Beware of swiping right for single men on Tinder who claim to work for Goldman Sachs, especially if they woo you with a heart-wrenching tale of needing money for their sister’s cancer treatments. You might just wake up a few weeks later and find they’ve swiped your money.
That’s the message from Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus R Vance Jr, who on Tuesday announced the indictment of a 35-year-old man for scamming $26,000 out of two women he met on Tinder.
“The classic dating scams of yesteryear appear to be thriving online,” Vance said in a statement. “My office is seeing an increase in the number of scammers targeting singles online.”
According to the criminal complaint, Brandon Kiehm is a dog walker who was passing himself off as Tristan Acocella, a Goldman Sachs banker, on Tinder.
In July 2015, Kiehm allegedly “matched” with a woman through the mobile dating app, and the happy couple dated for several months. In August, Kiehm began asking the woman for money “because his sister was undergoing cancer treatment and because his wallet had been stolen”.
The woman allegedly gave Kiehm approximately $14,000.
A second woman dated “Tristan” for several weeks in October 2015 after meeting him on Tinder. Kiehm asked her for money “because his mother was undergoing cancer treatment and because he had been robbed”.
The second woman allegedly gave Kiehm approximately $12,000.
In both instances, Kiehm paid the women back with checks drawn on closed accounts, which were rejected by their banks.
A New York police detective contacted Kiehm’s mother, who informed him that “neither she nor her daughter currently have or have had cancer”.
Kiehm is also charged with a third scam: he allegedly stole the debit card information of one of his dog-walking clients and opened a Venmo account with it, ultimately charging about $13,000 to the card. Venmo is a mobile payment service that allows users to make peer-to-peer money transfers.
Kiehm has been charged with five felony counts of grand larceny, identity theft and scheme to defraud.
In its 2014 annual report, the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center reported 5,883 incidents of online “romance scams” resulting in the theft of $86.7m. The vast majority of victims were women older than 40.
Tinder did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
