A Sudbury, Ont. woman was threatened by a man she met online after refusing to send him $15,000.
Within days of meeting on Plenty of Fish, a dating website, the man professed his love to the victim.
“I was naive, not thinking straight,” she said.
The man said he has a daughter studying in the United States and that he’s working on a project in Turkey. The two only spoke for a few weeks when he started asking her for monetary favours.
At first, he asked her for a $100 iTunes gift card, and a few days later, she bought him a new laptop for work.
Finally, he asked her for $15,000 to help save a work project, or else he said he would lose a contract worth millions.
After saying no, “he threatened myself, my daughters, my grandchildren and that’s when I decided I’d better go to the police.” The man told the woman, “you’ve made the biggest mistake, and you know how.”
The Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre says that romance scams were one of their most reported in 2016.
Jessica Gunson, the call centre and intake manager, says romance scams cost Canadians more than $20 million in 2016.
Read more at CBC News
