‘I believed him’: Woman loses $204,000 to crypto scam

PHOENIX (KPHO/Gray News) – A woman says she lost $204,000 to a cryptocurrency scam that started with a pop-up message on a computer that appeared to be a security alert.

The woman, who asked to be identified only as Sue, says the pop-up message said to call a number, so she did.

“He said ‘Somebody’s trying to take $14,500 out of your account,’” Sue said. “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 said she had never heard of a Bitcoin ATM, but she trusted the man on the phone, so every day for 13 days, she deposited 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 said the 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.”

Ultimately, Sue 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 said she kept the secret for months, like many other people who have 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.

Watson 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,” he said.

Watson said 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,” he said.

Sue eventually told her son about what happened.

“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.”