Shreya Dutta converted some of her savings into cryptocurrency.
Philadelphia, United States:
The “liquor merchant” wooed her online for months with his bubbly smile and emoji-sprinkled messages. He then went on a killing spree, defrauding a Philadelphia-based tech professional of $450,000 in a cryptocurrency romance scam.
The fraud that drained 37-year-old Shreya Dutta’s savings and retirement funds and plunged her into debt involved the use of digitally altered deepfake videos and a script so sophisticated that she felt her “brain had been hacked.”
This scam, commonly known as “pig butchering,” compares victims to pigs fattened with fake love and affection before the proverbial slaughter by fraudsters – luring them into fake crypto investments.
The rapid rise of this fraud, run by crime syndicates in Southeast Asia, has caused billions of dollars in losses in the United States, with victims saying they have little means to get the money back.
As with many victims, Dutta’s experience began on a dating app — Hinge, in her case, where last January she met “Ansel,” who described himself as a French wine merchant based in Philadelphia. Presented.
Dutta said that as the conversation quickly moved to WhatsApp, he was “charisma bombarded”. The gym lover with the dreamy smile deleted his Hinge profile to give her “focused attention”, a refreshing take on the age of fleeting online relationships.
They exchanged selfies, flirty emoticons and made brief video calls in which the gentle but “shy” man posed with a dog, later determined to be an AI deepfake.
In keeping with Dutta’s desire to have a caring partner after the divorce, he would send messages to “Ansel” daily, inquiring about small things, such as whether he had eaten or not.
Plans to meet physically kept getting postponed, but Dutta was not immediately suspicious. Last year on Valentine’s Day, she received a bouquet of “Ansel” sent from a Philadelphia flower shop, with the card addressed to her as “Honey Cream.”
When he sent her a selfie posing with flowers, she sprayed it with red kiss mark emojis, according to WhatsApp exchanges seen by AFP.
‘painful’
Amidst the squabbling, “Ansel” sold him a dream.
“The dream was, ‘I’m retiring early, I’m fine. What’s your plan?'” Dutta, who is from India, told AFP.
“He says, ‘I made all this money investing. Do you really want to work until you’re 65?'”
He sent her a link to download a crypto trading app — which came with two-factor authentication to make it appear legitimate — and showed her what he called money-making trades via annotated screenshots seen by AFP. Is.
Dutta converted some of his savings into cryptocurrency on US-based exchange Coinbase and the fake app initially allowed him to withdraw his initial profits, giving him confidence to invest more.
Looking back, Dutta said, “As you trade large amounts of money, it messes with your normal risk perception.”
“You feel like, ‘Wow, I can do more.'”
“Ansel” encouraged him to invest more savings, take out loans and, despite his reluctance, drain his retirement funds.
By March, Dutta’s investment of about $450,000 had more than doubled on paper, but when he tried to withdraw the amount alarm bells went off and the app demanded personal “taxes.”
She turned to her London-based brother, who did a reverse image search of the photos “Ansel” had sent him and found that they were 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,” Dutta said.
“It was very painful.”
– ‘Brainwashed’ –
Dating sites are full of disinformation, including “Tinder Thugs Dating Scams” and “Are We Dating the Same Guy?” Like Facebook groups. is coming to the fore, and researchers are pushing for the increased use of AI-generated profile pictures.
But using romance to commit financial fraud is giving rise to a new threat.
The FBI told AFP that last year more than 40,000 people reported losses from cryptocurrency fraud, including pig slaughter, totaling more than $3.5 billion, to the agency’s Internet Crime Complaint Center.
But this estimate is probably low, as many victims do not report crimes due to shame.
“The horrifying thing about this crime is that it takes away every last penny from the victim,” California-based prosecutor Erin West told AFP. She said she is “full of victims every day.”
Campaigners say self-harm is a common concern among victims, with most unable to recover their losses and some falling prey to another breed of scammers – fake recovery agents.
Dutta, who is in therapy and has moved into a smaller apartment to manage his debt, said he had little hope of recovery after reporting the crime to the FBI and Secret Service.
Neither organization responded to AFP’s questions about his specific case. Neither did Coinbase, which informed Dutta in an email after he became a victim of the fraud – that he “may have sent cryptocurrency to a fraudulent investment platform.”
Dealing with public judgments, like, “How could you be so stupid?”
“There should be no shame in becoming a victim of this absolutely skillful psychological scam,” West said.
“The victims are literally brainwashed.”
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
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