Karin Kängström was exposed to romantic scammers on Facebook

Sometime last winter, 76-year-old Karin Kängström received a friend request from a man she didn’t know on Facebook, after some thought, she accepted it.

– Normally I don’t approve of someone I don’t know who he is, but I thought he looked good and someone I can have a conversation with and then it started, says Karin, who became a widow almost two years ago.

The man, who called himself Martin Henriksson, told Karin that he was born in Lund but moved to England as a child and therefore could not speak much Swedish, which Borås Tidning previously wrote about.

He also said that he worked on an oil rig outside of Italy and had his own company. She posted photos of what it looked like and when Karin Googled it was the oil rig she said she was working on and she could read about it.

Quickly led the conversation to romance

But quickly “Martin Henriksson” turned the conversations into romance, which Karin found strange.

– It quickly turned into romance, it was hugs and kisses, all putty. and then she started sending flowers digitally every morning and then a long declaration of love and some music video that was connected to it. I thought “this does not seem wise to me, what is this”.

“Martin” had no contact with his Swedish relatives, but he would try to find them when he was ready on the oil rig and so he wanted to visit Karin, which seemed even more strange to her.

– He wrote that he would go directly to me. It sounded so strange that he wasn’t going home to England where he had a dog. But if I write that I have a dog, it is clear that he had it too.

Reports of various types of fraud are decreasing in western Sweden, the only category that is increasing is romance fraud.

– Contact can last a long time, sometimes more than a year, before a question arises about transferring money for an urgent need. But in typical romantic fraud, the parties have never met in real life, says Anna-Karin Kjellgren, crime prevention officer in the fraud section at Police Region West in a press release.

I tried to give Karin a bad conscience

It wasn’t long before the man calling himself Martin started asking Karin for money. She had already begun to suspect it was a supposed sun and spring and says she played along.

– After a couple of weeks the drills were broken and they needed to get new ones but he didn’t want any money from me but I was helping him with his transfers and getting all the contact information but I said no and he got mad. And then it was the shipment was not on the invoice so they couldn’t get the drills out and he wanted me to send him money for that, he couldn’t withdraw more from his account for a month and then it would take a while to come here she says

When Karin both times said no, partly to help him and then to send real money, her tone immediately changed and she tried to give her a bad conscience.

– He wrote about how useless I was, that I was not who he thought, that I did not feel empathy or understanding for him. He presented it as if I was the worst person in the world, he says.

My friend was also affected

In all of last year 43 fraud were reported throughout the year, but so far this year, the police have already received 49.

However, Karin decided not to report to the police.

– I was not injured in any way, but they say you should so maybe call today at least today.

Shortly after Karin blocked the romance scammer, a friend of hers received a friend request.

– I got so mad, this is a whole industry. Just a few weeks later, a friend received a friend request, it was the same photo but with a different name. “I’m a richer experience, but not a penny poorer,” he says.

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