A couple from Eden Prairie, Minnesota is down nearly $10 million after one fell victim to a crypto romance scam via LinkedIn.
Police in North Star state say a man was lured into hitting the jackpot in an alleged investment scheme that promised to pay out huge returns, according to a report by local publication Star Tribune.
The man reportedly met another person through LinkedIn who sold him the idea of making big profits on an investment strategy and then “running away together” without his wife. He sent the person a total of $9.2 million in 21 different transactions after continuously doubling and replenishing his deposits without his spouse knowing.
John Stiles, spokesman for Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, said the amount lost from the plan was unprecedented.
“Nobody in the office has heard of a crypto fraud case this big… In fact, their eyes just popped when I told them the amount.”
According to the police, the suspects did not invest any of the man’s money, but used it to buy cryptocurrency for themselves.
The man believed he invested in ‘Coinrule-web3′, a known fraudster who pretends to use automated trading software to trade victims’ money for big profits, showing them fake profit numbers on their screen while the real money is siphoned elsewhere .
The Star Tribune reports that the man’s wife alerted police that he had been liquidating all of their investment accounts for over six months and “phoned her in a panic” to ask her to withdraw all of their remaining funds so he could charge the fraudster $ 2.8 could pay. million “withdrawal costs”.
Police determined that the Metropolitan Commercial Bank of New York City was used by the fraudster and is often used in such scams and to launder stolen money.
Stiles says Minnesota has already seen seniors lose all their life savings and take out multiple mortgages on their homes to get more money to deposit in cryptocurrency scams.
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Featured Image: Shutterstock/Salamahin/Kiselev Andrey Valerevich