A woman in central Vietnam’s Quang Nam Province has been scammed off over VND900 million (US$40,000) by a purportedly American boyfriend she had met on Facebook.

Quang Nam police said on Friday that it had just received a denunciation penned by N.T.P., who claimed to have been scammed by an online boyfriend.

P. had been exchanging Facebook messages with a man by the name of Muller, who claimed to be the ‘Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army’, stationed in Afghanistan, according to the woman’s account.

Muller reportedly confessed his love for P., offering to send her a large sum of money as a gift to prove his sincerity.

A few days later, the man called P. on the phone, telling her that the gift had been confiscated by Hanoi authorities, and that P. would have to pay VND37 million ($1,600) in order to receive it.

Confident in her boyfriend’s words, P. transferred the sum without a second thought, only to be asked to make multiple further transactions that added up to over VND900 million ($40,000).

Not having the large amount of cash readily available, P. mortgaged her house and other properties for bank loans.

It was not until P. had waited too long without receiving any gift that she realized she had fallen victim to a scam and reported her case to the police.

Earlier this year, a Vietnamese woman from Lam Dong Province in the Central highlands was also duped into transferring VND366.5 million (US$16,000) to a self-claimed U.S. military official she had met on Facebook, using similar con technique.

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