Dating Site Scams: How Cryptocurrency Enthusiasts Get Duped
Even if you’re a top-tier trader, predicting asset price swings to the nth degree, love can cloud your judgment, making you vulnerable to manipulation and bravado.
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We've previously discussed prevalent CryptoRom scam strategies. Yet, the number of individuals succumbing to these deceptions isn't dwindling. Perhaps dry statistics and theoretical discourse don't resonate as alerts to tangible threats? Let's attempt to engage our readers by detailing specific cases.
A man from Eden Prairie, Minnesota, lost $9.2 million and his spouse due to a misadventure on a dating website. A woman he met persuaded him to amass wealth, desert his wife, and commit to her. Over six months, the infatuated trader depleted their shared accounts, lured by a crypto bonanza the woman promised. She assured that his contributions to an unnamed token soon launching on the Coinrule-web3 platform would fetch incredible returns, enabling a heavenly life together. Initially, modest investments did yield profit, prompting him to invest further.
Between December 2022 and June 2023, he executed 21 transfers to the wallet provided by the woman. Alarm bells only rang for his wife when the bank notified her of a withdrawal ($2.1 million) exceeding their account's balance. Racing to the police, she was certain they'd been hacked. The ensuing drama when she realized her husband was behind the transactions remains undisclosed. What's evident is the mysterious woman vanished, her account deleted from the platform.
However, if you believe this episode is an isolated incident, you're gravely mistaken. This man is neither the first nor the last to be ensnared by crypto swindlers.
In 2022, a 30-year-old Brit bid farewell to $200,000 after interacting with a Hong Kong woman on a dating app. She posed as a triumphant crypto investor, promising a rosy future together in the UK. Upon his revelation of prior BTC investments, she dangled the carrot of insider knowledge guaranteeing enormous wealth. She directed him to a platform to transfer his bitcoins. Post downloading the app, his funds evaporated. Reaching out to her led to a tale of a sudden emergency involving an ailing aunt in Australia, after which she disappeared from the digital realm.
However, it's not only young men who can be blinded by love.
In February 2023, a 70-year-old retiree from Nottinghamshire transferred all her savings to a cryptocurrency wallet belonging to an “ex-military surgeon from the US army” she had met online. This online friend asserted that he wasn't interested in her money; he only wished to meet and end his days in the embrace of a woman. All he needed was a ticket to London. The elderly woman, prioritizing her emotions, converted £150,000 into BTC and sent it to the “surgeon's” provided address. Fortunately, the police managed to recover around $130,000. But that didn't heal the emotional wound she suffered. The retiree shared her story on a local television channel, advising everyone to be wary of online relationships.
But who heeded her warning? After all, we tend to think scams only happen to other people and not to ourselves, don't we?
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