A mother-of-three lost her £6,000 life savings to a crypto scammer on Tinder.
Natalie Foster, 42, matched with ‘James’ on Tinder three weeks ago. The pair immediately struck out before he started talking about crypto incessantly.
He convinced Natalie to buy a cryptocurrency, a virtual wallet that allows you to buy and store cryptocurrency. The mother was convinced to upload money and ‘trade’ crypto – with the scammers initially making it look like she had made up to $86,000 in profit.
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But this quickly dropped to zero before she could make a withdrawal, causing her to lose a total of £6,000.
Natalie, from Windsford, Cheshire, said: “I feel stupid, I feel ridiculous. I can’t believe I’m one of those women I read about in magazines.”
Natalie, who has stopped working because of her MS, said that once she matched with “James,” he started to become very progressive.
She continued: “He looked like a very handsome man, he had nice dogs and was very progressive, which I didn’t really like.”
But after a week of talking, James mentioned that he had an uncle who had made a fortune in the crypto world. Natalie said: “I’m not a gambler but he was very convincing.
“He told me to put in £300 and then transfer it to a trading platform. I did it and made a profit of £80.”
Natalie then invested a further £100 on the trading platform and made a further £93, although she would never receive the money.
A few days later, James said the next night would be “a really big night.” She said: ‘He convinced me to put in even more money, so I put in £2,000. He then said he had been in touch with his uncle, who told him a once-in-a-century deal was about to happen. down and I could make an 800% profit.”
Natalie then withdrew whatever money she had left from her savings and transferred it to the crypto trading account for a total of £3,500. She was then added to a WhatsApp group with a man posing as her Tinder match’s uncle and another person.
According to Natalie, they then executed a trade that netted $86,000 in profits to her trading platform account.
When she looked into it herself, it briefly said that she had exceeded the amount she could hold in it before her total balance suddenly changed to 0. Natalie said: “I then contacted customer service who said I owed them 20% tax on a new York Bank account totaling £20,000.”
But then James transferred €5,000 to her trading platform account.
Natalie said: “At this point I thought it was still legit, but I then spoke to my ex-partner and he gave me a reality check. I realized I had literally fallen for a textbook crypto scam.”
None of the profits from the trades ever went back to her apart from the initial £80, with Natalie losing a total of £6,000. She then went back to James to confront him about the scam he told her to “go and die quickly.”
He then unmatched her and disappeared without a trace.
Natalie says that, looking back, there were “all these red flags,” including James saying he was German but not having a German accent, and that he even got his own dogs’ names mixed up while his photos, Natalie said, ‘had clearly just been downloaded’. somewhere online”.
She has since reported what happened to her to Action Fraud and has appointed a lawyer who hopes Natalie can get her money back.
Natalie said: “It was my entire life savings that I inherited from my grandad – I’m absolutely distraught about it. I just feel stupid and ridiculous.”
“It’s so terrible. I don’t know how they can do this to other people”
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