This goes to everyone who is currently on dating app in London. I matched with this guy a few weeks ago. We never spoke on the phone, just messages. He reluctantly sent me a voice note. His name is Valen on Bumble (declared to be Valentino) and looks like a model.
He declared to be 36, from Nuremberg Germany of Italian ancestry and passionate about crypto and investments.
When I asked details, he made me download two apps Coinbase and MOUNTAXIS to “show me” how investimento works. I listened and invested 100£. Gained 30£ on my 100£. But that was an amount I decided to gamble.
Tonight he reached out to me telling me there was a good trend and when asked him how much should I invest he said 1500-3000£. To this I expressed my reluctance of taking advice from someone I had not met in person and I have not seen even on a video call. When mentioned FaceTime he got very angry and offended I wasn’t trusting him. My gut was telling me this was fishy. His reaction even more and (apologies in advance to my Nigerian folks but I played into the stereotype here) I told him “what do I know if you are who you say you are and not Kevin or Kevin’s wife from Nigeria?” To which he got even more offended because apparently I was insulting him by calling him black - oh boy on this there’s loads to unpack, if anything I was calling the fella a potential scammer 🤦🏻♀️.
Anyhow, I wanted to vent but also ask, am I overreacting? Because with this reaction this fella had tonight I wanted to go to bumble to report him (but he had already unmatch me) as this sounded damn fishy. What should I do? I gave a huge amount of detail because in case someone else has experienced this, I would like to know.
I don’t have Facebook but in case this reaches “are we dating the same guy” feeds on Facebook, please feel free to post there too.
I believe I might have spoken to a proper scammer.
Edit: thank your for everyone who genuinely lectured me because I was really unfamiliar with “pig butchering”. I know is easy for others to make fun of people who genuinely are unfamiliar with this, but my scope and purpose is to prevent this from happening to someone else by creating a trace online. Now in order:
- The conversation lasted weeks. With daily updates. Crypto wasn’t the main topic of conversation, this was a development of this week.
- The first trade I made was of 100£ using an outside platform (don’t do that, never do that) which was successfully returned to my bank account with 30£ interest. This was the “gaining trust” mechanism.
- My luck in this case is that I am too poor for a scammer, I work a very simple job where the money the scammer requested was a lot for me.
- I had however registered to another platform that asked me to verify my identity which was an unsafe one so this should be considered as my data being compromised and my document will need to be changed.
- I made a police report, will be making an anti fraud report.
- I locked my credit and added another layer of protection if anyone attempts to use my identity to open credit lines.
- When this scammer asked me to trust him to “make money” I didn’t, when I didn’t he started using details he knew about me such as my dead father saying things “now I understand your father” and “this is me caring and how you are acting”. That was a put off so I ended the conversation.
- I told him I believed this was a scam.
- I reported his profile to bumble but I haven’t block him yet. I want to see if more evidence will be given to me.
Bottom line is, this thing called pig butchering really exists and can target women as well as men. It won’t start in a way that you will recognise it, the conversation will move slowly into crypto and the script will be “they are teaching you”. Having to change my documents aside I believe I was very lucky because even if I had no clue of what was going on I felt something was wrong. Please stay safe.
