In early May, James Evans* met a man on the dating app Grindr. The man, who said his name was David, was friendly and chatty. “It started off as a normal conversation,” says Evans. “We moved to WhatsApp and exchanged messages. After a few days he started telling me about crypto trading and how he could show me how it worked and how I could earn money from it. It seemed like a genuine connection.”
Unfortunately for Evans, , that wasn’t the case. He hadhooked up with a scammer, who within a week had convinced him to hand over £20,000.
Dating scams surged during the lockdowns, with Which? reporting a 40% rise in cases involving people being tricked into transferring money to people they met online. In Evans’s case instead of asking for financial help the man he met persuaded him to sign up to an fake investment.
First he was persuaded to set up an account with Binance and pay in £500. Binance is a cryptocurrency exchange – a website where investors can buy into digital currencies including bitcoin and ethereum. The City regulator, the Financial Conduct Authority, warned…
