Bitcoin Forum

BBC reported that a 75-year-old woman is warning others of the dangers of an online scam that has cost her her life savings. She lost 11K EURO!! You can see the news from here, https://www.bbc.com/news/amp/uk-england-devon-51205126

Guys, don’t think too much to spend 100-150 USD, buy a hardware wallet right now! You are not safe in any online wallet by 100 percent! 

From the article: "Frances Foster, from Plymouth, lost £11,000 to a bogus Bitcoin company she saw promising high returns."

To be fair, even if she had the safest hardware wallet in the entire world, she would have still be scammed as she sent the money voluntarily. Heck, the article didn't even mention anything about her holding or sending in bitcoin. Probably read the article first?

Yeah, I get the impression that at no point was any bitcoin actually involved.

In my earlier crypto days I did the same thing. Was so embarrassing, felt so stupid immediately after I fell for it. I'm a very computer savvy, but greed overrode my sense of "this is a scam". I sent like 1.5 BTC to the scammer though. This was back when BTC was around $750, so it was less USD-wise, but it sure would be nice to have that 1.5 BTC, plus all the forks, now. Honestly, I learned a lot that day, and I'm sure we learned a lot today. stay vigilant out here. Everyone makes dumb mistakes in Crypto, it's all part of the learning experience.

I mean, yes, web wallets are terrible, but as pointed out above, even an airgapped wallet makes no difference if you are voluntarily sending your coins to a scammer.

The site was called "LTC Markets", so was presumably actually advertising Litecoin rather than Bitcoin? And no bitcoin was involved - she made transfers from her bank. Calling it "Bitcoin fraud" is a bit of a stretch to say the least. Are the BBC usually this poor?

i am not sure how hardware wallets are related to this incident since it was a personal mistake and was about trusting random websites with pretty designs.
but i have to say, hardware  wallet is not the only way to go. basically people need to learn how bitcoin works and how to secure their private keys. this is mainly about cold storage and HWs are for special cases where people want to keep accessing their coins and mainly carry it around or maybe connect it to a system that may be compromised and use their coins.

LTC-Markets apparently offered accounts that invested in BTC and/or ETH and/or LTC, offering hourly returns of up to 85% … I mean which old grandmother can resist a call from them right?

Their site does not even seem to be online now, and the following link bears some testimonials to similar cases at the same place: https://www.forexbrokerz.com/brokers/ltc-markets-review

They probably never even had any crypto at any point in time - likely just fake ledger balance sheets.

honestly this is just sad to see. I hate scams who prey on the weak and poor. This old grandma probably did not know much about BTC and since she is an elder was tricked easily. I really do not understand some people, how can they be so soulless and evil to scam like this. Honestly, 11k pounds is not that much, but still not good.

She invested in an obvious scam. Hardwares are certainly worth it though if you care about the money you are holding.

I am not sure if the coin was stolen from her wallet. I think she voluntarily gave the it to the firm.
Wish the bbc site listed the name of the scam company/site... that will probably help readers  understand the nature of scam. Besides, the site where the woman found the scam site advertisement shouldn't have allowed the ad in the first place.

what is related to hardware wallet with this news. If you invest your own money then what will do online wallet or hardware wallet?  He invested his money in scam sites and he lost his money.In this case there is no issue about using wallet. Better peoples should know which is scam and which is legit.       

Hackers' tactics and abilities must evolve over time so they keep up with the innovations in the antivirus and protection software. If we don't remain updated about the latest practices and don't make the minimum necessary effort to keep our belongings safe then we shouldn't be suprised if we lose them. The world is full of mischievous people and some will attempt to steal from us one way or another. Be safe out there!

Hey OP, your post makes no sense. She invested in a scam, and that is the reason she lost her savings. When I first saw the title of the thread, I though someone had hacked the poor lady's online wallet and stole all her coins. But that is not the case. She willingly sent all her coins to some criminal and now there is no way to recover them. And a hardware wallet would have made no difference in this case.

I feel sad that so many people are getting scammed where Bitcoin is concerned. It is not the fault though of Bitcoin. These online scams existed well before Bitcoin came out but the only thing that has changed now is the scammers using Bitcoin instead of Fiat, to generate scams and create fake sites. Also, people want to make fast money without working, which is a passive income source, and too many scammers get into this niche to steal from unsuspecting people.  I think many of us here have been victims of either phishing sites, passive income scams or hackers. If not all three of these, at least from one of these nasty elements that plague this niche, or the earn money online niche at large. The scammers prey on all of us, all the time, we need to be more vigilant. Just don't invest in HYIP scams period.

As always, bitcoin being the evil in here when clearly it is the naivety of those involved are to be blamed. As the saying goes, if something is too good to be true, it certainly is. Greed certainly urged the old lady to bite at the offer without thinking about it, more so about considering the fact that it could be a fraud all in all. We all know that these types of scams target the elderly for the most part so why not take extra caution about it?

Even if the lady has the latest and greatest hardware wallet, if she initiated the transaction, there's no turning back from that one. Welp, a hefty sum to be charged on 'experience' I'd say.

Indeed a hardware wallet has nothing to do with anything if you willingly send your funds to a scammer.

Actually you have to re-evaluate what the meaning of a hardware wallet is, do you think its "protection"? Think again. A hardware wallet should be used for small amounts, instead of your smartphone or pc, that's it. Long term holding should be done in a cold wallet, and a seed word phrase (which you also make with a hardware wallet) is enough.

Do not use a hardware wallet to store large amounts, that defeats its purpose. Think of it, buy and save? So instead of seed words, you have seed words, password, 2fa? whatever. This was intended for daily use small purchases, so you could just use a password instead.

A cold wallet does not need a physical device, but you always need your seed word phrase to access it in the future or just in case the thing breaks on its own. Normally you just make a wallet and destroy it afterwards in a PC. Why are you wasting a hardware wallet for that? Any piece of paper works, well and the public address if you want to keep sending funds to it.

What is easier to protect, the seed words, or the seed words + password + 2fa + whatever? If anything, the wallet allows more vectors for accessing your funds. So rather than 1, you have to be mindful of 4. Don't even think for a moment that a hardware wallet is replacement for seed words, if you do not make your seed words phrase, you are simply begging to lose your funds, if your device fail or if you lose its password whatever.

You know why people should keep their savings in a piece of paper? Because its precisely annoying to move them. The small change should go into your "hot" wallet, software or hardware only changes the security of the hot wallet, especially if you are unable to use a secure os / smartphone, it is a perfectly valid alternative. But a hardware wallet should not be used as a cold wallet, you can, but that's not unlike using a laptop unplugged stored somewhere like a bank vault or such. No, its not giving you "extra" security, unplugged is unplugged, be it a laptop, a gadget or a piece or paper.

If all you want is a password to access your words, any thumbdrive works, just encrypt a text file. But then you risk if the flash ram gets damaged to lose your funds forever. Not a smart long term plan, same issue as using a hardware wallet or laptop.

When I have read the article declares "Bitcoin company"; okay here we go again. Another scampany.

She probably have invested to a HYIP because the returns made her encourage to invest there. Sorry for the experience that she had with her life savings but she really has to research first before investing.

from the news it is very clear that it is not a matter of a hard wallet or online wallet, look at him investing in a fake bitcoin company, even if he uses a hard wallet he will still be fooled because he has sent it to another wallet, So the news warns about online fraud sites not about online wallets.

That's correct. there is no defense against human negligence. People lost bitcoin due to there own mistakes and blame bitcoin that its not secure. If you investing in crypto market then you have to be careful against scam projects, its not bitcoin responsibility.

Unfortunately it's way easier for older people to fall victims of such scams.
In my country,there are lots of phone call scammers,threatening old people to just send them money,or they will kill a member of their families.In this case,we are talking about a classical HYIP scam and no person with decent internet skills and knowledge about cryptocurrencies call be trapped into this shit.

Classic scammers. They always target elderly people who doesn't have much idea about the current generation. Doesn't she have anyone that takes care of her? Like jeez, 11,000 pounds is a lot of money in my country standard. The worst part here is that she probably doesn't even know what cryptocurrency is, all she know is that, invest, wait, profit which is a too good to be true with returns as high as this.

Well I pity the old lady, but if you have to look at it, she was defrauded or scam by someone. She was called upon by the scammers and she fall for the trap. It's not Bitcoin fault per se, it still up to the people or individual who are holding their coins.

I agree that a hardware wallet is a good investment, but for beginners, you should be very careful of your assets and don't believed everything you read or hear. And there are a lot of cyber criminals in this crypto-space, that's whey we need to be very vigilant and use our common sense here.

You nailed it. Though I really sympathize with the victim, we have to understand that this is just a common fraud actually -- bogus investment company luring victims to deposit money into the account of the company hoping that the high ROI or profit can be flowing soon indefinitely but things are not as they are supposed to be because there is no investment firm in the first place.

"After first paying £250, she went on to make thousands of pounds in further payments."  (https://www.bbc.com/news/amp/uk-england-devon-51205126)

Yeah, there is no mention of Bitcoin or any cryptocurrency in here so maybe the article is just assuming that the transactions took place using Bitcoin. And even if it did, this has nothing to do with Bitcoin at all in the same manner that if the victim is using the dollar I think nobody will ever call it as a Dollar Scam, would they?

The takeaway here is to be careful with whom and what you are dealing with online, offline or wherever you can be because we are living in a real world where scammers are just waiting to give us a big punch. And yeah, it does not matter if one is using a hardware wallet or not.

We should even call it as MSN Scam since they allowed the advertisement of this program on their site without doing a good verification if what LTC Markets is offering can be real and not just another fraud scheme.  

She sent £11,000, but not in Bitcoins. The scam was made only using the name of Bitcoin, telling that it produces high returns. Basically, the woman was just blinded by greed to making more out of her savings.

The internet is a dangerous place especially for those who don't know about these type of gimmicks, especially on advertisements. Especially the elderly, they think that everthing on the internet is legitimate.

I dont know why people connect these scams with cryptocurrencies.? There are lots of scams like these everywhere where people fall for their greed and invest their money to make it double or something like that. Buying a hardware wallet is suggested but if you are going to invest by your own then what is the use of it.?

It's not about the wallet. It's about the trust you give to a stranger. Obviously she was scammed because she saw a high promising return which is in the very first place is kind of suspicious. Ms Forster is already 75 years old and looking at it, she's vulnerable for scams. At her age, maybe she doesn't have enough knowledge with technology that's why she got scammed easily. She easily trust a bogus company and send them a big amount of money without doing background research or consulting her family.

This is more or less what the Plustoken scam was in China. Most of us never heard of it but apparently they had people promoting it on the streets of China. They would have seminars how regular people can open up a Huobi account and fund it with CNY and then buy some bitcoins. Then those bitcoins would be used to buy the PlusToken scam.

Reason why it was succesful because the people at the beginning actually made good profit. Someone would send $100 and get back $200 in a few days. Then they would send $500 and get back $1000. Then they moved onto life savings like $50,000 and told all their friends about it and the unlucky ones would get stuck holding the worthless tokens. This is why you got warning everywhere telling you to stay away from HYIP.

Articles like these ruin bitcoins name in front of the people. People like these in the media are really a shame since they give a bad name to bitcoin.
It's the people's mistakes that they are not aware of such scams. People invest money without doing a proper research just to satisfy their greed and eventually get scammed.
Bitcoin has nothing to do with all this bulltshit. Media is sometimes just too overwhelmed because of bitcoin's fame.

I'm not sure if yours makes any either. Your post is just another way of saying what has already been said above you.

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The keyword here is "high returns." Any site, person, company, organization, email, ads, and so on offering "high returns" should be scrutinized down to the last and smallest detail if possible. Because it is most likely just a bait.

These days a lot of bank scams also happing. If people are not up to date with the technology or at least vigilant then they can be easily targeted for these kinds of scams. It's nothing to do with bitcoin or cryptocurrencies but it is completely people's negligence or wants to make easy and fast money so they believe these scam programs and invest their hard-earned money.

Yes, these kinds of articles from the reputed news channels give a bad image to bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.

A lot of people in this thread is right, it is no matter where we save our bitcoin in wallet. Because that kind of scam ask us to give them our money and then getaway with it. it is all depends on us how we protect our investment and not trapped to scam or anything that really danger our money like Ponzi or maybe MLM scheme.

The article stated that the person lost the coin not because of hacking, so I thought this news was not related to online or offline wallets, but he lost the coin because of his own mistake, who quickly believed when he heard the big advantage that he was tempted to send some of his coins to fake bitcoin company by expecting lots of returns.

People nowadays keep losing their funds and assets because of their own stupidity and end up blaming bitcoin when we can clearly see that they are also the reason why it happened. It's because they keep on risking their own money, actually it's not about the wallet. It depends on how you will protect your own funds from scammers and hackers. If you are wise enough then you will definitely think the possibilities before giving your money, you don't even have an assurance that it's legit and that your funds will grow.  You can't just expect people to be nice after seeing that your giving them an opportunity to take advantage of you that's why people also need to change their way of thinking. They need to be aware that scammers will make them believe to their promises and when they finally get the benefits they wanted from you then they will leave you with nothing, don't let yourself get fooled by their sweet lies.

she's stuck in a fraudulent business network, it's common for someone who overly believes in too attractive offers. Using hardwallets will also remain the same, because it sticks to personal trust. If this article was published in crypto media, the narration would certainly not be too tendentious like that and more about how to make better investments independently.

I don't think this is a wallet problem, but it is purely the woman's fault that is tempted by the lure of huge profits / returns, this is clearly a business fraud that seems to have happened a long time ago. The point is the lack of understanding of crypto, and no hacking here. online wallet or hardware wallet for me is the same, it all depends on how we protect our assets.

this is the importance of education before discussing the material.
he made a fatal mistake because of his greedy and unrealistic.
there are still many who know bitcoin because there are many websites that promise definite benefits even though it is just a fraud.

This is not about getting security for your crypto asset but someone engaging in a rapid Ponzi scheme that promises in doubling her investment. These are the kind of people who are very eager to make huge money without doing a background checks on the person or what they are investing. in 2013, during the period in which HYIP is witnessing huge participants, I also participated but it did not take me much time before I realize that all will end up being a scam. How will someone offer to pay 100% of your investment within 30 days? Even Banks will not give you a 50% interest in one year. The major drawback is the effect it has on the payment processor. We all know what happened to Liberty reserve and hyip is doing the same damage to cryptocurrency by making it look like a dirty.