Greg's Corner

When romance and crypto scams meet

By Greg Collier

Money can complicate any relationship. However, it’s not complicated if a person you never met in person asks you for money. That person is more than likely a romance scammer. Typically, romance scammers will cultivate an online relationship with their victim for months before asking the victim for money. Scammers will claim they have plenty of their own money, but it’s tied up for some reason or another. There is also a variation to this scam where the scammer doesn’t ask for money. Instead, they offer to help their victim.

This scam has the unfortunate name of the ‘pig butchering’ scam. The scam is named this way because the victims are seen as the pigs that the scammers ‘raise’ before leading them to the financial slaughterhouse.

It starts when the victim meets a potential romantic partner on a dating platform or social media. The scammer will string the victim along until the scammer tells their victim they can help the victim make money by investing in cryptocurrency. The victim is then directed to a cryptocurrency exchange run by the scammers. The victim will pay the exchange for their investment before being told their investment has had a substantial return. When the victim tries to get their money out, they’re told by the exchange they need to pay more money to get their returns. This will continue until the victim runs out of money or realizes they’re being scammed.

This happened recently to a woman from San Antonio, Texas, who met one of these scammers on the dating platform Bumble. The scammer claimed to have grown up in Switzerland before coming to the US. The scammer quickly moved the conversation off of Bumble and on to WhatsApp. There, the scammer said he could show her how to invest in cryptocurrency with the New York Stock Exchange. She paid $6500 to what she thought was the NYSE. She was told that her money was garnering returns. The scammer must have thought that $6500 wasn’t enough because the victim said the scammer started becoming aggressive and threatening. The victim then found out that the exchange had no affiliation with the NYSE.

While $6500 may be a fortune to many people, the victim is actually lucky. There have been instances where at least one victim has lost almost $2 million to the pig butchering scam.

The pig butchering scam isn’t limited to dating apps. If someone messages you with promises of record windfall by investing in cryptocurrency, they’re more than likely a scammer. No financial investment is ever guaranteed to make the investor a profit.