[Music]
a denver man thought he'd be able to
retire early after investing more than a
million dollars into cryptocurrency but
it turned out to be all a lie number
seven's bayern wang takes us into the
dark world of a new cryptocurrency scam
where thousands have lost their entire
life savings
my
title is vp of engineering and
operations scam victims these days fit
in almost every category ph.d student
i'm in research i wasn't even aware that
this type of scam existed neither was
steve belcher i always thought i'll
never fall for something like that but
just a few months after moving to denver
to be closer to his children belcher
would fall for a woman on a dating app
suzuka suzuki who
also lived in denver and was interested
in a lot of the same things the two
clicked instantly messaging for several
weeks but never meeting in person
eventually they would talk about
cryptocurrency a decentralized digital
currency with the widely fluctuating
value that reached more than 3 trillion
dollars at one point in 2021 i missed
out on google i missed out on apple so i
didn't want to miss out on this trend
belcher has made 70 thousand in the few
years he's been invested in
cryptocurrency and suzuki would tell
belcher she too has made a mint
conversation led to she invests on this
platform that is has both a mobile app
and a web app that she directed me to to
go sign up for my own account so belcher
software engineer himself signed up it
looked like a legitimate site the
rationale small changes in bitcoin
are large changes in usdt it made sense
to me i deposited a small amount of
cryptocurrency three and of course he
made some money on his first investment
zero
i just made fifteen hundred dollars i
withdrew the cryptocurrency and it all
seemed to work seamlessly right belcher
was hooked start transferring money out
of my retirement to this platform 1.6
million dollars in total and in a matter
of a few weeks my balance at the end of
the investment plan is over 8 million
usdt on the platform he's rich his
children are set he can retire early
life is set for belcher so i go to make
a withdrawal he says you need to repay
the loan before
you can withdraw cash from your account
the app wanted 1.5 million dollars from
belcher threatening to freeze his
account if he didn't pay up so then i go
look on the fbi site
and lo and behold romance scams are
designed to pull at your heartstrings a
cold reality sunk in i'm 52
my entire life savings
gone in a matter of a month i don't need
a fancy car right you see where i live i
don't
i don't need these things but
i thought it was
my kids were
upset
i was like they'll
both are in college like i could pay
their tuition no problem
i was life changing i thought it was
life-changing as it is for the thousands
who have identical stories meeting
someone on a dating app depositing money
into an investment app and losing it all
to this new scam or otherwise known as
shout out the pig butchering scam pig
butchering as in the victims are the
pigs and they're being raised for a good
long time suddenly you go and try to
withdraw the money from this third-party
investment platform and you're unable to
that's that's when you know that the pig
has been butchered grace yoon and jan
santiago are with the global anti-scam
organization a volunteer-led group that
advocates for the thousands who have
fallen for the pig butchering scam it
started late 2019 around in china both
have college degrees they may have
masters many of them have doctorates or
they may be physicians and they're doing
very well in their careers for ellie in
michigan that money was yeah it was
basically my life savings and for june
in boston i lost 150 000
in this game which was the entirety of
my savings others fell for similar scams
involving cryptocurrency may in new york
i was scammed a little bit over 1
million dollars q in texas the total i
lost is 250
k u.s dollar between january and july
the fbi received more than 1800
complaints related to crypto romance
scams resulting in more than 133 million
dollars in losses in denver local
authorities have seen a steady increase
in crypto related scams in 2018 the
denver police department said 21 people
reported being a victim in 2019 33
people 20 20 51 people and so far in
2021 63 people experts say there are
likely many more victims who never
report because of shame and
embarrassment
those who do go to police are in for a
rude awakening to say we lost 0.6
bitcoin you know like they see our
emotion and they see they hear the
higher hieroglyphics or things they
don't understand and it's in one ear and
out the other because there's a bank
robbery they got to get to most of these
locally reported scams are turned over
to the fbi's internet crime complaint
center or ic3 roman garcia was a special
agent to the unit for 12 years i have
never seen any resolution from ic3.gov
it's a great repository garcia says ic3
reports are primarily for data
collection not crime solving the bigger
agencies or entities that lose a lot of
money that's where all the effort goes
few victims ever hear back from the fbi
even the irs criminal investigation unit
admits it's a very difficult
situation to recover that that money
when it goes overseas but even worse
than losing her money that wasn't as bad
as
losing
trust in people still in her 20s the
clock is on her side to heal but for
people like belcher i'm on the last half
of my life so
being able to recover from this i don't
necessarily have time enough to recover
fully if i was going to leave anything
to my children i can forget about that
as you can imagine belcher is really
just going through it right now he says
he knows people are going to see this
story and think wow how did he fall for
something like that but as you saw the
scam is pretty elaborate convincing a
lot of victims to dish up their money
and that's exactly why belcher wanted to
do this story to raise awareness about
cryptocurrency romance scams for tips on
identifying scams like these and how to
avoid them visit thedenverchannel.com in
studio bayern wang denver 7.