The FBI says more than $12 billion was lost to cryptocurrency scams last year alone. But after speaking with a victim, this truly hits home.
“There’s guilt, there’s shame,” a middle-aged woman said about losing thousands in a cryptocurrency scam.
We’re hiding her identity because the woman hasn’t told her friends or family about being scammed.
She found out about a financial advisor on YouTube, “I was ignorant to investing. I didn’t want to really do it myself,” she says.
And she researched everything.
She went to the FINRA site, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority directory.
She found the broker and saw she was registered, licensed, and working for a big firm - Fidelity.
Then she even called Fidelity to double-check.
“I thought I had done my research,” she said, first investing five thousand dollars.
The woman adds, “Because I’m a cautious person by nature. I didn’t want to just go full throttle.”
Her money grew until she wanted to cash out.
Then, she was told she’d have to pay taxes on her investment gains under penalty of law. More emails came claiming tax payments, and another said she’d need to pay thousands more for an international business permit certificate.
When she asked them for help, “They advised me to go on to Crypto.com.”
When it was all done, she had lost 120 thousand dollars.
Soon after, the broker, like the money, was gone.
The truth was the broker was legitimate, but someone had stolen the broker’s identity.
In the end, she did everything right and still got scammed.
Computer security expert Christopher Budd, from Sophos X-ops, has studied scams like this for decades. He says criminals spend lots of time and money stage-setting schemes like this.
“So you said the victim went and checked things out. It all looked legitimate. You know, that’s part of a social engineering attack. And that’s a sophisticated one because they’re, you know, they’re creating an in-depth illusion,” Budd said.
What to remember here is that scammers operate in darkness. If you are sending someone money to be used for an investment, meet them face-to-face.
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