In June of 2021, a UK-based woman named Erzina Toto fell
victim to a scam impersonating a senior DCG portfolio manager via
the popular dating app “Hinge”, involving a total loss of £100,000.
The threat actor impersonating as a DCG employee goes by the name
George Vegard Tellers and claimed to be a UK-based portfolio
manager for DCG in London. Tellers convinced the victim to setup a
joint investment account with DCG - promising that if a deposit £100k
was made, the victim would receive a return of investment of £130k
within 72 hours. Tellers initially told the victim to send money to him
via CoinMama; however, that platform did not work so they switched
to using Luno.
During Halo’s investigative efforts into this victim claim, multiple scam
email domains, phone numbers and crypto currency wallet addresses
used in the scam were identified. Teller used multiple imposter
domains to impersonate DCG and forged DCG’s name and logo in
contracts and official email correspondence. Halo reached out to Luno
to blacklist one of the wallet addresses.

Halo’s investigation into the John Kluge DCG impersonation revealed this
was a well planned and highly organized fraud scheme that combined traditional
romance scam methodology with tactics typically employed in business email
compromise (BEC). The incident demonstrated sophisticated attacker tradecraft
involving backstopping and likely use of real-time deepfake technology.
HALO investigators received a report of a romance scam wherein the victim transferred
funds to a perpetrator fraudulently representing DCG. The victim met the perpetrator
using Tinder. The perpetrator impersonated a DCG investment advisor while using the
likeness of Swedish singer John Kluge and alias name “Darius Williams”. The
impersonator used common romance scam methodology, including building rapport
and establishing trust before having an emergent need for money. The perpetrator
simultaneously used his DCG impersonation to encourage the victim to provide funds
to invest. In order to employ this scam, the scammer used three sophisticated tactics