CA woman, 69, scammed out of $250,000 in crypto romance scandal

A 69-year-old California woman thought she had met the man of her dreams and even planned to marry him until she discovered her husband-to-be was a 26-year-old scammer from Nigeria. Laura Francis (pictured left) told DailyMail.com that a man by the name of David Hodge reached out to her on Facebook. The man told her he was a surgeon in the military on a secret mission for the Marines in North Korea helping soldiers who have been injured by explosives in the war. He had told her his ex-wife had cheated on him and after being in relationships with younger woman he was looking for someone more mature. Francis would spend the next few months getting to know this mystery man by text and on Google Hangouts.

She described him as charming, handsome, and romantic. He would send her daily love notes and sing her love songs. When he told her he was falling in love with her, Francis, who had never been married, soon became smitten, and even spent $10,000 on cool sculpting procedures so she could look as beautiful as she could for her new love. A few weeks into their love affair Hodge asked Francis for money. He told her he did not have access to his accounts but assured her once he was out of the service he would pay her back ‘every dime.’ He instructed her to send the money through Bitcoin apps – Coin Base and Coin Could Bitcoin ATMs. The first time was $5,500 for a new iPhone. He told her he had lost his cellphone during one of his covert missions. While he waited for his new phone to arrive, he asked her to send another $7,000 so he could continue speaking with her on his friend’s phones until his new phone arrived. (Note: This is a stolen photo used by the scammer to convince victim).

The money she was sending was part of her daughter’s inheritance. When she expressed her doubts and began to question his intentions, he sent her a bank statement from a bank in Ohio showing he had a $3 million balance – that had a Chase Bank PO Box. He also showed her an employment agreement from the Marines, and his passport that she shared with DailyMail.com. When Hodge told her he was falling in love with her and wanted to marry, Francis was feeling the butterflies too. He told her that he can get an engagement ring through a military program. Part of the process was to prove he had a fiancée and this, in turn, would allow his release from his three- year military contract. All that was needed on her part was the $42,568 which would cover the cost of the ring (pictured).

After the money was sent she received a letter from the ring appraiser and was eagerly waiting for the ring, but the day the package arrived inside the box was a tacky cubic zirconia ring that had a $9.99 price tag, not the princess-cut diamond Hodge had picked out. When Francis confronted Hodge about the ring, he told her something had gone wrong and that he was sorting it out. ‘I wanted to believe all the [expletive],’ she said. ‘He’d tell me, “how much he loved me and that he was so happy he had me in his life,”‘ she said. ‘I believed in him.’ Francis told DailyMail.com that she did not share her romance with any of her friends or family, since she said Hodge encouraged her to wait until they were were able to share the happy news of their engagement together.

Francis’ daughter who was skeptical of her mother’s new love interest – having no idea her mother had already sent her new friend thousands – encouraged her to go onto the site Plenty of Fish. When she did she soon met another handsome stranger, Robert Manguire. Francis saw on his profile that the man was an oil rig executive and lived in Los Angeles not far from where she resides – and was intrigued – only to learn that he was from Louisiana. As the pair began to speak more frequently, Francis told Manguire that she was in love with another man, but suspects that he may be lying to her. Manguire told Francis he could help her sort this out since he has the ability to hack into computers, and warned Francis that the person she was in love with was conning her. David Hodge was really a man by the name of Dom. (Note: This is a stolen photo used by the scammer to convince victim.)

‘I felt that I could trust Robert because he was the one who told me that David Hodge was really Dom,’ she said. ‘I told him how much I had spent. I did what Robert told me to do. I blocked David and reported his account and then took it down,’ she said. Manguire then told Francis that he contacted the military where Hodge was stationed to make them aware that Hodge was sharing inside information. When Francis found out that the man she was planning to marry was getting arrested for espionage and for being a spy she was frantic and came up with nearly $60,000 to bail him out. In the meantime, Manguire told Francis that he could help get her money back from the blockchain, but she would have to put money into a bitcoin account. ‘He was showing me all the screenshots of the of the money he was getting back. He had me running back and forth. I kept on giving him more money to get all the money out of the account – a total of $159,400.’ (Note: The romance scammers apparently photoshopped the photo of Hodge in the picture. This is a stolen photo used by the scammer to convince victim.)

Just when Francis was about to get the money back, she said Manguire went MIA for several hours. She would later learn the ugly truth that she was the victim of an online cryptocurrency scam by two different scammers losing a staggering $250,000. ‘It was all a lie,’ she said. ‘They were working together. They put the whole scam together from the beginning.’ She added: ‘It’s really painful because I really cared for the guy. I was in love with David and I was devastated.’ Catfishing is a deceptive activity in which a person creates a false identity on a social networking platform to lure a person into a relationship, mostly for financial gain. Social Catfish told DailyMail.com that that the photos of the two men had nothing to do with the scam. Their images were stolen by the scammers and used to trick people online. Pictured: A 39-page manual ‘How to make a white woman fall in love with you from online chat,’ provided by Social Catfish.

DailyMail.com tried to reach out to both men – whose photos were stolen – but were unsuccessful in their attempts, as their accounts are now private. Francis said all the money exchanged was bitcoin. ‘The money gets shuffled into different bitcoin wallets. Part of reason they use bitcoin is they cannot be traced,’ she said, ‘but it turns out it can be traced. She told DailyMail.com that she is now working with Social Catfish trying to get back some of the money she lost who is in touch with the Nigerian government. ‘These guys have this down to a science… they are good. They use all these scripts to scam women. I am not a dumb person but I did a stupid thing. I was naïve, and vulnerable.’ (Note: This is a stolen photo used by the scammer to convince victim.)

Romance scams are becoming more prevalent with a staggering $547 million lost to scammers in 2021 – up from $304 million in 2019 – and that number is expected to rise around Valentine’s Day, an opportune time for scammers to inundate dating apps and social media looking for lonely singles, who may be looking for love and connection. Social Catfish a company that verifies online identities with reverse image searches said Francis’s story is not uncommon. ‘Once money is sent it is often extremely difficult to retrieve,’ Social Catfish President David McClellan told DailyMail.com. ‘The only recourse is either ask these institutions crypto exchanges to either reverse funds to give money back or get law enforcement involved or a lawyer.’ McClellan said his company is working with the Nigerian government on Francis’ case. ‘We have contacts over in Nigeria – the ESCC, similar to the CIA or FBI – that are in charge of financial crimes in Nigeria are actively working on this case.’

The fact that Francis spent a majority of the money through Coin Cloud, a crypto ATM machine, he said they were able to trace the crypto transaction back to the exchanges. One of those exchanges was NairaEx, a leading Nigerian crypto exchange. ‘Anytime we are able to take funds back to an exchange, we can get law enforcement involved and file the KYC – Know Your Customer- request to find out who owns the account and that is what we did.’ Once the KYC request was filed that is when they were able to trace it back to Nigeria, and additional crypto wallets were found with money still in it. ‘That’s really good news when we actually trace it back to an exchange,’ he said. No arrests have been made, but said the person(s) who scammed Francis stopped using the crypto accounts. The company also said that they were only able to track one IP address in this case, and was not able to verify if there was another scammer involved in this particular case. Pictured: A bank statement Hodge has sent Francis showing that he had money in his account.

Since most victims of scams don’t get their money, McClellan said Social Catfish is trying to partner with law enforcement and law firms trying to change that. ‘If you really think about it, these people are sending either wire transfer or they’re sending crypto or they’re sending gift cards so this stuff can be traced,’ he said. Nigeria and Ghana are two most prevalent areas where scams such as Francis’ originate. The Philippines and Russia, are also a ‘hub for theses type of scams,’ McClellan points out. The person’s IP address is how they trace back its origin. And, over the last three years, the numbers of these types of scams have increased in the triple digits, he said. ‘The education is super, super important and a big part in stopping this,’ he said. ‘And, every single time we think we have a crazy story …next week we have a crazier one…it is just insane.’…