The police are now investigating to understand what happened.
An elderly man living in the East Lyme region of Connecticut allegedly lost over $60,000 worth of crypto to scammers. The alleged crime is being investigated.
East Lyme Resident Loses Lots of Cash and Crypto
Michael Finkelstein, chief of the East Lyme Police Department, says crypto scams have become an ongoing problem in his state and his department heads receive almost regular calls from people who believe they have lost money or been victimized. He commented in a recent interview that the $60,000 sum in question has been the largest yet, and urged the residents to exercise caution, in the following terms:
“The East Lyme Police Department urges residents to always keep themselves and their accounts safe, and use extreme caution when contacted and told to provide any funding to individuals. We are hopeful that continuing to shine a light on these constant scams will help keep our residents safe.”
It is alleged that a relative of the victim contacted East Lyme Police to inform them of what was happening. At the moment, the identity of the victim has not been revealed. He is only mentioned as a “senior citizen in the community” in documents related to the matter. The relative said the man had received a call from someone claiming that fraudulent charges had appeared on his bank statements.
From there, the man was transferred to a second person who claimed to be a lawyer. The person then instructed the victim on how he could send a payment to settle the charges. He had to withdraw a certain amount of money without telling anyone, then travel to a nearby Bitcoin ATM and convert the cash into crypto. The money could then be loaded into a digital wallet and sent to the lawyer (aka the scammer).
According to earlier reports, the victim was prompted to tell bank staff, in case they asked about the reason for the withdrawals, that the money would be used to purchase a car or to renovate an apartment.
Up to $60,000 was converted into BTC. There is good news in that members of the investigative police force were able to recover about $40,000, although another $20,000 still remains. Finkelstein said that cases like these tend to be difficult because most cryptocurrencies cannot be recovered once they are sent. He further added that “in so many of these cases, life savings are stolen and not recoverable.”
Scam That Happens Too Often
Crypto scams have become extremely prominent in recent years. Many of them take the form of romance scams, in which hackers target those seeking love online. Once they find people they feel they can victimize, they know them well enough to convince them to invest in fake crypto platforms.
Once they do, they start to see returns, though problems do arise when they try to make withdrawals and often cannot get their funds back unless they invest even more.
By Audy Castaneda
