Spoke to an old friend the other evening.
A close acquaintance of theirs just very recently got scammed out of tens of thousands of dollars. And, the way I see it, the acquaintance (‘victim’) has little chance of getting that money back. While the subject of age never came up, the conversation leads me to believe the victim is a senior.
The event:
·It all apparently started with a tech support popup on victim’s computer
· Victim calls the number in the popup, and winds up speaking to a scammer at an Indian call center scam operation. Apparently all voices in this scam were Indian sounding.
· Scammer convinces victim to download Teamviewer.
· Scammer takes victim through the whole spiel. 'Hackers are on your computer, are in your bank account, and we must take immediate action.’
· The tech support scammer patches victim through to 'a representative of victim’s bank.' · The 'bank representative' paints a dire activity of what is happening to victim’s bank account, and that the FBI must be brought in immediately as they can save the day.
· The 'bank representative' patches victim through to 'an FBI agent.'
· The 'FBI agent' paints a picture of a dire situation, and tells the victim they must immediately move all their money out of that bank account, and into an FBI account that will immediately secure victim’s money. The 'FBI agent' will step by step help victim accomplish this.
· Oh, and victim must make this account switch deposit in Bitcoin.
· The FBI agent talks victim into going to a local Bitcoin ATM, buying tens of thousands of dollars of Bitcoin, and depositing it into the secure FBI crypto wallet.
And there the money still sits as of the other evening. Out of reach. Unfortunately as is often the case, neither the FBI nor local law enforcement has been able to do anything.
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