A NOVICE crypto trader has revealed how he was scammed out of £176,000 in life savings after being duped by a stranger who texted him out of the blue.The pair struck up a friendship after she texted him out of the blue, asking if he worked at her local animal shelter, as she wanted to adopt a dog.
1The man fell victim of a hugely elaborate and long-haul crypto scamCredit: Getty
As chance would have it, her victim happened to also work in an animal shelter and they hit off.
The woman spoke to him in length about crypto trading and despite his curiosity, he did not show any interest.
“We kept talking for many hours every day about many things, and one of the things she was very excited about was some new crypto currency that she thought will be the next bitcoin,” he told Reddit.
“I had always been thinking about investing in crypto, but knew very little about it and told her I wasn’t interested, but she didn’t seem to mind at all and we just kept talking about other things.”
Crypto currencies are unregulated and do not answer to any financial authority, to which you could turn to, in the case of a large-scale scam.
Due to the anonymity and secrecy of the coins, it’s also extremely hard to track where your money goes, further complicating scam investigations.
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It is also incredibly volatile because they are very young markets and it’s not uncommon for the price to experience wild swings within a day or even within minutes making it very a dangerous venture.
Over time, the woman revealed that her coins were growing exponentially to her new friend, with him finally deciding he fancied his chances.
“As time went on she showed me screenshots of her currency and how much it was rising, so I asked her to help me just learn and start investing in the standard crypto currencies,” he said.
The woman showed him her tricks and got him to make an account on the website of the currency she was using, with him beginning to pour money from his £176,000 savings.
“She helped me with every step for many hours, and eventually I invested ~10k in the standard currencies like ADA, ETH, etc.”
“I started with investing just $5k, and over time I trusted her more I invested more, eventually up to about $70k. Everything seemed to go very well and (it seemed like) I made a ton of money.
“Per her recommendation, we would hold the currency until it was about to go public and then take our profits. We talked about how we would have a lot of money and also be able to help many people …
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