Tragic Story of Online Scam
Here’s another tragic story about a person who lost a large amount of money to an online scam. These Pig butchering scams are becoming rampant around the country, and this person lost his life savings, $272,000. He calls it financial assault, and we’ll talk a little bit about how these scammers are getting caught here a little bit later in the video. But first, uh, consider the fact that these people who are victims are pretty sophisticated individuals. They’re not stupid; they’re not dumb with what they’re doing.

Sophisticated Scammers
The scammers know exactly what to say. They know exactly how to craft their emails, their text messages. A lot of times, they use WhatsApp or Telegram; they don’t use normal channels. They prey on the emotions of a person, whether it’s greed for higher returns or guilt or threats or whatever they use. They are very sophisticated with the psychology, so don’t feel bad if you’re a victim. Also, if you are worried about somebody in your family or yourself becoming a victim, just make sure you don’t send any money to any place that is suspicious. You need to be very cautious. These scammers know exactly what to say and how to make it seem like they’re legitimate, so you don’t want to send money for an investment where you’re not verifying the actual.

Verifying Investment Information
The identity of the person you have—want to make sure you get license numbers for their registration with the Securities and Exchange Commission if they’re an investment adviser. If they’re a bank, you want to verify that. You don’t want to just take their word for some corporate number or just take their word for it. Every piece of information you want to verify yourself separately from what they tell you.

Accountability of Scammers
So, the other question we get a lot is, do these people get caught? Well, here’s a perfect example. Um, there’s a crypto scammer who did one of these schemes. His name is David Kagel. Allegedly, he was ordered to pay $14 million because he was running one of these schemes. So these scammers do get caught; we investigate them all the time, and we find that they’re discovered and busted by the government. They’re busted by the financial institutions; they have to pay restitution; they have to give money back.

Steps to Take as a Victim
This person had to pay back $14 million, and he was 86 years old, this scammer. So they come in all flavors, but they know how to push your buttons to get you to send money. So if you become a victim, make sure you check out our website, activeintel.com. We have all the instructions for how to proceed with a fraud claim, also where to file it with the SEC, with the FBI, with IC3, to make sure you’re on the victim’s list and also what steps you can take to do an investigation if you want to try to get recovery of your lost funds.