A cryptocurrency investment that seemed too good to be true costs victim almost €10,000“There was a link in the content and I clicked on the link and signed up to receive a call,” she writes. “Within five minutes a guy called me, asked me some questions about my age and, because I was in my 50s, he offered me a discount to make a deposit.”“I gave him my credit card details to make the payment.
“He asked me how much money I wanted to make and I said a few thousand euro would be great. He said I would not make that kind of money with a €200 deposit, so he gave me some profit figures if I could deposit more money. He told me that bitcoin value was at an all time high and that a ‘housing’ profit was coming mid April 2024 and that the more I had invested, the more profit I could return. I asked him where was this company based and he said Switzerland.
“I now realise that he was asking me this question because if I did want to withdraw some of my money, that he would tell me there would be a tax to be paid and would have asked me to hand over more money for this withdrawal.”“She was really suspicious that I had been scammed and when I googled the company all the reviews were saying it was a scam. I got very nervous then about the fact that I could have been scammed,” she continues.
We sent the details to Niamh Davenport from FraudSmart, the anti cybercrime unit of the Banking and Payments Federation of Ireland.