Mr. Stephen Carr fell victim to a cryptocurrency scam and said that he lost nearly $500,000 which has led him to consider selling his house – and warns others not to make the same mistake he did
An unlucky man said he has to sell his property after being scammed out of nearly $500,000 when he put money into a cryptocurrency site.
Mr. Stephen Carr said he lost his retirement funds after he was victim to a elaborate scheme. The pensioner, from Ontario, Canada, got in touch with a trading platform after watching a video on YouTube.
He was promised that his money would be invested into commodities, currencies, and cryptocurrencies. After depositing $250 into the website in October 2022, he invested another $2,500 after he saw his initial funds grow.
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According to Mr. Carr, he believed the site was real because he was able to withdraw $1,000 from his money at one point. This led him to invest $498,000 into the website over three months until January 2023, according to CTV News.
The platform showed him that his cash had doubled – and his investment had risen to a whopping $1.3 million. However, he realized this had been a scam when he was asked to pay $150,000 to access his funds and was unable to take out his money.
He said: “What I didn’t know at the time is this trading platform I was on was a simulation, it wasn’t connected to anything, like a flight simulator that’s not connected to a real airplane. I got conned, and in hindsight, I put a ridiculous amount of money in this and a ridiculous amount of trust in these people.”
He’s now in a very difficult situation following the scam, and had to take drastic action. He said: “I’m devastated. I’m in the process of selling my house and have to reorganize my life. I’ve got maybe two or three months of useable cash left, and that’s it.”
Carr also warned others about financial scams, saying that if he got scammed, then “a lot of other people can get scammed.” It comes as another man, from Illinois lost over $7,000 after he left a comment on a YouTube video. Jason Blentlinger said he thought his favorite YouTube channel had reached out to him to send him a MacBook Pro as a gift for being a fan.
However, it turned out that these people were not YouTubers but were actually scammers. Blentlinger was asked to send gift cards and only realized he had been a fraud victim after an employee raised the alarm.
Legal experts are also warning holiday shoppers to be on the lookout for gift card scams – with one state issuing a key warning. The Pinole Police Department in Houston, Texas has been spreading this important message online.
It comes as latest figures in 2022, show elders across the country saw an 84% increase in losses from 2021, being tricked out of $3.2 billion. Texas was the third most victimized state, leading the U.S. Attorney’s Office to educate Houston’s seniors about scammers.