Social media is full of scammers promising guaranteed returns on investment, and consumers lost billions of dollars to them last year.
Troy Gochenour, 50, of Columbus, Ohio, was conned out of $25,800, including $15,800 in borrowed money, in a crypto-mining scam that began with a WhatsApp message from a beautiful stranger.
“I had just moved home to restart my life, after trying to make it in show business in New York, and I was lonely,” Gochenour said. “So I started online dating. Then I got a WhatsApp message that began, ‘Sorry to bother you.’”
Financial scams, including cryptocurrency schemes, cost consumers $3.8 billion last year just in the U.S., according to the Federal Trade Commission, twice as much as in 2021. Such scams are also a problem globally.
