Local woman loses over MOP13.6 million in cryptocurrency scam

A local woman in her 60s is reported to have lost the equivalent of MOP13.64 million in a fraudulent cryptocurrency investment scheme, the Judiciary Police (PJ) informed.

According to the PJ, the woman met a man through a mobile communication application (app) back in April this year.

During the initial contact, the man said to wanted to rent a house in the same place where the woman had rented and wanted some advice.

After they became acquainted and started to chat, the scammer offered the victim a part in a scheme to invest in the cryptocurrency Tether.

Following instructions from the “friend,” she downloaded an app and created an account to start investing.

Over the course of about four months, she transferred money to this account on several occasions to purchase Tether and make investments. She also told the PJ that she had successfully withdrawn profits from the first two investments, so she trusted the scheme.

Last month, the victim was persuaded to invest at a larger scale, lured with the potential of huge profits, but she later found out that she could not withdraw the apparent earnings.

She then received a notification that the transaction she had attempted had failed and that consequently the account had been frozen for security reasons.

As commonly happens in this kind of case, a large sum was then requested to “unfreeze” the account.

After she tried by several means to recover her investments, she discovered that she had lost contact with the man who invited her to the scheme.  At this point she realized that she had been scammed and filed a complaint with the PJ.

In these cases, the police can rarely identify the suspects.