How Indian Women In US Loses $450,000 To Cryptocurrency Romance Scam (image@Pixabay)
Indian woman in US lost $450,000 in Cryptocurrency romance scam. Shreya Datta (37), who lost her savings and retirement funds said the con who looted her has used digitally altered deepfake videos and highly sophisticated script. She said she felt her “brain was hacked”. The Philadelphia based tech-professional Datta said the “wine trader” wooed her online for months with flirtatious smile and emoji-sprinkled texts.
For Datta, the story of lose started with dating app, Hinge. It was in last January she met ‘Ancel’, who introduced himself as a French based wine trader based in Philadelphia. she said she was “charisma bombed”, as the conversation quicky moved to WhatsApp. She said the gym maniac with a dreamy smile quickly gave up his Hinge profile to give her “focused attention”, which was a refreshing experience in the age of flickering online relationships.
She said they even did video call, in which a suave but “shy” man with a dog appeared, which was later determined to be AI deepfakes. Plans to physically meet each other kept getting pushed back. Datta did not find it suspicious, as during last Valentines Day, she received a flower bouquet from ‘Ancel’. The bouquet was sent from a flower shop in Philadelphia. the card addressing her read “Honey Cream”.
‘Ancel’ sold a dream to Shreya Datta. He said he was retiring early as he is “well off”, and asked what is her plan. He said, “I’ve made all this money investing. Do you really want to work till you’re 65?”, Dutta told AFP.
The con then sent Datta a link to download a crypto trading app. The app came with a two-factor authentication, that made it look legitimate. Datta then converted some of her savings into the crypto currency on the US-based exchange Coinbase. The fake app allowed her withdraw her early gains, which boosted Datta’s confidence to invest more.
“When you make astronomical amounts of money trading, it messes with your normal risk perception”, said Datta. She said she felt like investing more. ‘Ancel’ coaxed her to invest more savings, take loans and liquidate her retirement funds, despite her reluctance.
By March, she invested nearly $450,000 and it has more than doubled in paper. But she tried to withdraw the money, the app demanded a personal “tax”.
When she turned to her London-based brother, he did a reverse image search of the pictures of ‘Ancel’. He found out that they were images of a German fitness influencer.
“When I realized it was all a scam and all the money was gone, I had proper PTSD symptoms — I couldn”t sleep, couldn”t eat, couldn”t function”, Datta said.
The ‘Pig Butchering’
The scam is commonly known as ‘pig butchering’. Victims are usually the ones who are likened to the hogs fattened by the fraudsters who feign love and affection before the ‘slaughter’, which is tricking them into the fake crypto investment.
Dating apps are ubiquitous disinformation sites. The use of romance as a hook for financial fraudster has created alarm. The FBI told AFP that more than 40,000 people reported about losses, which total well over $3.5 billion from cryptocurrency fraud in last year alone.
It is said that the estimates are likely low as many victims opt to not to report the crime out of shame.
Erin West, a California-based prosecutor told AFP that, “what is horrific about this crime is it is meant to take every last penny from its victim”. She said she is “deluged with the victims every day.
Self-harm among the victims are also common. Campaigners say most victims are unable to recover from their losses and some even fall prey to another breed of scammers in the name of recovery agents.
Shreya Datta said she had little hope of recovery after reporting the crime to FBI and Secret Service. AFP said neither body responded to the queries of Datta’s case. The Coinbase, who sent an email to Datta after she was conned that she “may have sent cryptocurrency to a fraudulent investment platform”, also did not responded.
Datta, who has moved to a smaller apartment to manage her debt, said the more agonizing thing was to deal with the public judgements like, “How can you be so stupid?”.
West said, “there should be no shame in becoming a victim of this absolutely masterful psychological scam”. She said victims are “truly brainwashed”.
