ORLANDO, Fla. — A scam that started with an online romance ended up costing a central Florida man tens of thousands of dollars.
Olavo Amado, from Kissimmee, was looking for love online when he met a woman through a popular dating website.
Amado said, “I clicked on a view. She looked interesting and she wrote back to me.”
He chatted with the woman who used the name Lisha for a couple of months. They even spoke over video calls. After their conversations and relationship turned more serious, Lisha suggested he check out a website for investing in cryptocurrency. She used their online romance as an incentive to give it a try.
“That we could have a life together. We’d get married. We would buy a yacht. The money would come quick,” Amado said recalling the words she used to convince him to invest in crypto.
For Olavo Amado, the investing was exciting. He put in around $12,000 of his own money and continued to trade crypto.
“This is a screenshot of the trading I used to do,” he said as he showed his phone to Consumer Investigator Jeff Deal.
In just few months, the crypto website showed he’d turned his $12,000 into more than $240,000. But there was a catch. In order to cash out, he would have to pay taxes up front of more than $12,000.
Amado said, “I paid $12,000. I asked my mom for help, and she went along with it.”
Then he was told with such a high dollar amount the website required a $5,000 security fee. After he paid that, the people behind the scam demanded another $10,000. That’s when he realized he’d been scammed.
“They shut down. I tried to write back. They never wrote back. The woman I was talking to changed her phone number,” Amado said.
He told the Action 9 team, the investing website shutdown and he never heard from the woman again.
Amado said, “They take advantage of your heart and then they play with your mind.”
Earlier this year, the FBI told Action 9 the scammers are relentless, they keep journals and logbooks on potential victims and often adapt their techniques.
Tammy Mizer with the FBI said, “Romance scams are very sophisticated and just continue to grow in sophistication as techniques evolve.”
Olavo Amado now believes the entire investing website was fake. He wants others to learn from his devastating experience with this romance scam that turned into a crypto scam. It was a scam that’s left him mentally and emotionally broken.
“I was scared. How would I pay my mom back? Would I ever get my money back? I had a breakdown. I had a mental breakdown. I had to see a psychiatrist,” Amado said.
If you fall victim to a romance scam, report it to the social media company where you met the scammer. Also, if you lose money in any online scam, contact the FBI and the Federal Trade Commission to file a complaint right away.