A Daytona Beach Shores man was ensnared by a cryptocurrency investment scam that cost him $317,000 after he received a text from an attractive stranger asking him to let her dog out while she was out of town, according to new federal court records.
The man, identified only as Victim 1 in federal court records, wrote the stranger back to say she had the wrong number, but the chatty stranger kept the conversation going.
Astrid Orlov was how the stranger introduced herself. She lived with her uncle in Lake Nona, a bustling Orlando neighborhood.
Orlov and the man moved the conversation to What’sApp, then to video chat although the man couldn’t see her at all. Poor Internet connection was Orlov’s explanation why he couldn’t make out her face.
The court records don’t indicate if the tone of their conversations were platonic or romantic but their talks eventually turned to money. Gold, to be precise. And crypto.
Orlov said she successfully traded gold online and credited her success to her uncle who “would watch algorithms to determine what was going to happen daily with the price of gold,” according to federal court records filed this week in U.S. District Court’s Middle District of Florida in Orlando.
That convinced the man to invest in the trading platform XM Defi.
At Orlov’s urging to get things moving, he wire transferred $5,000 from his bank account to a Crypto account he started for her and then bought Bitcoin which he sent to the address Orlov gave him for XM Defi.
“‘Orlov’ instructed Victim 1 as to when he should buy and sell assets through the website to make a profit,” the federal court records said. “Following his initial investment, Victim 1 was able to view what he learned to be fictitious ‘earnings’ on the website.”
It seemed legit since he withdrew about $278 in cryptocurrency from his XM Delfi account to his Crypto.com account.
–Gabrielle Russon, Florida Politics
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