East Lyme Resident Loses $60K to Crypto Scammers

An elderly man living in the East Lyme region of Connecticut has allegedly lost more than $60,000 in crypto to scammers at the time of writing. Police are now investigating to understand what happened.

East Lyme Resident Loses a Lot of Cash and Crypto

Michael Finkelstein – chief of the East Lyme Police Department – says crypto scams have become constant issues in his state, and that his department heads are receiving calls almost on a regular basis 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 thus far. He said:

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.

A relative of the victim is alleged to have gotten in touch with East Lyme police to let them know about what was going on. Right now, the identity of the victim has not been revealed. He is only being referred to as a “senior citizen in the community” in documents pertaining to the matter. The relative said that 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 an attorney. The person then gave the victim instructions 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 to crypto. The money could then be uploaded to a digital wallet and sent to the attorney (aka the scammer).

As much as $60,000 was converted into BTC. There is good news in that members of the investigating police force were able to recover about $40K, though there’s still another $20K to go. Finkelstein said cases like these tend to be difficult in that most crypto is not recoverable once it’s sent. He commented:

In so many of these cases, life savings are stolen and not recoverable.

This Happens Way Too Much

Crypto scams have become extremely prominent in recent years. Many of them take on the form of romance scams, in which hackers target those looking for love online. Once they find people they feel they can victimize, they get to know them well enough that they can convince them to invest in phony crypto platforms.

Once they do, they begin to see returns, though problems arise when they try to make withdrawals, and they’re often unable to get their funds back unless they invest even more.

Tags: bitcoin, Crypto Scam, East Lyme