It's a tale as old as Tinder: Girl meets Boy. Boy convinces Girl to hand over a large chunk of cash. Boy ghosts Girl.
Twenty-five-year-old Divya Gadasalli says she never actually met the boy in question, at least not in person. But, in a matter of months, a man she knew online as "Jerry Bulasa” fleeced her of a whopping $8 million left by her father, who was murdered in 2015. That makes “Tinder Swindler” Shimon Hayut, the con man from the Netflix documentary who scammed an estimated $10 million from several women over a number of years, look like an amateur by comparison.
Gadasalli, who lives outside Dallas, says she fell victim to a growing type of crypto fraud called “pig butchering” because emotionally manipulated victims’ accounts are fattened before being drained. The Federal Bureau of Investigation said the amount reported lost in romance scams in 2021 increased nearly 60% to $956 million from the year before, with $429 million of that involving investment and cryptocurrency schemes. Gadasalli’s now suing Bulasa, which may not be a real name, two other individuals who may be part of the scheme, two banks that handled some of her transfers and crypto exchanges Binance Holdings Ltd. and Poloniex, which she claims aided and abetted the theft.
“The most emotional part of all of this was knowing what work my father did to put all that money together for me,” Gadasalli said in an interview, “and I just sit here, heartbroken and taken advantage of.”
Gadasalli's father was a highly successful cardiologist in Odessa, Texas, before he was shot to death in a murder-suicide by a friend who apparently believed the doctor had swindled him in a business investment. Dr. Suresh Gadasalli, who was separately under federal indictment for concealing money transfers at the time, left behind a considerable fortune. Divya Gadasalli said she borrowed the $8 million from her mother, who controls the estate.
The suit could be a test of fraud victims’ ability to hold exchanges accountable for transactions on the blockchain. Gadasalli’s story also suggests that even people of considerable wealth can be lured into scams by the prospect of making more money faster with crypto.
‘Nice To Make Money’
She and Bulasa formed a relationship of trust, but, in hindsight, Gadasalli thinks what happened was also about the state of her life when he first popped up on her Tinder in May 2021.
She was taking a break from courses at the University of Texas, Permian Basin, because she hated taking classes online. She was also craving more financial independence from her mother. “I didn’t want her to feel responsible for me anymore,” Gadasalli said. “In that moment, I was, like, ‘Man, it would be really nice to make money.’”
Jane Lee, a security architect with fraud-prevention software firm Sift, said pig-butchering scams have been fueled both by the pandemic and the buzz around crypto. “People are lonely, looking to dating apps, looking to meet and connect with people,” she said, “and then the other side of the coin is cryptocurrency is such a hot topic right now.”
In the March 28 complaint she filed in federal court in Sherman, Texas, Gadasalli included a picture of Bulasa’s supposed Facebook page. It depicts a young Asian man with swept-back hair standing along the waterfront in what appears to be Hong Kong. Other photos show him near the Golden Gate Bridge and on a Barcelona rooftop. He claimed to be a New Yorker, though, and she says he sent her videos of him in the city, including at Rockefeller Center. He also quickly began sending her articles about crypto and boasted about his success investing in it.
They began chatting on WhatsApp, and he got her to share personal details of her life. He started suggesting she could become a financial hero to her family.
‘Do you want to do the most amazing thing ever?’
“He was, like, ‘Do you want to do the most amazing thing ever and help your family so much?’ and I was, like, ‘Yeah, I do,’” she recalls. “Who doesn't?”
The same month they met online, Gadasalli wired $10,000 to a TD Bank account held by Dong Lian, a person with whom Bulasa said he frequently traded crypto. Days later, she wired $86,000, then $100,000 to another account at Abacus Federal Savings Bank under the same name. She then transferred $200,000 to a TD Bank account she was told belonged to another supposed trading partner names Danyun Lin, according to her suit.