So have you been a victim of a WhatsApp scam?

How Scams Start
How do these scams work? Well, typically what happens is a person online, maybe on social media, maybe on a dating app, maybe on an email app, will start talking to you about an investment that they made money on. They start by pointing out that they made a lot of money and sometimes they start out by showing a car that they bought, a vacation they went on. They’ll show off maybe them on a private jet, maybe they’ll show off some new clothes, and they’ll say, “Hey, I made a lot of money on this investment opportunity.”

Creating Interest and Curiosity
What they do is they try to get you as the victim to be curious and to be jealous and to be interested in how they made their money. Then they’ll start a conversation with you on an app like Instagram or WhatsApp or some other private channel for communications.

Introduction to the Fake Investment
Over time, you’re going to ask and they’re going to talk about this investment, and they’ll say, “Well, you know, the place is called XYZ Capital or ABC Crypto” or whatever the company is, and they’ll give you a website. This is where I made my money. They’re going to make it seem like it’s somebody different than them; it’s really them.

Small Initial Investment
Then you’re going to go to that website and they’re going to offer you opportunities to make money, and they’re going to offer you starting out with a very, very small amount—$500, $400, $1,000—some small dollar amount that’s very easy to say yes to where you’re not going to be suspicious at all. You’re not going to be cautious about sending them tens of thousands of dollars, sometimes it’s even $100.

False Returns and Escalating Asks
You’re going to send them the money, and they’re going to show you what looks like an account statement, just like you get from your bank, that shows your money doubled in a few weeks. Maybe you send them $500, and now there’s $900 there in a couple of weeks. They’re going to make it seem like you made all this money, and then they’re going to ask for more. They’ll say, “Well, you know if you have $9,900, if you have an account with $5,000 in it, it’ll double in one week, so you’ll have $10,000.” So you’ll send another $4,000.

Continued Deception
They’ll keep doing that and escalating the ask, escalating how much they want from you, usually on some communications channel like WhatsApp or Instagram or something where it’s a private channel. The next thing you know, you’ll have sent in a lot of money because they know exactly what to say, they know how to structure the communications and give you the right wording, and make you feel really good about sending them this money.

Realization and Attempts to Withdraw
The next thing you know, you might be in there for $40,000, $50,000, $100,000, $200,000. We had a client we talked to the other day with $400,000 they had sent in. At some point, you’re going to think, “Well, maybe I should take some money out, maybe I should cash in some of this, I could use this money,” or maybe you’re just suspicious and you want to get your money out. You’re going to ask for money back.

Tax Scam
Then what they’re going to do is they’re going to say, “Well, we’ll send your money back, but you have to pay tax on your profits.” They’ll come up with an amount. If you have, let’s say, $50,000 in there, they might say your taxes are $10,000, so pay us $10,000. Some people will actually do that; you may have done that.

Continued Deceit
If you tell them you don’t have the money, they might say, “Well, we’ll finance it for you or we’ll pay half your taxes. Your taxes are $10,000, we’ll pay half; you send us five.” They’re just going to say whatever they can to send in any money they can get because it’s all free money to them. Anything you send them is free money, it’s like a donation to them. The money’s not going for taxes, it’s not going for crypto, it’s not going for any investment; it’s just free income for them to take and spend on whatever they want.

Conclusion: Reporting and Recovery
They have many, many things they can tell you that sound legitimate to make you give them money, many things. They have all kinds of stories, I’m sure you’ve heard them. At the end of the day, you’ll at some point realize that you’re never going to get your money back. They took it all, it’s not real, the taxes aren’t real, the investment’s not real.

Next Steps
So what do you do? Well, at that point you have to look at what are your options. You want to report it to IC3, FBI, report it to local law enforcement, and then look at your options for asset recovery, for consultation, for asset searching, for fraud investigations. You can click the link below to get more information on those, but this gives you a description of what goes on behind the scenes at these crypto scams or at these WhatsApp scams that many people are finding themselves having fallen victim to.