Besides this being an impressively reported and written story, to me it's also another example of how wrong I continue to have been, since watching "Catch Me If You Can" and thinking that there wasn't much chance for a Fred Abagnale to exist in the modern centralized digital world (the Fyre Festival is of course another recent example of high-flying fraud). Reading about how easy it was for the victim's boyfriend, recently associated (but not convicted) with a criminal hacking group, to make himself seem like a big social media/crypto influencer makes me think that the arms race between verification and obfuscation will go on for a long time.
This story was also another reminder of how fast and overwhelming the news cycle seems to be these days. I remember reading Tomi Masters' death because of how unusual it was, but had completely forgotten about it until reading this story. If you asked me to remember when I first read about her case, I would've sworn it was at least half a year ago. But her death was reported in late December, so just about 1.5 months ago.