He was a victim. Now he’s fighting back.

It was 2020 and Troy Gochenour had just moved back to his hometown in Ohio after living in New York City for more than a decade. Like many people that year, Gochenour was out of work due to COVID-19 pandemic social-distancing requirements that caused many businesses to close. He thought it would be the perfect time to start fresh in the place where he was born and raised — and try some online dating.

Gochenour created a Facebook Dating profile, and quickly made a connection with a woman named Kris Gia who was living in Seattle, Washington. After several weeks of talking, she introduced him to something called “liquidity mining,” telling him he could make money by supplying the cryptocurrency Ethereum for liquidity pools. (See “What is mining?”, Coinbase.) Kris told Gochenour that he could get up to 1% in returns per day. But Gochenour didn’t get rich from this operation — he lost money. He’d soon come to realize that his relationship was a scam that stole $25,000 from him.

This past September, the FBI reported in its first Cryptocurrency Fraud Report there were more than 69,000 complaints in the U.S. about cryptocurrency schemes in 2023, with people losing more than $5.6 billion to fraudsters. Most of those losses were due to pig butchering scams in which fraudsters develop online relationships with victims to defraud them with cryptocurrency schemes. Many operate overseas in cyber scam centers in Southeast Asia run by transnational organized crime syndicates. Gochenour’s story is a case study in how fraudsters often ensnare victims through dating apps, steal money and break hearts. (See “Crypto scams stole $5.6 billion from Americans last year, mostly from older people,” by Kevin Collier, NBC News, Sept. 10, 2024 and “Billion-dollar cyberfraud industry expands in Southeast Asia as criminals adopt new technologies,” UNODC Regional Office for Southeast Asia and the Pacific, Oct. 7, 2024.)
Gochenour talks to Fraud Magazine about his experience as a fraud victim, how it affected his life and how he got involved in the fight against cyberfraud. (The interview has been edited for length and clarity.)

Fraud Magazine: Could you tell us what your life was like at the time and how the scam started?

Troy Gochenour: At the time, I’d been living in New York City for about 13 years. I moved there in 2007 to study acting at The American Musical and Dramatic Academy. But then in 2020 the pandemic happened, and everything shut down. I wasn’t sure when New York would reopen, so I decided to move to Ohio where I grew up and start my life over. I was also single at the time, so I decided to try Facebook dating. It didn’t take long before I was contacted by a woman named Kris Gia, who said she lived in Seattle, Washington. It was odd because she mentioned how close we live to each other. Washington state and Ohio aren’t close, but we struck up a conversation anyway. (Washington state and Ohio are 2,290 miles apart.)

She started asking me all sorts of questions, like what I do for work and whether I own a home. She asked if I was eating well. I told her my life story. By then, I’d gotten a job as an Amazon delivery driver, so we’d chat throughout my workday. She’d ask me what I was eating for lunch during my breaks. She’d show me pictures of what she said she was eating, and I’d tell her about my day.

We chatted like this for about three weeks. She told me how she owned five clothing stores in Ukraine. Then, she mentioned that she didn’t worry about her stores because she was also making money through liquidity mining. At first, she didn’t go into much detail about it; she took her time, but eventually she explained how she mined Ethereum using a Coinbase wallet. (Coinbase is a crypto exchange platform.) She said it’s safe because it’s an American company and she makes $200 a day doing it on top of the income from her stores. She said I could do it. I was resistant at first and didn’t want to have anything to do with it. But the more she promoted it, the more I started thinking about it.

FM: Did she help you get set up to mine cryptocurrency?

Gochenour: Yes, she showed me how to open a Coinbase account and download a wallet. She showed me how to buy Tether (USDT) and transfer it from my Coinbase account to my wallet. (Tether is a stablecoin, a type of cryptocurrency pegged to the U.S. dollar.) She gave me this website that I’d use to add crypto to my wallet. This site allowed me to mine Ethereum from my Coinbase wallet. Kris transferred the Ethereum to my wallet because the website required that I get a voucher to get started. This voucher gave them unlimited access to the Tether in my wallet, meaning they could take money out of my wallet, but I didn’t know it then. Later on, I learned that this whole set up is the scam, and it’s how victims get paid initially before they start losing money: You mine Ethereum with Tether in your wallet, then swap the Ethereum on the website for the Tether and transfer the Ethereum to your crypto wallet.
(Here’s an archived version of ethusdt.co, the site “Kris” used to defraud Gochenour.)

FM: What happened after Kris set you up with the wallet?

Gochenour: I bought more Tether and put it my wallet. I had about $5,000 in stocks, and I added that too.

At first, I was making money every six hours. I’d check the website, and lo and behold, I mined Ethereum. I’d convert the Ethereum to 40 or 50 USDT, and I’d transfer it to my wallet. But one morning my wallet was empty. The website Kris instructed me to use had a customer service chat, so I messaged it. That’s when I learned that I had a contract and owed $10,000 to meet the contract’s terms. I only put in $5,000 and that was removed from my wallet, so I needed to add another $5,000. Customer service told me that if I did that, I’d get all my money back plus rewards. But I had five days to meet the terms of my contract. I messaged Kris and asked her about the contract. She reassured me that it was fine and that she too had a contract. “Honey, you’re going to make so much money. We’re going to be so rich,” she’d tell me. “We’re going to be happy, and we’re going to make lots of money.” I believed her.

So, I took out a loan for $5,000, bought the Tether and added it to my wallet. But then that $5,000 was removed from my account.

FM: Why did they remove $5,000?

Gochenour: Well, customer service told me that my contract was for $10,000, and I needed to have $10,000, not $5,000, in the wallet. Again, Kris told me that it would be OK and that my money would be safe if I met the terms of my contract.

It was strange, but I didn’t know anything about crypto scams at the time. So, I got another loan for $5,000. Now I’ve taken out two loans for a total of $10,000. I bought more Tether and put in my wallet. That was taken out. I put in a total of 15,000 USDT. Of course, I didn’t realize I was being scammed. I contacted customer service again and was told that I fulfilled the terms of my contract but needed 10,000 USDT to get money back, plus rewards.

I could see my rewards adding up on the site, and at one point, I was on track for 200,000 ETH (Ethereum). Again, I messaged Kris who told me to put the money in my wallet and I’d get it all back. I took out another loan, this time for $8,000. Now I’m in debt for $18,000. (Gochenour’s loans came from his bank and two loan companies.) That money was also removed from my account, and I received a message that I was supposed to get 200,000 ETH, and I needed to pay $35,000 in taxes on it. This is when I realized I’d been scammed.

FM: You realized that you were being scammed when customer service kept asking for money that you thought you’d already earned?

Gochenour: Right. They kept asking for more money without paying me. When they asked me to pay taxes on money I didn’t have, it made absolutely no sense and that’s when I knew it was a scam. I couldn’t come up with that $35,000 even if I’d wanted to. If I go back to that moment in my mind, I can still see what I was dealing with. That’s why I always think about the folks who’ve lost millions to these scams.

I was angry. I messaged Kris and asked her where my money went. She responded, “I didn’t steal it, honey. Your money is in the mining pool. Just pay your taxes. You’re going to be fine.” She then said she might be able to come up with $10,000 to help.

I called the police. They told me a detective was assigned to my case, but after a month of trying to get in touch with him, I learned that one was never assigned. The police department told me that I’d have to contact Ohio’s attorney general for help.

I realized then there’s a big problem and people need to know about it. I found a Reddit group of crypto scam victims, and a moderator invited me to join a Facebook group for victims. We have about 300 people in this group, mostly crypto-mining scam victims.

In 2022, I met someone in the Facebook group who introduced me to the Global Anti-Scam Organization (GASO). Through GASO, I learned how these scams are a worldwide problem and how they’re largely committed by people who’ve been trafficked and forced to commit fraud in cyber scam centers in Southeast Asia.

FM: What was happening with your case when you joined GASO?

Gochenour: I realized there was little hope of my case being investigated by law enforcement. I’d filed a report with the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) and got a call from Homeland Security agents. They told me there wasn’t anything they could do for me since the amount I lost — $25,000 — was too low for the FBI to pursue. A U.S. Secret Service agent in Ohio took up my case in August 2022. Of course, my money was long gone, and there was nothing they could do.

But in June 2024, the Secret Service agent emailed me. He’d sent it to the Secret Service field office in San Francisco, California, who informed them that in 2023 they’d seized an account containing my funds.

FM: Wow, is that right? In 2023?

Gochenour: That’s right. Back in March 2023, an account with my funds and that of 21 other victims, and now I could be getting some sort of recovery. My case was transferred to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Southern District of Georgia. According to the FBI, my case is still being reviewed, so I’ve yet to receive my money.

FM: That’s fantastic!

Gochenour: Yes, but at the time, I was told nothing could be done and that my money was gone. All I could do was try to warn others about these scams.

I hope it gives people hope. I don’t want to give people false hope, so I speak to the media a lot. Since 2023, I’ve been following different Telegram groups. I scour them for information about scams and scammers, and I’ve been able to get all sorts of information from chat groups and pages with developers selling their scam websites. I’ve learned about so many scams. [Telegram is a messaging app popular with cyberfraudsters because it encrypts data and users can conceal their phone numbers. In August 2024, Telegram CEO Pavel Durov was arrested in France on charges related to illicit activity on the app. (See “Telegram messaging app CEO Durov arrested in France,” by Ingrid Melander and Guy Faulconbridge, Reuters, Aug. 25, 2024.)]

FM: What are some of those scams?

Gochenour: The latest scams I’ve seen are online shopping and task scams. [In a task scam, a fraudster offers a victim a work-from-home job that involves a simple task such as rating restaurants online. According to the FBI’s IC3, scammers employ a confusing compensation structure that requires victims to make cryptocurrency payments to earn more money. (See “Scammers Defraud Individuals via Work-From-Home Scams,” FBI, June 4, 2024.)]

The United Nations just published a report about how scammers are becoming even more technologically advanced in their use of malware, remote-access Trojans and artificial intelligence. (See “Transnational Organized Crime and the Convergence of Cyber-Enabled Fraud, Underground Banking and Technological Innovation in Southeast Asia: A Shifting Threat Landscape,” United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, Southeast Asia and the Pacific, October 2024.)

FM: Do you think the circumstances in your life made you vulnerable to becoming a fraud victim?

Gochenour: Yes, 100%. Loneliness and needing money. I think that’s what tends to get most of us scam victims. And needing money doesn’t necessarily mean being unemployed. I know of a victim here in Ohio who wanted to open a dance studio for his daughter. Many want more money for retirement. You don’t need to be lonely to fall for a scam — the scammers are looking at every angle possible when they target people. They use whatever they think will be most compelling to their intended victims.

Scammers are now targeting professionals; they’re not going after people like me when I was scammed. They’re now looking for people with titles — CEOs, doctors, dentists, etc., because scammers know they have money.

Scammers do their homework on you before they contact you. There’s a good chance they’ve found you on social media, and they dig deep into your profile to assess whether you have nice clothes, a nice car or a nice house. If they don’t reach you on social media, then they’ll send a random text message to your phone. If you answer that random text, they’ll ask all sorts of getting-to-know-you questions.

Are you married? Do you have kids? Do you have a home? Do you own it, or do you live with someone who owns it? Do you have two homes? Do you have a job? How long have you been working at your job? They’re building a financial profile on you. They ask you how long you’ve been with your job to gauge your retirement savings. I’ve heard this from the scammers themselves. For example, I talked to this man who’s being held at a scam center in Myanmar. He tells me they target men over 50 because they have life savings. People forced to commit fraud go after that money because the criminals who run those operations have scripts and training manuals for them to follow. They’ve studied victims and passed their knowledge down to the dog pushers — that’s what people in forced criminality call themselves.

FM: How did your communication end with Kris?

Gochenour: I realized that I was being scammed, and I told her that I’d come after her. I don’t know who she is, and I’ll probably never know, but I still said I’d come after her. There wasn’t much I could do to find her. I was an actor trying to start his life over. The one thing I can do is warn others about these scams.

I decided to reach out to the media. To start, I contacted Jeremy Merrill of The Washington Post, who’d written a story about cryptocurrency. I told him about liquidity mining, and he wrote a story on it. (See “An ex-cop fell for Alice. Then he fell for her $66 million crypto scam.”, by Jeremy B. Merrill and Steven Zeitchik, The Washington Post, April 4, 2022.) I did what I could. I participated in a Wall Street Journal panel discussion about online scams with an FBI agent, Jamil Hassani. (See “‘Pig Butchering’ Online Scams Are Proliferating. Here’s Why They Work So Well.”, The Wall Street Journal, Aug. 14, 2024.)

FM: Did you ever go to the Ohio attorney general’s office?

Gochenour: I called them, but they couldn’t help. They didn’t know what I was talking about.

FM: When law enforcement said they’d be able to get some of your money back, were they able to trace other information?

Gochenour: The agent in the San Francisco field office told me that I was lucky and that they learned of the account through the New York Police Department, which was investigating another case when they found our funds.

I think a lot about people who’ve lost millions, who’ve taken out hundreds of thousands of dollars in loans or cashed out their retirement savings. I know of people who’ve sold their homes because the scammers made them do it. What I lost is nothing compared to what others have lost. I’m hoping that more folks get their money back.

FM: Did you tell anyone in your personal life about Kris?

Gochenour: I told people, including my best friend, who passed away in March 2024.

I think people assumed what was going on was legitimate and that I wasn’t the type who’d fall for a scam. One of my friends thought I was being catfished, but early on, I had no indication I was being scammed.

FM: When did you start telling people that you’d been defrauded?

Gochenour: Right after it ended. I might’ve mentioned to a friend that I had to get more money to fulfill a contract. After it ended, I told a friend who’s a pastor that I’d been scammed. He told me that God would use it for big things, and I think he’s right. It’s taken me to where I am today, talking to people I never thought I’d be talking to.

At the time, though, it felt like I had nothing. I had some college debt. But then I fell even further into debt because of the scam. I’d think about how I’d never be able to get married. I’d have to live at home. I didn’t know what I was going to do for work outside of making deliveries for Amazon. I didn’t know how I was going to rebuild my life after the scam. But I’ve done it. It took one day at a time, which is what I tell other victims. Rebuilding your life is hard when you’ve been a victim of fraud. All we can do is take things one day at a time. We didn’t make the money we lost overnight, so rebuilding won’t happen overnight either.

FM: What helped you in the aftermath of your scam?

Gochenour: My faith and my friends were great supports. Working with GASO has been extremely helpful. I can do a news interview and warn others about these scams. I post on LinkedIn about the scammers I’ve observed on Telegram. It’s all about getting the message out to others and what else I can learn.

FM: Do you consider what happened to you a pig butchering scheme, one of the most common schemes used in cyber scam operations? (See “Crypto scams stole $5.6 billion from Americans last year, mostly from older people.”)

Gochenour: Yes, I consider what happened to me a pig butchering scheme because they were most likely operating out of Southeast Asia, and they sparked up a relationship with me. They usually spark up romances with victims — not all the time, but usually that’s what they do.

I think my scammer chose the mining scheme because I didn’t have a lot of money, so getting me to invest would be pointless. They also figured I wouldn’t understand any of the investment lingo; as I’ve learned, scammers like to use investment jargon because it’s intriguing to investors. I also believe my scammer was working out of KK Park in Myanmar. It’s one of the largest scam compounds in Southeast Asia. (See “How Chinese mafia are running a scam factory in Myanmar,” by Lewis Sanders IV, Julia Bayer, Julett Pineda and Yuchen Li, DW, Jan. 30, 2024.)

While pig butchering is still being perpetrated from Southeast Asia, these operations are spreading elsewhere. Recently, Interpol busted a cyberfraud operation in Namibia. (See “INTERPOL busts Namibia’s cybercrime gang,” by Savious Parker Kwinika, ITWeb Africa, July 9, 2024.) I’ve also seen job postings looking for people to work as scammers in Islamabad, Pakistan. A Chinese national was arrested in Texas for a pig butchering scam. (See “Chinese national charged in ‘pig butchering’ scheme,” U.S. Department of Justice press release, May 21, 2004.) They’re occurring everywhere. Raising awareness is the most important thing.

FM: What advice would you give to fellow fraud victims?

Gochenour: Don’t sit in silence. You’re not alone, and it’s not your fault. Report your losses to local authorities. If you’re in the U.S., contact your U.S. Secret Service field office, and fill out a report with the FBI’s IC3 at ic3.gov. Be wary of companies that say they can recover your funds. Only law enforcement can do that.

Getting your funds recovered can be difficult but it’s not impossible, as I’ve discovered. It can take years for recovery; it’s a long, arduous road depending on how much money you lost, so take it one day at a time. Talk to a tax professional about reporting your losses in your taxes.

FM: What do fraud victims need from law enforcement and fraud examiners?

Gochenour: At first, I had little help from law enforcement, but I’m amazed at where I am today and want to thank them for their efforts. We need more support from police at the local and state level. These scams are devious, and anyone can fall for them. The people being targeted aren’t the kind of people you’d think would fall for a scam. Scam victims are already dealing with guilt and shame, and the last thing we need is someone without compassion. These scams can be elaborate, and they’ve been attempted thousands of times. Scam operators know what works on victims. I’d recommend that law enforcement and fraud examiners get training on how to investigate crypto scams because they’re not going to stop any time soon.

FM: Based on your experience, how can people protect themselves from these scams?

Gochenour: Delete any wrong-number text message you get. Don’t respond to it. Block anyone you don’t know on social media if they contact you. Don’t give out your personal information — it’s how scammers build financial profiles on their victims. If you’re chatting with someone and they ask you to take the conversation to Whatsapp or Telegram, that’s a huge red flag. Don’t do it. Report the profile. Finally, if someone you don’t know asks you to invest in crypto, don’t do it. It’s probably a scam.

FM: Are there opportunities for people to get involved with GASO?

Gochenour: We’re an all-volunteer organization. Folks can reach out to me (troygoch@sbcglobal.net) and I can pass their name on to GASO to see if we can use their help. Right now, those of us who are fighting these scams are one step behind the scammers, but little steps forward can make a difference.

Emily Homer, Ph.D., CFE, is a research specialist for the ACFE. Contact her at EHomer@ACFE.com.