71-year-old scammed into depositing $30k into foreign Bitcoin account

DUNDEE, Michi­gan (WTVG) — Inter­net scams can hap­pen any­where, even in a small town.

Police in Dundee, MI, say a 71-year-old man recent­ly fell vic­tim to a con that’s mak­ing the rounds in our area. It start­ed with a pop-up on the inter­net claim­ing to be from the man’s bank. The mes­sage gave him a num­ber to call.

The scam­mer then told the man his bank account was hacked, and that he need­ed to trans­fer out his mon­ey and con­vert it to Bit­coin to keep it safe.

“So, he was asked to get out $15,000 two days in a row to basi­cal­ly emp­ty out his sav­ings account. He fol­lowed direc­tions to go to a bit­coin machine in Dear­born, MI, where he deposit­ed mon­ey over two days, and he was even warned by the scam­mer, ‘If the bank asks you what you’re doing, tell them you’re mak­ing some home repairs.’ Because they’re telling him that a bank employ­ee is actu­al­ly involved with the hack­ing of his infor­ma­tion,” explained Act­ing Dundee Police Chief Lieu­tenant Randy Sehl.

Lt. Sehl said once that mon­ey was deposit­ed in the for­eign account, it was con­vert­ed into dig­i­tal cur­ren­cy. That made the cash in the machine obso­lete and off-limits.

“We asked why we couldn’t get the mon­ey out of the machine. Actu­al­ly, that’s just an avenue for the mon­ey to go across seas. It’s all elec­tron­i­cal­ly trans­ferred once it’s put in there. It’s not real­ly the machine or the own­er of the machine’s respon­si­bil­i­ty for that because the crime had already hap­pened. So, we’re work­ing all avenues to try to get the mon­ey back, but it’s not look­ing good right now,” said Lt. Sehl.

Dundee Police are work­ing with Home­land Secu­ri­ty and the F.B.I. on the case. Mean­time, they’re spread­ing the word so no one else falls victim.

See a spelling or gram­mar error in our sto­ry? Please include the title when you click here to report it.

Copy­right 2023 WTVG. All rights reserved.