PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — The FBI, with a program called ‘Operation LevelUp,’ has been focused on catching online scammers using cryptocurrency as their bait — and they say they’ve been able to prevent some unsuspecting would-be investors from handing over money and becoming victims.
It can start with a message on social media—or a random text from someone you don’t know, says FBI Special Agent Kurt Waller, with the FBI’s complex financial crimes squad.
“Hey John, I’m in town”
“Hi, it’s Anna, are we still meeting today?”
He says the scammers have a playbook, and will do anything to get you to trust them — before they pounce.
“It will just turn into something where they ask for more and more money, and anybody who has done it before is typically a continuing victim in other schemes.”
Waller says they start to build upon the messages into some sort of relationship
“What will happen is someone will reach out and ask for an investment and build some kind of trusting relationship to a point where, once they have enough confidence, they will ask for an investment on any of these crypto platforms.”
He says people have depleted their 401(k)s and taken mortgages out on their houses, promised they’d be making the investment of a lifetime. “We have seen people who have had cancer treatment and were taking money out of their savings thinking that they were making an investment.”
He says, most of the time, the fraudsters are organized crime groups from Southeast Asia.
“We have seen people liquidate their 401(k)s, take mortgages out on houses, using their disability funds. We have seen people who have had cancer treatment and were taking money out of their savings thinking that they were making an investment.
The FBI has been able to stop some people from becoming victims—tracking false accounts backwards using information from others who have reported their experiences to the FBIs complaint center ic3.gov.
“Be very aware of communications and interactions,” he said. “It’s better to be safe than to be sorry.”