Fed up in lock down? Looking to make friends online? Need money? Beware. Ruthless individuals are using Tinder to lay honey traps with the intent of committing financial fraud.Β
I’ve never been to China, or Hong Kong, but have spent a couple of years on a crash course of armchair culture-download, mostly in the form of videos and podcasts.
Having absorbed hundreds of hours of analysis, anecdote, praise and criticism of China, it’s obvious that scams are rife on the mainland, particularly in northern cities. π
Whether it’s counterfeit goods, forged banknotes, tea ceremonies, over-priced taxis, fake monks, pickpockets or pretty young ladies with hidden agendas befriending fresh-off-the-boat foreigners, it’s rare to not encounter some kind of deception. π£
Why Are There So Many Scams in China? β οΈ
Those that experienced the notorious famine following China’s Great Leap Forward (spanning three years but with persistent consequences) tend to have a long-lasting mentality of grabbing and greed. π€π₯’
It is the worst type of short-termism born out of fear from a traumatic period in the nation’s history in which the government attempted to transform the agricultural economy into an industrial one.
Things were particularly bad in the early 1960s; we’re talking forced labour, executions and eventually, cannibalism. The stuff of nightmares. β οΈ
Widespread Fraud
Decades on, and still feeling the pressure to achieve financial security through outlandish enterprises, millions of people in China lost money as part of the OneCoin ponzi scheme for which 98 people were prosecuted in 2018. π¨
Similarly, police arrested 36 in connection with a fraudulent stock trading group set up in WeChat. These examples are the tip of the iceberg. ποΈπ₯Ά
Although it’s considered acceptable to dupe outsiders to acquire wealth and provide for the tight-knit family unit, this absolutely cannot be said for all Chinese people.
Decent, law-abiding people are generally embarrassed as it paints their country in a terrible light.Β
Tinder Crypto Scams π€₯
For unscrupulous cheats, the use of unverified online dating app profiles together with newfangled “opportunities” like Forex or cryptocurrency are a match made in heaven. ππ§§
As you may already know, Tinder is a hotbed for such nonsense because catfish profiles are easily created using stolen photos.
The fraudsters are usually based on the mainland but use a VPN to change the virtual location and artificially place the profile elsewhere. Hong Kong is a commonly chosen destination as it is seen as a desirable, successful, civilised society.
The Pig-Butchering Scam aka Sha Zhu Pan (ζηͺη)
The scammer will “like” thousands of profiles with a view to developing multiple fictitious online relationships. πͺ
Smitten by unconditional attention, the typically male targets are eventually encouraged to send money β often thousands of dollars β as part of bogus “guaranteed” investments. Browsing Reddit forums and YouTube comments, you’ll uncover first-hand testimony of money lost. π΅πΆπ·π₯Ί
In the 2021 book Criminal Contagion: How Mafias, Gangsters and Scammers Profit from a Pandemic, authors Tuesday Reitano and Mark Shaw comment on the ingenuity and adaptability of criminals:
“Although we have spent years studying organised crime issues, nothing lessens our surprise at the ability of criminals to adapt or the resilience of criminal markets and actors. What we have observed with the coronavirus is extraordinary and has renewed our belief in the importance of understanding the changing dynamics of organised crime and developing new responses to it.”
Knowing all this, I headed into Tinder to seek out suspect profiles that were using photos of attractive East Asian women. π£
How Far Will a Tinder Scammer Go? βοΈ
I matched with one Asian female with pictures, claiming to be from Hong Kong. Her distance was of so many thousand kilometres away but sometimes changed to 20km, most likely because of the “Global” or “Passport” settings on Tinder, or just a straight up VPN. π
The bio said “I like to travel, I like to make some sincere and friendly friends, not dating and love.”
We got chatting and “she” claimed to own a beauty salon in Hong Kong as well as a clothing factory in China. Her visit to a UK fashion convention had apparently been cut short because of COVID-19. πΌ
It wasn’t long before the subject of WhatsApp came up and we took the conversation on there at her request. The switch from Tinder to WhatsApp is typical for this scam, because once they have you on WhatsApp, they’ll unmatch on Tinder so you can’t report them as easily.
If you’re smart, you’ll save their Tinder profile link so you can continue to access it even after they unmatch.
The conversation started on Tinder
The “Backstop” Story of the Average Tinder Temptress π§
The name used was Li Zilan. A Facebook profile with the same name and photos was quickly found. πͺͺ
I downloaded the photos and performed a reverse image search, not expecting to find anything because I imagined them to be stolen from Chinese social media β probably an innocent person’s Sina Weibo profile (an equivalent of Twitter).
The Facebook profile stated she worked for the Hong Kong Economic Times, despite the salon/factory story. Odd. π€¨
Also, a Russian mobile phone number was used in the About profile.
Furthermore, many photos were date stamped in June, July and August 2020, tagged with locations showing an alleged visit to Germany with friends at the height of COVID-19.
Love Bombing π
The text messages started every morning around 9am. Once I’d replied, the response came almost immediately, asking lots of questions and indulging me in a way that felt… off. π
The conversations were so intense, I sometimes muted the chat as the constant “ding” of WhatsApp notifications was irritating. π
Still, I played along, exchanging photos and audio voice clips, never divulging anything too personal. One of the voice recordings the scammer sent was of a young softly-spoken female saying “nΔ hΔo…” (hello…) followed by some Mandarin I didn’t understand. π£οΈ
Was it actually “her” speaking or a stock voice clip relayed from elsewhere? π
They Avoid Having Voice or Video Calls π₯Έ
When I suggested having a voice call to practise my language pronunciation, the scammer was evasive. “Don’t you have work today?”
In the end it only took 7 days of daily text messaging before β as expected β the topic of investment came up. Ding! Ding! Ding! We have a winner! ππ«°
“Sorry, I’ve just been busy with my investments. My investment today made a profit of $2,390. Perfect” I was told, receiving a screenshot from some online trading platform. π
Yeah, I laughed too
Don’t Waste Too Much Time with These People β
At this point boredom had set in and it was time to bring the interactions to a conclusion. π₯±π€
Imagining the person on the other side of this WhatsApp conversation was possibly a proud Chinese mainlander with no problem fleecing foreigners, I made what I hoped would be considered stinging remarks, one of which was aimed at Chinese Communist Party leader Xi Jingping. π«΅
Nothing more was said after I made it clear I knew all along
The Funny Ones
Changing the Tinder settings to “Global” and specifying Simplified Chinese as the language, I actively pursued more fake accounts to prod and test the scammers. π€
It was funny when they took my sarcastic responses seriously, but sad knowing innocent people are actually falling for their deceptions.
I love it when dry humour goes unappreciated
The investment and wealth recommendations came quickly
The scammer cottoned on to my idiotic statements and participated in the farce
The Women are Often “Real”
For a while, the basic assumption was that these lowlifes are men posing as women. π
One scammer, amongst their rambling about “guaranteed 20% monthly investment returns”, sent me photos I supposed were also bogus. π€£
To test my theory, and with persistence, I insisted they take a photo selfie in which they made a specific hand gesture to prove authenticity. π€³
And she did. π
The scammer really WAS an attractive woman
Summary: Don’t Mix Business with Pleasure, Be on Guard π
Some of the profiles I matched with were not scammers. I was certain they were but was surprised to find normal, nice people. Who knew?!
They had real Instagram, Facebook and TikTok accounts, with actual content and interactions, not the usual sock puppet crap. π
I matched with a schoolteacher from Chongqing β yes, that’s the China mainland β and we exchanged Skype details where we have text message conversations mostly about Mandarin.
Criminal Contagion: How Mafias, Gangsters and Scammers Profit from a PandemicΒ β£οΈ
A few women initiated video calls in which we discussed anything from language, culture, hobbies, politics and the virus situation to relationship goals.
But Tinder is not the place to do business β ever. π
Research on Tinder crypto/forex scams turn up reports of WhatsApp conversations lasting months before the scammer brings up the topic of investments, by which time the victim had fully bought into the idea of making quick money. The psychology, love bombing and grooming is similar to bullshit schemes such as Amway.Β
Photos of pretty people is apparently all it takes for a situation to escalate into anything from a minor shakedown to financial devastation. Don’t be “The One” who falls for it. π«£
Update: October 2021 π
A person introduced themselves in the comments section of this article in May 2021. It was the beginning of many duplicitous WhatsApp conversations now identifiable as an investment fraud stolen funds recovery scam.Β
Update: October 2023 π
This scam has gained greater awareness worldwide and more people are wising up to the inner workings of the fraud. One thing you may not know is that some of these scammers are actually trafficked and held prisoner in large dorm-like compounds as part of multi-million dollar criminal enterprises.
Cambodia seems to be one prominent location amongst many.
This doesn’t mean the person you are talking to is a prisoner, but it’s possible. Exercise caution in your interactions with potential scammers and be aware that there absolutely is forced labour going on.
Check out the BBC documentary The Pig Butchering Scam for a detailed insight into the routine beatings, murder and rape used to control people living in these horrible situations, as well as the stories of those who actually escaped.
Scams to Watch Out For, Tips to Keep in Mind
β οΈ Scam Poetry: The Time I Was Recruited to the Cult of Amway
π€ Exposed: The Chinese Investment Fraud βRecoveryβ Scammer Deceiving Victims
β οΈΒ Looking for Online Work? Don’t Fall for this Fake Hays Recruitment WhatsApp Scam
β οΈ Privacy and Data Protection is a Matter of Life and Death
π How Safe Is Your Password from the $450 Billion Cybercrime Industry?
π£Β Cream of the Crap: How Fake Reviews, Bad Businesses and Dangerous Products Rise to the Top
Chinese girls in their twenties are just ruthless and greedy, desparate to get money rather than earn it like everyone else. Never get yourself a GF from there either, they will turn out to be ruthless after all the initial sweet talk has worn off
You’re being a bit harsh here. While there are definitely issues with scammers there, it is a huge country with lots of regularly hardworking people. I think they are a hardworking people and industrious – and sadly crime is an easy way out for some. As for what you say about Chinese girlfriends… I wouldn’t know, but if you fell in love with a Chinese woman maybe that would make you realise in the end that people are people. Good and bad everywhere.
This is true. I want to talk about the girl with the peace sign. I have many pictures of her too. I believe this girl has serious metal issues and multiple personalities. 4shoo! She begged me to invest with her, but I would never do such a risky type investment. im curious how the scheme actually works. I have a good idea. I think this information will be very useful in not falling for their scams. Ive collected alot of info on this individual so if you would like to compare notes. Send my a message.
Hello, i read your message about the chinese girl named Lily/Emily o something like this…My friend has been scammed by her. Have you got more information about her? thank you very much
I’m going through the same thing with this girl from HK. But she doesn’t ask me for money or any personal info. She even offered to pay for a hotel so I can visit
They are probably going to drug you and remove most of your salable organs. If they donβt then count yourself lucky.
Yes, now many people in the UK pretend to be Chinese girls to commit fraud
As a British, I must admit this. The British are too hateful. I deceive myself.
Britainβs current situation is a sorrow
As a British, I must admit you are clearly a British.
I mean it is after all incredibly obvious from your perfect command of the English language and understanding of British sarcasm.
You are 100% right. Fraud and scamming is in their DNA.
Every once in a while I get a Chinese girl messaging me calling me a random guys name I usually reply with β you never sent me those lingerie picsβ works every time they never reply.
Now Iβm chatting with one that after second day wants me to invest $1k in Bitcoin. Iβm not that dumb but I do enjoy my humor to them and always sidetrack their invest in crypto crap
As a seven year China expat, I just want to say Markus C completely gets it, and the ones criticizing him for being “too harsh” are speaking from the lotus-eating armchair view of a Westerner living in comfort and who has never experienced the horror of living among the Chinese (in fact the article admits that).
Sounds like you got taken for a ride. Where did you meet your 20 something, at a washy washy massage place, what were you expecting to find there, true love? I met a young, beautiful Chinese girl at a grocery store in Chinatown. That was 20 + years ago. Married for 18 this summer.
Your entire article is racist and you will pay a heavy price for your attack on China!! There are no scams here and you are just making this up to fuel your anti China agenda. We know where you are and we are watching your family closely!!
Haha! “A heavy price”! That’s the part that got me! You have made my day! A few days ago I was genuinely afraid of what CCP trolls might be capable of, but now I just think they’re sad little men masturbating in their parents’ basement earning chump change for harassing people. Insecure?
Well said! Kudos!
Say China is a pathetic little man, then I ask what kind of a humble ant is your country?
Please don’t put all the people in your mind as dirty
Fuck you son of a bitch, people like you made our British Covid-19
too bad there isn’t a LOL reaction, anyway thanks for sharing your experience, I guess it has the answers to many questions arising in the mind of those who go through the same experience on dating apps, mine was how the heck do they look like they’re around the corner if turns out they’re in HK?? and yes they feel like real person sometimes, and conversations can last months, i still have a couple still on since December or so, all pushing for investments in cryptocurrencies, claiming 6 figures gains a month can be easily made with their precious advices.
I am a woman and using Tinder+ in Tokyo. From 5 matches all 5 turned out to be Chinese with live bombing and wanting to teach me investment on the second day of chat. All. All wanted me to invest, though the topic we talked was unrelated and I never asked about money or finance. I speak from experience.
Iβve had the same from women purporting to be from
China, Vietnam, Singapore.
Conversation was pleasant until investment was raised
ok so why use tinder when we can meet on the forum haha
Well, you can eat your words because Iβve encountered two asian guys SCAMMER investors basically theyβre using Tinder, theyβll form a solid relationship with you then ding ding… investment comes…
He won’t. He, in fact, saved a lot of people from paying a heavy price to those girls…
Shut the fuck up! The article is fact as i was a victim. I lost $10,044. To some Chinese bitch.
I am a girl from Kazakhstan and I was scammed by a guy from China. I lost 6 000$. For me it’s a big money and now I have problems in my life. I still can’t believe, because of this asshole my life is ruining. Be careful please!
What was her name?
What you are saying is wrong. I’ve experienced the same situation that he was talking about and it was a scammer. I was vigilant so I found out early.
Faceless white knights like you don’t get laid for a reason..
They are also trying this with male profiles as well. I get a lot of mysterious good looking Asian guys that just happe to be close by. Who sometimes are straight as well, but matching with me because they want friends. If I engage for too long they point out they’re an investor and such. I have used other apps in the past and spoken to many Asian guys nearby and world wide but tinder has a real problem with these fake Asian accounts that want to get you to Invest
I got scammed TWICE, and dodged the bullet 5-6 times!
One was about a “super trending” and “secret” scam cryptocurrency called TOZOC, and the other was about plain forex — sadly I sent BTC to trade with, and the transaction was successful, but the funds got mysteriously “missing” (stolen, really).
Romance scams.
After that every time I matched with a Chinese profile on Tinder I wrote “If you’re going to say that you’re an investor/trader and that you’re planning to offer me a financial opportunity, then I won’t participate. And I know that I’m right about this when I see you running and hiding now!” — And they did run immediately! LOL!
You are not a smart man my friend.
More like desperately wanting to find a girlfriend, which clouded my judgement and common sense.
Once burned, twice shy…
We all fall for it at one time or another.
I suspect that someone is secretly transferring my usdt, can you tell me how he treats you?
I think such people are not necessarily Chinese. There are also many people who pretend to be Chinese and do such things. We must judge from our subjective meaning when analyzing things. We cannot listen to what others say.
Nope theyβre 100% without a doubt Mainland Chinese. I know from personal experience.
They are all from mainland China. Some pretend to be Korean, but they are Chinese.
This has happened to me 3 times in the past 2 months; one even took 6 weeks before bringing up his “uncle.”
Uncle that is working as a Senior Financial Analyst in Wall Street.
Same experience here but good thing I did research. Her name was Anna.
Just ended the whatApp chat with her just now.
Be careful guys.
can you tell me more about this person, i may be in same situation.
If it is a Scammer Anna, I send a screenshot where it showed that I had a million dollars and that tomorrow I would teach to invest in the gold market, I call by videoconference and if it is a girl but it does not look much like the one in the photo XD obviously it is all blocked and leave a nice message that the police are already on their way to get her.
Also in a WhatsApp with a girl named Anna, Qianqian, her dad is a financial analyst, she owns a makeup company, wants me to screenshot my crypto wallet so she can advise me on how to increase my earnings, etc
Is it Anna Lin?
Kathy Lin for me! Same scenario, Filthy rich uncle. So thankful for this information that has confirmed my suspicions.
Larry
I’ve heard of that same name and Mandy too. All scammers
Sheβs contacting me now.
The one that I have been talking to is definitely a beautiful lady who didn’t bring up anything about investments for the last 2 months. So I was thinking, “finally I am talking to some genuine person”. But since yesterday she has been asking me to download metatrader4 to earn money. When I didn’t show any interest, She is literally scolding me saying I am not ready to help myself, hahahaha…
Facebook dating is exactly the same. All saying they are Chinese from Hong Kong some based in Singapore or Thailand. ALL have uncles who treat them very well and teach trading, they in turn will teach you. Their other line of business is clothing/yoga studio/beauty salon. It’s all lies and a scam. I’m on number 16 at the moment with three more waiting in the wings.
I have three now. All want to teach me trading with BTCUSD. One gave me a demo trading account with 100,000 to practice with. Now all three want me to open a real trading account so to trade with them. They also all have an uncle that sees to work on the New York stock exchange. One texts me and says their uncle just called and to get on the account and to trade now. I usually make a lot of money but feel like it is all set up. What to do?
tell all of them to FUCK OFF.
it is all scam my friend.
read all comments here. it is all BS
Yes I must have met the same Girl
Thank you for this article.
Since the pandemic situation is quite a novum, this new scheme wasn’t familiar with me.
Especially the point about engaging and investing in long conversation. I normally uncover such scams immediately, but only because normal scams are freaking badly performed.
So it happened, that the first young woman already sounded too good to be true. Like in your article, owns a shop or something like that. And of course, just recently left the city back to Hong Kong, because of the pandemic. Plus “because of clever investments she doesn’t need to work anymore”.
In a normal conversation, where it suited the case, she mentioned very brief, that she is fortunate, despite the problems in the pandemic and her shop, to still be financial secure.
So I got that feeling and told her “somehow it sounds a bit scammy”, which resulted in her being upset and angry, because she seemingly only answered my questions… With the tiny detail of always mentioning the investment topic.
That actually seemed as far as to interpret over only text messages, somehow genuine and yes I did ask what she does /work and how it’s going. On top, I’m not a native English speaker and feared additional cultural misinterpreting.
But she didn’t reply to my explanation and after two days she deleted my number. Well, bad luck I guess.
Today, it just starts the same with the second luxorious Chinese – Hong Kong woman, who just left the country and is interested in engaging a real conversation.
So now I’m here reading your blog.
Ah yes, BTW, she mentions “investing” in her Bio as interests and hobbies. π
Hereβs one on TikTok:
lizilan666
You sure that’s a scammer? Li Zilan could be a common Chinese name. I’d be curious to know who is this individual is.
Hey,
first of all: Never try to verify a person with a peace gesture. In every photo set of a girl there is at least one with a peace gesture. That’s no proof she is really a girl.
I got a chinese tinder contact too, also from hongkong with a beauty salon. She said I should invest in GCP coin on a website called “ptebtc com”. I saw the website and there was a gmail mail account for contacts, which looked very dubious.
When I asked her why only this website knows about this GCP token and why there is no ICO date of it on other websites she insulted me and blocked me.
Greets from Germany.
Walter Frosch
Yes it’s true that many Chinese women make the peace gesture and it’s highly likely that photos of this person doing just that already existed. Look at a Chinese woman’s social media profile and you’ll probably find such a photo.
I am from Italy and the same exact thing happened to me with two girls met on Speaky (language exchange app) until today 4th of February when I quit both of them. The first claimed to be originally from Beijng but living in Edinburgh (UK phone number) and owning a restaurant and the second from Hong Kong and living there (Hong Kong phone number) owning a clothing shop. Same story, I was asked for whatsapp contact right away and then all went for a nice easygoing chat with photos of both good looking girls, lasted almost one month. All of a sudden they said that they were making money with forex trade and bitcoin following the advices of her teacher and the other girl’s uncle. One offered to teach me how to make money and the other asked me, because she was very busy with her fashion company, if I could help her managing her investments by downloading the metatrade app and giving me her login and password. For luck I am skeptical and I was able to understand it was too good to be true, but unfortunately some naive people fall into their net.
I have been ‘playing’ with exactly these types of profiles on Tinder for over 12 months.
There is something else you are missing.
WhatsApp.
They all insist on using WhatsApp. Not snapchat, not signal. Just WhatsApp.
I don’t know why. Two theories.
1. There is some scam they can do with your WhatsApp. Google says it is not difficult to associate a punters WhatsApp with a new device, where they can read all your other messages and hopefully find sensitive banking or credit card details if you messaged those to a family member.
2. Sharing WhatsApp also shares your mobile phone number. With some sweet talk they will get your full name from you and have your mobile phone number. That combination is a powerful combination. Maybe the will even get your ‘birthday’ (Date fo Birth). Almost certainly also your photo. Bingo. Three or four critical ID’s. What the heck they can do with that I don’t know. Maybe you can help me understand,
Why WhatsApp.
There’s a good chance they’re using WhatsApp because it is genuinely encrypted and unreadable by a third-party. You have to remember that in China, all inbound/outbound data is monitored for keywords, and financial scams/embezzlement/fraud/corruption is the most persecuted crime in China. If these racketeers get caught, they could face some very, very serious punishment.
well my friend let me tell you this, the exact thing is happening to me , one of then supposedly her name is ella miller and the other one annie both of then from new york . and both of the contact me first through regular tex ( but the area code of they phone number was from florida and new j) and the jump in to whatsup,,
and it can be a cosidence but everything started whe i opened my account in signal , right after one asian girl contact calling me steve and if i still in chicago, i said yiu got wrong number, then she said sorry , for the mistake and started asking for name and birth place, never asked, and then the supposedly mistaken tex messages started it on my private number
You possibly couldn’t have chosen a worst gesture to prove your point. I think you got fooled on that one. I would put money down that almost all have a photo with a peace symbol. I’ve been on 2 dating apps the last 6 weeks and I’ve not found one genuine person yet. If you want a story and information I’ve collected along the way I think you might be quite interested.
Yes, in hindsight, I agree that Chinese girls all have photos of themselves doing a peace sign. It’s part of the culture. So the girl might not be a girl but someone else pretending to be her. How does this change the fact that this is still a scam?
You mean dreamy Asian woman are doing scams…nooo lmao
Its epidemic.
Warning signs on Tinder
1. Beautiful/stunning 30-38 YOA
2. “Collect super cars”. Ferrari, Lamborghini, RR etc.
3. Made piles of money that day. Screen shots of financial graphs
4. Travel alot
5. Luxury brands
6. Endless talk about teaching you success and propaganda speak
7. Cannot hold a emotionally intelligent/intimate conversation
8. Easily offended if conversation is directed away from crypto/finance. Or if you debunk money=relationship success.
9. If you set boundaries about money talk they evaporate or insult. But always ghost shortly.
10. Immediately shift to whatsapp and delete tinder match..(Red Flag).
11. Claim to be in your search region but are almost always in China or Singapore.
Don’t fall for it. I never have. This article helped. I will pretend to be superman next time
I really wish i found this before i got duped for $10k! The Chinese bitch wanted me to add MORE MONEY! WERE TALKING $80K thank God i don’t have it. Well i do but lucky for me it’s easy to access. But i digress. The money i lost was from my Coinbase account that i have been slowly building and gradually growing in investment returns. And poof just like that it’s gone.
Moral of the story. NEVER DISCUSS MONEY
NEVER EVER EVER EVER!
I feel you… I lost about $50k worth of BTC to those damned Tinder scammers because I desperately wanted a gf and that alone messed up my common sense.
That’s so sad. I am actually speaking to a Chinese man now, and he’s encouraging me to trade digital currencies. Is there no one from this site could claim that not all investment opportunities are fake?
I’m sorry to say it’s very probably fake. I’ve spent 6 months talking with a chinese woman who seemed to be very good at trading, but it turns out it was all fake. I’m just glad I only lost $1,000 because I don’t have a lot of money.
Watch out for so-called funds recovery experts. I’m sure you won’t fall for it, but I am saying this anyway for the benefit of anyone reading.
Just when you thought you were out of The Matrix and into the real word (which is still hard) it turns out someone else is trying to scam you and you haven’t really gotten free of these fraudsters.
Just donβt invest anything. He will leave if you refuse bluntly. It is a scam ALWAYS
Just be vigilant. Thats all I can tell you
You dont need a fcking man in fcking communist China to help you with anything.
you got it right,,
I also want to share a similar experience I had this week. Passport in Tinder was free at least for my region one entire month. So I decided it would be a good idea to swipe in London. My surprise was that I was making way too many matches with Asian people (Korea/Hong Kong) and so on.
One thing in common as someone mentioned before here, was that almost immediately they ask for your WhatsApp and cancel the match in tinder once you start chatting in WhatsApp.
So I started chatting with this Korean girl. It was actually kind of weird because she stated that she was residing in Korea but raised in France but she had a WhatsApp number from UK lol. That was a red flag.
I am not that much of an attractive guy in my country. And this girl was insanely beautiful. At first I just thought the beauty standards were different in Asia and probably I was somehow attractive in Asia, so I gave it a chance.
I was chatting with this girl via WhatsApp for about 1 week and she told me she was wealthy and all that stuff. She even shared some photos with me and sent audios! Literally she will send audios to me from time to time (2 second audios but still made sense in the conversation).
She said she owns a gym with a friend which she invested with and also a clothing brand in France or something like that. It was just too good to be true to be honest.
She said she wanted to come to visit my country and also to teach me how to invest. She said she will look for the requirements to visit me blahblah. In the end she told me she will have everything setup in about 2 months (probably expect me to scam me within those 2 months)
Also she acted really cute and was talking to me as if she wanted something serious and she also flirted with me via text.
Long story short, she started talking about crypto currency and basically she wanted me to invest in bitcoin and another weird crypto currency (SST, something like that)
She said she had an aunt (which “knew some inside information”) that knew that SST would be a big trend and would raise its price like 10 USD in the short term.
Up to this point, I kinda felt it was a scam but I wanted to know how the scam would be, as buying bitcoin and investing to my own wallet is not really a scam.
In the end, she said I was supposed to exchange bitcoin for SST and could not buy SST directly from well known cryptocurrency sites.
She provided me with this webpage: https://bitcbtc.com/
The page seems like a total scam. I wanted to find some information in google for that page but did not find anything. Just a post in reddit that made me suspect even more: https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoMoonShots/comments…
So I am guessing once you try to “exchange bitcoins” for “SST” on that webpage, you are sending your bitcoins to a scammer’s wallet.
She said the following to me:
“It is a relatively concealed transaction, which is not fully open because it can bring great profits, so not everyone can buy it”
Bullshit if you ask me, lol. So just be aware of this, people. Trust no one when it comes to people trying you to invest and you have not even met.
I really wish i found this before i got duped for Β£1000.
Same story happened to me but the fake exchange was (web.instaforex24.com)β¦my money in 3 days increased to Β£4500 βfake numberβ, when I wanted to withdraw, they asked me to deposit more money.
It was doubtful even at the beginning of the scamming game but I just wanted to try.
Itβs been a month that I am overthinking of being dumped.
It was so realistic, she gave me a UK address just to prove that she is based in the UK, but she refused voice calls.
Hi
Interesting article!
It’s not just Tinder, but other sites are also full of these.
You should have mentioned that Facebook Dating has had a lot of these. You match with a pretty Asian girl, they ask you for your WhatsApp, and they have a code from another part of the country (I’m in BC, Canada) or New York, or something.
Tagged (formerly Hi5) is the worst site ever, full of so many scams including these ones. I don’t get why that site hasn’t been taken down yet.
So yeah, I think a lot of people have had similar experiences here; it’s pretty overwhelming, and quite frankly after a few it’s actually really, really obvious.
I deal with immigration, so it’s not difficult for me to catch out the bs stories about those claiming to be in the UK (a few quick questions about visa type and duration of stay/mitigations flushes them out, if you know the correct answers).
The moment that girl gives you her +852 number, you know it’s a dodgy situation, especially if she’s claiming to be somewhere else in the world. Small chance she might be legit, but don’t count on it.
Most of these ‘girls’ don’t actually know a huge amount about the financial world, either, truth be told. If you have half a clue about economics and securities, you can even challenge them on their knowledge of literally anything finance related – there’s a good chance they don’t know half of what they’re spinning.
It’s really a thing tbh, and while I actively encourage better cultural relations and mutual understanding, I do hope more people become aware of this matter and stop before they get hurt by this ruthless scamming.
Thank you so much! You literally saved me today!
All of you.
I tried Tinder for the first time. During this Sunday 5 ( five!) chinese, malaysian, japanese girls addressed me. I am from Prague.
They all know Prague, been here, but return in 1 month, one lives in Berlin, owns 11BTC ( screenshot), another one just made profit $65K ( twice ). She bought and sold 20 BTC during one night!
Unfortunatelly, I am very well experienced in crypto world or I think it about myself . Both of them couldnt stop explaining me, how to earn money. So, I told them, i am interested in other things then money. Iβm Ok with my job. So, They started to be angry.
The third one was from Japan.
Unfortunatelly, I spent in Japan several months when was on high school. My japanese girlfriend is my lifetime friend and we keep in touch for 20years.
I started something in Japanese.
But she was only Born there, father was travelling ( like me ) and found her mother in China,so they live there. She is mining BTC, parents as well. She mines 1BTC in 2 months. I started to be nervous and then found your article.
Fourth lives here in Prague. At her aunts place, was today in hotel Ambassador Wencslas square, my flat is like 5 minutes walking. But she has no time. She manages company in SINGAPORE.
Last one is from Malaysia, hasnt tried anything, weβll see. Iβm gonna try it, now just for fun.
But again, Thank you so much!!!!!
Interesting reading what you described. I just finished today a chat of about 3 weeks from one from a Facebook match from Malaysia – uncle knows secrets on how to make six figure daily profits from Forex, is a key guy in Wall St etc
Her Facebook profile is skeleton, and she claimed to have studied finance at LSE. Well so did I, so that was a coincidence she wasn’t expecting. I happen to know that foreign students at LSE are expected to have a high standard of English, everything the girl was typing was a google translation as she at one point mistakenly pasted something to me in Chinese.
Its a sad waste of time really it is, but live and learn.
Wish you safety folks! π
Happened to me as well. I kept on talking and thought the scammer was really dumb and I felt sorry for her.
But asking for a photo with a peace sign is like asking: βProve to me that you have a head!!β. It might work if itβs a guy, since they never do peace signs, but every other photo with a woman has a peace sign in it.
Hello everyone, here is my story. With the first Lockdown I was stuck in Sevilla (Spain), boredom in a small apartment and Tinder offered “Passport” so I thought “why not? lets explore the world” I got various (maybe 5) matching with very good looking girls age 25 to 35 Chinese or Chinese but living working in UK or Spain. After working in fraud for a multinational company I made of “TGTBT” (too good to be true) and “Better Safe Than Sorry” two of my (boring) mantra. All the girls wanted to move the conversation to WhatsApp after two or three messages on Tinder. All of them after a week started talking about how much money they were making, investing, bitcoin, cryptocurrencies. Buying a house, big holidays in Australia, visiting uncle in London. Etc. They all disappeared after I kept on talking about nature, food, and only replying “oh woah I am so happy you are making so much money”. Back in Italy. April 2021. And this lead to my last experience that ended today: started on the WhatsApp on the 05 of April, she started to talk about working in finance and investing in Bitcoin pretty soon, she recommended me to use Behance.com (which is legit website), I told her that I was reading and getting ready to start investing, I kept on telling this for a good 10 days. “sorry busy working I am still studying” Playing her game to see where this would lead. Today she wrote me she can’t trust me. And deleted her WhatsApp account. I still wonder if I was chatting with a man or a woman! π BUT I met at least 5 real profiles, normal people who just wanted to chat about many various different topics. Sorry for the very long message.
I have been experiencing this scam for about a year with a bevy of Chinese girls who claim to be living in Hong Kong. But lately, they have become a bit more sophisticated in their outreach. Instead of indicating they live thousands of miles away from me (my home is in the Western US), these women now claim they live only a few miles from me on Tinder. In fact, someone texted me via Tinder this week and not only texted a nearby neighborhood of mine as her domicile but listed more distinct areas within that neighborhood.
As with many of them, she claimed to be a consultant in the clothing industry. She actually invited me over for a dinner of braised fish. When I suggested a more neutral location, she then admitted she was temporarily in HongKong but returning in June. This part fits the pattern for all of them in saying they will be returning to my hometown soon. This particular lady, if she is indeed a lady, did not reach the point about her Bitcoin investment scheme but I am sure that was next.
Instead, I got bored and said contact me when you arrive. She asked for my whatβs app number, which I gave her though not sure if that was such a good idea. But so far, she has not reappeared.
This article is great, more people need to see this.
I had a similar experience. Smoking hot Asian girl with 2 photos on tinder matches with me and immediately asks to go to WhatsApp, starts talking about cryptocurrencies and other boring stuff. I’m well off, I don’t care about the stock market. I have a great job lmao. I mentioned how scammers use WhatsApp but so far they didn’t seem suspicious of me that I’m on to them.
Another one on tinder asked to go to WhatsApp and I just said straight up scammers use WhatsApp. This person became suspicious and asked “what I knew”, I guess in reference to the scam they run. I laughed it off and explained how some people try to scam on WhatsApp and that it’s painfully obvious and weak bait, and how scammers are pathetic and should get real jobs. They instantly unmatched me!
It’s kind of fun to troll them along. I got a great laugh out of the screenshots in the article where he pretended to be batman. I hope all scammers stub their toe and go to hell π
Just wanted to share my experience here. Hopefully it will prevent someone from falling prey to these scammers.
While the dating app bots are rudimentary and are easily detected / noticeable, I hope more people realise that there are actual people out there to scam others using methods which were highlighted in the main article.
Instead of this scammer trying to get me to buy cryptocurrencies or specific shares, she hinted at a “game” she was playing which allowed her to make good money based off her calculations. She even shared a photo of her handwritten notes in relation to this game. I subsequently did a reverse image search of her handwritten notes but did not get any results. Similarly, she shared a photo of her cat which I reverse image searched with no results. While she was hesitant to meet up (which was understandable given that we had only been chatting for 3 or so days), she actually gave me a call on WhatsApp. Her voice was certainly not automated and was not pre-programmed. It was an actual person on the line. The moment she started talking about the game and sent me a link on WhatsApp, I ended the call and blocked her.
Just wanted others to take note that these scammers are branching out to other types of “investment” scams.
Cheers.
Just wanted to add that her profile had at least 6 photos of her in different outfits, settings and poses. I did a reverse image search on all the photos with no results. These scammers are getting more meticulous with their work.
I believe it is because they are real people and the pictures aren’t necessarily stolen. They are taking pictures of themselves spending the money they stole from dumb lonely white people with yellow fever.
Sorry about the numerous comments, but after reading the comments I felt like I had to add on more details in relation to the phone number that this particular scammer used – which was from my own country and was not spoofed either. Like in the case of the photos, a google search of her phone number yielded no adverse results. Really just shows you how detail oriented they can be.
I have messaged several of these scammers and it appears that some are more patient in laying the bait to get you to “invest” in their scams; ranging from within the hour to about a week or so. I’m sure there are even more patient scammers who are willing to wait even longer to rope people in.
Please stay safe everyone. Do not fall prey to these scammers.
Im in the same situation but with some differences. I was stupid enough to send 4000 usd to a hong kong crypto exchange called BCHBTG exchange.(https://bchbtg.com/#/home) this girl claims to be from Taiwan. She has even sent me 15000 usdt (tether) through the exchange. We made a few trades together and have a total of 26000 USDT in this exchange. Has anyone either received money from these people? possibly the exchange might be fake? i have received many voice notes, photos and short video clips from her and she rejects the idea of a phone call or video call always. Have i been scammed?
complete fake, run away after you withdraw…..
This is a total scam!!!
Insist on a video call!
Same happened to me, I have sent about Β£1000 to this exchange (web.instaforex24.com/#)
She sent me 1000 tether and in couple of days we increased to Β£4500.
Then I wanted to withdraw some money to send her back the 1000 tether but the exchange asked me to deposit another 1000 usdt as I borrowed this money from a third partyβ¦I said to the costumer service of the exchange βI have enough money on my account to give back this 1000 usdt why should I deposit more?βand they just ended the conversation.
Forget the money you lost coz itβs gone.
The scammer used to refuse voice calls with me.
I still donβt know how my mind was stocked at the time I been scammed!?
Same thing as other comments here..1) Profiled me on facebook 2) Mentioned finances on facebook 3) Got me to change to Telegram 4) Got me to invest in scammer forec broker via Binance (USDT tether) 5) Said she was in love with me and if she made me a million we could get married and live in Thailand together 6) Good mornings and good nights with heart emoticons 7) Fake copytrades based on “insider information” from uncle who is a billionaire 8) Fake broker freezes me out of the site 9) Girl then tries to contact me using different Telegram and facebook profiles, the photos are not the same 10) Pretends to be sad and disappointed when I say I know it’s scam
I am a financial analyst from Hong Kong. I used Tinder for the first time today. But what surprised me was that everyone seemed to hate Hong Kong people. I didnβt understand. Later, someone named David told me that all Hong Kong people Women are engaged in cryptocurrency and foreign exchange scams. I am shocked. I don’t understand what this means. I read your article and everyone’s comments. I’m sorry that the reputation of Hong Kong people is so ugly. I donβt know if these women and men are real people, and I donβt know if they are women in Hong Kong. I am in Hong Kong now. If the woman you meet is also in Hong Kong and asks you to invest, then you contact me, I can help you find her in Hong Kong, and I can also help you check whether the items they ask you to invest in are authentic. I’m sure she is not from Hong Kong. This is my APP; REMOVED. If I can help you, please don’t misunderstand Hong Kong people. They may not be Hong Kong people or the woman in the photo.
Please contact me,
Case Details: i’m asking if you can help me to get my money back (USDT), because i was trading on Platform then when i start to withdraw my crypto, they sent to me fake Transaction i lost total amount $153,402.000 USD as i see now they are scam platform
Sure, we believe you. Tell us if someone is “real” and then we can invest. Yeah right, sure.
To anyone else reading this, contact this person on their WhatsApp and see what they say. If it’s B.S., I am deleting their comment. They could be in on some crypto scam.
i chatted with her through video call whats app. she seems to be legit and also acknowledge i was being scammed by the other party. Then she offered to help me by investing with her trades paying her a fee for her service and ask me to download metatrader 4
Are u for real??
No, this person was not for real. Not at all. In fact, it was a scammer called May pretending to be different people, shilling for herself. I have IP address records and played along with this B.S. for months.
Read about the scammer “May” seen in this comments section.
Hi Darren
Letβs step back and think about this situation.
Has anyone in the history of the universe ever made money by someone knocking on their door and saying βhey you, want to make some free moneyβ?
Investment advisors are people we trust with our lives (savings) – itβs patently obvious we shouldnβt engage someone from a foreign country that we met on a dating site. Come on guys.
With respect to this example, it seems that she is another scammer herself or at best (as another poster has pointed out) trying to guide people to another exchange site.
Guys, we in the west are too naive. There are people out there who will think nothing of fleecing you out of your few thousand pounds/dollars of savings. And on top on that, manipulating you emotionally via the lonely hearts scam is just a means to an end.
Unless you are a famous actor or a know billionaire, women do not throw themselves at you. Both because of you, but also because women donβt like to behave that way. On tinder, if itβs too good to be true, it CERTAINLY is.
Stay safe out there.
Thank you very much May. Without you I might have been deceived by these people. Everyone needs to be careful.
Thanks for the article. Iβm in Australia and this is totally out of control on tinder here. I scrutinise every Asian females profile carefully to look for signs that sheβs actually in Australia and even then, surely enough, after a few messages I get the βletβs move to WhatsAppβ thing and the tinder match deleted immediately.
I believe this has now got sophisticated enough that they know the kinds of questions that people like me ask, and have ready made responses. For example, I asked one girl who said she was in port Melbourne to take a quick video out her window of landmarks I would recognise. I even explained why. In return I got a pretty convincing clip taken from an apartment SOMEWHERE in Melbourne with an explanation that βIβm at a friends place right nowβ.
Itβs really unfortunate because in Australia there are a lot of genuine women of eastern Asian descent (Chinese, Vietnamese etc) whose profiles are now being dismissed by people like us who are just sick of 9/10 of them being fake.
Iβm sure they pick their target carefully – Iβm 44, previously married (this isnβt on my profile) and they ask the kinds of questions that reveal that I might have a bit of spare cash lying around to invest. I do wonder if they both to target guys under 25 say.
This is hilarious. I’ve been through at least 6-8 of these with normal Facebook friend acceptances (all at their initiation) and even had a theory that all off-shore Chinese girls were EXACTLY the same, until it finally occurred to me that this was all a scam. So here I am. The latest–and last–one is still on the line waiting for me to become adept at screen shots, so that she can teach me step-by-step how to use Meta Trader 4 (or is it 5?). I’m such a polite and cautious philosophy MA that most gave up long before this, though I’m genuinely impressed at how long they can carry on the scam (‘long con’, I suppose), and how similar all their routines are. I still can’t believe that they are all mainland Chinese scammers with VPN’s and elaborate false identities. They DO have Singapore and HK phone numbers, after all. I tend to think that they are genuine individuals all working a similar scam. Oh, well, all’s well that ends well, I suppose, even though I never even got close to sending bucks. The irony is that they think I’m impressed with their conspicuous displays of wealth, when in fact I am disgusted. BTW there are also a lot of very straight-laced very British Bitcoin pushers who seem to be doing something similar with Crypto on Facebook, though without all the cuteness, usually. Maybe I’ll play one of them along and see what happens. AND the Forex girls do know a bit about it, so it’s not just a random scam. Seems that gold is the currency usually in trade, which I didn’t even know WAS a currency–but it is, at least against USD, go figure…
We had someone in the comments sections apparently from Hong Kong calling herself “May” who claimed to be helping scam victims recover some of their losses. She would do video calls and came across as “knowledgeable and legitimate”… and then she urged the victims to instead invest in HER trades and download MetaTrader 4!
I deleted her comments and she had the balls to message me on WhatsApp asking why I had deleted her comments! They are so persistent. They must think I’m a stupid simp to fall for it. I’m not going to let any victims of these scams become revictimised just because some Hong Kong woman has mysteriously showed up offering to help save the day. And you’re right about the ostentation – it is vulgar and shallow. Sports cars and hand bags just don’t press my buttons.
Update: “May” has further messaged me demanding to know why I removed her comments. I have the conversation still so I could easily post screenshots.
She ended up calling me a dirty British man who eats shit, and made remarks about my mother. I was also called anti Chinese, and that a lawyer is going to contact me because I will be sued for running an illegal website.
Wow. Haha.
By the way, everyone, I’ve been talking to May via text on WhatsApp. Although I’ve yet to have a call with her, I’m reasonably satisfied she is sincere in her intentions to help.
Unfortunately she did and said much to cause me to doubt her in the early stages of our interactions. I cannot trust her 100% though. This is because I don’t know her and I’ve never met her.
People I trust 100% are friends and family – not some pretty girl from Hong Kong. If you do message her, use common sense.
Will she talk to you on a video call? Does she offer good advice? Or is she badgering you to invest in some type of unheard-of currency?
And please don’t contact her if you’re only going to be abusive. It’s not necessary. You could be hurting someone genuine and you will only be wasting your time.
You are such a funny man, I was asking why you deleted my comment, and then you fuck my mother? I just like to scold you when I meet such a low-quality person. Why don’t I? “She urges victims to switch to HER trading and download MetaTrader 4! “? ? ? Are you funny? When have I urged victims to transfer funds to MT4? Give me your evidence? Don’t slander others.
Hi may. You sound perfect for me. Iβd like to take you out for dinner. Iβm the western guy of your dreams. Please contact me on WhatsApp. Bob.
Sorry, I don’t believe in the so-called “love” in today’s society. But making friends is okay.
If anyone contacts this woman and she scams you, more fool you!
She is real, she let me invest in MT4, if I make money, it will give her 10% of the profit. I invested 200 euros to try and everything is normal now, she is a good girl.
They are everywhere. I get bombarded with friend offers on facebook from young “Korean” women, that actually post nothing but a few stolen pictures from Chinese websites (usually a year old) and a slightly suggestive line (in Korean) that sounds harmless but hints that they have something to offer. Followed by a Line ID.
I was asked to install a Chinese app and make an account (which I would have to pay for), to allow “her” to take revenge on a chating ex (LOL). I refused to do it and the last thing I heard was “Did you install it already?”.
Here’s my story. I met this woman named Lisa(her name on tinder was different which I forgot) from tinder app. She claimed that she’s Taiwanese and currently live in Canada.
Our converation has now lead to whatsapp and she told me she owns autopart business and also does investment on the side(currency it is). We have normal conversation everyday and she made an arrangement to meet me in person this month, we had phone conversation today and she did not sound suspicious. She is keep telling me story about her investment and she made a lot of money doing investment since her mother works in the bank in Hong Kong and taught her how to invest. This just sounds like a big scam.
I have not made any transaction so far and I told her I would have to wait until I meet you face to face. I asked her to send her the picture with background and she sent me today
I googled image searched and no result so far, maybe she used one from chinese social media site. Is there any hope that she’s real person?
She’s a scammer
Omg I’ve been on Tinder for a few days and just caught on to this Scam! And yes it’s all Chinese men scamming. They are scamming women too. Three of them tried it with me.They totally underestimated how..nozy and not desperate I am. I’m a psychology grad who knows a thing or two about human behavior. Mistake number one, Real hot people/guys don’t give you THAT much attention (The Love bombing), Real rich people/guys don’t really care if you have your own money or not (The forcing you to invest)…I found out after he created a fake instagram account and he stupidly followed the Chinese celebrity whose pics he was using. Then Instagram suggested I add his fake account since I had saved his number recently on my phone. The other I will say was a bit smarter, he even had a verified Tinder account and the pics were less polished and seemed more believable. But still a quick google search revealed it…The third was also seemingly real but he completely knew nothing about the area he claimed he lived in where I lived for 10 years. His story cracked quickly and he really wasn’t too in control of his emotions kept saying how disappointed he was in me for not wanting to buy his stupid crypto after 3 days lol Anyway absolutely no more Asian man matches for me. Good luck out there!
Wow long post!
I am Asian girl and to be exact I am from Viet Nam so the word “Asian” hurts me a lot even though I think I met an Asian scammer too! T.T wanna cry
A male approached me, claimed that heβs Taiwanese. On the app, he is 10km away from me so at first i am quite surprise to know that he is not Vietnamese!
I asked him about this and he told me that he usually go to my country for business!
First two days everything went on so well, we have normal conversation, he said his work is financial management and also he invests by himself to make his own profit! He always told me that he needs to do Foreign Exchange after ending our chat. Suddenly, on the third day he said that was some good FX trending and he would like to do it with me cause he is a professional :)))) He sent me a suspect website and told me to invest on this web with a small amount of money. You know, the website is too suspicious, customer service of that web asked me to transfer money to a Vnese bank account in order to start my own investment. Well global webs always use credit cards and secure payment gate, no one should use a bank account as a payment method! Such a lame stupid mistake! I suspected him since then, I told him that i am an artist and Investing is not my Forte so I won’t do it with him. However, the next two day he still insisted on telling me to invest so that we have common thing to talk about, why i don’t do it with him…. I do not know what to say anymore. I said that I do not believe in him then we ended talking to each other. I’ve been wondering for several days if I am the one who is at fault for suspecting my friend but after reading all the posts here I am sure he is a scammer! Actually feel relief now
And do you guys know what irritated me the most?
I sent him a video of my two super cute cats playing together and he replied that his profit today was good! Normal people would fell head over heels in love with my two cuties but he was not!
Ah ah very true !!! No love for cats means he is not a true Human !!! But yes it is a true sign of “scam” when they change topic immediately,
I feel you. It always hurts my self-confidence when I fall for this kind of manipulation. And to be honest, I was scammed by Vietnamese, too. Not investment or big money, but nonetheless. How can you trust anyone that you haven’t met in real life, these days? It’s so tiring to invest your time and hopes just to find out after days or weeks they are fake, again.
Let me give you a suggestion. 90% of the people who let you invest in cryptocurrency are scammers. He may be a man or a woman or not a person. Who knows! The scammer will usually give you a cryptocurrency link that she made herself. , He will tell you the trend and future of this cryptocurrency is very good, or tell you to use Bitcoin to mine new cryptocurrencies or your cryptocurrency cannot be withdrawn after transfer, and tell you that it will take time to withdraw or inject more funds to withdraw money This is obviously a scam. If you want to invest in cryptocurrency, I suggest you choose Binance, Huobi and other well-known cryptocurrency platforms.
Ok, thanks May.
I was wondering if I can use Chinese characters, but finally I decided to use English.
Scammers everywhere, and 90%+ are from mainland China, but nowadays as the Chinese gov’s crackdown intensifies, many of them got punished. The influnces still there, and the whole article aimed the scammers.
On the other hand, what about those social app companies? Like Tinder, Meetme, Skout or other social apps. Should they do something to avoid that happen? Who is to blame?
I am Chinese, one of the 1.4 billion in China, and for those scammers, what’s the percentage? This article hurt every normal Chinsese, so sad.
most of the scammers are from Taiwan but they are also Chinese
if you can help , please tell me where in Chinese govβs i can contact or call??
because already i contact HK police but they didn’t do anything until now
Remind all the victims that when you find out that you have been deceived, don’t expose her. You can contact me in time and I will teach you to get back part of your funds. If you expose her, then all your cheated money will not be able to withdraw. Don’t send this article to that liar. Yesterday, a liar dared to contact me. When I tried to make a video call, I saw a man who answered the video call under the enchanting WhatsApp profile picture!
I enjoyed this so much, and I wrote an article in Danish on my own personal blog, keeping this article in mind. I did link back to this article, so maybe, you would like to link back? I can live with nofollow though π
I love this article.
Ha, Ha, I did the same thing you did during lockdown. But I really F’ked with them. And one of them most of reported me because I ended up getting kick off tinder for life. I found it hilarious that Tinder sided with a scammer, dumbasses.
Tinder is a huge pile of crap, not worth anything whatsoever.
There are genuine people on Tinder. I’ve matched with multiple Chinese girls who have turned out to be really very nice people. We never discuss money and basically help each other out in learning languages.
TBH, most of these guys are located in South Asia but not mainland China. And many of them are from the Number 1 Taiwan. But fine they are also Chinese and I feel so sorry for them
Dit volgende nummer is een scam
+852 66456863 (called herself Amy) is a scam/fraudster
Thank you so much for disclosing this information. A purported Japanese beauty contacted me by Tinder. We talk by WhatsApp and she seems so real talking about family, food, hobbies… Later she start to talk about “foreign exchange” and how she has that hobbie for make an extra money.. I was not interested in cryptocurrencies and all this world, but I create an user in Binance just for curiosity… However, in the moment buy a cryptocurrency I refuse because I’m not interested on this way… But she get angry when I refuse and then I started tus suspect something was wrong and I start to search information about phishing… That’s extremely dangerous because this scam is really sophisticated…
If only I had seen this earlierI got scammed for $40,000 just now. Is there nothing that can be done?
Try Mychargeback? Maybe they can help, they offer a free consultation.
Amazing to read all the comments here. Please keep posting to help warn people who suspect they may be dealing with scammers!
It has really gotten out of hand in the past year. They are on all the dating apps!
It’s so tedious having to go through each profile, and figure out if it’s real or fake.
Most are really easy to spot; usually their job is in import/export, or they’re a CEO, or apparel/clothing.
NONE of their pics are taken locally. Normal people have at least more than one picture taken while out and about or their friend’s place. All the fakes have pics taken elsewhere. If you know your city well, it’s easy to tell these people are clearly not local.
Sometimes I talk to them for fun, but majority of the time they’re not worth it because conversation is painfully boring.
One got more entertaining because he switched to Chinese. Still not sure what he wants to sell
Well, these scammers are all over Facebook dating. Report their accounts when you can!!!
They have totally taken over facebook dating in the UK. As VPNs donβt work with Facebook dating I guess at some point these individuals were in the UK and they have kept their location as the UK. Like everyone else has said its easy to know they arenβt in the UK, their profiles say Just joined and the bio is full of a standard tagline- looking for a handsome man etc. And they usually have a HK based location or where they are from. Most recently I saw chinese photos with a HK based company and a home town in the Philippines, its getting pretty obvious to me that these scammers arenβt located in China but could be actually in the Philippines, all the tag lines are standard and could just be copy and pasted by a non english speaker from any Asian country. They are using Chinese photos as they deem the Chinese to be more attractive then phillipinos to lure men, their whatsapp accounts are also online constantly. Its a pretty unsophisticated scam and anyone with some common sense can spot them a mile off that they are fake, unless you have never used a dating app in your life.
Hi guys,i want to have fun too:).i am in vacation right now.So i found a beautiful china”girl”.the app name is MAMBA i think it is russian.Anyway its the same scheme:
1-whatsapp,live in england
2-beauty company OWNER,and uncle-cryptocurrency ”expert”
3-avoiding,voice and video chat(we need more time to get to know each other)
i think it will be long run.I will share information after i finish.
Well, I think I just got a scam. I was so stupid and I believed her. So I started investing my money together, and made some profits and withdraw a little. Since I hit certain amount of money, the platform just shut down and disappeared. I really do not know what to do now
Siru, I had a similar experience. At first Lilian Wang, the Chinese woman from Hong Kong currently in New York City visiting her aunt who is an investment manager for a big firm took me for a 6 figure amount. At first no investment talk and then suddenly it was the major part of our WhatsApp conversations. At first she was βteachingβ me to do small trades and probably made $750 which was nice. Then she had me try wap.CBOEX.vip trading platform and again I made a small amount. Then one day we are talking and her βauntβ had given her a good node to use that evening. So my original $3300 grew to $228,000, I was very excited and though I could relax about money issues in my retirement years. The interesting part started the next day when I went to the site to withdraw my funds. When I went to the page to withdraw funds and completed all the necessary info a pop up said I could not withdraw any funds. I contacted βcustomer serviceβ and was told I needed to pay $100,000 to their tax department. I talked to Lilian and explained I did not have $100k and asked if she could pay could pay it and then when the money was available I would pay her back. Next day she said she could pay half and I pay the other half which is what we did. So I notified Cboex that the payment had been made and was told I would receive an email about what would be next. The email I received said, in part, they could not accept a 3rd party payment due to their regulations and I had to pay in 3 days. When I told Lilian she did not understand and said I would have to pay to unlock the funds. So I did pay another $50,000. Then I received this mai β After the system review, your credit score is insufficient and only 90 points make you unable to complete the tax payment, so you need to wait for the credit score to reach 100 points. If you need to complete the tax payment in advance, you need to pay 100,000 US dollars to complete the credit score 100 points, but the remittance time must be 3 The funds will be certified to your cboex as your assets if you complete the payment within daysβ. This is when I knew this was a major scam and I had fallen for it, if you read the mail there are glaring errors and it comes from a gmail.com extension which is certainly not a business address. During this 3 day period I am having very heated discussions with Lilian, most of which dealt with paying her back the money she loaned me for the tax payment. Accusing me of scamming her etc. I gave up trying to explain that cboex had her money not me, I also said she has no proof she ever sent them any money. Today, I told here we were done, sent her an article describing exactly the kind of scam she was part of and blocked her phone number from continuing to contact me. I am a fool and should have done more homework, but it is too late now. Just be aware there are incredibly devious people that want your money rather than do honest work themselves. Just so you know too, I did receive 4 photos early on and I doubt they were of the person I was dealing with.
Can you send me the photos of your contact person?
I feel I am dealing with a similar individual
The same history for me I lost 15000 usdt… we begin to speak in language app call Tandem and after that we use whatsapp. She told me about new coin call VCC, his aunt and she are investing in this new cypto coin… Her name Kelly Chen (Chen Siyi) She teach me how yo use Binance and Coinpeace ….the Scam site is http://www.coinpeace.club at this moment its available… She put inititially 5000 so I recharge 5000 after she speak about increase the amount so she load another 20000 but she wants I reached to 15000… after that she reach to 25000 ustd… she would like reach 50000 so she need more money from me when I say I’ll can’t more to add she begin to discuss and after some days she block me on whatsapp
This was a big mistake… i know other people in this app from differents cultures and do good friends.. I don’t hate any culture.. but after this bad experience… chinese people lost my respect
I spent a year and half off and on getting scammed. I was lucky money wise but money is not everything. What about the dreams in my head that I was going to actually marry one of these beautiful ‘women’.
I did lose a lot of money, time and self-esteem, and trust to the dating sites who profit from this. I logged in multiple times a day to see these matches and paid for extra likes and perhaps more importantly I lost trust in humans and incorrectly thought cute asian women had a thing for me.
The FBI knows but please report it: ->
https://www.ic3.gov/Home/FileComplaint
Here’s what they have said on it in September ->
https://www.ic3.gov/Media/Y2021/PSA210916
Also, give a negative review to the apps.. Match is super rich. Facebook is insanely powerful. The scammers are poor. The rich should have done a better job fighting this.
In Tinder, you can not even filter out unverified profiles. They profit from these pretty people profiles posted who you would probably log in to just in order to swipe right on just if it were a game of ‘hot or not’. They could offer a solution very easily but you would swipe right a lot less and pay them a lot less money.
I totally agree that we don’t know who the sammers are. It would be racist to say the scammers are asian and sexist to say they are women. They use pictures of asian beauties who have nothing to do with the scheme. Since its a pyramid scheme the victims of the fraud will also try to scam others to get their money back.
I know what you are feeling. I was talking with one those fake profiles for months. We were getting along very well. We were even suggesting having kids together one day. But now that I know this is fake, I’m afraid I’m broken and will never actually find love.
I’m sorry for venting here, I just needed it.
Scammers aren’t poor; they make thousands or hundreds or millions off naive vulnerable people.
Last year (2020) NZ lost 19 million to scammers and that’s only calculated from those that report it. Many of us hide in shame.
Same problem here…. Handsome Chinese men.
They add me with Facebook. And ask for my whatsapp.
They always have an excuse that they can’t make a video call.
And after a while they ask if I want to invest in investing.
I β accidentally β received a message on Wattsup from one of these beauties, Gwineth was her Wattsup but she told me her name is Natalie. Asking me about some books she ordered for kids in need. I explained itβs probably wrong number. Now starts the befriending. She started the question bombardment to find out what am I doing in every moment, how I earn my money, etc. I approximately a week of chatting she told me she lives in ManhattanNY City, and she owns a beauty salon and a coffee shop. And – like so many of you guys wrote here- she has an uncle freshly retiree from a senior position at NYSE. Of course I received a couple photos, she is insanely beautiful. The photos were taken in a gym.
Yesterday she helped her BFF to pick up a gift for some other friend and she was so touched by the fact that the gift was for her. This friend had some financial issues with her business and she taught her to trade on Foreign Exchange. And her uncle helped her friend with a loan. She never got with me into specifics with investing- I told her Iβm interested but Iβm also interested to learn Mandarin and she offered to teach me, we exchanged short audios with basic conversations.
Iβm 47 yo, married with children.
I questioned myself every day and this morning I blocked her on Wattsup. In US there are plenty of established companies helping with investing, not Wattsup scammers. I ended this adventure today, Iβm relieved and happy. Than I googled for this type of scams and saw they all have the same pattern.
Itβs crazy how many of us are fooled and how many people lost money to these scammers.
I appreciate Asian people I know, ambitious and very smart people. Itβs not about the race here, itβs about the scam.
Hi all, this person @Annie6697 from alias Chen linlin from tweeter is a romance scammer, will introduce the. http://www.lane.gold domian with OLTK crypto coin. Don’t believe this, this is scam. Don’t fall on this. Its a fake profile, they are from Hu Nan, China. Name: Zuo jing sen.
I met a Chinese girl on Asian dating recently and talked to her for a few days on Whatsapp before she started bringing up the investment b.s. I blocked her immediately. I suspected she (if it was actually a she) was fake anyway because they couldn’t hold a coherent conversation about anything and started this nonsense.
This is the first time it’s happened to me but good to know I’m not the only one!
I am really having a problem with this one. On every dating website I am only matching with these profiles as if I can’t match with anything else. They are showing up on FB friend recommendations too.
In particular there was one girl I mentioned the scam to and she immediately unmatched me. I stated that I felt it was a scam. A month later she shows up my friend recommendations with a fully fleshed out profile, pictures of friends, and even her kids. She lives not too far from me though she is from Hong Kong originally. She has a linkdin and performs music for the royal academy of arts. I actually added her on facebook just to see and she has a fully fleshed out FB page with a career. That is everything on her profile would suggest she is legit, except that she was 1 in 10 matches from Hong Kong at that time, and the others all seemed illegitimate. I wondering if she is real but the scammers are mirroring her matches because I don’t know what to make of this.
I also got the same case. I’m Asian from Indonesia also meet hongkong girl from application besides Tinder. The application name is Langmate (now gone on google play store but still have on app store). I meet her since she is match with me on Langmate. Her name is Wang Lan Lan. I’m still have phone number & her photos and she offering me about forex trading broker to invest. I lost my money until $8600 and got scam. I need somebody can investigate about her. Thank you
She got me on TikTok too..
What’s really amazing is that, as you noted, these girls are actually real. I did the hand on nose trick and sure enough, she sent me a picture of herself pointing to her nose. I almost started to believe her… but not quite. They are ALL liars
I am seeing a similar trend on Twitter recently. Very similar to how you describe them on Tinder. The few I talked to were in the Hong Kong area, one said she worked as a bank manager and was trying to get me to invest all of my retirement in a single stock that she said would make 70% profit within a week. I ended up just blocking them, but I’m sure there are people that fall for their scams.
Ackkk, man the heart will fuck you up if you let it. I’ve been talking to a cute “Singapore” chick for a couple weeks. The scam is very smart and well thought out. because they don’t come hard with love bombing, but it’s a very slow gradual conversation about your work life, your personal life, picks of her making food, drinking wine, and then i send similar one. She is probably real-ish, but the scam is EXPERT level social engineering. The finance talk felt immediately off, and i was like “why the fuck does she care about this investment stuff” But after lots of compliments about how smart i am, and how i am so careful with money, i gotta jump on this big grift with her and her uncle.
Run away. I didn’t send any money, but i finally asked what someone who does this invests, and then here comes $5,000. Ah, there it is. Basically, if you can’t meet someone or even video chat with them, it’s 100% a scam, 100% of the time, that is just the cold hard fact. Crazy thing is, I HAVE met a girl from a different country, we have met many times, and we have a real relationship, and the one time i offered her money, she told me to fuck off and she’s a big girl and take care of herself and doesn’t need my money. And she’s a firecracker in the sack. Now that’s legit. When foreigner romance has lots of money involved, it ain’t about love.
So here is my story… I read a couple of stories and mine is related to the rest.
She contacted me through DM and then transferred me to her WhatsApp directly, saying this was her business contact number. You’ve been messaging almost every day, some personal things shared both. And then she claimed to be company CEO in the medical industry, also doing Crypto for fun that she lives in NYC. She shared screenshots from her BitMartch account with wealthy amount of money and increasing every day. She shared some pics as well of her and her kids in different locations. She says she will share her crypto knowledge, tips and tricks to create wealth and explain to me some or the things I already know. I have an IT background and scared about those things investigated her, found the same profile in FB and other social apps.
Inquiring into the scam and MO invest $150 USDT and so far with my own profile and pw looks to be legitime.
But still comes into my mind, how come a successful company owner locked her attention into me?
Is out there additional way to find out if she’s real?
Thanks.
Hahahah too many scammer frm chinese mainland, always talk about forex and investments
I was too the sadly person scammed out of 100.000 usd from this fake website:
https://invest-luxurypropertyshares.com
It started as a romance, the guy sent me flowers, gifts, money, clothes, would shower me with affection and attention. He would even invest with me and match what I invested. At the end I wanted to withdraw, the company asked for taxes, then upgrade fees then more money, then finally the scammer disappeared and I cannot withdraw any money. To any women out there or man don’t ever get involved in a romance and trade or send any money or cryptocurrency. The guy would never video chat or face time never call only whatsapp chat. Always an excuse. It was a pigbutchering scam. The man in the stolen photos was nice, but I even believe all 10 photos he sent me were not of the same person. Which I asked him and he said they are from different ages!!
Hey guys, I am happy to see that so many people are sharing such events. My book on same topic is being published this month on Amazon.
If you are interested contact me on LinkedIn.
– Nilmadhav, Kalyan
https://www.linkedin.com/in/nilmadhav-kalyan-nilesh-b-patil-a72379180/
When I’m scrolling through Tinder, about 1 in every 20 profiles shows me this beautiful, quite pale, Asian girl. I have come to think of her as “Porcelain Doll” and I must have seen hundreds of different photos of her by now. Every profile uses yet another name and has some different specifics, but I swear that it’s always the same girl. As has been noted here : it’s a telltale sign that the professional-looking pictures are never local.
I’m not much into Asian women so I’ve steered clear of the temptation so far. It seems obvious that some kind of scam is being attempted, but I’ve often wondered exactly what’s so lucrative about matching with someone on Tinder. What’s in it for them .. ? Your article explains very well where the rabbit hole leads. Thanks for clearing that up !
I matched with 2 pretty women from “japan” way too pretty to match with me so I figure its a scam. If its too good to be true it is.
Thank you for sharing this Article. A lot people are victims of Pig Butchering from 2020 to this year. Here is a related article on Yahoo money/Finance
https://money.yahoo.com/news/tactical-refunds-offers-optimal-solution-124500934.html
Thank you for this article mate. I have recently been done by a “Japanese” girl I got a message from out of the blue on twitter. I always knew it was too good to be true but lonely idiot that I am fell in love with “her” over a few weeks. They were supposedly based in Wimbledon which is like 15 minutes away from me though she never wanted to meet despite telling me she loved me, we did manage one video call where she hung up after 3 seconds which was really odd, every other time we were going to call she would just disappear. The things that gave it away were her pictures and they would text at 11:30 on the dot every single day, but they never once brought up cryptocurrency or investing, she also followed mostly middle aged blokes on twitter. She once sent me a picture of her shopping trolley in a supposedly asian supermarket in London which just was full of Mexican food hah. The voice notes always sounded like they were in a call centre or something you could hear people talking in the background. The most pathetic part of this story is that when I finally had enough and blocked them, I did a search and found they had a linekdin page and panicked and unblocked them and said I was sorry, the linekdin page was obviously actually the real girl or just part of the scam. They did me in and I feel like such an idiot.
Just to prevent future troubles. i think i exchanged with a very subtil scammer. She was a girl, i’m sure because we talked one time on the phone. After two days, she asked me if i was interested in crypto currency and when i say no, she didn’t insist.
So, the story could have been a good one with an happy ending. But things didn’t add up. She said her father lived in the city “neighbouring” city. Of course after asking her last name, no man with the same name live in that city (i’m in position where i can check this kind of thing), suspicious.
Like i said, she didn’t insist with the investisment, but regularly amid some photos, she showed me how much she earned, send me a picture of her new handbag, she bought to reward herself (a gucci for 980 euros). I feelt like she was fishing maybe…
Of course, no way to find her presence online, strange for an investor to not be on linkedin for example… I then tried to check her photos. It seems fine until i got to a special website, just for that. And behold, almost all her photos were eslwhere (except one to be fair).
Suspicious again i would say…
Just half an hour ago, i asked for a facetime, she refused of course. Before that i tried to make a facetime, but she said she was driving, then suddenly she get her mother,when minutes before she said she was cooking for herself tonight…
When i asked her what the program for her and her mother tonight, she show me a another thing for crypto, ignoring the mother.
So after the second demand of a facetime, i compromised and asked for a video of her doing a thumb up…
Suddenly, i’m fat, old and ugly and wanting a video call is stupid… Strangely enough, she didn’t mind before…
Oh, the dear and honey happened during the conversation and oral messages.
So beware of a scammer girl saying she was from singapore…
I’m also having the same experience.
A girl from Hong Kong approached me and asked for something for her business with a Vietnamese number. Then she asked for texting me via her personal phone number and making friend with her. She told me about her life, her stories.
Then days by days, we step into a relationship. She said she will be here, in Vietnam in the end of this year. Then she advised me invest with her for making profits.
For the first time, I only invested 40$ and made 7$ profit. Later days, she asked me for investing more around 1000$, and I made 220$. Lastly, she asked me for investment of 50,000$, but I only had 4,000$ at that time. Then I transferred from OKX wallet to a strange site “cexiu.net” (the same as I did make profit before with her), it was late at night. She asked me for gathering enough 10k$ for next few days, but I rejected. Then at night, I wanted to withdraw my money from cexiu.net to OKX, it took me hours for transferring, instead of minutes.
After that, in the morning, I asked her about the issue, and told her that I will invest more because I was trying to sell all of my real estate for this. After that, my money suddenly went back to OKX.
I’m still chatting with her for I’m not really understand this situation. But I’m surely not going to invest anymore.
I’m not sure about this situation, is this a scam?
This is 100% a scam!