MEDICINE HAT, AB — A local woman is out roughly $300,000 after falling victim to a romance fraud.
Police say the woman involved began transferring large sums of money to a man in the United States, who she had never met, earlier this year.
Officers with Major Crimes are investigating, but say there is little chance the money will be recovered.
Staff Sergeant Trevor Humphries with the Medicine Hat Police Service said a lot of these scams stem from online dating.
He said people are being exploited out of loneliness, just wanting to believe that they’ve finally found ‘the one’.
He said it’s easy for anyone to become someone else online, but it’s not so easy for police to track down who they’re talking to or to pin point where the money is going.
“These people are becoming very sophisticated, not only in their ability to manipulate the victim, but their ability to navigate through the internet and how they’re able to exploit the banking system and how they’re able to get access to the funds with very little trace,” he said.
Humphries said officers investigate the circumstances surrounding each matter, but it’s difficult to lay charges when the suspects are in other countries or overseas.
But he added that police still want people reporting what happened and said it’s important officers are aware of what’s happening to see if there’s anything they can do.
“Sometimes we’ll have family members report it,” he said. “We’ve had people that have gone to different institutions to do a money transaction (…) and we’ve had those institutions phone us saying that they perceive that this person is going to be victimized.”
Humphries said, like in most cases, if it’s too good to be true, it probably is.
“People that constantly want funds, it’s pretty difficult to say that there’s any type of romance involved in that,” he said.
