Documentary: Inside a Crypto Dating Scam : Swipe to Invest (Part 1)

Brut America

They matched on a dating app. He said he liked cryptocurrency … And scammed her out of 400,000 dollars.   In his latest documentary, Brut filmmaker Jessey Dearing meets a young woman who fell for a romance con, and is fighting back …

Transcript

00:00I decided to get on Hinge dating app.

00:11That's when I actually met this guy named Hal, which is where it all started.

00:24These people will take as much from you, you know, till you're in debt.

00:30And really what they're doing is just scamming you.

00:50My money, my dad and I's money was gone in seconds.

01:0118 to 29-year-olds are increasingly being targeted by romance scammers.

01:06Last year, $139 million were stolen through these scams and cryptocurrency alone.

01:12For Brut, I'm taking you to Tennessee to meet up with 24-year-old Nikki Hutchinson,

01:17who lost nearly $400,000 to a crypto scammer she met on Hinge.

01:21Now, she's living in an RV with her dad.

01:24So this is kind of our home abode where my dad and I live.

01:33This is kind of where I do all my work when I'm a social media producer or just straight chilling.

01:38This is my little office. This is our little kitchen.

01:41My dad's room, the master, my closet.

01:44We don't need to go in there. It's a little messy.

01:47So yeah, that's our little home on wheels.

01:52In October of 2021, I visited a friend out in Southern California.

01:58I decided to get on Hinge dating app.

02:0124 years old, never been on a date, never kissed a guy.

02:05Dating was never really in my priorities.

02:09But as you get older, obviously all your friends have been on dates or have boyfriends or girlfriends.

02:14And it's like, oh, I kind of want to know like what that would be like.

02:18I started, you know, swiping right to these people.

02:21And that's when I actually met this guy named Hal.

02:25I thought he had like a clean appearance.

02:28Not super bulky, not athletic, not like a frat boy of any sort.

02:32Soft eyes, feminine looking almost.

02:36I've always gravitated towards those types of people because they feel easier to connect with.

02:42And he was also Asian. That's a big thing for me.

02:49OK, well, I will use half of it in here and then I'll save the other half for if I want to make like pho.

03:04I think there was only like three kids in my high school that was Asian.

03:10And so just like that, it just didn't feel right.

03:16I always felt like a little bit of an outcast because I was never white, but I wasn't Asian enough.

03:22I'm still trying to figure out where I fit in, really.

03:26I do think anybody who's been adopted or anyone feeling outcasted in a sense,

03:33like not looking the same like everyone else, you do want to have that sense of community and bond.

03:46The first message I think on Hinge was like, oh my gosh, you're so beautiful.

03:52I just kind of pushed that aside because that makes me very uncomfortable, to be honest.

04:07Even from the get go, I was like, there seemed to be a language barrier.

04:12He texted really good English, but it felt very formal, like what you are supposed to be taught when you're actually learning English.

04:19So I thought, oh, OK, well, I don't think a connection could ever be super deep just because of a language barrier.

04:26So I was like, OK, well, that's fine. Like I voiced that maybe we should just be friends.

04:31And he was super OK with that.

04:42So that was kind of like my first experience of like a guy friend and a guy friend that wasn't super pushy

04:50and kind of respected my boundaries of like, hey, let's just be friends and whatnot.

05:03And trying to get to know anyone, you're in a sense have to be a bit vulnerable

05:09in order for them to kind of get to know you and who you are.

05:12So that's kind of what we did. I started asking him questions about his family and told him I was adopted.

05:19I asked about hobbies and he rattled off a ton of hobbies.

05:23And then at the end, it said cryptocurrency.

05:31When I was a lot younger, my mom worked as a cashier.

05:35And she was like, oh, you're a cashier?

05:37And I was like, yeah, I'm a cashier.

05:39And she was like, oh, you're a cashier?

05:41And I was like, yeah, I'm a cashier.

05:43And she was like, oh, you're a cashier?

05:45When I was a lot younger, my mom worked and she made really good money,

05:50you know, middle class, upper middle class.

05:52And then when she lost her job, we struggled.

05:55I remember being on food stamps.

05:58They divorced. There was a lot of stuff going on.

06:01And I just felt very unstable.

06:03After losing that, I think she lost a bit of her.

06:06And so she took that out through drinking.

06:11I grew up with that from, you know, middle school all the way up into college.

06:17And it was just really sad to see my mother just,

06:22the mother that I loved kind of disappear.

06:28This is my childhood home.

06:30When my mother passed away, it kind of came to me.

06:32And my dad and I split the profits.

06:42The way he texted about teaching me and showing me was like FaceTime,

06:58you know, showing me what to do, giving me tips.

07:01I go back to him and he's like, are you ready to learn?

07:04And I'm like, yeah, I'm definitely ready to learn.

07:07How are we going to do it? Are we going to do Zoom?

07:10Are we going to do FaceTime? And he was very confused.

07:13He was like, FaceTime, Zoom, I can just teach you over WhatsApp.

07:18And I was like, okay, that wasn't what I expected.

07:21So I was like, well, why don't we just do a quick FaceTime?

07:26You're good?

07:30You are shy.

07:32You like me?

07:35Well, I'm really excited to learn crypto.

07:40Oh, turn me off.

07:42My friend recorded like the whole him being on FaceTime,

07:48but she didn't like get any of his, I guess, like face or anything.

07:52I just remember freaking out inside because what I saw was just an eyeball.

07:57And I was just like, why is there a freaking eyeball?

08:01Why is there a freaking eyeball looking at me and doing this?

08:06Like it was looking all around and it was just like.

08:21Oh, my gosh, this guy is really shy, like super nervous.

08:32I want to always take care of my family.

08:35I take care of my 90 or four-year-old grandmother.

08:38I got you some flowers.

08:40You want me to hold them?

08:41Yeah.

08:42Okay.

08:43I was paying for her finances as well as my dad helping to chip in.

08:47But also my dad, I know he's 66 years old.

08:50He has a fixed income.

08:52So I wanted to make sure he could live the dream life I thought I could provide for him.

08:58All right.

08:59I love you.

09:00I love you, too.

09:01All right.

09:02All right.

09:03I'll see you next week, okay?

09:04Okay.

09:05I love you.

09:06I love you, too.

09:07All right.

09:08Have a good day.

09:09Bye.

09:10I shared that, like, I have these fears and how it always made me feel like it's okay,

09:15you know, you're going to figure it out.

09:17But also, like, with investing, you're going to, you know,

09:21have all this money to not even worry about those mundane types of things.

09:26And you can live the life and your dream life that you want

09:30because you'll have the money to take care of your grandmother and your dad.

09:35I think he started to know that that's the reason why I would do this.

09:45We would do the buying and selling for maybe five minutes at the most.

09:50And it just felt like, okay, tell me when to buy and sell.

09:53It was exciting.

10:23It felt, it did feel like an adrenaline.

10:35It felt like, wow, this is how people do it in, like, crypto.

10:39They buy and sell at a certain time and, like, this is the feeling.

10:42But I also felt like, I felt very confused.

10:46He kept wanting me to get these bonuses and VIPs.

10:50And so he wanted me to get to, like, I think 50K at that point.

11:16You're seeing profits go up.

11:20The fact that I am making profits and I'm seeing results from it,

11:24that's where I started to trust PAO a bit more.

11:27It first started out 2,000, 3,000, 5,000, 10,000,

11:32got to 15,000, and then 20,000, 25,000, 50,000,

11:38and then I think 75 was the highest I ever put in.

11:4275 was the highest I ever put in on a wire transfer.

11:54He said, you could be a millionaire at the end of the year.

12:04There was still so many unclear answers.

12:07It was really hard to digest.

12:10And I just remember crying.

12:12I was in hysteric and I just said, I think, I think I lost all this money.

12:17I think we've been in a scam.

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