Modern love, modern blackmail

ML from New York City had just ended an eight-year long-distance relationship when she signed up for an account on Tinder. Trying to forget the pain and loss of her previous relationship, she began swiping and matching with a man who was completely not her type. However, it was only a matter of time before the daily exchange of greetings and messages led to the trading of intimate photos and videos.

ML would soon discover that not only did this man have a thing for her, but he was more interested in the opportunity to blackmail and extort ML for over $100,000.

Hindsight is always 20/20, but trauma only brings more trauma when you’re blind to the pain.

I recently learned that the average marriage in the U.S. lasts 8.2 years. That’s nearly the length of my last relationship, which ended this summer after eight years of flying around the world to keep our long-distance trysts eternal in the age of modern love: London, Milan, Paris, Tokyo, Shanghai. Travel restrictions inevitably led to a true COVID-era relationship casualty, with no real goodbye satisfaction; just texts from me in New York and him in Hong Kong. While we never actually married, there’s a real sense of loss beyond love that’s more immediate when someone so constant suddenly disappears from your life. Even more tragic is the loss of friendship; being able to talk to someone every day about details that no one else would care about because the care is so deep; that’s worldly love.

The week I knew I’d never see my boyfriend again, I went on Tinder (for the first time) to immerse myself completely in it: reveling in the details. One of the first matches I started talking to was someone who honestly wasn’t even into me, but I was newly single and ready to have some fun. He was Chinese, good-looking, and immediately referred to our match as “destiny.” We started chatting on June 23, and after I told him I lived in New York City, I learned that he was a wine distributor living in Washington, D.C., with a beach house in Long Beach. For weeks, he greeted me every day with “good morning” and “good night,” as if aligning with my circadian rhythm to be closer to me. Our conversations started out friendly, harmless, even innocent, until I told him I wasn’t interested in dating or a relationship at the time. “Maybe we should exchange pictures,” he said, and so began a barrage of nudes via Instagram and WhatsApp—photos, videos, and then longer video requests that quickly escalated to the point of aggression. I blocked him on WhatsApp for the first time on July 4 after he began harassing me to send him more videos or he wouldn’t come to New York.

The next day, he slid into my Instagram DMs with “show me your vagina” (rolling eyes) and then a lighthearted reference to “earning crypto gains” while inviting me to him. After calling him out on his bulls*** (aka scam), the conversation took a dark turn.

Ok, then wait till I upload your video to Instagram. ”

I thought he was joking at first, so I played along so we could keep chatting. I later realized he had been manipulating me to build a collection of compromising assets he would later use against me, but it was too late. The moment I downloaded his crypto trading app (called Block VC), the carnage began.

The timing of this scam couldn’t have been better. I was on vacation to Italy that week with some friends, giddy and clearly not thinking straight, while simultaneously excited/delusional about seeing him on my way back. I had embraced the highest level of hedonism and freedom from my ex, while being sleep deprived, dizzy, intoxicated, and on a boat with bad signal half the time, texting him day and night about what we would do when we eventually met (with crypto, of course). We started with a few small trades, and I even started bragging to my friends about the profitability of my new hobby. Despite my resistance every time, he managed to get me to transfer $1,000, $20,000, $30,000, and eventually $10,000 via a combination of bank wires and BTH/ETH on Coinbase. $50,000 increments, by threatening to leak my nudes and then sincerely apologizing because he was just so concerned about "making money together." It all felt wrong, but somehow I held onto a glimmer of hope that I would be able to withdraw my money because he kept promising me to "withdraw after the next trade."

So far, I have transferred $102,000 to this crypto trading platform, but after his assisted trades, my "balance" is $339,174. A few clicks on the app wasn''t bad, despite some uncomfortable experiences in the process. Just when I thought this would be my payment day: "Can I tell you my plan?" he said. "500,000 dollars in crypto, I''ll help you buy $200,000, you buy $200,000, and we''ll finish the trading income for the month." By Friday. Wow.

I quickly woke up from my stupor and turned on private investigator mode, frantically Googling everything I could about him and this app. I didn''t want to see it, but it was time to find out the truth. All the signs were there, I just didn''t choose to see them. Why did he always make excuses not to meet with me? None of the pictures he sent me looked they were taken any I knew in Washington (after all, I grew up there). How could someone who looked that not have a real online presence? I reverse-searched, only to discover that his pictures were stolen from a Taiwanese influencer who lives in Taipei. Ironically, I work in the tech industry. I know I shouldn’t download apps that aren’t in the app store, but crypto is my blind spot. Maybe, I thought, this is how the dark web works? I researched “Block VC” but couldn’t find anything except a Chinese blockchain company with a similar name and profile on LinkedIn. But then I went back to the site I downloaded the app, bvproglobal.com.

The search query returned this headline on a Reddit post: “Beware of fake investment sites.”

The so-called “pig-killing scam” involves a scammer patiently grooming victims from online dating/social media apps over weeks to get them interested in cryptocurrencies, then convincing the victims to their hobby of trading cryptocurrencies on a supposed new investment platform. Together with “customer service,” they coax and bully victims into sending tens of thousands of dollars through a series of psychological tricks and subterfuge.

With deep fear, I filled out an IC3 report online. Not only had I lost over $100,000, but a scammer hiding out some in Southeast Asia (and therefore outside the jurisdiction of US law enforcement) was out there blackmailing me with dozens of my nude photos and videos.

That same evening, an FBI analyst called me to follow up and suggested that I also file a police report with the Hong Kong police, since my money had been wired to a HSBC bank account in Hong Kong. I told them how scared I was because the deadline to transfer $200,000 was approaching, and asked to speak to someone about how to handle the extortion. The next day, they connected me with an agent from their violent crime task force. The agent was empathetic, level-headed, and transparent. I knew that my crimes were by no means violent, and that they were probably dealing with kidnapping victims or murders at the same time. He assured me that these cases take a long time, but that they "will never stop investigating." I was in open communication with the FBI for several weeks before the threats began to taper off. In Hong Kong, I hired an attorney to file the police report and investigate the linked bank accounts. Of course, the money was immediately emptied out.

The investigation is still ongoing, or so I can only assume.

He began DMing my friends, threatening to leak my intimate photos and videos to my Instagram followers.

From what I’ve learned from other victims of pig-butchering scams, extortion with nudes and threats to “invest” is rare, as it’s usually done willingly out of trust (or greed). With this particularly evil scammer me, it was done out of fear. He also persisted in his threats. Every time I refused, he sent screenshots of the DMs to my friends and followers (some even to my clients).

Eventually, even after I stopped talking to him, he posted my nudes to his own Instagram account and amassed thousands of followers to get my attention.

With the help of a friend who works at Instagram, his account was quickly reported and d, only to pop up again days or even weeks later with a new number or username.

That nagging feeling was always there. He could always find me.
He then threatened to find my parents, as well as their friends and coworkers, and send them intimate photos and videos.

On September 1, nearly three months after our fateful Tinder match, and more than a month after I discovered the scam and cut off all contact, I received a message from an unknown number: "I saw you online, I won''t ask you to do anything. We can talk calmly and peacefully." ” Against all the lawyers, from the FBI, the Hong Kong police, and my lawyer, I finally confronted him. I had to, or he’d be on every corner of the internet forever. I told him I knew all about the scam and to leave me alone. He denied it, of course, so I blocked him one last time. It felt great. Cathartic.

It was finally over.

In the days after, I pondered how I should have been more strategic in my final interaction with him: capturing his IP address, figuring out ways to psychologically manipulate him for more information, as I’d done with the 50 or so other scammers I’d obsessed over since, on revenge dating apps, all of which used the same playbook.

But now it was time to move on.

There were very few people in my life who had the courage and trust to share this story with me: my therapist and two close friends—certainly fewer than the number of people who had seen me naked at this point (counting: the scammer, the scammer’s colony, the FBI, the Hong Kong police, my lawyer, Instagram, and countless viewers on who knows how many porn sites).

They often say it’s “immeasurable.” In my case, it was exactly 102,000 $.

This is me sacrificing my dignity in a moment of extreme emotional vulnerability, the result of trying to cheat loneliness.

A breakup tax, if you will.

Who am I kidding? Freedom isn’t free.