Mr Liu, from China, was scammed out of thousands of pounds by a group of fraudsters. He believed he had an online girlfriend until he realised it was strange that the woman wouldn’t meet him
A man was duped out of a whopping £21,000 after he fell for a woman he met online – only to find out she wasn’t real.
The man, Mr Liu, from Shanghai, China, was targeted by a group of scammers who trained artificial intelligence to be his girlfriend. The hopeless romantic said he had no idea that his girlfriend, Mrs Jiao was completely made up. But by the time he had realised, it was too late.
According to China Central Television (CCTV), he had sent her almost 200,000 Chinese Yuan ( around £21,778 ) under the premise that he was helping her pay for her relative’s health care. He was also tricked into passing over the huge sum after believing he was supporting her dreams of opening a business.
He eventually alerted the police after becoming suspicious of why they had not met in person. The funds were transferred to the crook’s bank account in August last year, reports Mail Online. The gang even created pretend documents to make the AI girlfriend seem like a real person including the medical records and an identity card.
Police uncovered a trail of lies and found that the imagery and videos he was sent of Mrs Jiao were actually AI materials. It has been reported that the team of fraudsters bagged a total of two million Chinese Yuan since the scam began.
According to the police findings, revealed by the Chinese state-run broadcaster, the gang consisted of “a team of scammers sending videos and photos that were all created using artificial intelligence or by combining multiple photos.”
Sadly, this is not the only scam to emerge overseas within a matter of weeks. One month ago, a French woman thought she had struck up a friendship with Brad Pitt. The 53-year-old was left out of pocket by £697,000 after she thought she was sending money to the actor.
She was tricked into believing that she was helping fund his alleged cancer treatment. The 53-year-old victim shelled out the eye-watering sum to help with what she believed was cancer treatment for the film star. “There are so few men who write you this kind of thing. I liked the man I was talking to. He knew how to talk to women, it was always very well done,” she told BFMTV at the time.