An Australian woman has been robbed of her life savings after becoming ensnared in an online romance/cryptocurrency scam that started on the dating app Tinder.
Known as ‘pig slaughter’, this cruel scam sees victims ‘fattened’ on a fake relationship before being ‘slaughtered’ by fraudulent investment advice.
Bank employee Sarah (not her real name) from Sydney thought she had met a great man, John, on Tinder, and quickly fell in love.
Two weeks later she realized it was all a hoax and that she was the victim, but not before losing $157,000, which was her entire savings and $40,000 she had borrowed from a friend.
“It’s been humiliation after humiliation,” Sarah, 42, said 9News. ‘I now realize how idiotic I am. I’m still trying to realize that I actually did this to myself.’
An Australian woman has been robbed of her life savings after becoming ensnared in an online romance/cryptocurrency scam that started on the dating app Tinder. ‘John’ used a photo he found on the internet of a man with a husky dog and pretended to be himself
Financial crime in pig slaughter started in China but has since spread around the world and is becoming increasingly common in Australia.
Cybercrime expert Simon Smith confirmed there have been many local victims, with some losing up to $850,000.
‘They are very extensive and ruthless. The scammers will continue until they take their victim’s last cent and then some,” he said.
In August, Sarah was matched with a man calling himself John on Tinder, where he had a ‘verified’ profile.
He said he lived 10 miles away from her in western Sydney and posted photos of him with a husky dog.
She liked that he seemed like an animal lover and thought he was “hot.”
“And we got along so well, it was great. I have to say it was incredible, and I think that’s why they’re making it.”
After just a day of chatting on Tinder, John moved their chat to the WhatsApp messaging service, where he turned out to have an Australian phone number.
He told Sarah he had closed his Tinder profile to focus on her, which she found “flattering.”
John was quick to point out that he was trading cryptocurrency as a sideline for his construction work and said he could help her make some money that way too.
He had her create an account with an Australian cryptocurrency exchange called CoinSpot and then introduced her to the MEXC cryptocurrency platform.
Even though MEXC is real, he had sent her to a fake MEXC website – which was so well set up that Sarah thought she was watching the deals go through and the profits accumulating in her account.
John showed her how to deposit a small amount first and withdraw it immediately if she wanted.
“Then I transferred everything – I added $10,000, $20,000. I kept putting more and more into it,” Sarah said.
The scam site even had a “customer service” department she spoke to who facilitated the scam by giving her a deposit address.
The man she thought she loved making it appear as if he was depositing additional money into her account to help increase her profits.
But things started to unravel very quickly when he told her to get her money out because the ‘good trading period was over’.
Sarah was told she had to post a $40,000 “deposit” to get the money out.
She paid it, but was then told she had to double that amount again – money she didn’t have.
John claimed to have paid some of the money and she borrowed $40,000 from a friend to make up the difference, which she regrets most.
When the money still hadn’t been transferred, she asked John what was wrong, but he simply told her to contact customer service.
She tried to get a personal loan after the criminals asked for more money, but that didn’t happen. “I wasn’t successful, thank God,” she said.
Sarah confided in her best friend what was going on and she and her husband helped her realize she was the victim of a financial crime.
They then discovered that John’s WhatsApp number had been disconnected, and they discovered that the man with the husky photo had just been taken off the internet.
“I literally looked up ‘man with husky’ and the very first picture that came up was his,” she said.
Australians have already lost almost $24 million to romance scams this year, with 74 percent of that money lost to women. The photo shows a woman looking at the Tinder app on her phone
According to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission’s ScamWatch site, almost $24 million has already been lost to romance scams this year, with 74 percent of that money lost to women.
Sarah is not happy with the Australian authorities’ response to what happened to her.
“It’s very clear they have no idea what to do,” she said. “If someone broke into my house and stole everything, it would be a different story.
‘I’m the kind of person who has never done anything wrong in my life. I’m a rule follower and I did this one thing and it ruined everything.”