Japanese woman scammed by 'Russian astronaut' who needed money to return to Earth

Internet scams have been on the rise in the years since the pandemic began, but this might be the craziest yet.

With the rise in internet usage, the number of online scams has also increased considerably. At Interesting Engineering, we report the latest crypto-scams so that people do not fall for them in their attempts to connect with the new-age technology.

There is also the category of influencer scams - where individuals who have quite a bit of fan following on social media advise people to invest in schemes that can deliver very high returns. But sometimes, we also come across scams that do not make any sense at all. The entire episode has scam written over it, and yet, people fail to spot it.

The 'Russian astronaut' Romance scam

The woman transferred 4.4 million yen after the scammer promised to marry her after returning to Earth.

A man who claimed to be a Russian astronaut allegedly scammed a Japanese woman into believing he would marry her once he landed back on earth.

The man is said to have coerced the woman into paying for his ‘return trip’ from space.

According to news outlet TV Asahi, the man discovered the 65-year-old victim on Instagram in June and began to contact her

He messaged her and claimed that he was working on the International Space Station while his profile was changed to include photos taken from space.

They communicated through the Japanese messaging app LINE and it wasn’t long before he pretended to propose to her and promised a life together when he ‘returned to Earth’.

“I want to start my life in Japan,” he told her, before adding: “Saying this 1,000 times won’t be enough, but I’ll keep saying it. I love you.”

Japanese publication Yomiuri Shimbun reported that the man then told the woman he needed money to return from space. He said the fees included buying a rocket to fly to Japan.

The woman by this point believed him fully and paid him around 4.4 million yen (about £25,000) in total over the course of five separate payments.

According to the reports, the woman eventually grew suspicious of the man after he grew more demanding and the police launched an investigation into a romance scam.

Not the first Russian astronaut

Interestingly, this is not a one-off incident where a scammer tapped into someone's fascination for spacewalkers. Another Japanese woman in her 40s was followed by the Instagram handle claiming to be a Russian astronaut at the ISS, local news outlet Asahi reported.

Over the next two days, the duo interacted using the direct messages feature of the app, where the astronaut is likely to have used software to translate messages into Russian, while the woman used Japanese to converse, the outlet said.

The "astronaut" then requested to move the conversation to another app, which got the woman suspicious, who then ended the conversation there.

It is not the first time romance scams have come to light. Romance scams are basically when a fraudster makes a fake social media profile and online persona and tricks their victims into thinking they're in a romantic relationship in order to gain their trust.

This has not only been on the rise in Japan but it is the case in different parts of the world. This became more serious during the lockdown period of the pandemic when many victims fell prey to scamsters who extracted money from them.

Scams are growing increasingly common in Japan, with the number of cases rising to 14,498 this year – a 67 per cent increase in 10 years.