Additional reporting by Koh Ewe and Gavin Butler
This story contains accounts of physical abuse and human trafficking.
Shortly after 2 o’clock one Friday afternoon, a notification popped up on Cindy Tsai’s phone. It was a WhatsApp message from an unknown number, simply stating, “Hello.”
Tsai ignored it. Three hours later, another message: “Are you Linda from the pet store?” She felt she should respond.
“I have never gotten a wrong message on my U.S. WhatsApp,” she told VICE World News from her Boston home. “I thought it was legitimate. I came back and said, ‘Sorry, wrong number’.”
That three-word message, delivered as a courtesy to the individual on the other end, would prove the most costly she’s ever sent. Within two months, she would lose more money than the average American earns in a lifetime.
“I met my scammer on October 15, 2021,” she said of that Friday exchange. “All said and done, I lost about $2.5 million.”
What unfolded was an online quasi-romantic relationship with an intelligent, handsome younger man named Jimmy, whom she believed lived in Los Angeles. Their daily conversations spanned life, sports, economics, literature—and, eventually, cryptocurrency.
After a tentative start buying and selling Ethereum through a website Jimmy recommended, initial profits prompted Tsai to take the plunge, buying vast quantities of the cryptocurrency. She had invested huge sums by the time the crypto investment platform alerted her…
