He puts the “con” in romantic connection.
Rather than scoring love at first swipe, Katie Powell, a single mom, was scammed out of $40,000 by a trickster on Tinder.
“It’s turned my life upside down,” Powell, from Portland, Oregon, told KGW, her local NBC outlet.
Sadly, leaving victims in total upheaval seems to be the modus operandi of romance scammers worldwide.
As singletons continue turning to dating apps, such as Tinder and Hinge, scrolling for sweethearts, an increasing number of fraudsters are using Photoshop and artificial intelligence to create faux profiles and con the lonely out of their loot.
According to the Federal Trade Commission, approximately 70,000 people reported being targeted by flirtatious flimflammers in 2022 alone.
Folks ranging in age from 40 to 69 tend to be prime prey for the virtual vultures, per the FTC.
Katherine Goodson, 67, a widow from San Diego, is now living in her car after being fleeced for over $60,000 by a phoney-baloney Romeo who impersonated actor Keanu Reeves in the name of grifting.
Anne, a 53-year-old interior designer from France, was suckered out of $850,000 from a tech-savvy schemer in January. The no-good guy used AI to pretend to be Brad Pitt.
“I loved the man I was talking to,” Anne confessed. “He knew how to talk to women and it was very well put together.”
Powell, too, fell fast for the guy who ultimately pulled a fast one over on her.
The digital deceiver, a 40-something who claimed to be a civil engineer working in Turkey, hooked her with heaps of hot-and-heavy communication.
“I mean it was ongoing, constant texting right away for the first, for the entire relationship,” Powell said.
Their buzzy back-and-forth chats went on for more than a month before the scoundrel began asking for money.
“Instantly, my instinct was like, ‘Why would somebody, you’ve never met me, I’ve known you for 10 days,’” Powell groaned. “Why would you be asking me for money?”
Powell’s would-be paramour, whose true identity has yet to be publicly revealed, claimed he’d fallen on hard times — struggles that landed him in the hospital — and that he wouldn’t be able to rely on family for support.
Laying it on extra thick, the hoaxer even sent Powell a photo of himself in a hospital bed, hoping to tug at both her purse- and heart-strings.
The sympathetic snapshot, however, was actually a Photoshopped pic of former MLB pitcher Phil Hughes in surgery. The ne’er-do-well simply altered Hughes’ face, replacing it with his own (or whomever’s mug he was using to commit the con).
“I was questioning every single thing and knowing this is not right,” said Powell. “But he was able to talk me into the fact that it was right.”
She and the scammer continued talking for months. Powell said he even paid off her credit card bills and moved $750,000 into her Vanguard retirement account.
But, eventually, the credit card payments bounced. The large sum of money added to the Vanguard account raised red flags and the company froze her account.
The additional funds in Vanguard vanished.
“It was physically, psychologically, emotionally, just draining,” said Powell.
Julie Campbell, a market director with JPMorgan Chase Bank, told KGW that one in 10 profiles on dating apps are shams created by AI-knowledgeable crooks. The cheats are well-versed in faking their photos, appearances and voices with the help of computerized systems.
“They play on people that have soft and tender hearts and feel like they’re in love,” Campbell said.
Powell admits to fully taking the bait.
“Yeah, I loved him,” she confessed.
But that love lessens each time the now cash-strapped mom is forced to work shifts on her second job as a fast-food delivery worker
“I curse him every time I’m out DoorDashing,” Powell said. “Busting my butt to make some more money because of him.”
