Government agencies across North America are seeing an increase in investment-focused romance scams. The ND Securities Department issued an alert warning residents that scammers are using dating sites to get a hold of a victim’s cryptocurrencies and digital assets. Karen Tyler is Security Commissioner.
"It's really easy for a scammer to introduce those concepts into an online conversation. They start talking about memestocks, or trading apps, or cryptocurrency. They get the victim interested in learning more, get the victim to allow the scammer to help them learn how to trade, and then get the victim to share their account information or give the scammer the private key to their crypto wallet. Then the scammer will steal the money through that approach."
Scammers may also direct victims to websites they created.
"Usually on a website or a trading app that the scammer created, you can look out for things like grammar and spelling errors, the website won't have any depth, it will be one really long page, the graphics and photos will be less clear or they can be researched and they might just be stock photos that were purchased off the internet. Bottom line is, contact the state securities regulator and research the website, research the url, the domain name, and we can assist with that."
More information on how to protect yourself from these scams can be found on the ND Securities Department website:
https://www.securities.nd.gov/