LAS VEGAS (KLAS) — Romance, cryptocurrency, and investment scams are skyrocketing.
Highly sophisticated, highly educated people, as well as large corporations, are increasingly being scammed.
Yvonne Harlan, 68, had nearly given up on dating when friends suggested she try the dating website Tinder.
Harlan said almost immediately a man reached out to her and the two began communicating through text, and then phone calls.
“He would call me at seven o’clock in the morning, 11 o’clock at night, it’s strange when someone is calling you regularly, and texts, you sort of begin to anticipate them,” she said.
But the first red flag came when he canceled their in-person meeting.
Harlan said he had an excuse, and a few weeks later he asked her to help sell his father’s European estate.
“I thought, that’s a real switch, you know usually they are asking for money they don’t want you to receive money. I did some research and come to find out that is money laundering that I could be subject to criminal penalties,” she told 8 News Now.
She told him, no, and about a month later, after he professed his love for her, she didn’t hear from him, for two days.
“I wrote to him and asked if everything was o.k.? He said, no, and he told me there was an explosion at his work site, and all the computers were destroyed, and this machine fell on me and I broke my leg. He sent me a picture of him in a hospital in a hospital gown,”…
