A 40-year-old man from Ajman named Sajjad Khan fell victim to crypto scams while trying to find a second wife on the dating app Tinder. The girl he met online introduced herself as Anna and suggested that he invest in a cryptocurrency called BIS, assuring him that the investment would change his life.
As a result, the father of five children transferred US$ 47,000 to his Internet girlfriend, which he set aside to buy a house. In addition, he persuaded two friends to invest in the crypto scheme – Mohsin Ali and AK lost US$ 11 and US$ 3 thousand, respectively.
Sajjad Khan said that he had never seen his interlocutor in real life. “We had nothing in common, but she was friendly and very talkative. She called me “Darling” and I called her “Princess”. I was looking for a life partner and saw in Anna the ideal wife. She said she wanted to open a yoga studio, and that impressed me,” said the victim.
After a short Internet romance, the man was left with a broken heart and an empty wallet. He shared his story to keep other UAE residents safe from internet scammers. It is worth noting that in recent years, online dating applications have become a real “pasture” for scammers – they earn millions of dollars annually from them.
Experts believe that at least one in ten profiles in applications is fake. Sajjad said that Anna asked to transfer the correspondence to WhatsApp and then persuaded him to invest in cryptocurrency, including sending a 68-page presentation of the project, which described the whole mechanism of earning, and promised that the value of the cryptocurrency would rise to US$ 500.
The “groom” had to open an account on the Binance online exchange and transfer US$ 1,000 to the FidelityEx platform. The first profit was US$ 207, after which the woman asked to invest more money. In total, Sajjad and his friends transferred more than 230 thousand dirhams from their bank accounts to the crypto exchange. When they tried to withdraw their profits, the website did not allow them to do so, and Anna simply blocked all contacts.
“It was hard to believe that a woman who exchanged love messages with me daily turned her back on me overnight. First, she stole my heart and then my money,” Sajjad complained. In a panic, the victims contacted FidelityEx support, but all addresses turned out to be invalid.
As it turned out later, FidelityEx is a one-day company that only uses the brand of the American corporation Fidelity Investments Inc for financial fraud. Last year, the Canadian regulator Canadian Securities Administrators issued a warning to investors about fraud using the Fidelity logo, brand, and images.
Data from the US Federal Trade Commission shows that in 2021 alone, Americans lost US$547 million by contacting scammers on dating sites.
The popularity of cryptocurrencies as a profitable financial instrument has led to the emergence of a large number of sophisticated fraudulent schemes. It is not uncommon for scammers to create fake wallets or use fake crypto exchanges to steal money.
To avoid the theft of cryptocurrency, experts advise keeping money in “cold” wallets outside the exchange. At the same time, you should make sure that the exchange is centralized, licensed, and under the control of government agencies. Crypto schemes that offer unusually high returns in the short term should be avoided.