Under the online safety bill, which is currently going through parliament, social media platforms will be required to take these paid-for scam adverts down. He settled the case the following year after the tech firm promised to donate £3m to an anti-scams project and set up a reporting tool. Lewis has previously taken legal action against Facebook for failing to remove scam adverts using his image in 2018. However, it turned out to be a complex cryptocurrency scam. And once they have it, they hold it, and they release it, it’s almost impossible to get it back, especially if you don’t know who the other side is,” Patel said.Jane was considering opening an Isa when she spotted a promotion for “Current Coins” on Facebook in December last year, which – falsely – claimed to be endorsed by Lewis, who founded the MoneySavingExpert consumer advice site. “Once you send that money, it goes to exchanges. In 2021, according to the Federal Trade Commission, people reported losing $294 million in cryptocurrency payments to fraudsters, compared to losing about $44 million in credit card payments to them. And constantly reaching out to them and hitting them, whether it’s emails or phone calls or text messages, everything, every avenue they’re actually trying to exploit.” Patel warned swindlers are targeting a “whole gamut of age groups and people. It can and it will, and I guarantee you someone in your inner circle right now is the victim of a scam.”Ĭryptocurrency is rapidly becoming the preferred payment method for traditional scams like phishing, where someone sends a text message, e-mail, or makes a phone call demanding payment for anything from taxes to insurance, according to Ricky Patel, acting special agent in charge at Homeland Security Investigations in New York. “If you think it will never happen to you, you’re wrong. “The victims who are involved in these scams, they’re losing hundreds of thousands of dollars to even millions of dollars,” said Nofziger. Nofziger said her team currently receives two to three complaints a day involving crypto romance scams, compared to one to two a week last year, and the losses are staggering. But then when you want to draw your whole balance, that’s when you realize you’ve been a victim because they say that there’s usually a penalty or fee, and it’s in the hundreds of thousands of dollars,” said Amy Nofziger, director of fraud victim support at the American Association of Retired Persons Fraud Watch Network. “You’ll see earnings you’ll even be able to withdraw some money at some point. The search for love online ends with a broken heart and an empty bank account. Swindlers use dating apps and websites to lure in victims with flirtation and the promise of romance and quick financial returns, tricking them into fraudulent cryptocurrency investments. Courtesy photoĬryptocurrency romance scams, like the one Mike fell for, have become increasingly common thanks to the boom in online dating and the use of cryptocurrency - and the size of his losses is not unusual. Mike downloaded the dating app Tinder looking for companionship with someone nearby. That’s when he realized none of it was real - his gains or his girlfriend “Jenny” - except for his epic losses. He tried to transfer money out of his account - and he couldn’t. When his cryptocurrency portfolio hit $1 million in value, he was assigned his own “teacher analyst” named Devon.īut after four months, when Jenny and Devon told him to send his tax payments to the Department of Homeland Security and not the IRS, Mike grew suspicious. The more you have in here, the more you can make.’” “She would get me excited and say, ‘Mike, so you got to send more money. Then she encouraged him to transfer that money to a different platform, said Mike, who is retired and single. They’d never met, but Jenny persuaded him to invest $3,000 with a legitimate cryptocurrency exchange website,.
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