A Tennessee woman said she lost $390,000 belonging to herself and her father after she fell for an online crypto dating scam. After losing her mom, 24-year-old Nicole Hutchinson inherited her mother’s house which she sold and split the proceeds with her father. The $280,000 she inherited was supposed to go toward helping her family and building a life in California.
As a way to make new friends before moving to California, Hutchinson began to use the online dating website “Hinge.” She said she met a man who called himself “Hao” and they became friends. She told CBS News’ Consumer Investigative Correspondent Anna Werner that she felt a strong connection with him when he told her he came from the same town in China from where Hutchinson was adopted.
He was into investing and cryptocurrency and suggested she too could invest.
“I’m like, ‘I’ve never invested in my life.’ I don’t know anything about cryptocurrency either. So I was very skeptical,” she said. Hutchinson said that Hao reassured her that this was an area he knew well.
Hutchinson said Hao told her to create an account on a legitimate site, Crypto.com. Then she said he sent her a link and told her to transfer money to the new link, to what he said was a cryptocurrency exchange platform.
She started small but said she soon started investing larger amounts.
“He just kept saying things of, like, ‘Look at this money that can help support your family.’ Obviously that’s what I wanted to…
