DENVER — It appeared as if retirement would come early for 52-year-old Denverite Steve Belcher, but the millions he thought he made in November by investing in cryptocurrency turned out to be a lie.
Belcher would be one of the thousands who’d fall to a new cryptocurrency scam, which has recently been sweeping through the United States, according to the FBI.
“I always thought ‘I’ll never fall for something like that,'” Belcher said in an exclusive interview with Denver7.
But just a few months after moving to Denver to be closer to his children, Belcher would fall for a woman on a dating app.
If only he knew…
“I met Shikuka Suzuki, who also lived in Denver, and was interested in a lot of the same things,” Belcher said.
The two clicked instantly, messaging for several weeks, but never meeting in person. Eventually, they’d talk about cryptocurrency, a decentralized currency with a widely fluctuating value that reached more than $3 trillion at one point in 2021.
“I missed out on Google, I missed out on Apple, so I didn’t want to miss out on this trend,” Belcher said.
Belcher has made about $70,000 in the few years he’s been invested in cryptocurrency, and he said Suzuki told him she, too, has made a mint.
“The conversation led to she invests on this platform that has both a mobile app and a web app that she directed me to go sign up for my own account,” Belcher said.
Belcher, the software engineer himself, signed up and everything checked out.
“I registered and it looked…
