Description

He said his name was Richard Daub and we matched on Tinder on 10/16/23. He’s 53 and was born on 3/4/70. We never met. He started out in Fort Wayne, IN and claims to have a house in San Diego, 1516 Vine St, San Diego, CA 92103 and one in Paris. He lived in Fort Wayne at the time. He’s a freelance project manager and he had to go to San Diego to oversee a project two weeks after we started talking. It was only supposed to be for a week or two. About three weeks later he got a call about a project he completed over a year ago in Doha, Qatar but never got paid for it because of Covid. He was invited to meet with the board of directors for payment. He flew there on 11/22/23. He hired a lawyer and translator. He paid his lawyer once but when he had to pay him a second time, he couldn’t log into his bank account so he asked me to do it. He gave me his login and password and all of the info so I was able to make the transfer from his account. The next day he still couldn’t get into his account to pay the translator. I tried again and his account was blocked due to suspicious activity. Turns out he has to go to the bank physically in England to unblock it. He needed the translator to have the meeting so I offered to take out a loans to pay $21,000 for the translator. By this point in our relationship we were talking engagement and marriage. He clearly had money because I saw his account so I thought I would get it back, plus this payment was supposed to pay him 10 million. I took out two loans from two different credit unions and took a cash advance on a credit card. I ended up needing $26,000 total to cover the crypto atm fees. He had his meeting and was awarded $10,100,000. Turns out he had to stay longer to do an inspection on the work that was done. So meeting him kept getting delayed. He asked the financier if I (his fiancé) could handle the payment while he did the inspection. I filled out a beneficiary form and Richard sent a link to the financial institution where the payment would be sent. It’s a cryptocurrency institution. We both decided to have it paid via crypto vs. through a bank because it was supposed to be quicker and the bank fees were high. I created an account on the website, https://pro.blakeyinvestco.co/, and sent an email to customer service as instructed. I was assigned an account manager, Professor Beck, with a phone number which is +44 7361 584726, and was told to reach out to him via WhatsApp which I did. The account manager verified my account and asked for my drivers license and a copy of the beneficiary form which I provided. He said everything looked good and payment would show up in 24-48 hours. 48 hours later it was there. I asked about converting it to cash and transferring it to my account. He proceeded to tell me that I had to activate the account to make a withdrawal and it was $50,000 to do that. I was prepared to take money out of my retirement account. I told my financial advisor what was going on and he informed me that I was most likely a victim of romance fraud. Over the course of a few days I was convinced and never gave him the money.