A WOMAN looking for love ended up losing $40,000 in an unlikely way.
There was a glaring red flag that she failed to realize at the moment.
Several Tinder users looking for a romantic connection are getting scammed, as reported by Oregon’s local news outlet, KGW.
One Portland woman, Katie Powell, said she was on the dating app hoping to connect with someone.
So, when she matched with an man who alleged to be in his early 40s, Powell did not immediately suspect anything suspicious.
Within a couple of months of connecting with the man, she had been scammed out of $40,000.
“It’s turned my life upside down,” Powell told KGW.
The nature of the relationship moved quite quickly, with frequent texting and conversation that deepened over the course of a month, she told KGW.
“I mean it was ongoing, constant texting right away for the first, for the entire relationship,” Powell said.
After that, the man asked Powell for money, claiming he was going through a medical emergency.
“Instantly, my instinct was like, ‘Why would somebody, you’ve never met me, I’ve known you for 10 days,'” Powell questioned.
“Why would you be asking me for money?”
The scammer went so far as to alter a picture of MLB pitcher Phil Hughes in a hospital bed to convince Powell that he needed the money urgently.
The picture he was using was over nine years old.
“I was questioning every single thing and knowing this is not right. But he was able to talk me into the fact that it was right,” she said.
The man told Powell he was a civil engineer from Turkey who was estranged from his family.
Cyber expert’s advice on spotting a romance scam
Speaking to The U.S. Sun, a cybersecurity professional who specializes in romance scams shared important insights to help people stay safe. Roger Grimes, a defense evangelist working at KnowBe4, highlighted 8 key questions that individuals should consider.
- Is the person trying to move you off the dating site to an unmonitored app?
- Are they asking lots of questions before revealing info about themselves? This could be a bid to establish common ground and build trust.
- Are they avoiding phone calls and video chats and coming up with excuses?
- Do they say they travel a lot or that they’re not in the same country? This is often a lucrative part of the scam as they will need money.
- Have they said they are traveling on a certain day and something unforeseen happens, so they need money to get there?
- Do they ask for deep, dark secrets, or incriminating or nude photos? This could be used for blackmail further down the line.
- Have they said they have been scammed before? This is sometimes a ploy to build trust and convince you that they’re not a scammer.
- Do they have a sob story? Like their spouse died suddenly or left unfairly? Or they’ve been left with kids or massive bills to pay?
Read more here.
He had sent Powell documentation which appeared real — but was fake.
The scammer dropped $750,000 into one of Powell’s Vanguard retirement accounts and even paid off her credit card bills.
However, once the credit card payments didn’t go through, the company froze Powell’s accounts.
The hundreds of thousands of dollars in the retirement fund also disappeared.
“I mean it was physically, psychologically, emotionally, just draining,” Powell said.
In total, Powell ended up losing more than $40,000 because of the Tinder scam.
