Mary Handeland, a real estate agent in Grafton, Wisconsin, found a match on a dating app last year. He said that his name was Mike and that he was an engineer for a defense contractor in Texas.

Within two months of texting and talking, Mike told Handeland, 71, that he loved her. Then he asked her for money.

Handeland was instructed to deposit cash into machines known as cryptocurrency ATMs. Often found inside grocery stores, gas stations and smoke shops, the kiosks resemble conventional ATMs but convert cash into cryptocurrency.

In 19 transactions starting last October, Handeland deposited $98,300 into the machines. All of it vanished — as did Mike, who turned out to be a fiction.

“I don’t even know what happened to me,” Handeland said. “The way you’re manipulated, it’s almost like you

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