{"id":331999,"date":"2019-07-29T17:10:51","date_gmt":"2019-07-29T15:10:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=331999"},"modified":"2019-07-29T17:15:42","modified_gmt":"2019-07-29T15:15:42","slug":"hawks-and-fbi-take-down-online-dating-scam-which-allegedly-stole-millions-of-rands","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/internet\/331999\/hawks-and-fbi-take-down-online-dating-scam-which-allegedly-stole-millions-of-rands\/","title":{"rendered":"Hawks and FBI take down online dating scam which allegedly stole millions of rands"},"content":{"rendered":"

A 48-year-old man accused of defrauding his victims through an online dating scam appeared in the Cape Town Magistrate\u2019s Court on Monday (29 July) for alleged fraud and money laundering.<\/p>\n

The suspect who allegedly scammed people out of millions of rands, was arrested last week Friday following a joint operation by the Hawks\u2019 Serious Commercial Crime Investigation and the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI).<\/p>\n

“It is alleged that the suspect lured mostly USA based victims from a dating site,” the Hawks said.<\/p>\n

“After building a certain level of trust the victims were tricked into paying the suspect for apparent business related challenges in the guise that the money was going to be paid back.<\/p>\n

“The Hawks and the FBI linked the suspect to over R4.1 million transferred to a South African based company owned by the suspect.”<\/p>\n

This is not the first major instance of a South African-related scam targeting people in the US.<\/p>\n

In 2016, it was reported<\/a> <\/strong>that an internet fraud syndicate operating out of Pretoria stole over R70 million from hundreds of women over six years, with a Nigerian man posing as a US soldier to win the hearts of his lonely victims.<\/p>\n

The cyber scam network was set up by a group of Nigerians in 2009, which ran romance and credit card-related scams.<\/p>\n

\n

Read:\u00a0Facebook to pay record R70 billion fine for privacy violations<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A 48-year-old man accused of defrauding his victims through an online dating scam appeared in the Cape Town Magistrate\u2019s Court on Monday (29 July) for alleged fraud and money laundering.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":31721,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9882],"tags":[26],"class_list":["post-331999","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-internet","tag-headline"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/331999","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=331999"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/331999\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":332007,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/331999\/revisions\/332007"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31721"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=331999"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=331999"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=331999"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}