A woman was conned out of her £42,600 savings by a sophisticated international scamming operation using dating apps to prey on victims.
Life coach Sofia thought she was falling for a 38-year-old investor called George Williams living in Fulham in London, but it was a con artist using a false name.
He persuaded her to set up an account with the international cryptocurrency platform Binance, then transfer her life’s savings from there to a platform trading in foreign currency – only the platform does not exist and the man calling himself George has since disappeared, together with her funds.
‘He was very romantic and handsome and full of compliments,’ she explained. ‘Any woman would have been flattered by the attention.
George persuaded Sofia to set up an account with the international cryptocurrency platform Binance, then transfer her life’s savings from there to a platform trading in foreign currency – only the platform does not exist
‘Initially, I was shocked when he disappeared, then worried and sad, and after finding out my funds are not in my bank account, I now feel embarrassed.
‘It is a lot of money to lose. I had plans to go traveling, which I am not sure I can do now and I am going to have to work a lot harder to pay my bills.’
Sofia first encountered the conman on the dating app Happn in May, where he boasted of his investments in property and wineries.
He quickly asked to continue the conversation on WhatsApp and bombarded her with hundreds of messages every day, calling her ‘my princess’, telling her she was ‘very beautiful’ and even suggesting he wanted to marry her and start a family.
Yet whenever she asked to meet, he claimed he had family visiting or had business outside London to attend to.
And he said he could not make a video or phone calls because he was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder after his pregnant fiancee died during a video chat.
She duly transferred the money via Binance into the wallet, and was then asked for another £6,500 as a security deposit to prevent ‘money laundry’ (pictured)
He wrote: ‘I remember that day when I was on a business trip. She stood on a rock and showed me the beautiful scenery around her. There was a gust of wind and the rock was probably too slippery. She slipped into the sea and suffered a severe head injury.’
He told Sofia he rushed to hospital and ‘watched the love of my life pass away before my eyes’.
The conman also sent her pictures purporting to be of himself as a child and out with his family, as well as more explicit pictures, to win her trust.
And when Sofia questioned his stilted English and occasional lapses into Chinese and German, he claimed he had been brought up in Shanghai and Hong Kong by British parents and was using a translator to communicate.
After grooming her for a fortnight with hundreds of flattering messages sent round the clock, the conman insisted his financier uncle had let him in on a good forex investment deal and he wanted her to join him.
On WhatsApp, the conman walked her through the steps to transfer cash from her own bank account to Binance and then into a wallet he helped her create on the forex trading platform called hotgolbal.com, insisting she send him screenshots at every stage
The platform hotgolbal.com was only set up two days after George first contacted her on Happn and has since refused her access to her money via online chat, insisting she needs to pay thousands in taxes and security deposits first
Sofia now believes the foreign exchange trading platform was made by George and the people he is working with
Sofia initially resisted – but when he became aggressive and bullying and mocked her for not having enough savings, she reluctantly agreed.
‘This is our secret,’ he wrote on WhatsApp. ‘My uncle and I don’t want too many people to share this method of accumulating wealth.’
He added: ‘I am very happy that I can accumulate wealth with my princess and we can do more things…and realize our dreams in the future.’
Sofia said: ‘I have a background in finance so I thought the trades made sense. ‘The figures he suggested I could make were not completely irrational and he was basing them on the advice of his uncle, who had been in finance for 30 years.
‘George recommended that I invest through Binance, which enables people to buy cryptocurrency, and then transfer the cryptocurrency to a foreign exchange trading platform, which I now believe was made by him and the people he is working with.’
On WhatsApp, the conman walked her through the steps to transfer cash from her own bank account to Binance and then into a wallet he helped her create on the forex trading platform called hotgolbal.com, insisting she sends him screenshots at every stage.
But the platform hotgolbal.com was only set up two days after he first contacted her on Happn and has since refused her access to her money via online chat, insisting she needs to pay thousands in taxes and security deposits first.
It claimed her £42,640 investment was now worth £94,680 – but told her she would have to pay £9,400 in taxes before she could access it.
She duly transferred the money via Binance into the wallet, and was then asked for another £6,500 as a security deposit to prevent ‘money laundry’.
Sofia said: ‘They assured me via the online chat that this was the last amount they would ask for. ‘I tried to withdraw all the funds but when the money had not appeared in my bank account 24 hours later, I contacted the platform and was asked to make another payment.’
As she became increasingly frantic, she messaged the man calling himself George, who tried to appease her and told her to make the payments, repeating the phrases used by customer services on the hotgolbal platform.
Distressed, she texted George shortly before he had promised to take her on their first date in London in June: ‘You promised I would make money and protect me and my money. I never imagined this scenario.’
Last month the Financial Conduct Authority issued a formal consumer warning about Binance and banned it from conducting crypto operations in the UK
He replied by telling her his friend had been involved in a car accident – then deleted his profile from Happn, disappeared from WhatsApp, and switched off his phone.
Sofia has been unable to contact him since and without having spoken to him or met him, does not know if any of the details about his identity are accurate.
She has reported the matter to Action Fraud, the police department investigating cybercrime.
Binance has promised its security team will investigate the matter but the cryptocurrency platform has already been blocked by several British high street banks, including Santander and Barclays, because of an alarming rise in the number of victims of crypto fraud.
Last month the Financial Conduct Authority issued a formal consumer warning about Binance and banned it from conducting crypto operations in the UK.
A Binance spokesman admitted: ‘Anyone can set up a wallet [to transfer funds]. We do not require any ID verification and customers can withdraw to any address to do a currency transaction unless a flag has been raised against it.
‘Once a matter goes through law enforcement channels, we are able to investigate and have blockchain analysis tools to see where a transaction has gone.
‘We have deep sympathy for the circumstances of this user and will work collaboratively with law enforcement when they get in touch to help provide as much information as we can to assist in the recovery of their assets.’
A spokesman from Happn said the app would cooperate with any legal investigation, adding: ‘Just as there are dangers and dangerous people in the real world, unfortunately, this is also the case with mobile applications.’
But Sofia said the experience had made her wary of using any dating apps again.
She said: ‘I have friends who have met very nice people and even married through them. They convinced me to try it. ‘This was only the second time I had used an app to date.
If I ever use one again, I am going to make sure it is one that does a lot of background checks and can verify a person’s identity before I even think about going ahead.’