A Morley great-grandmother has been scammed out of nearly $150,000 after she was conned through an elaborate cryptocurrency scheme.
Dale Hambrook, 73, said she was lured in by a fake email that spruiked a well-known television personality, David ‘Kochie’ Koch. Ms Hambrook has been left devastated.
“[I feel] stupid . . . for not being a wake-up and I wish it could all go away,” she told 7News.
The 73-year-old great-grandmother has lost her entire life savings.
Her hellish nightmare started back in June when she received an email from an unknown person.
“[I] got an email about Kochie investing in bitcoin and was doing very well with it and thought it’d be a good opportunity to make a few extra dollars so I could have some eye surgery to cover the out of pocket,” she said.
Ms Hambrook then clicked on a link in the article and signed up for the trading scheme.
The scam started off small with just a few hundred dollars, before growing bigger and bigger and entering the thousands.
“There was seven and a half thousand and then the next one was 10, there was a couple of 15 and then it just did all that until I said I’ve got no more money,” she said.
It was only when the 73-year-old asked to get some of her money back that she realised something was wrong.
“The contact stopped,” she said.
But it wasn’t just the great-grandmother who was fooled.
Her granddaughter Rachel Wilks said the sophisticated scammers even fooled her.
“There’s reviews, there’s people…
