In a shocking crypto Tinder scam, a US individual lost around $277,000, equivalent to ₹20 lakhs to a cryptocurrency scammer who pretended to be his lover. In a romance-filled scam, the scammer contacted the individual on Tinder won his trust and went ahead to steal all his money. The story commences when Mike, the victim, is matched with a woman, Jenny, the scammer from Malaysia, on the popular dating app Tinder. After conversing with each other, their romance moved to WhatsApp, and the two started engaging in talks for hours. It was going relatively smoothly until the scammer started talking about Bitcoin.
This then resulted in the victim losing all his life savings. This incident was first reported by NBC News, where Mike told everyone, “She started telling me about her uncle who worked for J.P. Morgan, and he was the world expert in Bitcoin operations. I wasn’t looking to invest in cryptocurrency. I was looking for somebody to have some fun with, you know, let’s go hiking, let’s go have dinner.”
Crypto Tinder Scam: A US man was scammed of $277,000
Despite talking for long hours, the two never engaged in an in-person meetup. The scammer, who went by Jenny, claimed to be living in Malaysia while Mike was living in The States. Regardless of the distance between them, Jenny went ahead, convincing Mike to invest in cryptocurrency. Initially, Mike bought Bitcoin worth $3000 from a legitimate service provider. However, Jenny then persuaded him to transfer the cryptocurrency to a different website, which was a fake designed to scam people. As time progressed, Mike kept investing more and more into the website, thinking he was doing so in cryptocurrency.
Mike said, “she would get me excited and say, Mike, so you got to spend more money. The more you have in here, the more you can make.” Four months later, after Mike had invested over 20 lakhs, he started growing suspicious regarding his money transfers and eventually found out that his account was locked. However, by the time Mike realized that he was being scammed, Jenny was already gone along with all his life savings.
You may also like: Facebook Parent Meta Exploring the Potential of Digital Money ‘Zuck Bucks’
Recently, after Crypto Tinder Scam, Tinder has set some new guidelines on how users can protect themselves from such scams. After all, the Tinder Swindler must have taught users something about blindly believing in anyone.