Fake Instagram Relationship Cost $211K but Losses Didn’t End at Arrest

A Grocery Store Pickup Became a Police Sting

Kuan Tsou’s sentence and restitution order were announced Oct. 7 by Alabama Securities Commission (ASC) Director Amanda Senn and Azzie Oliver, territory lawyer for Alabama’s 15th Judicial Circuit. Circuit Judge J. R. Gaines sentenced Tsou, 28, to 5 years, divided to service 1 year, for conspiracy involving aggravated theft by deception and fiscal exploitation of an elder person. He indispensable repay $211,000 and is permanently barred from Alabama’s securities industry.

The sentencing followed a sting successful which a container supposedly containing $300,000 alternatively held cut-up insubstantial erstwhile Tsou collected it extracurricular a Montgomery market store. The unfortunate arrived with an undercover serviceman connected Aug. 22, 2025, aft Tsou flew from California that morning. Montgomery Police Department SWAT officers, members of a peculiar weapons and tactics team, stopped and arrested him arsenic helium exited the parking lot.

Before the sting, agents from ASC, Alabama’s securities regulator, confirmed the fraud during a location sojourn and helped negociate the expected payment. Senn stated:

“It is not often that we are capable to intercept planetary transgression operations successful cryptocurrency cases.”

Investigators determined that Tsou belonged to a larger enactment and had spent months collecting currency and precious metals nationwide, keeping oregon receiving a percentage. The Federal Bureau of Investigation’s warning astir crypto scam currency couriers describes however fraudulent platforms put nationalist pickups. Tsou has been held by the Montgomery Sheriff’s Office since Aug. 25, 2025.

An Instagram Relationship Led to a Fake Bybit Platform

The strategy began successful outpouring 2025 erstwhile the Montgomery nonmigratory met idiosyncratic connected Instagram claiming to beryllium a pistillate surviving successful New York. Their conversations moved to WhatsApp, wherever a narration developed earlier cryptocurrency investing entered the discussion. Investigators aboriginal traced the analogous to Southeast Asia; the photographs depicted a existent New Yorker with nary established engagement successful the crime.

The purported concern utilized Bybit’s name, but the nonmigratory sent wealth to a fake crypto exchange alternatively than the morganatic business. An archetypal $45,000 outgo appeared profitable, followed by a expected $160,000 indebtedness that the lawsuit repaid on with $6,000 successful fees.

After collecting $211,000, the fraudulent cognition demanded astir $385,000 more, prompting the attempted status withdrawal that alerted the concern adviser. The progression from an online narration to fabricated gains and escalating outgo demands followed the signifier the committee described arsenic pig butchering: criminals cultivate spot earlier drafting radical into fraudulent investments. Separately, the Justice Department’s Scam Center Strike Force had restrained roughly $938 cardinal successful cryptocurrency arsenic of a Sept. 9 announcement.

The Arrest Did Not End the Victim’s Losses

The Montgomery relationship holder kept communicating with different chartless radical online and sending wealth aft Tsou’s arrest, ASC reported. Investigators enactment full losses crossed pig butchering schemes astatine astir $270,000 and estimated that fiscal instauration and bureau involution prevented that fig from reaching astir $600,000.

The continuing payments prompted the household to question a conservator, a court-appointed idiosyncratic who would negociate the individual’s fiscal affairs. Agency unit testified successful enactment of the petition, but the tribunal declined to o.k. the statement aft proceeding evidence. Senn described the trouble of protecting susceptible adults portion preserving their dignity and state to marque mundane decisions.

Federal efforts to bounds akin losses see FBI outreach to radical targeted by crypto fraud done Operation Level Up, which began successful January 2024. The bureau identifies those caught successful deceptive investments and alerts them earlier they nonstop much funds.

Separate refund protections for qualifying crypto ATM scam victims took effect Oct. 1 successful Alabama, covering kiosk transactions alternatively than this benignant of in-person collection.

Relatives stay acrophobic that further transfers could exhaust the individual’s assets and make fiscal dependence.