A WOMAN looking for love ended up losing $40,000 in an unlikely way.

There was a glaring red flag that she failed to realize at the moment.

Katie Powell was scammed after a man on Tinder drained her of $40,000Credit: KGW8

The scammer sent her an altered photo of him in a hospital bed (left) that had been taken from MLB pitcher Phil Hughes (right)Credit: KGW8

The scammer asked her for money after claiming he had no one else to turn toCredit: KGW8

Several Tinder users looking for a romantic connection are getting scammed, as reported by Oregon’s local news outlet, KGW.

One Portland woman, Katie Powell, said she was on the dating app hoping to connect with someone.

So, when she matched with an man who alleged to be in his early 40s, Powell did not immediately suspect anything suspicious.

Within a couple of months of connecting with the man, she had been scammed out of $40,000.

“It’s turned my life upside down,” Powell told KGW.

The nature of the relationship moved quite quickly, with frequent texting and conversation that deepened over the course of a month, she told KGW.

“I mean it was ongoing, constant texting right away for the first, for the entire relationship,” Powell said.

After that, the man asked Powell for money, claiming he was going through a medical emergency.

“Instantly, my instinct was like, ‘Why would somebody, you’ve never met me, I’ve known you for 10 days,'” Powell questioned.

“Why would you be asking me for money?”

The scammer went so far as to alter a picture of MLB pitcher Phil Hughes in a hospital bed to convince Powell that he needed the money urgently.

The picture he was using was over nine years old.

“I was questioning every single thing and knowing this is not right. But he was able to talk me into the fact that it was right,” she said.

The man told Powell he was a civil engineer from Turkey who was estranged from his family.

He had sent Powell documentation which appeared real — but was fake.

The scammer dropped $750,000 into one of Powell’s Vanguard retirement accounts and even paid off her credit card bills.

However, once the credit card payments didn’t go through, the company froze Powell’s accounts.

The hundreds of thousands of dollars in the retirement fund also disappeared.

“I mean it was physically, psychologically, emotionally, just draining,” Powell said.

In total, Powell ended up losing more than $40,000 because of the Tinder scam.