All of us love watching movies and even love the various actors that star in them. But these fandoms have often become places for conmen and fraudsters to exploit and extort people out of money. For instance, a conman duped a Kajal Aggarwal fan and extorted Rs. 75 lakhs in exchange for a meeting, or a Tamil Nadu man posing as Armaan Malik online and persuading women to send nudes and extorting lakhs of rupees. Here is another catfishing story from Berlin.
As per a report in Times Now, a 45-year old German woman named Katja Lorenza, who was allegedly in love with celebrity Vin Diesel, gave away approx. Rs. 4.8 lakhs to a conman who was posing as the actor. She was in a virtual relationship with the man who catfished her saying that he needed the money to return home from South Africa.
Reportedly, Lorenz is already in the profession of working with actors. She also claimed to have met Vin Diesel at the Berlin Film Festival and even follows the ‘Fast and Furious’ actor on his Instagram handle.
She said, “I work with actors, and I met Vin Diesel years ago at the Berlinale and follow him on Instagram. Sony wrote to me, I didn’t think it was unusual, as we vaguely knew each other.”
So when the conman contacted her, she admits to having been confused as to why the actor didn’t get in touch with her through his official Instagram account. But the fraudster managed to convince her through the excuse that he can’t text other women from his official account as his management team would note it immediately.
Unfortunately, the Berlin woman believed the excuse and proceeded to start an online relationship with the man. On his request, she transferred a huge amount of money to him when he made up a story about how he was mugged in South Africa and needed the money urgently to get back home.
She got to know of the reality when the conman revealed himself to her and messaged her revealing that he was in fact a 23-year old medical student who pays for his studies by catfishing and conning other people. The case is currently being investigated by the police.
This is truly the era of ‘catfishing’ and ‘ghosting’ as cases like this are exponentially on the rise. We can only try to be more aware and vigilant of strangers on the internet and their promises. What do you think?