Fascinating read about a horrible tragedy by a complete idiot. I also learned such a way of scamming is called pig butchering.
I’m not making fun of scammed people and feel for them, but I’m stunned how person X from NYC could believe that person Y from Hong Kong would want to marry them by never having met them. I mean, I can’t understand why you’d trust someone who you’ve never met and only been chatting to.
For example, if a real friend of yours had been a victim of email spoofing and the scammer started trading emails as your friend, then you’d be interacting with a “trusted” party and I can see it would be easier to fall for it, but these are random numbers from a country you’ve never visited (which no one can even certify even is the one they claim to be) and you start trusting them for no good reason.
There are tons and tons of scams, some much more subtle and/or targeted than others, but this stuns me in how generic and random it is (and how successfully it works)