Im a 28 year old female from Australia. I decided to go dating online using Bumble after my breakup with my ex 7 months ago. I believed I was healed and excited to find someone, I knew what I wanted in my next relationship. The first day I was on there, I matched with a good looking Malaysian-Chinese man.
We chatted for an hour on the app and moved on quickly to use Whatsapp. He apparently fell in love with me after 3 days of chatting with me, and proceeded to love bomb me, promised me the world, wanted to make me his woman, give me everything he owns when we get married. Initially this was too much for me and I confronted him about it. He said he understands but its how he shows his love. He respected my boundaries, gave me a lot of compliments, promised me a bright future, encouraged my ideas and plans etc. I liked talking to him every night, this was all over text. We called once or twice but he was usually too ‘shy’ or ‘nervous’ to speak to me on the phone and meet up. I was also a shy and anxious person so I understood.
We then started to speak about his tough financial background growing up and his journey into investments. I was heavily into property investing and understood basics of stocks and crypto. He told me about how he makes money by placing most of his savings in a mining pool, which generates roughly $7K a day. He has been doing it for an entire year. He showed the screenshots as proof, and the amount he had in his savings. I believed it and so when he asked about my finances, I told him about it thinking too much about it since he was also open about all of his finances. He convinced me to put my savings in a mining pool and I did that. Initially it was $8K usd.
Over the next week, I was able to see returns of about $400 a day. He mentioned that these mining pools are great, but they don’t last long. This particular pool will end in 2 months. This baited me to put in most of my savings. I liquidated my stock and crypto assets, and stupidly added it to the wallet, totalling $60K usd.
Then the mining pool sent out a notification to join this ‘Couple activity’ and pledge your funds to the pool for greater returns. The guy I was talking to mentioned how we have enough funds to join this activity since the requirement was wallets totalling $300K usd. Once we joined, he panicked and realised that to complete this activity, and release the funds, each account needed to have $150K usd. We didn’t understand the requirements fully. I just jumped into it without thinking. He then reassured me thats its fine and its possible to get this money. We just need a plan.
He told me he was short on money and was unable to help me. His friends won’t be able to assist. He has a bad record with the bank so he can’t get a loan. Trying to convince me that he’s exhausted all his options and no one can help him. He’s so tired from working 12 hour days, telling me that his only motivation to work is because of me. I brighten up his day etc. Don’t think too much about the problem, let’s be optimistic he would always say.
I was reassured by the customer support team and him, that this was all we needed to do to get our funds back. He said he has done it multiple times before but only participated individually, however the rules have now changed.
My stupid ass decided to add in all of my savings to this pool, apply for a personal loan and borrow money from my parents to make up this total, because there was no other option else I’d lose it in a couple of days. I made it happen, completed this activity, but was told that I needed 30% of the $150K in my wallet to ‘open the release fund channel’ to withdraw these funds. After hearing this and confronting him about it, he said he had forgotten this was a requirement when he participated before but promised that this was all we need to do to get our money back.
By then, I realised this was all a scam and started to find similar scams to this. I’ve also checked the wallet address he apparently pledged with me, and realised that no such funds were taken out like they did with mine. I lied to him that I had the money to withdraw the funds, but he had to prove to me that I was going to get this money back. He instantly flipped, turned on me, gaslighted me about how I don’t trust him after everything we’ve been through.
I never thought I’d be one to fall for one this badly, and lose so much. I work in IT and am usually so careful when it comes to these things. I went through feelings of self-blame, shame, guilt, depression and embarrassment. I was stressing out so much over my job before and thought about leaving but now I have no choice but to work to keep up with my mortgage repayments.
This situation messed me up really badly, and also caused me to have a lot of trust issues and not ever want to date again. There were so many red flags I missed but now see clearly. I was also isolated to not talk about this situation with my friends and parents because ‘they wouldn’t understand it’ and ‘we can fix this problem ourselves’ so I shouldn’t worry them with our matters.
I’ve seen a psychologist about this and spoke openly with my parents and friends about it to start the healing journey, but I’m still fairly shocked that it happened over a short amount of time. I save every dollar and don’t spoil myself at all, so this loss was painful. As a result of this, my parents are now having to revise their finances to retire comfortably. I understand that I was a victim of this and that these scammers use strong psychological tactics to bait you into getting scammed but my guilt is eating me up every time I see them stress out about their finances.
I’ve reported this to the police but I’ve accepted that this money is lost forever and I won’t be able to get it back. I’m hoping that sharing my story can stop others from making the same mistake.
– FormalLife5339
Theodore Lee is the editor of Caveman Circus. He strives for self-improvement in all areas of his life, except his candy consumption, where he remains a champion gummy worm enthusiast. When not writing about mindfulness or living in integrity, you can find him hiding giant bags of sour patch kids under the bed.