She was contacted via Facebook, where the scammer claimed to have fallen in love with her, despite never having spoken to her
A Richmond woman is warning people to be wary of romance scammers online, after someone tried to dupe her buying and transferring cryptocurrency.
Sydney Yuen wasn’t surprised back in December, when a stranger contacted her via Facebook, complimenting her on one of the many dishes she posts from time to time.
Yuen, who is in her 30s, said she’s in many social media groups and such interactions happen all the time.
But after only two days of exchanging messages with the stranger, there was already some red flags popping up.
“I went along with it to begin with. Although there’s no indication on my profile that I was single, I don’t have that on social media,” Yuen told the Richmond News, after reporting the scam to the Better Business Bureau (BBB).
“He sent a video, claiming he was in this nice place enjoying a ballerina performance. I searched the place from the video and it appeared to be in Moscow.
“When I asked him about it, he claimed he was in San Francisco. He claimed many places look the same now. That was it for me.”
Yuen then decided to take the fraudster for a ride himself, stringing him along with the motive that “as long as he’s wasting time with me, maybe I’m keeping them away from someone else.
She said she kept him going for a month or so, into mid-January, letting him believe she was still on…
