Police Save Elderly Woman from Crypto Scam

A woman nearly lost $16,000 after falling victim to a crypto scam. The money likely would have been gone forever if it wasn’t for the police force at Stevens Point, as well as the firefighters of the region and UPS.

Woman Nearly Loses Money to Crypto Thieves

The woman, who remains unnamed at the time of writing, is 79 years of age. Many crypto scammers are under the impression that they can victimize people who are elderly given they’re less likely to understand the technology behind crypto and computers. The woman received an email claiming there was some sort of bogus charge on her PayPal account. Through a little coaxing, they told her to go to her nearest bank, withdraw a certain amount of money (which later turned out to be $16K), and convert it to BTC at a local crypto ATM.

From there, she was to use the machine to send the bitcoin to an address held by the cyberthieves. All this would have been very bad except it appeared fate was on her side that day. The bitcoin ATM didn’t work when she tried to send the money. Thus, she instead tried to send it through UPS to an address in the state of Texas.

Stevens Point police lieutenant Joe Johnson explained in a recent interview:

She made multiple attempts to deposit money in the machines, and then she went to mail it through UPS. They told her they thought she was being victimized, and they took her package. They weren’t going to mail her package, and they let their investigators know, and then that is how we got involved.

Eventually, she was able to send the money through the bitcoin ATM, though the police in the area – along with firefighters – were quick to realize what was going on. They entered the machine and were able to get her cash out before it was received by the scammers.

Situations like these have become quite common in recent weeks and months. One of the big problems with these types of cases is that once the money is sent, it’s usually gone, and if it can be recovered, the process of getting it back is quite difficult and lengthy.

This is Becoming too Common

Crypto scams, unfortunately, are nothing new. Among the most common types of crypto scams are romance scams. These usually involve predators seeking victims through online dating sites and similar platforms. They latch onto certain people, develop phony relationships with them, and earn their trust enough to get them to start investing in alleged crypto platforms.

What the victims don’t know is that these platforms are in the hands of the scammers. Thus, whenever they send money to their accounts, they are really sending it to the thieving parties.