A mangaka was swindled out of 75 million yen (approximately $500,000) by a scammer who claimed he was Mark Ruffalo.
Reported by Asahi Shimbun, Chikae Ide, the 74-year-old mangaka of Viva! Volleyball, alleges that she was approached via Facebook in February 2018 by a man who claimed he was the actor who played Bruce Banner/Hulk in the Avengers films. "Ruffalo" pulled her into a whirlwind online romance where she found herself falling hard for the man's honeyed words. "He respected my work, and he said that I, this old lady, am beautiful," Ide said, adding that his words "gripped my heart."
Ide poured her heart out to "Ruffalo," telling him about how she had an abusive marriage in her 30s. As the breadwinner, she raised her three children alone before finally divorcing her husband. The scammer promised her he would "never make you feel sad."
During the first few months of their courtship, Ide did try to check whether he was legitimate by having a video call with him. After the 30-second call, she was convinced -- not realizing that the call was a deepfake video where the con man had digitally altered his body to look like the American actor. She and "Ruffalo" married shortly afterward in September that year, although the marriage was unofficial. A month later, Ide was wiring money to her "husband" for a range of different reasons -- until she was sending him more than 10 million yen a month. Ide had never met her "husband" in person.
Throughout their marriage, Ide's "husband" constantly asked her for money to the point where she sold her possessions, including original artwork, delayed paying her assistant, fell behind on her bills and was even forced to use her older son's savings to help her lover. She sent most of her sponsorship contract with Gucci, worth 35 million yen at the time, to the con man.
"Ruffalo" continued to con Ide out of her money through the use of black notes. At one point, Ide said that her husband began calling the black notes "cocaine." This move was yet another scheme in which Ide received white-dusted black paper, which looked like banknotes, with the promise that she could take 200 million yen from her husband's secret fortune of $12 million. The only way she could even touch the cash was to purchase oil, meaning that Ide, once again, needed to find some way to scrape together enough money to get her money back.
The Manga Artist’s Daughter Tried To Intervene
In 2021, Ide's daughter suspected her mother's new husband was not who he said he was, but she could not dissuade her mother. At this point, she was already 3.5 years deep into the scam. Her daughter lent her 200,000 yen but gave her mother an ultimatum: if Ide did not get the money back, then she'd have to admit she was getting scammed. The mangaka, predictably, did not.
It took close to 4 years before Ide managed to break out of the cycle, but her false relationship had already stolen 75 million yen from her with the con man still out there. Ide is not the only victim of online romance scams. In 2021, 192 consultations around “romance investment frauds” were conducted, possibly due to the isolation felt by the COVID-19 pandemic.
The mangaka recently published the novel Poison Love, based on her own experiences, in the hopes that her story would be a cautionary tale to those embarking on online romances.
Source: The Asahi Shimbun