Victims of dating-app fraud handed over $139m in cryptocurrencies in 2021

In 2021, total losses from fraud on online dating services reached $547 million, with cryptocurrencies accounting for a fifth of the total. Data from a отчета by the US Federal Trade Commission.

According to the agency, last year 18% of all schemes were linked to fake investment apps. They earned scammers $139 million.

An offender finds a potential victim on dating services and claims to have earned money by investing in cryptocurrencies. He offers coaching and promises substantial profits. The scheme has been dubbed CryptoRom — short for ‘Cryptoromance’.

One of the victims стал British man James Evans [name changed]. He met a certain «Дэвидом» on the Grindr app. A few days later the new acquaintance told Evans that he was versed in cryptocurrency trading and could teach him. He persuaded the Briton to register on the Binance exchange and invest £500 (about $680).

Then Evans transferred cryptocurrency from the exchange to a trading platform, a link to which was sent by his Grindr acquaintance. In the following days the Briton deposited a total of a further £15,000 (over $20,400), but could not withdraw.

Evans’s account on the trading platform stopped working, and «Дэвид» advised him to contact the platform’s support. The ‘managers’ confirmed the blockage of the account, demanding a deposit equal to 50% of the balance to unlock it. The man ‘suspected something was amiss’, but after a day he still deposited, yet the account did not function.

Total losses amounted to around £20,000 ($27,250). The victim added that he had not intended to invest that much, but the fraudster engaged in ’emotional abuse’ and manipulated him.

Fifty-year-old Briton Eva Kedula заложила свой дом, to invest £35,000 (about $47,700) in the app that a new acquaintance on Facebook advised her.

Two weeks later Kedula attempted to withdraw funds from the app, but in the ‘support service’ she was told that a deposit was required. The woman refused to top up the account, and the criminals threatened to report her to Interpol for fraud.

When Kedula asked the new acquaintance for help, he began to gaslight and accuse her. The Briton contacted Action Fraud, which investigates cybercrime, but they doubted that the scammers could be traced.

Initially, CryptoRom was used predominantly in Asia, but gradually it spread to Europe, the United States and Russia. A Russian woman познакомилась in Tinder with a man from China — both were interested in trading on an exchange, and the man offered to teach her. The woman deposited $100 into the app to which a new acquaintance had provided a link.

In the next two weeks the Chinese man urged the Russian woman to invest more and more. When she wanted to withdraw them, the app’s support told her that this could be done only if the account held at least $10,000 (she had $3,000). After researching the service, the Russian woman realised that she had fallen victim to a scammer.

Only to one of the Bitcoin addresses used by the criminals did they transfer about $1.39 million, noted in Sophos, a publication that investigates cybercrime. The criminals use hundreds of counterfeit trading, banking and other apps and websites that pass themselves off as popular services such as Binance, Kraken, Gemini, Bitwala and others.

Although the App Store does not admit suspicious apps, scammers use services for testing the publication of new programs and distributing them among developers, for example, Apple Developer Enterprise. After following the link, a page that imitates the App Store opens and the app is downloaded. The counterfeit service often carries a high rating and many fake positive reviews designed to boost victims’ trust.

In the US Federal Trade Commission report, it говорится, that only about 3% of fraud victims report to authorities, so the scale of losses may be much larger.

Earlier ForkLog reported that in 2021 in Russia каждая вторая финансовая пирамида attracted potential victims with the help of cryptocurrencies.

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