Fighting for your money

Romance fraudster stole £63,000 using sweet talking and faux promises of Bitcoin riches

QOn Jan 31, I met a guy on Facebook Dating. We used WhatsApp to chat. In the beginning, we were just getting to know each other. But two weeks later, he started to talk about investing and how he could help me invest in Bitcoin and make lots of profit. He was very persuasive and told me to buy some through the Binance platform, then to transfer the Bitcoins to another app, which he sent me a link to download. It looked legitimate.

I trusted him and believed he was an experienced analyst and investor. I followed his instructions. Over the following fortnight, I bought more Bitcoin and transferred it to this app. I was even persuaded to take a £20,000 loan from my bank.

I started to feel things were not right when he kept asking me to put more money in. He persuaded me to sign up to a special investment event, which would earn me a bonus so long as I added a certain sum.

At this point I wanted to pull out because I just didn’t have any more money. But customer services said it was too late and that I would have to wait and withdraw my money when the event was over.

So I asked a friend if I could borrow the money I needed. I told him the whole story and he immediately said it was a scam. He works for an antivirus software business, so he checked the link the guy had sent me – and confirmed it was fake. The name was adapted from that of a genuine app.

I have lost £63,000 in total, including the loan from Lloyds Bank.

I reported everything to Action Fraud on March 10. The same day, a policeman came to check some more information. I also phoned my bank, but was told there was nothing it could do because I had had full control of my money when I bought the Bitcoin and that I should talk to Binance. All I could get from Binance was a case identification number.

The situation is very bad, and not just because I lost all of my savings. I have never felt so shaken up in my life. – Anon AMy

heart sank when I read your story. You have been scammed by the most ruthless and loathsome type of crook. Someone who exploits the trust of a person who is looking for friendship or love through a dating service has got to be the lowest of the low. It makes my blood boil that he (or possibly she or they, as you have no way of knowing whether it is an individual or gang behind this scam) not only stole all your savings but urged you to take out a bank loan to squeeze yet more money out of you.

You believed that the details you saw on Facebook Dating, of a handsome 32-year- old from Orpington in south London, were genuine. His profile stated that, like you, he enjoyed sport and claimed his favourite food was “cola chicken wraps”. The words he used to best describe himself were “exercise, health, sunshine”. He should have added his occupation of “greedy exploiter of innocent people”.

You trusted this would-be romantic interest, but once he had gained your confidence, he embarked on his wicked plan to defraud you. You are not alone: Action Fraud said that £78.6m had been stolen in dating scams in the past 13 months, with victims losing on average £9,573.

I contacted Binance on your behalf. I felt the series of transactions, passing from your bank to buy the cryptocurrency Bitcoin, and then out again to a fake app masquerading as a genuine service, should have raised a red flag. But it said there was little it could have done, as these accounts were not like traditional bank accounts.

Cryptocurrency is held in a digital account called a “wallet”, which contains a security key that corresponds to the wallet’s address. These addresses are not registered with a central organisation to allow for checks. There

Action Fraud said £78.6m had been stolen in dating scams in the past 13 months

are databases where cryptocurrency exchanges do share information about dubious accounts, but Binance said that unless a rogue address had been flagged up, it could not know in advance when one was suspicious. When you reported your ordeal, Binance blacklisted the address and the associated accounts.

The company explained it could not recover assets once a purchase had been recorded on the blockchain, the digital ledger for Bitcoin transactions.

All in all, investing in cryptocurrency is a risky business as it is not regulated and investors can lose everything if things go wrong.

I also asked Lloyds Bank to revisit your case. When it came back and expressed sympathy for your position I feared this was a preamble to rejecting your claim. But some good news was to come. The bank had listened to the recordings of the calls you made reporting the scam. Taking these and other details into account, including the sophistication of the fraudster and the fact you did not benefit from the money you borrowed, it decided to refund the £20,000 loan as a gesture of goodwill.

Lloyds could not refund all of your losses, it said. This is because your case fell outside the scope of the “Contingent Reimbursement Model” code, which some banks use to fully refund victims following a “no- fault” fraud. You missed out because you personally opened the Binance account and funded it as intended.

I also contacted Facebook, which played host, albeit unwittingly, to the fraudster, and asked what it did to combat these crooks. It said it encouraged people to report suspicious profiles on its app – which you did – and stated that it blocked millions of fraudulent accounts of all kinds every day.

The dating site offers a variety of safety tips, which I am sure you wish you had known about and considered. As a rule, it is wise to be cautious of any dating site profiles initially, as it is all too easy for scammers to set up sham profiles with fake photos.

If the profiles themselves do not set off alarm bells, then it is vital to be alert to other key signals. Be wary if the person quickly suggests taking conversations off a dating site’s chat function and on to the likes of WhatsApp.

The biggest, brightest red flag of all is when discussions quickly turn to money. This almost always means it is a fraudster at work – and it will be more than a heart that gets broken.

Trainline denied refund on my wife’s worthless digital over-60s railcard

QI bought a three-year digital senior railcard for my wife from the Trainline website, but have been unable to download the necessary app or the railcard because my iPad does not have a modern enough version of the operating software.

All efforts to get Trainline to provide either a refund or a paper version have been unsuccessful. It is totally intransigent. This means we have spent £70 for an inaccessible, and worthless, railcard. – JD, Woking

AI

was sorely disappointed to hear of the inflexible response of Trainline when you informed its customer services you could not download its app nor the senior railcard on to your tablet device.

I contacted the company on your behalf and, while it insisted that the non- refundable nature of the digital railcard was shown in the booking process, it appreciated that you did not feel this was clear enough. As a result, it was happy to refund you the £70 in full as a gesture of goodwill.

Be warned that Trainline only provides digital railcards, but paper versions are available elsewhere.

Senior railcards give a third off the cost of train travel to the over- 60s and can be purchased at any National Rail-staffed ticket office, many travel agents or online at websites including senior-railcard.co.uk. The card can be registered online for easier renewal.