SAN ANTONIO – When kindergarten teacher Beth Hutchinson met “Robert” on the Bumble dating app, he seemed like a potential match.
“He was saying that he was adopted, grew up in Switzerland, moved to the U.S. about three or four years ago,” she recalled.
He suggested they move their conversations off the platform and to the private messaging app, WhatsApp.
After a couple of weeks of messaging, including heart emojis, she said he offered to teach her about trading and investing.
“He showed me how to take money from my account, turn it into Bitcoin and then be able to start using it to trade and whatnot on the New York Stock Exchange,” Hutchinson said.
She started with $1,000. Within a few weeks, she’d turned $6,500 into cryptocurrency and invested it on a website “Robert” said was the New York Stock Exchange. It looked promising.
“Every time I did it, I was always gaining money up to a point where it was a couple hundred at a time,” she said. “I thought I was putting my money in the New York Stock Exchange.”
But when “Robert” became aggressive and…