Only rarely do the law enforcement authorities succeed in gaining access to a love scammer in Germany. And when it does, the trail of money gets lost somewhere in an internet café in Ghana, for example.
Carsten Schott has headed the »Department for Phenomenon-Related Property Crimes« at the LKA Hamburg. It has been a years-long battle against criminals who are almost impossible to track.
The dramatic living conditions of the victims, who lose their entire fortunes, have affected him so much that he is still committed to them today.

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Carsten Schott has retired, but he continues to look after the victims on a voluntary basis at the "White Ring". Among them are women who, because of the high payments to the professional fraudsters, forget the loan installments for their house in a love frenzy. One victim even got married on the internet without ever meeting her husband. Some also pay money to enter the dating platforms, which do little against the fake profiles.
The love scammers usually hijack their false identities on Facebook. SPIEGEL TV reporter Steffen Vogel tracked down a certain "Matthew," allegedly an American. But the likeable best ager turned out to be Jens Buddrich from Schleswig-Holstein. He had published large parts of his life on social networks in good faith. The third episode »Under Interrogation: The Tinder Swindlers« is about the branching system of love scammers that makes prosecution so difficult.