A romance-focused scam has robbed a Brit of £150,000.
In 2020, a man (let's call him Tom) began a correspondence on a dating site with the charming Jia from Hong Kong. Soon their communication became close and they moved to WhatsApp.
Jia talked a lot about the future, about moving to the UK and how young people could build a rich life together. She posed as a successful crypto investor, inviting Tom to join her lifestyle.
Tom had already had experience investing in Bitcoin several years ago, and kept the asset in his wallet.
Jia convinced Tom that she had inside information, thanks to which she made money. She showed Tom screenshots of her successful trades, proving that she was an experienced investor with large incomes and her own business. After much hesitation and convincing, Tom gave up and decided to try investing according to the proposed scheme.
Jia showed the exchange application, which needs to be downloaded to the phone. Tom immediately became suspicious due to the fact that some functions did not work. Jia calmed him down and persuaded him to invest a small amount in bitcoins to prove the legitimacy of the site.
The man transferred 0.1 BTC to the exchange and converted it into US dollars. To strengthen his confidence, he tried to withdraw this money, and he succeeded.
Since the platform processed the withdrawal as expected, he decided to increase the invested amount. Tom transferred 150,000 pounds sterling (about $200,000) in BTC to the platform. Soon after, his deposit disappeared.
Jia wrote to him that she too had lost more than $1 million on the exchange. And then she said that she “needed to fly to Australia to look after her sick aunt,” and disappeared.
Only then did Tom realize that he had been deceived. He contacted the police.
According to law enforcement, Tom is not the first victim of “romantic fraud.” Scammers use dating sites to build trust and then manipulate victims into transferring funds to fake sites. In the United States, 1,800 such complaints were recorded in the first half of 2021 alone. In total, about $133.4 million was stolen in this way during the year.
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