The relationship was the instrument The platform was only a screen.

It is a fraud in which a relationship is built first — romantic, friendly or professional — and an investment opportunity is introduced inside it later. The victim is directed to a trading platform that looks entirely ordinary, deposits crypto, watches a balance grow, and is encouraged to add more. The balance is a display; the deposits are real and were sent onward immediately. The industry also calls this pig butchering, after the practice of fattening the target before the loss is taken.

Because it is the most effective part of the con. An early, small withdrawal that works proves the platform is real in the only way that convinces anyone, and it converts caution into confidence. It also costs the operator very little: the sum returned is a fraction of what the demonstration is designed to unlock. When later withdrawals are blocked, the memory of the first one is what persuades victims that the problem is procedural rather than fraudulent.

No. There is no balance to release — the number on the platform was never money held for you, so no payment can free it. A demand for tax, a release fee, an anti-money-laundering deposit or a verification payment is simply the next extraction, and paying it typically leads to another. If you are being told the funds are nearly available, you are at the most expensive moment of the whole scheme.

More often than in most categories, and the reason is structural. You sent the money yourself, so every transaction is documented from your own wallet or exchange account, and deposits in these schemes frequently pass through real exchanges where there is a compliance team and an account holder behind the address. That gives us somewhere to file a freeze request and a court somewhere to send an order. What decides the case is how fast it is opened and whether the funds are still in that chain of accounts.

It is close to universal, and it does affect cases — not because anyone judges you, but because shame delays reporting, and delay is the one factor that reliably destroys recoverability. These operations are run by organised teams working from scripts refined over thousands of attempts, often over months. Being deceived by a professional operation designed for exactly that is not a character failure. What matters now is speed.

Everything the other side can delete: the full chat history, the profile and any photographs, the platform's website and app links, your account there, screenshots of the displayed balance, and above all your own transaction hashes and the deposit addresses you sent to. The transaction hashes are what we trace — without them there is no investigation. Export conversations rather than screenshotting them where you can, and do not confront the person before the evidence is saved.

Not before your evidence is preserved. Once confronted, accounts are deleted and the chat history — often the clearest record of what was promised — goes with them. Save everything first, report it, and get the addresses flagged. There is nothing to be gained from the confrontation itself, and one of the few tangible assets your case has can be lost in it.

Our published threshold is a loss from $200,000, and smaller cases are considered individually. Losses in this category are often large precisely because the money is sent in instalments over months, so the total is frequently higher than victims first realise when they add it up. The assessment call is free, and if we see no realistic prospect of recovery we will tell you on that call rather than open a case.