According to the criteria of
Leonid did not trust immediately. He looked up information about the company on the Internet and everything seemed to be in order. He even spoke to a financial advisor connected to the company. Although everything seemed to be in order, Initially he contributed only US$250.
When he started seeing profits and did not experience any problems, he decided to make a larger investment and transferred US$10,000. Again, he got a return on that money, so he decided to go for more. But first, He withdrew $100 from the account to ensure that he would actually have his money available. and had no problems.
Excited about the possibility of continuing to earn more money, decided to transfer all of his savings amounting to US$256,470 but, at that moment, everything started to change and become confusing.
The company he was investing in asked him to take out a line of credit and encouraged him to invest in bitcoins. After that, they started charging him high fees. Then, he received an email where there was supposedly a link to his digital cryptocurrency wallet, but when he checked it, he realized that there was an error in it, so he began to suspect that something was wrong.
Then, the worst came, The alleged investment company contacted him to ask for more money, so the man decided to hire a lawyer., who took it upon himself to seek legal representation for the company, but was unable to find anyone who had a license under the name he had been provided with.
When he realized that he was not going to be able to proceed legally, he decided to hire a private investigator who traced all transactions back to one person in Bulgaria. The man had hope when he was informed that most of the money he had sent had been moved to an account at Bank of America, so He trusted that the banking institution would help him solve the problem..
But when his lawyer got in touch and explained what was happening, he simply said, ignored their requests to investigate the fraud. The situation continued to worsen as, from having savings for his retirement he ended up owing fees to the lawyer and the private investigator for almost US$300,000.
Advice from a US retiree who was scammed
In his interview with Business InsiderLeonid Shteyn admits that he made mistakes and that it is his fault that he went through such a scam so shares his case with the intention that More people stay alert and avoid falling in this type of fraud.
But also He urged the authorities to carry out investigations to prevent such scams from succeeding. Well, he said, he contacted his local police department who assured him they would investigate, but he never received a response. When he persisted, they told him they had 600 pending cases like his so the chances of them being able to resolve anything in his favor were very slim.
“People always ask me what advice I would give to other older people, but I think that’s the wrong question. Scammers will always exist and people, especially the elderly, will always be very vulnerable. We need to be able to trust the government and the big institutions,” he concluded.
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