We think the Tinder Swindler needs to step aside as there is a new dating scam trend in town – ‘pig butchering’.
A woman from Philadelphia, US, claims she fell for the cruel trend after looking for love online – and it cost her a staggering $450,000. (£360,000).
Shreya Datta, 37, a tech executive, said a cryptocurrency investment scheme drained her bank account of the huge sum.
READ MORE: Influencer extradited to US after £1.6m romance scam targeting older single men
The huge loss meant she was forced to rent a cheaper property, sell her car and reflect on the ‘red flags’ in her so-called “relationship,” which began on the dating app Hinge.
“It’s like my psychology was hacked,” Datta told the Philadelphia Inquirer of the experience.
The term ‘pig butchering’ comes from the Chinese name for the scam, as that’s where it’s thought to have originated, according to the Inquirer.
It involved con artists pretending to be innocent people looking for love.
And once they find their victim, they tell them they made a large fortune trading cryptocurrency.
They encourage their new partner to try it as well, having them invest real money via a fake app.
As the relationship builds, the scammer then tries to convince the partner to put more and more money into the “investment platform.”
The scammers often find marks on dating apps, but sometimes they take things to LinkedIn or WhatsApp, the Inquirer reported.
At first, the victim may be allowed to withdraw some funds from the fake app, but after a number of investments, they aren’t unable to take out more.
Then in a last-ditch effort to get more money before the scam is found out, the app will ask for a payment called a “tax.”
Shreya said she had always dreamed of achieving wealth freedom”.
She first of all covered $1,000 (£802)into crypto using a real platform called Coinbase, then sending it to the fake trading app.
She said the app appeared legitimate — it asked her for two-factor authentication, and even had customer service.
At first, her $1,000 turned into $1,250 (£1,002), and she was able to withdraw the entire balance from the app.
But as time went on, the couple’s plans for meeting each other kept falling through.
At the time he said he had a business trip, she reported being told her investment of $6,000 (£4,812) had turned into $9,000 (£7,218).
All the time, the guy was constantly checking in on her and sending selfies and “flirty emojis.
“I was in a trance,” she told the Inquirer. “I felt like I had met my person.”
However, she was then told if she wanted to start making “real money,” she would “need to increase their investment.”
She claims the guy lent her $150,000 (£120,000), telling her to sell stocks and take out personal loans.
Shreya even liquidated her 401(k), raising questions from people at work.
By the end of March, her $450,000 (£361,000) investment in the fake app had more than doubled, she said, but she couldn’t withdraw it. Instead, she was hit with a demand for a 10% personal tax to access her own money.
Alarm bells started to go off in her head, so she contacted her lawyer brother in London.
They hired a private investigator and allegedly found the photos the guy had sent her were not of him, but of a German personal trainer.
“Sometimes I’m like, ‘It’s just money,’” Datta told the Inquirer. “Some days I’m like, ‘I should just cry.’”
And a Hinge spokesperson told Daily Star: “Over the last several years as these types of scams have grown in popularity – not just on dating apps but on all online platforms – we’ve taken steps to help prevent and warn users of potential scams or fraud using automated tools to detect words and phrases and proactively intervene.
“Earlier this year, we pushed out a consumer education campaign on the different types of scams and how to identify common behaviours to help users protect themselves.
“The safety of all Hinge users is a top priority, and we take any incident of fraud very seriously. We have sophisticated machine learning technology in place and trained content moderators that are constantly patrolling for fraud.
“Users should never ever send money to someone they haven’t met in person and if anyone on our app receives a request for money, we ask them to immediately report that individual so we can take action. As romance scammers find new ways to defraud people simply looking for a meaningful connection, we continue to explore and invest in new updates and technologies to ensure we’re keeping our daters as safe and protected as possible.”
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