Hatim Mursi says he had an entire life’s savings stolen in a cryptocurrency investment scam, more than a half-million dollars.
He says the funds are ”completely, completely, completely gone.” At first, the person referred him to legitimate trading platforms where Mursi said he decided to open an account.
“She started sharing with me links to this new company,” Mursi said.
“That’s the only website where you can actually purchase that coin,” Mursi said.
In order to buy this supposed new coin, Mursi said he needed to fund the website’s virtual wallet with other cryptocurrencies.
So he purchased Tether, a well-known crypto coin, from Binance.US, a legitimate trading platform, and transferred the funds to the new site.
Mursi then started moving over thousands of dollars worth of cryptocurrency after that.
The Federal Trade Commission says from October 2020 to March of this year, there were 12 times the number of crypto investment scams reported compared to the same period the year before.
“We’ve seen a lot of these types of cryptocurrency scams start on social media,” explained Christopher Leach, a staff attorney for the FTC.
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