679,981 Tether: a forfeiture that starts on LinkedIn and a dating app

Why this case matters

Two victims, two platforms, one scheme. One was approached on LinkedIn — a professional network, where the approach can be an industry conversation rather than a romantic one. The other on Coffee Meets Bagel, a dating app. The scheme that reached both is described identically: romance and investment fraud.

That is the practical definition of pig butchering. The relationship is instrumental. It can be a romance, a friendship or a professional connection, whichever the target is more likely to accept, and it exists to make the investment conversation possible later. Anyone who has decided they are safe because they are not on dating apps has misunderstood which part of the scheme does the work.

What a civil forfeiture actually is

The case is captioned against the money, not a person. Civil forfeiture proceeds against property alleged to be the proceeds of crime, which lets prosecutors act on funds they can locate without having to first arrest someone they may never reach.

For victims this is one of the few genuine routes to recovery — but it is slow, it works only on funds that have been traced and frozen, and it applies to a small fraction of what is stolen. It is worth knowing about mainly as the answer to “does anyone ever get anything back?”: occasionally, through this, and never through a stranger who emails offering to help. See recovery scams.

What it tells you about the scheme

Tether is a stablecoin pegged to the US dollar, and it is what these operations most often convert into: it holds its value, moves instantly, and is accepted everywhere in the ecosystem. Its transparency is also why forfeitures like this are possible at all — the transactions are on a public ledger, which is a genuine weakness in a scheme that otherwise leaves very little behind.