In a series of incidents beginning in early June, a woman became financially entangled with someone she met on a dating website. The details, detailed in a Facebook post yesterday by the Denver Police Department, show how a seemingly altruistic offer to pay off a hefty credit card bill devolved into a cycle of fraud and extortion.
The victim, entranced by the suspect's offer, linked her credit card to the bank account information he provided and saw her $7,000 balance cleared. However, the suspect soon asked her to send $5,000 using a digital payment service to aid his allegedly sick mother, which the victim complied with, before things took a darker turn and the suspect's perpetuation of the scheme saw the victim's credit card balance soar to over $15,000, the suspect kept requesting money, and other users on the digital payment platform began to come forward claiming they, too, were caught up in similar webs spun by the same suspect, it was at this juncture that the victim feared she had been duped.
According to the Denver Police Department's social media post, the victim’s growing concerns were validated when further claims surfaced from other users on the payment service, speaking to the suspect's overarching deceit. Promptly reporting the transfers as fraudulent, the victim had her credit card closed and a new one issued; the suspect, in response, became threatening, declaring that he would broadcast her private information across the online expanse. It was then that she ceased all communication and froze her credit.
