One Ohio couple was nearly tricked out of $17,000 — before a Chase Bank manager in Westlake stepped in and foiled the scammer’s plan.
The bank manager became suspicious and alerted police when the couple tried to withdraw the cash to pay for what they thought was a warrant from the Cuyahoga County Sheriff’s Office.
“The customers did figure out they were going to be scammed if they took this money out and bought gift cards or put it into a crypto ATM,” Captain Jerry Vogel of the Westlake Police Department told News 5 Cleveland in a story published March 28.
It seems this type of scam isn’t a rare occurrence. The local broadcaster reports two more instances of fraud involving cryptocurrency machines have occurred recently in Westlake. Victims in those cases lost more than $25,000.
Here’s what happened, along with steps to protect yourself from being victimized.
In one incident, the scammer posed as a Microsoft customer support representative after the victim called a phone number she found while doing a Google search. This is referred to as “search engine poisoning,” where cybercriminals manipulate search engine results so a malicious website (which looks legitimate) appears at the top of the page.
Vogel says the victim was tricked into giving the fake employee access to her computer and was scared into thinking she had visited illegal websites that were trying to steal her money. She was instructed to withdraw $40,000 from her bank and deposit it into a gas station Bitcoin ATM to protect her funds. An attendant took notice and warned her it was a scam, according to News 5, but not before she lost $20,000.
In another incident, police say the victim got a call from what he thought was the Social Security Administration directing him to deposit $5,500 in a Bitcoin ATM at a convenience store. The owner of the shop told News 5 they planned to remove the machine.
“I just advise you to be very wary of anything that directs you to buy gift cards or put cash into an ATM,” Vogel said. “Especially the cryptocurrency ATMs.”
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