KUALA LUMPUR: A 46-year-old single mother was cheated of RM23,180 recently in an online dating scam.
The victim, who wanted to be known only as Ranee, said she met “Chandru” via an online dating website in October last year, and even took a loan from loan shark as a means to provide financial assistance to her online lover.
Chandru, who claimed to be a 50-year-old widower with a 15-year-old daughter, introduced himself as an architect currently involved in a construction project in New Zealand.
He claimed that he was born in India and currently residing in San Diego.
“I wanted to date a widower because my main focus was to find a father for my son and become a mother to his child,” Ranee said at the MCA Public Services and Complaints Department.
She said she was convinced that “Chandru” was real after several phone calls, even meeting him at an airport for a short while.
Chandru claimed that he had mortgaged his house for his business but did not have enough money due to the high cost of living in New Zealand.
“At first there was nothing to be suspicious about as he used his own resources to run his life over there. However, slowly he started to ask for some money from me as he needed it for his expenses. I trusted him and gave him the money that I borrowed from an ‘ah long’.
“He asked money a few of times for work-related purposes and I obliged as I trusted him and resorted to a loan shark again,” she said.
Chandru told Ranee that he bought a flight ticket to Kuala Lumpur on March 19 and was going to spend a month with her in Malaysia before bringing her and her son to the United States for good.
She waited several hours at the airport, but Chandru did not turn up.
“Since then, I have not received any calls or any information on his whereabouts... I can’t believe I got myself into this scam as I thought for sure this person was real,” she said, choking back tears.
Department head Datuk Seri Michael Chong said online love scammers usually targeted single women and widows who were lonely.
“I have already received 32 cases since last year involving a total of RM3 million and the majority of the victims were women. Usually the scammers claimed they were living overseas but actually they stay here because most of the money transactions were deposited using local bank accounts.”