A 66-year-old San Jose woman is reportedly out several hundred thousand dollars after falling victim to an online dating scam.
The woman, whose name was not released, met a man on the site ChristianMingle.com who claimed to be a citizen of the United Kingdom working on a Scottish oil rig. After a courtship consisting of text messages and phone calls, the woman sent her online beau $500,000, according to Santa Clara County prosecutors. Her suitor claimed he wanted to borrow the money to run his business, even creating a fake company website and listing her name as a company official.
At some point she suspected the gentleman might have been lying to her. She contacted authorities, who traced the man’s Skype account and e-mail addresses to Nigeria. Then a man named Wisdom Onokpite tried to withdraw the money from the bank in Turkey, where she had wired the money. He was arrested, but is apparently not the false oil rigger, but an associate who had traveled from Nigeria to Turkey on a fake passport.
The scammer used a legitimate dating site to find his victim.
Fortunately, the woman was able to recover about $200,000 of the money she sent to the account in Turkey.
Read more:
San Jose Mercury News: San Jose woman victim of dating site fraud
SFGate: San Jose woman loses $500,000 in online dating scam
