A Tampa bakery owner is warning crypto investors after she says she was scammed out of more than $80,000 of her life-savings. She now says she’ll have to shut down her business.
TAMPA, Fla. – Victims young and old are falling for a get-rich-quick cryptocurrency scam that investigators are calling “pig slaughtering.” According to authorities, scammers fatten up their victims, getting as much as they can from them, before disappearing and often taking the victim’s life savings with them.
Investigators have said the scam usually starts with a call, text or message through a social media platform. The stranger builds trust with the victim before bringing up cryptocurrency and introducing them to an investment platform that someone the victim knows has been using with high-yielding results.
The victims then invest money into these websites, sometimes dropping their life savings, all with the hopes of the same promising return.
It’s exactly what happened to Lorena Brunson, a South Tampa bakery owner who found herself in a pinch and needed money. Her son had been investing in cryptocurrency through a website he was introduced to on Instagram. He’d seen his investments triple, so Brunson decided to invest too.
READ: South Tampa bakery to close after online ‘investor’ disappears
She put in $4,000 to start, turned a profit, and was able to withdraw it. After two months, she’d invested $80,000 of her own money with her crypto balance having grown to nearly $180,000. However, when she tried to cash out, she was told she’d have to pay $62,000 in taxes before she could access her money.
The person Brunson had been communicating with eventually disappeared, taking all of her investments with them.
Investigators have seen an uptick in these scams and have said this is usually how it goes. In 2021, the FBI received 4,300 complaints, totaling over $425 million dollars in losses.
“Although it’s yet to become a mainstream payment method, reports to the FTC show it’s an alarmingly common method for scammers to get peoples’ money,” according to the Federal Trade Commission. “Since the start of 2021, more than 46,000 people have reported losing over $1 billion in crypto to scams – that’s about one out of every four dollars reported lost, more than any other payment method. The median individual reported loss? A whopping $2,600.”
According to authorities, the best way to avoid this scam is to do your research on the investment platform or website in question to make sure it’s legit. However, if a stranger is introducing this platform to you, there’s no reason to trust them because chances are they don’t have your best interest in mind.
The FTC provided the following ways to avoid cryptocurrency scams:
You can learn about the different types of cryptocurrency scams by heading to the FTC website: consumer.ftc.gov/articles/what-know-about-cryptocurrency-and-scams.
Click Here For Original Source.
Recently, SEC Chair Gary Gensler issued fresh warnings about cryptocurrencies amid Bitcoin's surge to a…
Pay Dirt is Slate’s money advice column. Have a question? Send it to Athena here. (It’s anonymous!) Dear…
By Virma Simonette & Kelly Ngin Manila and Singapore14 March 2024Image source, Presidential Anti-Organized Crime…
Technology has disrupted many aspects of traditional life. When you are sitting at dinner and…
Reports of suicides, missing bodies, sexual kompromat and emptied bank accounts as fake sangomas con…
A South African woman has been left with her head in her hands after she…