Some crypto scammers are reportedly building online relationships — via dating apps such as Tinder — with their victims so that they can then be parted with their money.
According to a report published by The San Francisco Examiner earlier this month, techies in Silicon Valley have been hit hard by crypto fraudsters. The report profiles Cy, a Bay Area real estate analyst, who lost $1.2 million in a crypto fraud scam. Cy told the outlet the criminal went so far as to end the two-month long correspondence with the words “Now you have to go kill yourself”.
Cy, who committed himself to a local psychiatric ward, said of the scam,
I lost more than just money. I lost my self-confidence. I have ruined my family’s lives.
The report claims Cy was the victim of a type of an online crypto scam known as “pig slaughtering” or “pig butchering” — “sha zhu pan” (杀猪盘) in Chinese– where the victim is “fatted up” over a prolonged period of time as the criminal builds an online relationship with the target. The victim is then tricked into giving away their cryptoassets or money.
An FBI spokesperson told The Examiner,
The FBI San Francisco Division has seen a rising trend in which romance scammers are persuading individuals to send money to invest or trade cryptocurrency.
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