Alexandr Gutu, a chef who has lived in the UK since 2016, worked two jobs to save a £42,000 deposit for a house. He matched with a woman calling herself Kristine on Tinder, and the two grew close over several weeks of messages about a shared future. Kristine introduced her uncle, a cryptocurrency trader who offered to grow Gutu’s savings, and Gutu put in £850 to start. He kept adding larger sums as his balance appeared to climb, until he had put in £40,000. When he tried to withdraw part of the money, the uncle stopped replying, and Kristine blocked his number and vanished from Tinder.
Why the money comes last
Investigators at the FDIC’s Office of Inspector General call this pattern pig butchering, after the practice of fattening a pig before slaughter. Contact usually starts through a dating app, a text message or social media, and the conversation soon moves to an internet chat app. Only once the relationship feels real does the fraudster mention a “high-yield” investment, often in cryptocurrency, and ask the target to open an account. The fraudster then presses for more money, or the relationship will end. A withdrawal request meets demands for fees, or no reply at all.
Adenike Cosgrove, a cybersecurity expert at the security firm Proofpoint, told the BBC the aim is to get a victim investing “more, more and more of that money,” over a long stretch of time. She said the approach works because it plays on “that human desire to connect” and the wish to be with somebody. It catches a target in what she calls a “fast brain” state, reacting rather than checking the story first.
A relationship built to remove your guard
Which?, the consumer group, describes the same pattern in its own casework. A scammer meets a victim on a dating site and “love-bombs” them for weeks before ever mentioning money. The scammer then encourages a move off the dating platform and onto a private messaging service, which strips away any protection the dating app offered. Only once the victim is “sufficiently groomed” does the scammer claim they have been investing successfully, in property or cryptocurrency, and offer to bring the victim in.
Not every version runs through Tinder or through crypto. Which? cites a former Somerset police officer who lost £107,000 believing she was investing in retirement flats in Cyprus. The UK’s fraud problem is broad enough that Which? describes it as the country’s most-reported crime, accounting for two in five of all reported crimes.
Reading the warning signs early
Cosgrove’s advice is plain. Be wary of anyone who tries to move a chat off a dating app and onto an encrypted one, and treat any request for money as a reason to log off and report the account. Anna Rowe, who runs the online support group Catch the Catfish, examined Kristine’s profile herself and traced the photographs, through a reverse image search, to a real social media account they had been lifted from. Dating platforms need “proper verification,” she said. Which? adds one more check: tell a friend or a family member about a promising online relationship, because someone outside it can spot warning signs a person caught up in it cannot.
A second scam waits behind the first
Losing money to a fake trading account is often not the end of it. The Financial Conduct Authority says fraudsters pose as the regulator itself, contacting victims a second time to offer help “recovering” money lost to a crypto scam, for a fee. In the first half of 2025 alone, its consumer helpline logged 4,465 reports of fake FCA scams, and 480 victims sent money. Almost two-thirds of the reports came from people aged 56 or older. Steve Smart, the FCA’s joint executive director of enforcement and market oversight, said the regulator “will never ask you to transfer money to us,” and never asks for banking passwords or PINs.
