Deceived by one person; "saved" by two people

First Sunrise, 40, a legal professional, is a food lover who uses Instagram to share photos of food that inspires her. In late July, she would meet three Instagram users who took advantage of her interest in food to befriend her, though they all had the same critical ulterior motive.

I was caught between two, possibly even three scammers.

First Scammer: Alan

Alan messaged me on Instagram on July 23. He appeared to be a food lover, asking me about a dish I had posted. A quick look at his profile showed that he also d to take photos of food, cars, and expensive things. A show-off, so I presumed. The conversation then moved to life, more context, and eventually to WhatsApp, as Alan claimed he didn’t use Instagram much. I had no problem continuing the conversation on WhatsApp, as many of my friends and family use it to communicate, so it wasn’t a red flag for me. However, I did see new posts from him on Instagram every 1-2 days, so I wasn’t sure why he said he was inactive, but I didn’t care too much.

Alan''s current Instagram profile - inactive since September 27th

We started chatting day and night. He would say hi to me every day and honestly it felt nice. None of my other friends did that so it was nice to get that attention. Alan said he was some sort of entrepreneur who had a business based primarily in China but moved to LA to run the division there. He was temporarily living in LA waiting to buy a house in West Vancouver as his sister was attending university in BC. He said his elderly parents from China would move there as well once he was settled. He calmly discussed housing prices as if it was nothing...For those who don''t know, Vancouver is one of the most expensive places to live in the world. When you chat with someone who talks about ping a few million dollars on a house and paying completely in cash, you''re going to be a little impressed anyway. Again, not a red flag for me as there are a lot of wealthy Chinese buying homes in Vancouver.

We would talk about becoming neighbors and I scoffed at the idea. I live comfortably in Banff, A.B. but I figured if this friendship really worked out I wouldn''t mind having another friend come visit when I was in Vancouver and probably gawk at his mansion! I’m a bit of a realist. I wasn’t looking for a romantic relationship, and certainly not a long-distance one. Even when he confessed his love to me, and as flattering as it sounded, I couldn’t believe it 100%. How could this tall, handsome, supposedly wealthy guy be interested in me, someone who wasn’t immediately available and had so many other women around? However, I did enjoy the friendship. He was a good listener and showed a lot of concern. We could talk about anything and everything. He was supposedly five years younger than me, but he sounded mature. He always knew the right thing to say, however, sometimes he did mess up, but I didn’t expect him to remember everything I told him. Looking back, there were signs. For example, one night he brought up my low alcohol tolerance. I said to him, I never told you I was an alcoholic. He responded, no, you did tell me, otherwise how would I know? A quick search in our chat history would show that we had not discussed drinking before, but I didn’t do that, and now I know that he lumped me in with his other “pigs”. In addition, he would ask for selfies of me but would never send them to me. They were always photos he had to dig up, but when asked, he would only say he doesn''t take selfies. Now I know why - he has to wait for the real owner to post new photos before he can steal them and send them to me.

Ah, the cryptocurrency part. It was brought up quite early. I had never been into crypto before, but did know a little about it. I''m a low-to-medium risk investor, and my funds are allocated in ETFs and some high dividend paying stocks. That way I was content. Alan started showing me his profits on his trading platform HKYY. I would say it was impressive, and when he asked me to try it with him, I did search on Google, but nothing popped up at the time. The link he sent me to download the app didn''t raise any red flags, probably because I don''t know much about these trading platforms. My ignorance and carelessness led me to this problem, but it was a good lesson.

Like all other victims of the pig slaughter scam, the investment started small, won, was able to withdraw partially, and then greed took over me - I didn''t expect big wins, I just wanted to be able to spend more lavishly here and there. I had told Alan this and I was not a greedy person – just some income supplement would be nice. He barely forced me to deposit the extra money but because we had discussed my financial situation before, he knew I had money to be scammed. He convinced me with multiple “wins” on the platform to the point I willingly added more money. At this point, I had invested 44,050 CAD (was able to recover about 16%, so my total loss was $36,702 USD) and was about to add more money until I was intercepted by another person… my second scammer.

Second scammer: Aoki

Aoki found me on Instagram on August 8th or 9th and his first message to me was asking me if I was a food blogger, I told him no, just a food lover! We chatted on Instagram for about 2-3 days before moving to WhatsApp. For some reason, I never warmed up to him. He was not as caring and attentive as Alan. He was arrogant and blunt, which offended me on many occasions. Within a few days he was asking me about Chinese, I told him I was only communicating in Chinese for his convenience, how dare he say I wasn''t good at it? I told him, but he came back the next day to apologize. However, during the course of our "relationship", he would annoy me a few more times, but each time he came back. Honestly, what kind of person has such patience? He confessed to me twice, but the first time I had already told him I wasn''t interested. The second time he tried again and even asked me how I felt about him, and I again told him very honestly that I had nothing to offer him other than friendship. If that wasn''t good enough for him, he could stop talking to me. He still stayed he was.

Interestingly, Aoki also lives in Los Angeles. He came to Los Angeles a few years ago to escape the haunting death of his fiancée. Anyway, it''s all fake backstory, so I won''t go into it, but he was also interested in food, cars, and enjoying life. He brought up crypto trading early on, but because I was already doing it with Alan, I told Aoki that I didn''t have extra funds and I wasn''t interested. I trusted Alan, but I didn''t trust Aoki... How ridiculous, right? Aoki became more aggressive and asked me why I didn''t want to make more money to live a better life? We had another argument, and then I finally told him that another "friend" was already helping me! He then softened and started asking about our trades, what platforms we were using, etc. Once I gave him all the information, he got really, really mad at me, and started saying things oh, it makes sense that you don''t let me help you, because you already have someone else. Is this person someone who s to share food photos with you and chat with you a lot? I was shocked by his words and thoughts, how did he know that? I said to him, am I not allowed to have friends other than you? What the hell is your problem? What''s going on here? I was so frustrated that I went to bed without further response.

Because Alan and Aoki were both said to be in LA, I often wondered if they knew each other. Were they both involved? But what could they gain from it? I would soon find out...

Potential third scammer: CY

This person, also from Instagram, messaged me the same night (September 13) that I had a full-blown argument with Aoki about my crypto trades. Supposedly, he is a Singaporean living in Vancouver, who calmly bought a house for $3 million and is in some kind of import/export business. His Instagram account showed a very lavish lifestyle with fancy cars, brand names and some food photos. He soon started talking about crypto trading and I said to him you know you are the third person I have met in the last two months talking about this. He said yes that is it now, don’t you trade? I told him yes a friend helped me out and he asked me which platform? I told him HKYY and he replied that he had never heard of it before. We left it that and I went to bed until the next morning when everything fell apart…

September 14th – When everything fell apart

I woke up to find CY messaged me saying he had done a search and HKYY was a fake platform. Then I saw a ton of messages from Aoki telling me the same thing. He said your life is yours and I don’t care but try to quit the platform and you will see what happened. Panic started to spread and this time for some reason when I googled HKYY the Global Anti-Scam website came up and when I read through the pig slaughter scam I realized what was really going on…

I was really sick so I tried to hold it in when Alan messaged me his usual good morning. CY said to try to withdraw 10% of my funds and see if it works, he said he would help me come up with a plan for the rest. 10% worked and CY said I should wait a few days before withdrawing but not alert Alan. Of course Alan would know exactly when I withdrew but he couldn''t really question me, how else would he know? So it was really hard to play along with him when I already knew what was going on. At this point I noticed his tone changed when he spoke to me (maybe another scammer took over now) and I changed my tone too but we stayed friendly.

By the end of the night I was really upset and blamed myself for blindly trusting strangers on the internet but now was not the time to be emotional. I needed to sober up and see what other damage control I could do. CY and Aoki kept messaging me to check on me and offer more advice. They both suggested I make up a sad story for Alan and see if I could withdraw more money. I gave him the story without a problem but as expected HKYY customer service gave me some BS story and would not release my funds. CY said sorry I think it''s time for you to give up. I thanked him and accepted my fate. Aoki, on the other hand, insisted that there might be something else I could do, but after reading many other victims’ stories, I knew there was no way I could get my money back.

No reason given to deny my withdraws

The next morning, I sent Alan a message to tell him I knew what was going on and that I had called the police. I immediately blocked him. Not even 30 minutes later, another number messaged me saying Alan had something important to relay to me and to please unblock him. No. They called; I didn’t answer. Over the next four days, a different number would message me, all from Alan, saying he was messaging me from his friend’s phone and to please give him a chance to explain. I kept blocking them because I knew my money was gone and they were just trying to frame me by playing with my emotions again. On Saturday, September 18, another friend of Alan’s sent me a handwritten letter from Alan. It outlined the things we had talked about, my goals, dreams, how important I was to him, and the second page explained that HKYY was not a scam and that I only had to wait two weeks before I could withdraw my money. It was a very sad and playful goodbye letter – it almost made me want to respond, but I didn’t. I couldn’t let these people get to me anymore. I thought it was over.

Do any of these numbers look familiar to you?

Since the ordeal, Aoki has been very supportive and even called me twice to cheer me up. I admit, this helped because I didn’t know he was a scammer at the time. It wasn’t until I was browsing Alan’s Instagram account that I noticed he was posting the same photos that Aoki had sent me. It couldn’t be a coincidence! So I confronted Aoki and he neither admitted nor denied it but explained that his photos had been hacked and that was why he had closed his Instagram account. Now my guard was up again and I would say all kinds of things to test him and see if he was robbing me of my money. He did ask me if I had suffered financial losses from being scammed and I answered no and it would not affect the amount I had. He seemed happy to hear this and said that if I had met him first, before Alan, this would not have happened… Yeah, right. He would start talking the same way that Alan had originally done, which was very confusing to me and it once again raised my suspicions.

Aoki neither admitted nor denied…very vague

Soon, he was trying to introduce me to his trading platform bitmaster.cc. I couldn’t google anything on bitmaster – it would be a legitimate video game if you tried. So, I visited the Global Anti-scam website and lo and behold, it was listed as a fake site. I relayed this information to Aoki again and he said he had no problem using it but left it alone. I guess at that moment his scammer group realized I couldn’t take the bait and gave up on me. We silently stopped talking and I continued to block him.

Then I went to check CY’s Instagram account and it was disabled, so I believed he was also a scammer, but since I had already been scammed, he had no interest in preying on me. I now realize that Aoki was frustrated because he found out that he could get my money only to lose it to another scammer. Since he was so angry, he decided to intercept another scammer. For this, I really have to thank him and CY, otherwise my financial loss would have been even greater. All I can say is that his skills are not as good as Allen’s, which is why he simply couldn’t get me to open up to him.

It was still fresh and raw, and while it certainly sucked to lose money, it hurt me a lot because I was emotionally invested in Alan. I really thought he would be a great friend, and I really thought we cared about each other. Instead, how stupid was I to talk about my dreams, hopes, and goals to a bunch of scammers who used that information to play and manipulate me? That was the most hurtful part - I was opening up to a bunch of people who probably laughed at everything I told them - I was completely violated.

I was lucky because my monetary loss wasn''t a big hit to my finances, and I was strong enough to recover quickly and move on, but not everyone is in the same situation. Understand that we are not stupid and dumb - the smartest people still get scammed. These scammers are just that good - you''re dealing with a group of people, not just one person. They''re good at what they''re doing. Be careful the next time someone randomly messages you. I''m not saying never trust someone again, but proceed with caution.

Remember the old saying, if it''s too good to be true, it probably isn''t.

--First Sunrise