I was recently the victim of a cryptocurrency investment scam worth nearly 400,000$ CAD.
Context of the romance scam: single mother of three girls for two years, out of a toxic relationship.
In Sept. 2024, I met a man on the Hinge platform, encouraged by my friends who encouraged me to try the experience again (to meet again). The discussions quickly moved to the WhatsApp platform where I exchanged in English for almost five months with this supposed Chinese named "Lin Ye". I have never seen him, neither in person nor online. I spoke to him twice on the phone and quickly realized that he spoke very little English (and no French at all). From what he told me, he is Chinese and lives between Ottawa and Vancouver (because his company is in this city). He had come to Canada 9 years ago to change his environment, following his divorce from his wife who had cheated on him during their marriage. During our conversations, he appeared to me to be very mature, trustworthy, very experienced, responsible, loyal, reassuring and having Asian values (a protective man who can bring you security and make you feel safe in a relationship, very family-oriented). His approach seduced me.
Soon after, he started talking to me about his investments in "gold futures market". He later insisted that I learn to invest, but I refused his first too insistent attempts. I told him that I had neither the money nor the interest in investing, because I knew little about this field. Little by little, he was able to charm me with his willingness to prove his affection through his actions (rather than words). He wants to lighten my financial burden by helping me with what he knows best: investing in "gold futures market". To please him, I finally gave in to his desire to teach me how to invest and to make it a joint project (without sharing accounts, each has their own independent account).
To obtain liquidity, I drew on my mortgage margin (I used all of it). The money was exchanged and converted into USDT via a "Bisti Foreign Exchange" store that sold cryptocurrency. All the amount was deposited in Trust Wallet on my account and was transferred to another site (without my knowledge) to invest (I thought everything was happening on the Trust Wallet platform, but I learned that it was false: https://web.saxabspro.com/profile).
In the meantime, his father died and he had to return to China for the funeral. New nightmare: he was imprisoned for a case related to his father's death (someone took advantage of the situation and made a fake invoice. In order to avoid his mother being involved in his father's case and being investigated/imprisoned, he took all this responsibility on his shoulders).
Anyway, when I wanted to help him out of this impasse (I informed him of my wish to convert USDT to CAD $), I discovered that I could not make any transactions on the website web.saxabspro.com and that my money was not in Trust Wallet. He quickly blocked me on WhatsApp on Feb 5, 2025.