Online love fraud Photo: VCG

An 80-year-old man in Hangzhou, East China's Zhejiang Province, was cheated out of 2.7 million yuan ($400,000) by a "woman" he met online and fell in love with. The scammer turned out to be a male after a five-year "relationship," reported The Paper on Tuesday.

The man, surnamed Fang, met the "woman" through a chatting app in 2016. The "woman" claimed that "she" runs a coffee shop in the US and showed extra care for Fang and even "flirted" with him to impress him. 

Fang later fell into a "love trap" and started providing financial aid to the "woman" when "she" was "in need" for money for investment, car purchase and medical treatment. 

In five years, Fang transferred a total of over 2.7 million yuan through online payment platforms.

Fang's daughter reported the case to the police in June and after investigation, the "woman" was found to be a 23-year-old man who was previously in prison for robbery at the age of 15. 

He has been arrested by the police now.  

To eliminate Fang's suspicion, the swindler had been using someone else's photos he downloaded from the internet to tell Fang that the person was "her."