A resident of Wheat Ridge was swindled out of approximately $16,000 due to a scam involving PayPal and cryptocurrency, leveraging her use of a PayPal account.
Initially hesitant to seek help or disclose her experience due to embarrassment, the individual was ultimately ensnared by a scheme that appeared very persuasive. Detective Reyna Johnson from the Wheat Ridge Police highlighted the incident, emphasizing the clever tactics employed by the fraudsters.
According to reports from the FTC, there was a significant sum of money lost to scams in Colorado last year, totaling around $164 million. The Wheat Ridge Police shared details about a deceptive invoice sent to the victim via email, which was disguised to look like it was from PayPal. However, the invoice originated from a Google email account, marking the first sign of a scam.
Detective Johnson pointed out that the victim did contact a phone number provided on the fake invoice, believing it to be a legitimate PayPal hotline. The person on the other end offered convincing and friendly assistance, further misleading the victim.
A major cautionary flag was the phone number on the invoice itself, which Johnson advises should always be cross-verified with the official contact information found on the genuine company website.
The scam progressed with the victim being instructed to make payments through a series of phone calls and messages, eventually leading her to deposit a total of $16,000. She was directed to make these deposits at an ATM, under strict instructions to keep the transactions confidential, even from her bank.
The deposits were made into a bitcoin or Coinme kiosk, common in the metro area but dubious because they do not provide a legitimate Bitcoin wallet address for the transaction. Instead, they operate through a phone number that receives a code for the transaction, a method Detective Johnson criticized for its lack of transparency and legitimate purpose.
Unfortunately, the victim’s bank denied reimbursement, reasoning that the withdrawals were made voluntarily. Authorities are now attempting to trace the scammer through the phone numbers used during the scam.
The incident is part of a growing trend of cryptocurrency-related frauds, with the Parker Police Department also reporting a significant rise in such scams, amounting to over $800,000 in losses reported in just the past six months.
