Cryptocurrency Trading Romance Scams
BEWARE: LOVE IS UNDER SIEGE on Valentine's Day, February 14th.
THE TRUE COST OF CRYPTO VALENTINES
A day on which social tradition inspires us
to demonstrate the sincerity of our affection.
With a small act of kindness, and a
token of sacrificial love.
Yet love is besieged by fake identity profiles on social media and dating apps by malicious romance scammers. Who's sole aim is to mislead, manipulate and coerce romantic people to hand over their life savings under emotional, psychological and financial duress. ROMANCE SCAMS ARE AN EPIDEMIC IN 2023.
47,000
The number of investigation requests for financial crimes that have occurred through just one cryptocurrency platform.
Binance. How many staff do you think Binance has? Not nearly enough.
Despite the real-life scale of the issue being widely known, cryptocurrency industry peak bodies and member organisations have continued to scale up growth, before adequately remedying marketing practices or customer experiences within apps. Organisations like the USA Securities and Exchange Commission have a litany of court cases lined up to challenge the cavalier behaviour of the cryptocurrency platforms that sell trust, but that also deliver significant loss.
500,000
The average number of words in a social or romance chat. Words, sentences and paragraphs containing crucial evidence about what happened and how it happened. With important conversational leads to identity, and the small mistakes made by the criminal across a lot of grooming, manipulation and coercive conversation.
Through in-depth investigation, we find that fake romantic partner identities are very well researched, completely plausible and constructed over a period of months.
Why does the romance scammer invest so many words over so much time?
USD$400,000
The average amount that the criminal gains from a romance scam, as gathered from the losses of over 150 people that have shared details with The Dark Night Online. This is how much the criminal stands to make, per person, and usually in a short period of time.
3-MONTHS
The typical total duration of a romance scam from the start to the theft of the whole of wallet. The average scammer will run several romance scams at the same time, just like a customer service centre. They are organised and efficient and likely to siphon at least tens of thousands of dollars, more likely hundreds of thousands of dollars per victim.
USD$100,000
Some of the smartest people you will ever meet are duped by the criminal.
The Romance Scammer is in control a penny trading platform, that has a cryptocurrency trading front end. They are able to manually manipulate the figures so that it appears they have deposited large sums to help you with your trades. Later on, they will also "introduce" fake funds that appear to help you pay platform taxes, that are as fake as the day is long. You will be enticed by massive gains that allay your fears, but aren't real. Fattening up the victim by introducing fakes funds and massive fake gains invokes trust and confidence to invest more money. Including investing money borrowed from high interest loans. The term that law enforcement uses is "Pig Butchering". The criminal will fatten up their target, then kill their financial wealth altogether.
USD$80,000
The typical loan taken out under duress, coercion and manipulation as a 'home improvement loan', loans taken out by romance victims who don't own homes to improve. Unsecured, high interest rate, debilitating debt that often leaves a romance fraud victim destitute. These loans are used for fake trading platforms that appear real. Most often used to pay fake cryptocurrency trading platform taxes so that fake trading profits can be released.
4100
The number of publicly published known hacks and breaches of user databases in 2022.
Almost all internet users are likely to have at least one login and password, and their private identity details being sold on the Dark Web markets.
PII (Personally Identifiable Information) is useful to assist scammers to study your profile. Yes, most scammers use access to your PII to then study your social media for subjects to use in a romantic narrative.
UPCOMING PRESENTATION: INTERNATIONAL CRYPTO CRIMES Click here for event details.
THE DARK NIGHT ONLINE is a crypto crime fighting community founded by Glyn MacLean. Fighting cryptocurrency crime since 2016 and now lecturing on international crypto crime.
If you have been impacted by a Romance Scam
or Crypto Crime reach out via LIVE CHAT www.thedarknight.online