(TargetDailyNews.com) – An anonymous man who says he was scammed out of his entire life savings has told his story to warn other retirees of the danger posed by con artists.
The 70-year-old said he was trying to figure out how to make his retirement nest egg earn more money to keep up with the recent out-of-control inflation that has been devaluing American dollars and buying power. He said he and his 68-year-old wife worried they’d run out of money before the end of their lives. In addition, they wanted to leave something to their four grandchildren, especially for the two with special needs.
After contacting a friend for advice, he said, he took the friend’s recommendation and contacted an investment company. It appeared legitimate, and the retiree even spoke on the phone to someone who seemed to be a financial planner.
Starting slowly, the man invested just $250. At the next step, he put in $10,000. He said that when he started to see his money grow, he wanted to sink the rest of his savings in. So he put the entire $256,470 into an account with the company.
That’s when things took a turn. The “investment company” called him and dangled a line of credit offer. They wanted the retiree to invest in the cryptocurrency Bitcoin, which he did, saying the company started charging him very high commissions. Then he noticed something odd. An email he received from the “digital wallet” that held his investment had one incorrect digit in the number. That’s when he realized he was being scammed.
Because he trusted the bank the scammers were using, the retiree said, he also trusted people who turned out to be con artists. A private investigator he hired figured out that one of the parties involved was in Bulgaria, while the other was in the U.S.
After all was said and done, the retiree lost a total of $300,000. That was all his life savings plus the fees he spent on investigators and lawyers. Saying it was entirely his fault that he was not skeptical enough, the 70-year-old said he ran a business for 30 years and overestimated his ability to evaluate trustworthiness.
The sad story is similar to that of a retired college professor from Seattle. Linda Khandro, 76, went public with her story after losing her entire retirement nest egg to digital scammers. She is now using food pantries and trying to go back to work to make ends meet. “Be safe and look out for each other,” Khandro wrote.
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