Attacks
A relationship built over weeks, then an investment platform that is entirely fake. The largest category of crypto loss by dollar value, and the cruellest. Somebody befriends you, often through a wrong number text or a dating app, and spends weeks being a genuine friend or partner. Money is never mentioned early. Eventually they mention an investment they use, help you set it up, and it works. Small withdrawals succeed. Then you put in an amount that matters and the withdrawals stop.
What it is
The largest category of crypto loss by dollar value, and the cruellest. Somebody befriends you, often through a wrong number text or a dating app, and spends weeks being a genuine friend or partner. Money is never mentioned early. Eventually they mention an investment they use, help you set it up, and it works. Small withdrawals succeed. Then you put in an amount that matters and the withdrawals stop.
How it plays out
First contact looks accidental
A wrong number. A misdirected message. A match who is warm, attentive and slightly too available.
Weeks of real relationship
No pitch, no pressure. This is the part that makes it work, and it is why "I would never fall for that" is not the protection people think.
The platform appears casually
A trading site or app they use for their family’s money. It looks professional, shows a real chart, and your balance goes up.
Small withdrawals work
Deliberately. It buys your trust and it buys their next deposit.
Then the wall
A tax, a fee, a compliance hold, a minimum balance. Every solution requires more money in. That money is also gone.
What gives it away
- Any investment introduced by somebody you met online, without exception.
- A platform you cannot find independently, or that is not a regulated exchange.
- Guaranteed or unusually steady returns.
- A withdrawal that requires a payment first. Legitimate platforms deduct fees, they do not ask you to wire more in.
- Pressure to keep the relationship or the investment private.
How to not be caught by it
- Never take investment advice from somebody you met online, however long you have known them.
- Only use exchanges you found yourself and can verify are regulated where you live.
- Reverse image search the photos. Ask for a live video call early.
- Talk to one person outside the relationship before you send anything. Isolation is the tool.
- Understand that a withdrawal that requires a payment is always a scam.
If it already happened
- Stop sending money now, including any fee that promises to release the rest.
- Screenshot everything: the platform, the chat, the addresses, the transaction hashes.
- Report to your national fraud service and to the FBI IC3 if you are in the US. Chain analysis firms do sometimes trace and freeze funds, but only if it is reported quickly.
- Do not engage recovery services that contact you afterward. They are the same people, running the second scam on the same victim.
- Tell somebody you trust. This one carries enormous shame and that shame is what keeps people paying.
Where to go next
Check your setup before you need to
An hour on a screen share, going through your wallets, your approvals, your backups and your recovery plan. You click everything and we never ask for keys.