Description

A person named Haixin Liu approached me via email claiming to be a fellow alumni and wants to connect, subsequently connected to me using her WeChat accounts (two of them). After two weeks of chat she has gained my trust, she eventually switched to WhatsApp for the main communication channel . She casually mentions that her job is involved with a customer Bullish (a legit crypto platform), who is hugely successful. A few days later she mentioned that she will start a prolonged business trip to Seattle for a month to help Bullish with backend database maintenance, as part of her job. Next day she mentioned that she discovered a secret from Bullish database that she can see a large volume trader always gains on each trade, and tells me she plans to setup an account for herself and follows the trade to earn money. Then she started her first trade and showed me he had 10% gain in 10 minutes. Next day she showed off another successful trade and recommend that I join as well, mentioned website www.bullishps.com (turns out to be a scam website that has similar name and icons as Bullish). After a few days since she showed her successful trades every day, she convinced me to set up and account at the scam website. A week later she convinced me to deposit $2000 into the account and follows her directions for a trade, it was a perpetual contract trade, I "earned" about $150. Next day she convinced me to add another $20,000, I did and followed her directions to trade and appeared to earned money on the website. A few days later she mentioned there's a promotion for fee refund if you top up at least $300,000. She said she has topped up and received refunds. The "promotion" is sent to everyone in the website. After that she tries to convince me to participate the promotion, after I said I don't have that much money, she said she can help, she expressed affection and said that this money is for a promised future romance. I had a brief relationship issue at the time and this seemed enticing so I agreed. Next day I added $60,000, she send me the other $240,000 to qualify for promotion. Several days later I overheard of stories of crypto scam and realized I might be a victim of the same. Tried withdraw $10,000 as a test, but was denied by the website with the reason that the account is flagged with frequent short term high leverage trading, and subject to tax withholding before releasing the fund. Chatting with customer support and realized that it is a scam website. they ask me to pay for the tax withholding with new funds into the same account. Since this is such a ridiculous proposal, I realized that I'm a victim, but did not realize that Haixin Liu was part of the team, I thought she was a victim too. I alerted her and she said this is normal and she offered to give me about 80% of the tax money needed but need me to add the remaining 20%, about $30,000. By now I realized that she's part of the team and denied her involvement.