He pretends to be an astronaut on Iss and gets money to return to Earth and marry her: a fraudster discovered

He pretended to be an astronaut and promised to return from space to marry her. Believing him, she would have paid a mountain of money into her bank account to carry out her project, but in reality she was the victim of a scam.

A true “galactic” coup, the one that would have been the victim of 65 year old Japaneseresident in the prefecture of Shiga west of Tokyo. The author of the deception would be a fake Russian astronaut, whom the woman met in an online chat: the man would have convinced her to pay a total amount of 4.4 million yen (equivalent to about 30 thousand euros). Money that would have been used to finance his trip back to Earth aboard a rocket, departing the International Space Station (ISS), where the “astronaut” claimed to be. In return, the man would make her a promise of marriage.

Thus, between the months of August and September of this year, the mistake would be consummated: according to what emerged from the local authorities, the woman would have paid the money in more “tranches”, up to the contested figure. Then, however, the sum agreed with his interlocutor would no longer be enough to cover the “costs of landing the spacecraft”: a new request for money from the man would have fueled the woman’s suspicions, who at that moment would have decided to report it to the police.

It is still unclear which online chat the woman would have been drawn to by the elusive astronaut. Nor would the huge sum of money stolen from the victim be used for what purposes. It is not even known where, exactly, the requests for payment against the 65-year-old man would have originated. It will be up to the Japanese authorities to clarify what happened and try to recover – as far as possible – the value lost by the woman.