Watch: A pope, a dog, and a life's savings: scam victims' unbelievable tragedies
Times Talk delves into a wave of increasingly sophisticated and insidious online scams that is sweeping Malta
How did a woman send all her pension to a scammer believing she was talking to Pope Leo XIV?
How did another woman spend seven years and €170,000 trying to buy a dog that never even existed?
And how did a man send his life's savings to a romantic partner half way across the world only to discover at the end she was not there?
You cannot make this stuff up... or can you?
This is the sort of stuff scammers make up every day to lure people to their stealing tactics, and these are the real stories of Maltese men and women who lost hundreds of thousands to sophisticated online scams during the past months.
In this latest episode of Times Talk three experts delve into a wave of increasingly sophisticated and insidious online scams that is sweeping across Europe, leaving a trail of financial and emotional devastation.
But beneath the sensation of the more ridiculous stories, thousands of other people are falling for and losing money to scams that are far harder to detect.
Some of them are business people who lost as much as half a million euros in one transaction, just because they received a seemingly genuine email from a scammer disguised as their accountant.
The scams are spreading like wildfire and the victims are not just the vulnerable or the uninformed; they are often educated, high-earning individuals who fall prey to meticulously crafted psychological traps.
Some of the most incredible scams are audatious deceptions and jaw-dropping hoaxes, to say the least.
This episode explores the human psychology behind these elaborate cons, and how master manipulators exploit the trust of businesses and the deepest desires of people.
Subscribe to Times Talk on Spotify or Apple Podcasts to make sure you don’t miss the next episode.
If you have been a victim of a crime, you can access therapeutic support or legal assistance through Victim Support Malta on 21 228333, email info@victimsupport.org.mt , or fill in the referral form on victimsupport.org.mt