An Australian woman lost her life savings after falling for an elaborate online dating scam, not realising her conman was also a victim.
Sarah, 45, had left a 20-year relationship and decided to try online dating when she met Daniel on Tinder last year.
Although she was skeptical of starting a relationship using the app, the couple quickly struck up a connection and chatted several times a day.
Finally, Daniel, an attractive world traveler whom the scammers created using sophisticated Photoshop tools such as artificial intelligence, revealed that he funded his jet-set lifestyle by investing in Bitcoin.
He recommended that Sarah start using a legitimate Bitcoin trading app, through which she could make profits and withdraw tangible funds.
Once he got her hooked on cryptocurrencies, he told her to try another platform that took all her hard-earned savings and transferred the funds to his own account.
She lost $100,000 in the scheme and has little hope of ever seeing the funds again.
Sarah described feeling embarrassed and “disgusted” that she had fallen for the scam, but said there were no red flags indicating Daniel was not a real person.
Sarah (pictured) lost $100,000 after falling victim to a Tinder romance scam last year
Sarah met Daniel (pictured), who offered her the chance to invest in Bitcoin, but instead he took her money for himself.
“There was nothing that was not credible. His photos looked authentic, there was no reason for me not to believe that who I was seeing was not who it was,” he said. 60 minutes on Sunday.
Scam victims like Sarah often think they’ve been targeted by a malicious criminal, and while that’s true in some cases, a new criminal trend has emerged that makes online transactions scarier than ever.
Criminal syndicates have begun setting up “pig slaughter” factories, luring innocent people to Southeast Asia and using torture to force them to commit fraud in a new emerging wave of romance and cryptocurrency scams.
More than 120,000 people are believed to be currently detained in buildings on the Burmese side of its border with Thailand, where they face brutal beatings and starvation if they fail to meet scam quotas.
“They beat us very hard,” one former captive told the program.
‘Fifteen days without food, without water. Fifteen days locked in the room.
In large-scale operations, administrators create a personalized portfolio of victims detailing their age, marital status, salary and anything else they can find on public social media.
These profiles are then given to prisoners to trick them.
Sarah was just one of many victims of the scheme around the world.
She shared her story in the hope that other Australians would not be caught up in what she described as an endemic disease.
Daniel (pictured, texting Sarah) was a fake persona created by a pig slaughter factory in Myanmar.
The person behind Daniel (pictured) was held captive inside a factory and forced to scam Tinder users around the world.
“It’s happening to a lot of people and I don’t think people realize what’s going on,” Sarah said.
You lose confidence in yourself and in people. You just want to hibernate… and that’s a crime that’s being committed against you. And one of the hardest things is that I’m complicit in that too.
“And they’re reaching people through one of the greatest things in life, which is love and romance.”
Benedikt Hoffman of the Bangkok-based United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime warned that fraudulent “pig slaughter” factories were a global first and made the online space dramatically more dangerous.
He warned that the schemes are even “eclipsing drug trafficking” and urged Australians to be extremely cautious when making any money transfers online, no matter how much they trust the recipient.
Australian Mechelle Moore lives in Thailand, where she works for Global Arms, a non-profit organization dedicated to eliminating human trafficking and helping captives escape.
“They beat them very, very brutally,” he said.
Scammers created ‘Daniel’ using sophisticated Photoshop tools like AI
‘They immobilized them and then used hammers and metal pipes to beat their bodies.
‘They have a lot of swelling, they have a lot of bruises all over their body.
“Sometimes they hit you immediately and it’s to scare you into compliance. Other times they hit you because you’re not fulfilling their scam objectives.”
Australians who believe they have been victims of a scam should report their experience to Scamwatch.
Through reporting, the government agency works to help stop scams, share warnings and offer support.
