A 34-year-old woman from Carrollton is warning people to watch out for online romance scams after she fell for one.
Per a report by The Dallas Morning News, Yik Li met “Dillen” on the dating app Hinge in January. According to Li, Dillen’s profile was like anyone else’s on the app. It contained photos of him as he worked out, cooked, and participated in other regular activities.
Upon getting to know each other, Dillen told Li he was a native of France who operated a wine warehouse in Dallas. The two got closer, and Dillen showered Li in attention.
Li and Dillen never met in person, as he always said he was too busy. However, they became close, to the point that he called her “his soulmate” in messages and they were making plans for the future.
During their conversations, Li had opened up to Dillen about her cryptocurrency investments, after which he introduced her to coindealst.com. The site is a close imitation of coindeal.com, an authentic cryptocurrency website from the Caribbean.
Li decided to invest in the website like Dillen told her. The fact that the site was good for short trading made the idea more appealing to Li, as that meant she could make money with her investments more quickly.
According to Li, she invested about $30,000 in the site at first. The day after her initial investment, Dillen told Li she should invest more, and she did as she was told.
Li said she noticed some suspicious things about the site, like incorrect grammar, but she continued to invest until she sensed something fishy about Dillen and began questioning his identity. She then blocked him.
By the time the Hong Kong native tried to take her investments out, the website had been shut down.
Li said she made five transactions on the website that combined totaled over $200,000. She lost all the assets, which was all of her cryptocurrency.
Li filed a complaint with the FBI. She also reported the incident to the Carrollton and Dallas Police departments, where she says she was told that nothing could be done because it was an online scam.
According to the DMN, a manager at CoinDeal warns Crypto investors of similar domains set for fraudulent dealings. The five domains he mentioned are coindealcd.com, coindealst.com, coindealxr.com, coindealvr.buzz, and coindealkop.xyz.
