SEVEN months after being diagnosed with gastric cancer, Cindy Tsai had her stomach removed in January 2021. 

Meanwhile, she went through a divorce from her husband of 16 years, who she hadn’t seen in person for three months before her diagnosis.

Cindy’s cancer had come back in September 2021, weeks later she received her first message from “Jimmy” via WhatsApp on October 15, 2021.

At the time, Cindy said she was going through “the most vulnerable time I have ever been in my life.”

“Jimmy” had mistaken Cindy for a woman named Linda whom he claimed to have met at the pet store. Cindy told him that he had the wrong number. Jimmy stated that Linda “looks Chinese” and that he was Chinese as well.

This shared origin brought the two closer together and they began constantly messaging one another.

Jimmy opened himself up to Cindy through their virtual communication, sharing selfies and carefully crafted food pictures that he supposedly made a home to her.

Cindy, a lawyer living in Newton, Massachusetts, believed that she had found a friend who would be there for her during trying times.

However, over the course of her three-month relationship with Jimmy, Cindy realized that she was one of over 400 victims of romance and confidence scams in the state in 2021, according to FBI data.

LUCRATIVE SCHEME

Massachusetts had the 11th highest rate of internet-related fraud, losing a total $21.8million alone. Across the US around 24,300 people reported losses of $956million to these scams.

“These scams differ from others in that the perpetrator is preying on the victim’s ‘heartstrings,’” said FBI spokeswoman Kirsten Setera to the Boston Herald.

“A confidence fraud/romance scam is when an individual deceives a victim into believing that they have a trusting relationship, whether family, friendly or romantic. As a result, the victim is persuaded to send money, personal and financial information, or items of value to the perpetrator.”

Setera said that the FBI cannot talk about specific cases that are under investigation, but the Boston office where she works did confirm that there were over 600 victims in Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire and Rhode Island who lost a collective $27million to the scams.

Mike Oziegbe Amiegbe, a Nigerian national living in Dorchester, is the most recent individual to plead guilty to being involved in such a scam.

He pleaded guilty on February 16 to one count of conspiracy to commit mail fraud. The feds say he admitted to using fake online identities to scam victims of at least $550,000.

BUILDING TRUST

Cindy had already known about Nigerian scammers before and says she isn’t the type to fall for strangers online. Before her illness, she never read messages from strangers on WhatsApp and wouldn’t even accept friend requests on Facebook.

Always careful with her money, Cindy had only recently become wealthy “in the last few years for returns on (her) real estate investments.” At first, she didn’t have much time for Jimmy, telling him during their first night of talking that she wanted to log off.

But as the relationship progressed, Jimmy had broken down her walls by offering Cindy a lot of emotional support. He’d often ask her about her cancer treatments - Cindy said that her cancer keeps coming back and has become terminal - he would have long conversations with her to get her mind off things.

“That innocent stuff went on for about 10 days,” said Cindy. “That’s the kind of scary part about these scams, it’s that they’re very patient.”

After that tenth day, Jimmy told Cindy that he moved to the US from China and that his family was in the clothing business. However, after the pandemic hit, they had to close their shop in Los Angeles.

Jimmy claimed that he spent his time day trading crypto online, telling Cindy that it had a much better return than her real estate investments.

At first, Cindy resisted Jimmy’s recommendations but she said that screenshots of his alleged crypto returns managed to convince her, along with reading about tech gurus such as Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey and billionaire Elon Musk actively talking about crypto in the past.

Jimmy introduced her to an online trading market, which was actually a fake site that looked very similar to a legitimate one, bearing a similar name and look.

To help ease her stress, Jimmy consented to a video chat and allowed Cindy to pull money back out in her first few days of “trading” to convince her the ruse was real.

However, by the time it was over and Jimmy was able to convince her of all these tricks to make it seem she had a successful crypto portfolio, Cindy lost $2.5million.

Cindy had been a victim of a “pig-butchering” scam, according to the Global Anti-Scam Organization, a volunteer-run advocacy and awareness group established in June 2021.

The phrase comes from a Chinese colloquialism for long-term cons such as this one. The group has over 500 volunteers, who have lost an average of nearly $100,000 per person.

According to the group, Cindy fits the profile of a scammer’s perfect target: a relatively young, educated and successful person who is at a point in their life where they might be affected more by words and attention from others.

Cindy reached out to the group, which hopes to educate others about these scans and offers a 24/7 support chat for people who have been victimized or may be suspicious of an online “friend.”

“Our stories are severely underreported in the media,” said a spokeswoman. “even though these scams are probably wreaking economic havoc on a similar scale to the recent wave of ransomware cybercrime.”