A 77-year-old Oklahoma woman, Marsha, lost her entire savings of $20,000 to a sophisticated cryptocurrency scam, leaving her devastated and humiliated, according to her daughter, Jamie Moore.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The scam began when Jamie received a suspicious email about a finalized Bitcoin transaction involving her mother. Concerned, Jamie warned her mother not to engage, believing they had avoided the fraud. However, Marsha, who suffers from Parkinson\u2019s Disease and Multiple Myeloma, reached out to the number listed in the email for clarification.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Posing as a federal agent, the scammer told Marsha that her identity had been stolen and instructed her to withdraw $20,000 from her bank account to \u201cprotect her money.\u201d He convinced her to keep the situation secret, even from her daughter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cHe stayed on the phone with her for five hours,\u201d Jamie said. Marsha, under the scammer\u2019s coaching, lied to her bank teller, claiming the money was for home renovations. She then drove 45 minutes to a liquor store in Ponca City, Oklahoma, to deposit the funds into a Bitcoin ATM, as directed by the scammer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Only after completing the transaction did Marsha realize she had been deceived. \u201cShe\u2019s humiliated, embarrassed, and doubting her choices,\u201d Jamie said. \u201cShe\u2019s a smart woman, and it\u2019s heartbreaking.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The family filed a police report, but there is little hope of recovering the stolen funds. The FBI, which later contacted the family, indicated that the scheme was likely part of a larger operation originating in Nigeria.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Cryptocurrency scams have been on the rise, with the Federal Trade Commission reporting over $1.4 billion in consumer losses in 2023 and an additional $1 billion in the first nine months of 2024.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A 77-year-old Oklahoma woman, Marsha, lost her entire savings of $20,000 to a sophisticated cryptocurrency scam, leaving her devastated and humiliated, according to her daughter, Jamie Moore. The scam began when Jamie received a suspicious email about a finalized Bitcoin transaction involving her mother. Concerned, Jamie warned her mother not to engage, believing they had […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4918,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[169,153,15],"tags":[190,156,109,33],"class_list":["post-4917","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bitcoin-scam","category-crypto-currency-scam","category-scam","tag-bitcoin-scam","tag-cryptocurrency-scam","tag-scam","tag-scam-awareness"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ripandscam.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4917","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ripandscam.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ripandscam.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ripandscam.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ripandscam.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4917"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.ripandscam.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4917\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4919,"href":"https:\/\/www.ripandscam.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4917\/revisions\/4919"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ripandscam.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4918"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ripandscam.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4917"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ripandscam.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4917"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ripandscam.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4917"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}