California man federally charged in alleged dating-app scheme
A man from California was arrested on a federal indictment of 14 counts on Thursday who alleys that he used to use meetings to challenge millions of dollars by pretending to be an investor, officials said.
Christopher Earl Lloyd, 39, of the County of Orange, is accused of having executed the program from April 2021 to February 2024, according to the indictment, published Thursday by the Ministry of Justice of the California Central District.
The accusation act accuses Lloyd of using meeting applications – such as Tinder, Hinge and Bumble – “to bond and engage in romantic relationships with the victims”, which then lied about his finances and his career to bring them to invest their money with him. When they sent it in cash, he used it for his “personal advantage”, according to the federal indictment.
Lloyd told the victims that he had recently closed on several properties that he had been finance director for years, that he was vice -president of a company called 13 holdings and that he was working for an investment company called Landmark Holdings – none of which was true, according to the indictment.
He convinced his victims that he knew investments well and encouraged them to send him their money to invest, according to the indictment.
The accusation act alleges that he promised that his victims would see “regular yields” on the money invested with him and that their investments were “assured up to a significant amount”. He also told them that they could withdraw their funds at any time, the indictment said.
To legitimize the process, Lloyd signed contracts which “specified the investments that the victims had to make” and created “a false calendar of returns on their investments”, according to the indictment. His victims sent money to a number of bank accounts he had via Wire, Zelle and Cash App or using Cash, he said.
“Rather than using victims’ funds for investments, the Lloyd defendant widely spent it for his own personal advantage,” said the indictment, including an incident in 2023 in which he used $ 40,000 of his victims to make a check to a Lexus dealer in southern California.
The federal accusation act lists at least five victims who, according to them,, on several occasions, the Lloyd Cabiné amounts varied from $ 15,500 to $ 110,000. In total, Lloyd raised more than $ 2 million to its victims as part of the program, he said.
Lloyd was charged with 13 heads of wire fraud and a charge in a monetary transaction in goods from fraud, the American prosecutor’s office said in a statement.
He made a first appearance before the American district court of Santa Ana Thursday afternoon and remains in police custody.
A lawyer representative Lloyd did not immediately respond to a request for comments.
If it is convicted, Lloyd would risk a maximum statutory sentence of 20 years in federal prison for each of the 13 enumerations of fraud per wire and up to 10 years in prison for the number of monetary transactions.
The FBI investigates.
