It's no secret that the elderly are one of the most vulnerable communities when it comes to scams. From sweepstakes and health-related scams to fake electricity bills and pensions, people really have no shame. But one scammer truly went out of this world, posing as a fake astronaut in the middle of a space emergency, robbing an 80-year-old woman in the process.
This story comes out of Hokkaido, Japan, where a woman, looking for companionship online, connected with someone claiming to be an astronaut. A man with an incredible imagination but a cruel heart told her his spaceship was under attack and he urgently needed money to buy oxygen. Believing she was helping her love interest survive in space, the woman wired about 1 million yen (roughly $6,700) of her life savings.
Police say the woman lives alone, and like many victims of romance scams, she was vulnerable to the attention and affection. "If a person you met on social media ever demanded cash from you, please be suspicious," a local officer urged, per the Japan Times.
According to the World Bank, Japan has the world's second-oldest population after Monaco, but this is a global problem. In the U.S. alone, over 7,600 seniors were scammed in 2024 through romance and “confidence” fraud, losing nearly $389 million, according to the FBI, per PEOPLE.
Seniors are prime targets because they tend to be trusting, polite, and often have savings that scammers can exploit. And many never report it, either out of embarrassment or not knowing how.
It’s easy to laugh at the absurdity of someone falling for a “stranded astronaut in need of oxygen money,” but people are lonely, and isolation makes you vulnerable. Whether it’s a fake astronaut, a soldier overseas, or a supposed celebrity sliding into DMs, scammers prey on emotions.
And when it comes to romance scams, they are on the rise everywhere, affecting all ages. The FTC reported that more than 64,000 Americans lost over $1 billion to these schemes in 2023, double what was lost just four years earlier. And that’s only the cases we know about.
Another bizarre case came earlier this year when it was revealed that a French woman was defrauded of over $798,000 after she believed she was talking to Brad Pitt. The woman named Anna told French television TF1 that she was contacted online by someone claiming to be the Oscar award-winning actor's mom, saying, "It’s a woman like you that my son needs," per The Times.
Anna had a gut feeling that she ignored. "At first I said to myself that it was fake, that it's ridiculous," she said. "But I'm not used to social media and I didn't really understand what was happening to me."
The Pitt impersonator sent her AI images of him in a hospital bed, saying he developed kidney cancer and needed a loan because his bank accounts were closed because of his divorce from Angelina Jolie, and she sent almost all of her divorce settlement.
The lesson here is don't send strangers money online, and warn the seniors in your life about scams.