A senior citizen residing in the United Kingdom was recently defrauded by crypto scammers causing her to lose £67,000.
As reported by The Telegraph, an elderly woman from the UK was swindled twice by crypto scammers causing her to lose over £65,000 while trying to earn profits through cryptocurrency.
Once bitten twice shy?
Amanda Briggs, which is the pseudonym for the 72-year old British woman, desired to earn profits through cryptocurrency to send her grandchildren to private schools. She gained interest in Bitcoin after watching an episode featuring Bitcoin on the BBC’s popular TV program Dragon’s Den.
She invested £42,000 into the now-confirmed scam broker Extick that was eventually shut down. Her banking partner, Barclays, advised her against the dubious investment. However, the granny refused to take the counsel seriously and went ahead with the investment.
She later admitted that the people working for Extick were very “persuasive,” and she could virtually see the profits raking in. However, the reality turned out to be quite different from her vision. When she decided to withdraw the funds, her account was only left with a meager £91 while the rest of her sum had been stolen by the crypto scammers.
However, her story does not end there. Another scammer, this one pretending to be an officer from the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), contacted the woman via email. The pretender convinced her to pay £25,000 under the premise of recovering her initial loss.
Crypto scammers aretargeting senior citizens
As the cryptocurrency sector grows, criminal activity is also seeing a rise. With blockchain technology being a new concept for the general public, scammers find it relatively easy to fool people. In fact, the FBI had published a warning regarding the growing number of crypto scammers that target senior citizens. These swindlers mostly target elderly people as they have less knowledge about emerging technologies.
