Elderly Woman Loses Thousands to Fake Astronaut in Romance Scam

A Japanese woman in her 80s lost thousands of dollars to a fake astronaut who conned her into believing he needed her support with an urgent spaceship problem, police said.

The romance scam began in July, when the elderly woman, based in Hokkaido, connected with the swindler on social media, AFP and Sky News reported.

Eventually, the con artist said he was “in space on a spaceship right now,” and was “under attack and in need of oxygen,” the police officer told AFP, adding that the woman was convinced she needed to send money online to help her love interest purchase oxygen.

The woman lives alone, AFP added, citing local media outlets, and was ultimately cheated out of approximately 1 million yen, or about $6,700.

“If a person you met on social media ever demanded cash from you, please be suspicious of the possibility of scam, and report to police,” the officer told the outlet.

Similar romance scams are impacting people globally, and experts say elderly people can be especially susceptible.

In 2024, 7,626 people over 60 fell victim to confidence fraud and romance scams, leading to more than $389 million in losses, according to the FBI’s Internet Crime Report.

“Seniors are often targeted because they tend to be trusting and polite. They also usually have financial savings, own a home, and have good credit—all of which make them attractive to scammers,” the agency said of broadly of elder fraud, which impacts millions of Americans annually.

“Additionally, seniors may be less inclined to report fraud because they don’t know how, or they may be too ashamed at having been scammed,” the FBI added.

This summer, a 66-year-old Utah woman, identified only as Rita, shared her experience getting scammed out of $90,000 by someone pretending to be a celebrity.

“I wasn’t thinking with my brain, I was thinking with my heart,” she said in a PSA shared by the FBI’s Salt Lake City field office in June.

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“He was going through a divorce. I was going through this also and so we kind of connected emotionally on that and then it just morphed into something more romantic,” Rita said.

The scammer eventually asked her to switch their chat to an encrypted messaging application and she later sent them money through Bitcoin.

“So many people are so embarrassed to come forward and admit to it. You really shouldn’t because you give these people an opportunity to make even more money, so you need to report it,” Rita said.

“Don’t get taken advantage of. It’s so hard and it hurts at the end, it really hurts,” she continued. “It takes a while to put yourself back together again and I’m glad I am back to who I am.”