BOSTON (CBS) – Cindy Tsai says it started with a seemingly innocent message. A man who called himself Jimmy texted her on WhatsApp. “Are you Linda from the pet store?” Cindy said. “And I messaged back and said wrong number.”
That text quickly escalated into the two sharing personal information and Cindy telling Jimmy she was recently diagnosed with terminal cancer. Cindy says, Jimmy was attentive, good looking and was a comfort for her during a difficult time. Cindy says she was also going through a divorce and in her mind the friendship became a relationship.
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It didn’t take long before Jimmy began showing Cindy how much money he was making trading in cryptocurrency and offered to help her invest on the platform he was using. At first Cindy was skeptical. “I basically said, look I don’t need a financial advisor, I am not giving you a dime,” she said.
But Jimmy told her that she would control her own account and he wouldn’t get any of the money. That’s when Cindy says her interest was piqued. Using the link Jimmy gave her, Cindy set up the account.
Matthew Giacobbi, the Special Agent in Charge of the FBI’s Boston Division, says these are growing schemes. Once the victim clicks on the link, it takes them to a spoofed site or close to a legitimate site that traders in cryptocurrency use and that looks very real but it is not. “They’ve become very sophisticated at making these websites look real when they’re not,” Giacobbi said.
Cindy’s investment started out small but over a few months grew to $2.5 million. All of that money is now gone. The FBI estimates in 2021, 24,000 people fell victim to these types of scams losing about a billion dollars.
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Giacobbi says with cryptocurrency, once you give someone your digital wallet and key, that money is gone…
