Scam Operation
I started talking to a woman on Tinder, who immediately threw me over to WhatsApp and we started somewhat of a meaningful conversation. Of course, meaningful conversations such as this turned into cryptocurrency discussion regarding a website called ImCoinShop.com and a currency called RoyalNFT (RYN).
As things progressed in the discussions, things started to look weird when it came to Etherscan.io and Cointracker.io providing me details on where my Ethereum was going as part of this whole process. The process to purchase RoyalNFT was to buy ETH on Coinbase or some other exchange, forward it to a "Capital Wallet" on ImCoinShop, transfer it to a "Transaction Wallet" on the site, sell your ETH into USDT, use the USDT to buy RYN, wait for RYN to hit $20, and then cash out.
RYN has held a significant consistent increase regardless of market conditions involving Bitcoin and Ethereum. I had considered myself fairly smart on the matter of crypto, having used Cointracker and Coinbase to make money with Ethereum GPU mining and properly account for tax returns.
The fact that RYN kept going up without any real decline, lack of information, and other forms had me ultimately conclude that the cryptocurrency is nothing more than a Ponzi scheme, likely paying people with other investors' money.
Timeline of RYN investment
Sent about $700 USD in Ethereum from Coinbase to ImCoinShop’s “Capital Wallet”
ETH moves from “Capital Wallet” to “Transaction Wallet” to purchase tokens/assets.
According to Etherscan.io, the capital wallet has only received my ETH that I moved in from Coinbase and no other ETH in its entire lifespan. The only transaction outbound is to this “Transaction Wallet”
The ImCoinShop “Transaction Wallet” has been active for 421 days, receiving incoming ETH and periodically transferring it out to an OKEx 3 exchange wallet. This would make some degree of sense considering exchanges like Coinbase have wallets where funds are transferred out to and from, registering them respectively in your name and your account.
The “Transaction Wallet” last transferred ETH to this OKEx exchange wallet about a week before it received my ETH from my “Capital Wallet”.
Approx 4 days ago, this “Transaction Wallet” moved about 0.862613 ETH (which half of is likely mine due to paper trail), to a random wallet which has received a large influx of ETH, currently holding 47,535 ETH (nearly $60 million USD)
Questionable flag- The ETH that I moved to the “Transaction Wallet” was sold into USDT on the website and used to buy RYN. However, according to Etherscan.io, the ~0.42 ETH had not moved from this transaction wallet until 4 days ago. According to Etherscan.io, the “transaction wallet’ currently has no ETH of any amount to speak of, since it periodically offloads the ETH to a consistent exchange wallet.
Why would the transaction wallet on ImCoinShop suddenly move ETH to a random wallet address which seems to currently be hoarding It and has no links to being used by an exchange?
Second questionable flag - RoyalNFT (RYN) was a currency I had not even heard of and you cannot even easily search for its existence via Google or other forms of media. The only place it seems that RYN exists is ImCoinShop, which also has very little information about it as an exchange.
Third questionable flag - The person I was speaking to always seemed to be rushing me into putting money into RYN, citing how she had started investing when BTC and ETH hit their peaks of $60k+ and $4k+, where she had a good few million in play and her RYN wallet linked to me showed she had about $1.5 million. Despite my limited income, which at times felt depressing to explain to her (always has been depressing for me to explain difficult debt, I’ve been pretty far down the hole before), she always seemed to insist on trying to rush me.
Fourth questionable flag - At some point in the conversation with her, she said “The profits are so great that if I were you, I would do everything I could to get some money and put it in.” To which I countered that “I would if I could, but can’t. No funds until I get paid, not going to pull cash advances since that would be dumb.” She seemed particularly invested in my putting anything I could into this whole thing.
Fifth questionable flag - I use cointracker.io for tax purposes, having used it to keep track of taxes from when I previously used ETH investments + mining to get myself out of a previous debt hole. Using that website, I was curious where my ETH was going and where it ended up. This is how I came to the paper trail as seen above and that it was odd that where my money was going had been a wallet in use since 2021. I was wondering why a fresh account has transactions from other peoples’ wallets. I presumed someone had access to my wallet or that my money was not my own.
Her response was “Sell RYN. I don’t want to say anything.” When asked why, she said “Because you have a lot of doubts.”
Sixth questionable flag - She said that “when you put your money into your bank card, you have already paid taxes. Don’t worry about this.” This was in response to me tracking my crypto transactions for tax purposes and I explained to her how buying/selling/trading/forking are all taxable events.
Her response - “I just need to get as much RYN as possible.”, “These didn’t help me to make a profit." For someone who supposedly has a large amount in crypto, it was rather concerning that she had no clue how crypto taxes worked or if she was even filing them. Even if I did want a relationship with this woman, the fact she was skirting taxes did not settle with me.
The final flag and the final straw - I had seen on Reddit that someone linked Coffeezilla's video about how the CEO of FTX basically described what a Ponzi scheme was in the form of a crypto token being a box that people put money into. I mentioned this to her and wondered about RYN in that context, since our ETH was being thrown into a pooled wallet like everyone else's on the site.
Her response "I don't want to discuss this with you, you should stop investing in cryptocurrencies if you think you know a lot about them. Pretending to understand without knowing."
I decided then and there to pull the money out of RoyalNFT and see what the paper trail on Etherscan.io would have for me if I did decide to pull it back, where would I come from? My thinking and response to her was that I would lose nothing if I simply pulled out and went back in.
Her response, which completely threw any idea of a relationship out the window, was the following
"Do you know why you are so poor? As a 30 year old man, so poor. Suspicious of this and that all day long. Not thinking about how to make money. On your hundreds of dollars, others are not willing to spend time to cheat you. Anyway, I got the money I deserved, what about you? Can you afford to pay $10k when you are also 30 years old?"
"I don't understand. I don't care. I can get my money and that's it. I'm attacking you because you're just a dumbass and I don't want to talk to you anymore. Don't send me any more messages. It is your own decision, get lost and don't send me any more messages."
I basically told her that I didn't want a girl who's investing in a Ponzi scheme anyway and attacking me for my wealth in comparison to her own. True colors come out when I call it suspicious and instead of clarifying anything, she called me dumb.
And then I learned about what a "pig butchering" scam was after looking up the website and hopefully, I pulled out just in time.
TLDR - An Asian lady you meet on Tinder changes the conversation into investing into some crypto you’ve never heard of. Might end up +$200 because I pulled out, but might also lose $700.
TADR - Scan for ETH. Money always has paper trail. HODL $GME and DRS. You be glad you did :D
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