A man claiming to be a cryptocurrency broker allegedly scammed a woman out of thousands of dollars after meeting her on the dating site Plenty of Fish.
The woman told Forest Park police that she began communicating with the man on Nov. 15 and that she was initially convinced to buy $1,000 in Bitcoin and watch its value grow, leading to a second, $7,000 investment.
Later, the crypto broker told the woman he was looking for a new employee at his office and convinced her to complete an online application that included her social security number, home address and phone number. Shortly thereafter, the woman received a $2,000 cashier’s check in the mail and was told to cash it at a grocery store and send the man the money. A grocery store and bank both declined to cash the check.
And in a final suspicious incident, after being told to accept payments through a mobile banking app, the woman said she started receiving messages from people who claimed they never received the “magic mushrooms” they had purchased and wanted their money back. The woman refunded four people and told them not to contact the man she had met on Plenty of Fish as she now believed he was running some kind of scam.
At that point, the woman tried to withdraw the money in her online account, now totaling more than $40,000, but was unable to do so.
This information was obtained from police reports filed by the Forest Park Police Department. Unless otherwise indicated, anybody named in these reports has only been charged with a crime. These cases have not been adjudicated.
