Beware of beautiful persons offering investment advice

[Grumpy]

 The most widely used technique among these operations is known as pig butchering, an allusion to the practice of fattening up a hog before slaughtering it. The approach combines some time-tested elements of fraud — such as gaining trust, in the manner of a Ponzi scheme, by making it easy for marks to extract cash at first — with elements unique to the internet era. It relies on the effectiveness of relationships nurtured on social media and the ease with which currencies can be moved electronically.

Typically, fraudsters ingratiate themselves into online friendships or romantic relationships and then manipulate their targets into depositing larger and larger sums in investment platforms that are controlled by the fraudsters. Once the targets can’t or won’t deposit more, they lose access to their original funds. They’re then informed that the only way to retrieve their cash is by depositing even more money or paying a hefty fee. Needless to say, any additional funds disappear in similar fashion.

http://www.propublica.org/article/human-traffickers-force-victims-into-cyberscamming

[Trenchcoat]

There was a crypto scam that went around and probably still is. Articles would appear online stating the vast easy sums that could be made in crypto currency often using purportedly respected prominent people back it - in reality they didn't. Anyhow the article would direct the reader to a crypto trading website. The person would be asked to deposit a £200 - 300 ish to get going. Once staked on the trading platform the person's money would go up in value. This was then the motivation for them to 'inves' more money when asked if they wished to by the sites investment advisors. The investment advisors suggested that they invest a lot more which would likely reap big money for them. So often the person would be hoodwinked into investing thousands of £'s, $'s, etc. Then of course once the money was invested they would miraculously suffer a change in fortune with their investment going down and possibly massive fees added, etc. Long and short their money was swindled. The graphs/figures for the crypto being shown on screen were all fake, they were figures made up by the trading site and manipulated by them. They stated well known crypto, Bitcoin, etc but it was all bs figures. Some were swindled out of tens even hundreds of £,$, etc. Don't know if they ever got their money back. Apparently once the initial money was traded in the platform there was some clause where they couldn't take out the money etc where it went up before they got asked to invest much larger sums.

Obviously those buggered out of many thousands were distraught as they were refusing to give much needed money back that were life savings or saved for retirement, mortgage, etc this that and the other. Kind of a pretty nasty thing to do to people I thought when I heard about it. So e of the comments I read by those conned out of a lot of money you could tell were really distressed so must have been an awful situation for them to have to suffer. How do e people can put others through that and sleep at night I don't know.