‘Fake love’ crypto scammers ensnare US victims

A message and photo that Shreya Datta, a tech professional who was a victim of an online scam known as ‘pig butchering’, shared with a person who would later turn out to be a scammer is displayed on her phone in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. — AFP

PHILADELPHIA: The “wine trader” wooed her online for months with his flirtatious smile and emoji-sprinkled texts. Then he went for the kill, defrauding the Philadelphia-based tech professional out of US$450,000 (RM2.14mil) in a cryptocurrency romance scam.

The con – which drained Shreya Datta, 37, of her savings and retirement funds while saddling her with debt – involved the use of digitally altered deepfake videos and a script so sophisticated that she felt her “brain was hacked”.