Romance scam costs Colorado man $1.4M in savings

The Colorado Bureau of Investigations (CBI) has started looking into a case of a crypto-linked romance scam, alerting the public to the warning signs of this type of ￰0￱ to authorities, the scammers targeted a Colorado native, scamming the unsuspecting victim out of his $1.4 million retirement ￰1￱ victim, who remains anonymous, spoke to the media on the condition that he appears in silhouette with his voice disguised to protect his ￰2￱ to the man, the CBI has said they will continue to investigate the case, hoping that they come across a big lead that will blow everything ￰3￱ romance scam cases have been on the rise in the past year, with numerous elderly people falling ￰4￱ some appear as pig-butchering scams, others are just outright scams, authorities ￰5￱ native loses $1.4 million to romance scammers In his statement , the victim noted that his travails began when he started having marital issues and joined a dating ￰6￱ noted that after several connections, he connected with a particular person who turned their conversation from love and romance to ￰7￱ victim mentioned that this person said they could help him invest in several digital ￰8￱ noted that he trusted the person because he felt they were romantically ￰9￱ victim mentioned that though they never met at any point during their conversations, they did have conversations on ￰10￱ woman said her name was Erin, with investigators noting that it might be a fake screen name adopted by scammers in the ￰11￱ victim said it all started with him sending funds to several legitimate cryptocurrency applications.

Later, he was asked to send funds to a fake application controlled by the ￰12￱ total, he lost $1.4 million. “If it’s too good to be true, it’s not true,” the victim ￰13￱ to CBI Special Agent Zeb Semester, this was the largest amount of money he had ever witnessed stolen in a crypto scam. “The largest amounts of losses that we see are in these crypto cases, like that, with investment scams,” Smeester ￰14￱ also added that these cases are not difficult to investigate, but law enforcement often takes a different view of them because the criminals are always ￰15￱ blame the unregulated crypto industry The CBI Special Agent noted that instead of trying to apprehend the scammers, they focus on retrieving the stolen funds.

“We’re not going after the perpetrators because most of them are going to be ￰16￱ it’s extremely hard to narrow down who those people are,” he ￰17￱ a report by the Better Business Bureau’s 2024 Scam Tracker, investment scams, including those that involve digital assets, are the riskiest out ￰18￱ group claims that romance scams currently rank third on the list, but according to BBB Director of Foundation Meghan Conradt, romance scams and crypto investment scams often come hand in hand. “Unfortunately, this is something we at the Better Business Bureau see a lot ￰19￱ it’s actually been increasing over the last couple of years,” Conradt ￰20￱ listed some of the red flags that people need to watch out for so they don’t fall prey to these romance scammers and lose their ￰21￱ stated the reason why crypto scams are common is that the industry is quite new and ￰22￱ mentioned that it doesn’t offer the same protections that victims will enjoy in traditional institutions if they can provide a dispute.

“It’s something people aren’t really educated about and don’t know a whole lot about,” she said. “It’s a little bit like the Wild West out ￰23￱ the value of it can swing dramatically every ￰24￱ could be worth hundreds of thousands one day and worth just a few dollars the next day.” If you're reading this, you’re already ￰25￱ there with our newsletter .