DAKOTA, Minn. – A 69-year-old Dakota man, smitten in an online romance, decided to give it up after years of having sent his far-away amour something like $38,000. He called the sheriff’s office to report he had been duped. The man said he assumed his correspondent was a woman and had loaned her at least $200 a month in bitcoin, often more, for five years. Finally he asked for the $38,000 back, but then found himself overdrawn at the bank when the repayment never arrived. That’s when he decided he had been a fraud victim. So who was this mysterious love? At first, he said, she claimed to be from Russia but then living in China, then North Carolina.
