Types of Romance Scams - The Crypto Love Scam

You meet this really great guy on one of the dating apps. He's super cute, has a good career in finance, loves spending time with his family, and is looking for true love and a long term relationship. You could really see something developing here. As you message back and forth you realize how romantic he is, and are immediately swept into his dreams of the future.

He suggests you switch to text to get off of the dating site, and then quickly he switches your conversations to WhatsApp once he has your phone number. That's fine, it doesn't really make a difference how you communicate, does it? Your texts then switch to phone conversations, and you're surprised to find he has a European accent. His profile had said he was from Ohio (or somewhere else in the middle of the country) and was now living close to you in NYC. Turns out he's originally from France, but grew up in Ohio. Okay, that makes much more sense, and the accent makes him even more attractive!

He wants to know everything about you, he asks you so many questions, it's endearing how interested in you he is. When you ask him questions in return, he repeats the same things again that he is looking for - an honest woman, who will be faithful and love him fully, who shares the same interests as him. He's hesitant to share the details of his life, you imagine it must be hard for him to talk about for some reason, he'll open up eventually.

He wants to take it slow in getting to know you, he doesn't think you should rush into meeting before you really know each other and feelings develop. At the same time, he's telling you he's falling for you, that he wants a future with you, and once you do meet you will never be apart because he will love you like no other. You are hooked, caught up in these dreams of the future and all of the travels and experiences you will have together. It's only been a few days, but you think he could be the one.

As you talk more about your future, he asks about your finances and how you are saving for retirement. This seems like a basic sort of question, especially coming from a finance guy, so you tell him about your 401k and your pension. He asks if you're doing any other investing, and tells you he's made hundreds of thousands of dollars investing in crypotocurrency. Wow, that's amazing! You don't know much (or aything) about crypto but you're intrigued by what he has to say, he's so knowledgable about it all!

He explains how it works, and says he will talk you through setting up an account and start investing. It sounds easy enough, but you hesitate to jump in because you don't really have the money to spare, trying out this new thing with potential risks involved. You tell him it's not the best time for you to do this, but he pushes harder, and says that if you're really interested in him then you'll trust him and do this. Of course you're interested, and you do trust him, you feel like you've known him forever already, from all of the talking you've been doing over the past week.

So you try to change the subject to other topics, but he brushes these conversations off and continues to talk to you about crypto. He asks, if you don't have the same interests then how can this relationship possibly work? Clearly this is very important to him, and you want this relationship to work, so you agree to invest $10 to learn more about the process. He talks you through it, as promised. It wasn't very difficult, but that's the extent of investing you intend to do. He doesn't understand this, and pushes you to invest more. He says he loves you and wants you to be together, but if you trusted him and wanted the same thing then you would do this.

What do you do?