A Cork woman has started a Gofundme to support her 81-year-old relative, who lost her life savings in an elaborate scam that began with a Bitcoin investment.
Fiona Chappell lives in West Cork, and first shared the devastating story of what happened to her relative on The Cork’s 96FM Opinion Line with PJ Coogan.
Having clicked an online advertisement and invested a couple of hundred euro in Bitcoin years ago, the woman had forgotten about her investment until she received a call from scammers a few months ago.
They told her she had made a significant return, and they needed her personal details in order to transfer the earnings to her bank account.
The fraudsters also convinced her to download software which allowed them to access her laptop remotely. They used this to show her that thousands of euro had been transferred into her credit union account.
Speaking to The Echo, Ms Chappell said that this earned the trust of her relative, who was “delighted with herself” to have made a profit on her small investment.
“They actually did transfer a very large amount of cash into her credit union… but she didn’t realise that the balance went out minutes after it had come in, and all of her savings went with it,” said Ms Chappell.
The woman lost all of her savings, just under €3,000, which was everything she had. The scammers set up a new bank account using her identity with an online banking provider. Two credit cards were issued for the account,…
