They get engaged online but never meet, he extorts 90,000 euros from her in two years: arrested

She had fallen in love with a man she had never met , giving him staggering amounts of up to 90,000 euros over time.

It happened in Savona , where the Carabinieri interrupted a "sentimental" scam that lasted two and a half years. The victim is a woman from Val Bormida, who fell into the trap of a 35-year-old man , originally from Potenza, with previous convictions, who was arrested and taken to prison . The two met in a chat for meetings , then the virtual "attendance" continued with phone calls and text messages. But they never met. The man, with " lies , psychological blackmail and real staging", has always found excuses not to meet the woman in person .

According to the story of the military, the man - when he realized that the victim had really fallen in love - did everything possible to ask her for increasingly large sums of money, telling her that she was the victim of extortionists . While she believed she was dealing with "a pleasant, serious, honest man ready to start a family", on the other end of the phone, the Carabinieri explained, there was instead a offender, addicted to drugs and with precedents for similar scams , also against his mother and invalid brother, who had denounced him for extortion.

(Unioneonline/vf)