When Angelica Chavez, a 30-year-old fashion illustrator in Los Angeles, met “Weijia,” a local businessman, on a dating app last fall, she was delighted to find that they had many interests in common, including entrepreneurship and music. The two began sharing photos and texting multiple times daily through WhatsApp. “We were so alike, and he was so kind and interested in talking about our daily lives,” Chavez says.
Then Weijia casually mentioned that he was investing in cryptocurrency, a digital-only form of currency whose value tends to be volatile. When Chavez expressed interest, he offered to help her get into the market, too.
With both trepidation and excitement, she purchased the cryptocurrency Ethereum through an app Weijia recommended. Her investment of a few hundred dollars appeared to nearly double in value within minutes, allaying any fears she had about the digital marketplace. “When I saw that, I thought, ‘Okay, this is real,’ ” Chavez says.
She continued adding to her portfolio over the next several weeks. But she was becoming frustrated with her virtual dating relationship. Every time she and Weijia discussed meeting in person, he canceled with an excuse.
After a month, she told Weijia that she’d drop him if they didn’t meet. Shortly after that, he stopped responding to her texts—and her cryptocurrency account balance, about $20,000, vanished. “I realized I had ignored a lot of red flags because he got me to trust him,” she says.
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