The Love Scam Empire
Young Namibians recruited to pretend to be rich, using fake social media accounts and scamming older men online IN JUNE 2023, a young Namibian man spent two weeks in Windhoek learning how to pretend to be a rich woman so he could scam men over the age of 50 on the internet. The man, which […] The post The Love Scam Empire appeared first on The Namibian .
Young Namibians recruited to pretend to be rich, using fake social media accounts and scamming older men online
IN JUNE 2023, a young Namibian man spent two weeks in Windhoek learning how to pretend to be a rich woman so he could scam men over the age of 50 on the internet.
The man, which the state has identified as Kambonde Nashitope, was recruited by a close corporation that is now accused of using Namibia as its base to scam people as part of an international scheme in which victims have lost more than N$8 billion.
The close corporation is also linked to criminal networks in countries such as Myanmar and Thailand.
Nashitope was one of the 50 young Namibians who were used to run a fraud scheme, a romantic scam known as ‘pig butchering’, in which scammers pose as wealthy individuals, attracting strangers and building their targets’ trust online over weeks before steering them into fake cryptocurrency investments.
The scheme was based in Windhoek near the police headquarters.
Nashitope, who was 27 years old at the time he worked for the close corporation, used fake names such as ‘Heidi’ and ‘Jane’ on social media as part of a fraud scheme that eventually led to the arrest of 14 people in Namibia’s capital.
Although the case has been ongoing for the past three years, unreported court documents show how these schemes entangled young Namibians aged between 20 and 35 who thought they had found jobs in Windhoek.
