A mother-of-three lost her £6,000 life savings to a Tinder crypto scammer.
Natalie Foster, 42, connected with ‘James’ on Tinder three weeks ago. The pair hit it off just before he started talking about cryptocurrencies all the time.
He convinced Natalie to get Crypto, a virtual wallet wallet that allows you to buy and hold cryptocurrency. The mom was convinced to upload money and “trade” in crypto – initially it appeared that she made up to $86,000 with the scammers.
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But that quickly dropped to zero before she was able to withdraw any cash – losing 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 is signed off work because of her MS, said that once she matched with “James” he became very progressive.
She continued: “He seemed like a really good-looking guy, had nice dogs and was very arrogant, I wasn’t up to it.”
But after a week of chatting, James discovered 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 deposit £300 and then transfer it to the trading platform. I did and then I got £80.”
Natalie then invested a further £100 into the trading platform and earned a further £93, although she never received the money.
A few days later, James said that the following evening would be “a very 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 there was a once-in-a-century deal coming up.” down and I could make 800%.”
Natalie then withdrew all the money she had left from her savings and transferred it to a cryptocurrency trading account, totaling £3,500. She was then added to a WhatsApp group with a man posing as her Tinder match uncle and another person.
According to Natalie, they then executed a trade that resulted in a profit of $86,000 on her trading platform account.
When she went to check it herself it briefly said she had exceeded the amount she could hold in it before her total funds suddenly went to 0. Natalie said: “I then contacted customer service who said I owed them 20% tax to 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 then I spoke to my ex and he gave me a reality check. I realized I had literally fallen for a textbook crypto scam.”
None of the profits from the deals were ever returned to her, apart from the initial £80, with Natalie losing a total of £6,000. She then returned to James to confront him about the deception, to which he told her to “go and die quickly”.
Then he was no match for 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 even getting his own pet dogs’ names wrong, while his pictures, she said Natalie, were “obviously just downloaded. from 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 a lifetime’s worth of savings that I inherited from my grandfather – it completely freaked me out. I feel stupid and ridiculous.”
“It’s so terrible – I don’t know how they can do this to other people.”
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