A 'Love Scam' Duped More Than 100 Lonely Hearts Out of Cash in Malaysia, Singapore

Love hurts. Especially when you're the victim of a Nigerian love scam.

Malaysian police arrested 27 people, including 13 Nigerians, 14 Malaysians and one Indonesian, for allegedly running an online love scam in Malaysia and Singapore that duped 108 lonely people out of 21.6 million Malaysian ringgit (Rp 64.6 billion) ahead of Valentine's Day.

Authorities also seized more than a dozen laptops, 26 ATM cards, 39 cellphones, two gold chains, seven vehicles, and more than 19,000 Malaysian ringgit in cash. They froze an additional 135,000 Malaysian ringgit in assets during the bust.

The online love scam was reportedly run by a crew of Nigerian nationals who were in Malaysia on student visas. The men worked with Malaysian and Indonesian women to lure lonely hearts into relationships online, only to them use their romantic feelings to rob them blind.

"The syndicate members involved in the romance scam use powerful words and emotions to prey on the lonely victims by using text messages only, and never face-to-face or phone communications," Acryl Sani, director of Malaysia's Commercial Crime Investigation Department, told AFP.

They would text sweet nothings to victims in Singapore and Malaysia, and would eventually promise to send gifts or fly out to meet face-to-face. But then something would go wrong. Sometimes the gifts would be seized at customs. Other times, it would be the lying Lotharios themselves stuck at the border. Regardless of the excuse, the request would be the same: wire money to this account and everything will be OK.

But the gifts, and the lovers, never arrived.

"These people are very good with the way they are tickling the feelings, the emotions, the hearts of the potential victims," said Acryl Sani Abdullah Sani, the head of Commercial Crimes Department at the Royal Malaysia Police. "So be aware."

Online scams are a serious problem in Southeast Asia. A study conducted by the Norwegian-based Telenor Group surveyed 400 people in Singapore, Malaysia, India, and Thailand. Some 46 percent of the respondents in Malaysia said they fell victim to an online scam—the highest rate among countries surveyed.

There were 14,627 cases of online scams in Malaysia last year alone, according to the Bukit Aman Commercial Crime Investigations Department (CCID). Most of the victims of these love scams were women, a CCID official said.

"It is very alarming that such cases are on an upward trend," said one official. "This is because of the influx of foreign cyber criminals."

It's enough that Singapore's National Crime Prevention Council runs a website called Scam Alert! to warn people about the dangers of these online scammer rings.

"These guys are on the Internet, posing as doctors, professionals, making friends with people around the world," David Chew, of the Singapore Commercial Affairs Department, told Channel News Asia. "The third one is once I become good friends with you, I can ask you to make investments, to give me loans.

"Of course, they never intend to return the money and when it's time for them to pay back the money, they're suddenly uncontactable. The modalities in which I can cheat a person who I trust is multifaceted."