Contributed by: kellyseal on Friday, March 18 2022 @ 12:18 pm
Last modified on Friday, March 18 2022 @ 12:35 pm
A young dater joined dating app Hinge and was swindled out of $390,000 in a fraud scheme involving cryptocurrency.
According to USA Today[*1] , 24 year-old Nicole Hutchinson of Tennessee signed up for the popular dating app looking to meet someone in California, where she had planned to move. She had almost $300,000 from the sale of her late mother’s house and was looking to build a life somewhere new.
She matched with a man named “Hao” according to reports, and after he told her he was born in the same town as where she was adopted, she felt a connection and continued texting him over WhatsApp. He told her he was knowledgeable about the cryptocurrency market and wanted to “teach her” how to invest.
They started with small investments made through a link that Hao gave her, and she was able to track the rise of her investment. As she gained, she bought more through the same site, and convinced her father to buy as well. When they had a combined investment of $1.2 million she went to cash out, but she was told she owed a $380,000 “tax bill” for the gain. She paid, only to learn after that none of her investment was real, and that Hao had run off with her money.
Now she says she wants to help others by bringing awareness to the scam.
According to reports from the FTC and FBI, she’s not alone. Scam artists are using cryptocurrency as a way to attract and swindle younger, tech-savvy singles. In fact, the FTC said dating app scams that centered around cryptocurrency schemes fueled the largest losses, which amounted to $139 million in stolen funds during 2021.
The New York Times[*2] interviewed researcher Jane Lee about the rise in cryto scams. She began looking into them last year, joining several popular apps only to be matched with numerous men who tried to offer her “investment advice.”
“People are lonely from the pandemic, and crypto is super hot right now,” she said. “The combination of the two has really made this a successful scam.”
These scammers initially help victims buy cryptocurrency on a legitimate site like Crypto.com, but then provide instructions for transferring it to a fake exchange which looks like a legitimate investment portal and offers an easy way to track your “investment.” It’s only later when the victims want to cash out that they discover the scammer took off with their money.
The New York Times cited experts who warn that defrauding people in cryptocurrency is easier in some ways because they can hide the money in digital wallets that can be set up anonymously. Plus, there’s no central bank or deposit insurance so it’s harder to recover stolen funds.