PHOENIX (3TV/CBS 5) – The phone calls were incessant and sometimes threatening. “You are not in your senses right now,” the caller said on a voicemail. “Don’t do anything wrong.”
It is the middle of a scam that started with a pop-up message on a laptop computer that appeared to be a security alert. “It said to call this number,” said Sue, who asked On Your Side to use only her middle name.
Sue called the number on the screen. An unfamiliar, but reassuring voice was on the other end of the line. “He said ‘Somebody’s trying to take $14,500 out of your account,’” Sue recalled. “He said, ‘We’ve got to secure the rest of your money,’ so he had me go down, withdraw the money, $14,500 and put it in a Bitcoin machine, so that’s what I did.”
Sue had never heard of a Bitcoin ATM, but she trusted the man on the phone. Every day for 13 days, Sue deposited more money into Bitcoin ATMs at convenience stores. “I believed him. I believed him. I really thought, ‘OK, somebody is trying to take this money out. I’ve got to secure all this money,’” she said. “All the money went into my [Bitcoin] wallet, but I never got the money. He took it.’”
Employees at the bank tried to alert Sue to the scam. “[The scammer] said they were going to do that,” Sue said. “He told me not to say nothing to nobody. He said my phone, my computer, everything was hacked, to where I didn’t talk to anybody. I didn’t tell anybody about it, not even my son.”
Sue ultimately lost $204,000. “I went to a very dark place. I thought, ‘OK. I’ve got lots of sleeping pills here. I did. I called the crisis hotline for that. I went that way. I went that far in the dark, but my friend, she pulled me through. And my son.”
Sue kept her secret for months, just like so many people who’ve been tricked by elaborate and costly scams. “With these crypto scams, we’re not talking a few thousand dollars. They’re looking for a few hundred thousand dollars,” said Brian Watson, a retired special agent for IRS Criminal Investigation who now works with the nonprofit R.O.S.E., which stands for Resources/Outreach to Safeguard the Elderly. “[The scammers] will tell you to go down to a local Bitcoin ATM. They’ll give you the QR code, the quick response code, so all you have to do is walk in there and scan the little code and start putting cash into the ATM. It’s actually really simple, and you think you have control over your money but you don’t.”
To protect yourself, take urgency out of the equation. “Time is your friend. You’ve got to stop. You may have to hang up on these people. You may have to delete an email. You may have to turn your computer off, but don’t react quickly. Go get a second opinion.”
Sue finally decided it was time to tell her son. “He knows, and I’ve got two friends who know. My family has no idea that it happened. I’m just embarrassed. I really am,” Sue said. “People will say I’m a victim, but I’ve got to be a survivor. I’ve got to be a survivor.”
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