Sex, Lies and Cryptocurrency

The Illinois man called the helpline, spoke in an subsequent interview and is not being named in this story. It was bad enough that his wife sent cash and gift cards intended for her phony suitor to addresses in Indiana and Virginia, he says. That she bought Bitcoin for him in September marked a dangerous escalation, since the couple, both retired state employees, had never purchased virtual currency before. The Bitcoin cost her at least $12,750, according to the man, who suspects that his wife has given the suitor a total of $50,000 for supposed needs that he, as an Army veteran, finds difficult to swallow. She could not be reached for comment.

Texan worried for his mother

A Texas man, 30, also called AARP’s helpline after his mother, widowed in 2020, began sending funds to men she met on the dating site Zoosk. Her latest interest is a someone who says he’s from Texas and working on a construction project in Africa. His mother has professed her love for him, assuring her son that the two will marry when he returns to the U.S.

Jarring to the son was a recent text from his mother in which she asked for his help to install the app for Coinbase, a large cryptocurrency exchange that lets people buy and sell virtual currencies such as Bitcoin, Ethereum and Dogecoin. “You’re almost 70 years old — you don’t need to be trading crypto,” he told her.

Though he doesn’t know if she’s given away cryptocurrency, he is worried about her emotional and financial well-being and “disgusted” that someone would exploit a widow’s loneliness and grief.

He says his mother beats back protestations about her latest suitor by contending that her son and best friends simply don’t want her to remarry. That’s not true, he says. “I would actually love it if you got married again, but this is not the way to do it,” he’s told her. “This person is going to squeeze every single penny they can out of you, and they’re going to block your number, and you will never hear from them again.”

Zoosk, in its online safety guide, says it does not conduct background checks on members and advises users: "Ultimately, your online and offline safety is your responsibility and should be your top priority." "Common scammer behaviors," it says, include requests for money.

Pandemic triggers complaints

Nofziger says she noticed that the helpline was receiving complaints about romance scams triggering cryptocurrency losses a few months into the pandemic last year. Victims said online daters urged them to send them crypto online so the senders could stay safe at home. Scammers always “up their game” and discard older, well-publicized tactics, Nofziger notes, and victims in these scams often don’t realize there’s nothing left in their digital currency accounts until it’s too late. By then the “criminal has long moved on to another victim,” she says.

Anyone using dating sites and apps should be aware that criminals lurk there, “waiting for you and your wallet,” Nofziger says, so when somebody on a dating platform offers investment help, don’t walk away — run away. Her advice is in line with what Interpol, the world’s largest international police organization, stated in a January notice to its 194 member countries.

Preacher lends support

The Illinois man, who suffers from prostate cancer, says he now spends nights in his camper, parked in his sister’s driveway, and often talks over his troubles with his preacher.

In hindsight, he wishes he had kept a closer eye on the couple’s finances so he wouldn’t have been blindsided by his wife’s obsession with a man she met playing an online word game, he says. He’s sharing their story so others can learn from his heartbreak and avoid becoming a victim.

He still sees his wife regularly because of a medical condition that requires his help. He expects they’ll divorce. He says his wife still professes her love, though half-heartedly. Referring to the faraway fraudster, he says: “She keeps telling me she loves me, but then turns around and tells me how much she loves him.”

Katherine Skiba covers scams and fraud for AARP. Previously she was a reporter with the Chicago Tribune, U.S. News & World Report, and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. She was a recipient of Harvard University's Nieman Fellowship and is the author of the book, Sister in the Band of Brothers: Embedded with the 101st Airborne in Iraq.