INVESTMENT SCAMS ARE EVERYWHERE ON SOCIAL MEDIA. HERE'S HOW TO SPOT ONE

Social media is full of scammers promising guaranteed returns on investment, and consumers lost billions of dollars to them last year

Troy Gochenour, 50, of Columbus, Ohio, was conned out of $25,800, including $15,800 in borrowed money, in a crypto-mining scam that began with a WhatsApp message from a beautiful stranger.

"I had just moved home to restart my life, after trying to make it in show business in New York, and I was lonely," Gochenour said. "So I started online dating. Then I got a WhatsApp message that began, ‘Sorry to bother you.’”

Financial scams, including cryptocurrency schemes, cost consumers $3.8 billion last year just in the U.S., according to the Federal Trade Commission, twice as much as in 2021. Such scams are also a problem globally.

Those who work in the space, including the FTC and Better Business Bureau, say the speed and convenience of the internet, the rise of online payment platforms and apps, and the spread of financial misinformation have all contributed to the increase. They also cite pandemic-era isolation and loneliness.

In Gochenour’s case, he spent several weeks messaging with someone who seemed romantically interested in him before she brought up “liquidity mining.”

Though he’d been a crypto skeptic, he eventually began following her advice and instructions. Scammers like Gochenour’s have become skilled at setting up sites that convincingly look like legitimate cryptocurrency companies, and Gochenour was taken in. After he set up a crypto wallet, it appeared that the money he transferred there was growing just the way his scammer said it would.

“I was hooked on this person,” he said. “And at first it looked like it was working. She said, ‘We could be together, you and I, and make all this money.’”