My friend Amy, a Gold Coast resident, had her life savings stolen in sophisticated, elaborate online scams related to cryptocurrencies. What she had experienced was mind-blowing and miserable at the same time. It involves ultimate approaches, technologies, and executions.
She said that over one month, she was intentionally and structurally conned into sending $50,000 to a website trading platform she believed to be legitimate.
Residing in Gold Coast, I can tell how disciplined Amy was so she could manage quite a significant savings. However, she never thought about checking the List Of Scamming Websites online like Forex scammer list, Cryptocurrency scammer list, etc. The frugal life didn’t prevent her from being scammed, and it’s something else.
It started when someone introduced Amy to cryptocurrency investment. Like many first-timers, she would love to invest in stable coins like Bitcoin and Ethereum. That’s where s found this crypto exchange platform that looks notoriously “high-tech” with attractive offerings in profits and bonuses. After depositing funds to a wallet address, her dollars would be converted into bitcoin and made immediately accessible. She felt confident that the website was safe and that the online portfolio was legitimate because of its apparent link to the stock market and forex market.
When making the first deposit, her bank didn’t issue any notification or warning about the particular transactions. That’s how Amy purchased (what she thought was) $25000 worth of Bitcoin for the first deposit. For the same reasons, Amy kept falling into making two other deposits, $15000 and $10,000, before realizing the actual problems. Unfortunately, the bank didn’t warn her in one way or another.
Amy is very good at her job; she’s a senior staff in her office’s finance and accounting department. However, this crypto investment was new for her. As for doing her jobs, Amy handles various transactions for the company and communicates with multiple banks. That explains why she wouldn’t believe the bank did anything for her case, but after some research, she started understanding the situation.
She’s a quick learner, so she could draw the big picture of what had happened to her with some quick research. She found on the search results that the crypto exchange she used wasn’t regulated and so wasn’t the wallet used in the transaction. Unregulated crypto exchanges typically operate offshore or from abroad, and they don’t have offices in the corresponding countries. That’s why it’s harder for authorities to step in when these exchanges scam citizens.
Amy’s money was also hard to track because these cybercriminals performed sneaky use of the crypto wallet. This wallet address sends funds to numerous accounts worldwide, making it difficult to trace their whereabouts. On the other hand, Bitcoin transactions are mostly anonymous so bringing out personal information like names and particular locations where the fund flowing was also tricky, if not difficult.
You might have wondered, “why did she make another payment after the first one?”. Well, Amy didn’t straightforwardly realize that she was a scam victim. Instead, the platform used by the scammer convinced her that she was making profits with her first deposit.
Sounds typical? Yep, if you’ve been researching crypto scams, this is one of the Common Online Scams currently trending. I can’t imagine how many people find this crypto exchange scam, read their convincing “whitepaper,” and make deposits, just like Amy did. The deposits are smooth, but there are always failures regarding withdrawal. That’s the spot, the ultimate red flag.
In response to the requirement, Amy told the exchange that she didn’t have the $15,000 required. The scammer told her to use credit cards or borrow money. Finally, she took $10,000 from her emergency fund, the last money she had, and transferred it to the scammer. The deposited money and the virtual profits were still unable to withdraw. The scammer required another deposit of $5000 several days later.
At this point, Amy had lost $50,000 of her hard-earned life savings, and she told me the story for the first time. I didn’t know anything about this crypto industry, but I knew someone who knew. Henry, my digital-nerd neighbor, told us about possibly bringing back Amy’s money. Well, that’s mind-blowing because, as I’ve explained above, these transactions were untraceable. But Henry told us, “No, they’re not untraceable.”
Before moving forward to the solution, Henry warned us not to believe such “fund recovery” services. I went, “Wait, what? You’ve just told me about bringing Amy’s money back, and then you said this? While it looked contradictive, they’re not, and Henry quickly made his point with the List of scam brokers 2022 on his phone. He explained that many scammers exploit the desperation of the scam or fraud victims and steal more money from them. These fund recovery services are too good to be true and never recover their client’s money.
Okay, okay, so what now? Henry introduced a scam report and watchdog site name Report Scammed Bitcoin. He said the organization was interesting because they expose scammers and receive information from the victims. He explained How To Report A Scammer to this site. Some people could get a full or partial refund, but that’s not the point. Henry convinced us that reporting Amy’s case is the right thing to do, to expose the scamming crypto exchange platform.
Amy was quite fortunate in that she could report the scam website and the incident on reportscammedbitcoin.com, where she received assistance recovering her stolen Bitcoins. But wait, so did Amy successfully purchase the Bitcoin? The scammer runs a fully working exchange, but they’re not regulated and use the gaps to scam Amy. So, as far as I understood, the transactions were there, but Amy couldn’t withdraw her money.
Reportscammedbitcoin received Amy’s report and quickly acted to conduct investigations and manage the “chargeback” process. It’s where users Report scams to warn others before it’s too late. They have experts and connections to authorities worldwide, allowing quick and deep pressure on the scammer. However, Amy could get her life savings back also because she didn’t put any delay in reporting her case.
I don’t entirely understand the technical explanations behind the recovery of Amy’s money, but there were many variables involved. These could look complicated and impossible for people like us, but not for Reportscammedbitcoin, which deals with these cases daily like those google safe browsing team members. The good news is that we don’t have to go in-depth into technical aspects. We can file a report if we’re a victim.
File A Complaint Against Scam Broker's
Another good news is that anyone can report questionable or suspicious sites for further investigation, whether the website is legit or not. To help others avoid falling for the most frequent types of online scammers, Reportscammedbitcoin is fully available and accessible. You may do this by using their website scammer check service. If you want to learn how to report fraudulent websites like Amy did, visit www.reportscammedbitcoin.com
