Investment scams are everywhere on social media. Here’s how to spot one

I was driving when I got a call from a mysterious number. A sobbing child begged for my help. But it wasn’t my kid — it was a scam.In Gochenour’s case, he spent several weeks messaging with someone who seemed romantically interested in him before she brought up “liquidity mining.”

Though he’d been a crypto skeptic, he eventually began following her advice and instructions. Scammers like Gochenour’s have become skilled at setting up sites that convincingly look like legitimate cryptocurrency companies, and Gochenour was taken in. After he set up a crypto wallet, it appeared that the money he transferred there was growing just the way his scammer said it would.

“I was hooked on this person,” he said. “And at first it looked like it was working. She said, ‘We could be together, you and I, and make all this money.’”Then one day, when he had transferred about $5,000 of his own money to the wallet, he woke up to check the balance and the money was gone. When he looked at a website his scammer had directed him to, to try to understand what had happened, he saw a “contract.

Gochenour continued to add money to his wallet when prompted, even though the money was transferred out each time, until it looked as if he had $200,000 coming to him.When he was told he’d have to pay $35,000 in taxes up front to access the $200,000, Gochenour realized it was a scam. By that point, he had taken out nearly $16,000 in personal loans.

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