Crypto Scammers Now Target Dating Apps

Romance scams as it is popularly called has seemed to be on the rise since the start of the covid19 pandemic and ironically, so has crypto prices. This has now become an opportunity for crypto scammers to carve a new entry point into the world of digital scams, aimed at nothing else but parting victims from their savings.

A lot of investors who use trading bots such as Bitcoin Smarter and BitPrime Gold are becoming even more careful in order not to become victims of scam bots. That has not been successfully handled and we now have to deal with this new form of crypto scams.

According to agency data, 57,000 romance scams with a total of about $137 million in losses were reported to the Federal Trade Commission in 2021. This amount is almost double the amount of cases reported to the commission the year before. 

This shows a progressive increase in the occurrence of romantic scams year after year. In a brief published by the Federal Bureau Of Investigation (FBI) in the fall of last year, the Bureau warned the general public of crypto dating scams. They mentioned that crypto dating scams were fast emerging as a major category of cybercrime with more than 2000 reported cases in the first seven months of the year.

Experts Analysis On The ‘How’ And ‘Why’ In The Saga Of Crypto Dating Scams

A lot of experts share the opinion that the dating scams originally sprung from China and only recently spread to the U.S and Europe. The Chinese name of the crypto dating scams directly translates to “pig butchering” which refers to the way a pig is fattened up with flattery and romance before being scammed of their hard-earned savings all in the next of crypto investments.

The deputy director of Global Anti-Scam organization – a nonprofit organization that represents victims of online cryptocurrency scams –  Jan Santiago, said that unlike typical romance scams, these scammers seem to be targeting young and more educated young women on dating apps like Hinge and Tinder. Mr. Santiago said that it is mostly millennials that are getting scammed on these sites.

A researcher at the online fraud prevention firm Sift, Jane Lee, started looking into dating scams at the beginning of 2021. In order to get firm results from her research, Jane signed up for a lot of popular dating apps and in no time matched with men who tried very hard to offer her investment advice.

Jane Lee stated in her research paper that people appear to be lonely from the pandemic. This loneliness coupled with the craze around cryptocurrency right now has made Dating scams a much more successful criminal venture.

Ms. Lee, whose company specializes in preventing fraud from dating apps, said that the men she matched with tried endlessly to move the conversation of the dating app to WhatsApp where the encryption can prevent the conversations from being tracked by law enforcement agencies.

The Sad Story Of A Victim

Ms Hutchinson had just inherited a total of $300,000 from the sale of her childhood home after the demise of her mother.

A friend of hers suggested that she invest in cryptocurrency – after all it was the trend of the season – she heeded the suggestion. Her friend who goes by the name Hao was someone she had only met on the internet.

She fell for Hao’s antics and invested her life savings with him. She would end up regretting this a few minutes from that moment.