{"id":422956,"date":"2026-05-11T23:05:10","date_gmt":"2026-05-11T23:05:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/422956\/"},"modified":"2026-05-11T23:05:10","modified_gmt":"2026-05-11T23:05:10","slug":"dunedin-woman-fears-800000-lost-in-online-romance-scam-with-fake-american-general","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/422956\/","title":{"rendered":"Dunedin woman fears $800,000 lost in online romance scam with fake American general"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"JtBQMqmXyJmFvekYOB\" style=\"display:none\">Investigators believe the documents she was provided were not genuine, and the image she was sent of the man is suspected to have been digitally altered.<\/p>\n<p class=\"JtBQMqmXyJmFvekYOB\" style=\"display:none\">Enquiries into the matter remain ongoing.<\/p>\n<p class=\"JtBQMqmXyJmFvekYOB\" style=\"display:none\">Lee said the case was a reminder of the risks posed by online relationships involving financial requests, particularly from people not known in person.<\/p>\n<p class=\"JtBQMqmXyJmFvekYOB\" style=\"display:none\">\u201cAny time someone asks you online for cash or something of monetary value, it should raise a red flag.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"JtBQMqmXyJmFvekYOB\" style=\"display:none\">He said police urged the public to seek a second opinion from trusted friends or family before transferring money or sending goods to online contacts.<\/p>\n<p class=\"JtBQMqmXyJmFvekYOB\" style=\"display:none\">Police also advise people to be cautious with unsolicited emails and phone calls, to check email addresses carefully, and to avoid clicking links from unverified sources.<\/p>\n<p class=\"JtBQMqmXyJmFvekYOB\" style=\"display:none\">Ben Tomsett is a multimedia journalist based in Dunedin. He joined the Herald in 2023.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Investigators believe the documents she was provided were not genuine, and the image she was sent of the&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":422957,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[81990,74,41242,7818,8239,1558,69679,10748,23552,37484,6788,37483,28164,19134,2294,305,78,5836,11692,111,43,139,69,1642,1523,675,3109,5714,1461,18434,13109,2069,1455,102,1354,1530],"class_list":["post-422956","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-81990","tag-after","tag-alert","tag-allegedly","tag-american","tag-been","tag-believing","tag-came","tag-claimed","tag-defrauded","tag-dunedin","tag-fake","tag-fears","tag-forward","tag-general","tag-have","tag-in","tag-lost","tag-nearly","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-online","tag-over","tag-police","tag-public","tag-romance","tag-scam","tag-scams","tag-several","tag-stay","tag-warning","tag-with","tag-woman","tag-years"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/422956","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=422956"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/422956\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/422957"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=422956"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=422956"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=422956"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}