DAMN, DOUBLE HOMICIDE

B**CH!!!

Hello fellow readers, I hope you are all keeping well and your 2022 has got off to a good start. Mine has definitely started with a BANG 🙃I would like to tell you an interesting story which happened recently but I would also like to raise awareness to an incident which just took place and make those of you out there who may be a bit naïve like me alert to the twists and turns of the scam world.

I’m sure most of you just like me made goals for the new year and one of mine was to begin to understand the crypto world more and hopefully start trading at some point in the year. Let’s rewind back to January 18th 2022. I received a DM on Instagram from my old hairdresser. I haven’t seen nor spoken to her since 2017, but I still have her on quite a few of my social media platforms. Although I haven’t spoken to this person for a while, I would like to say I trust this person and their character. So as I mentioned, I received this DM and when I opened it, my old hairdresser let’s call her ‘A’ said to me that she recently made an investment in crypto and received a huge return and she has found someone who is trustworthy who she would like to recommend as they can advise me on how to trade. This person would be able to support me and eventually I will be able to trade myself. If anything I was excited, as I thought a fantastic opportunity had fallen on my lap.

I proceeded to follow the trader that ‘A’ had mentioned as their page was on private. They accepted really quickly and DM’d me asking if I was interested in trading. I said I was and that I had been recommended but I needed guidance as this was my first time. The trader, let’s call her ‘J’ was really friendly and said it wasn’t a problem. ‘J’ then asked for my email address and said that this was needed to send some information about how to trade in Bitcoin and that I also needed to go in to my settings on Instagram and change my email address to her email so that our accounts can be interlinked and she can set me up with some crypto money. As instructed, I did all that ‘J’ asked me to do. I was then told to download trust wallet. For those of you who don’t know, trust wallet is a crypto wallet. You can send, receive and store Bitcoin and many other cryptocurrencies. ‘J’ then sent me a code to put in trust wallet and about $233,795.14 appeared. I was told that this wasn’t actual money but it was raw crypto money and I would need to mine it before I can make a return. If I’m honest, I had no idea what she meant by mining the crypto but she said she would explain once I had downloaded the bitcoin app. After downloading the bitcoin app, J told me that I needed to buy 2000 bitcoin and then I would be able to receive my profit. A friend of mine who is a forex trader was on the phone to me whilst I was communicating with J on Instagram and he advised me to download Coinbase to see how much money I would need to buy 2000 crypto. It turned out that I would need to spend £1,500 of my money to receive 2000 bitcoin. At this point, I messaged ‘J’ and said that I wouldn’t be able to go on further as I had no money. This was on Monday January 24th. The next day on Tuesday January 25th, ‘J’ messaged asking if I was still interested as she didn’t hear back from me. I said that I had messaged the day before explaining my situation and I wouldn’t be able to continue. ‘J’ then said that I shouldn’t worry and asked if I was free for a call on Google Hangouts. I ignored the message as I was busy at work. I then saw a follow up message with ???. I ignored that message also, as I had some tasks to complete at work. This all took place around 2pm. I got home around 5pm and opened my Instagram app and it popped up with a message saying that I had been locked out of my account…

I couldn’t understand how I had been locked out when two hours prior it was fine and I was logged in. I clicked on forgot password but that didn’t work, I also tried to verify myself but that didn’t work. I then opened up the email account which is linked to my Instagram account and I saw that I had received an email from Instagram saying that my email had been changed. The email address which it had been changed to had the number 24 in it and in ‘J’’s Instagram bio it had an email address which had the number 24 in it so of course I put two and two together. So that was it I had lost my Instagram account. Now I’m not so bothered about losing the account but what I would say is that my account is public and some of my friends have sent me personal information and pictures in my DMs before and ‘J’ having access to all of this bothers me.

I already had a second Instagram account which I kept as a back-up or maybe I just like to pree 😂 but I then used my second account to keep an eye on my account which had been hacked to see what ‘J’ would do. It’s been 4 days and ‘J’ did nothing until today, January 29th. There are now posts on my Instagram page about me receiving a direct deposit of £10,000 in to my cash app. The frustrating part is I don’t want people falling for this too. I have now tried to contact as many people as I can from my new page telling them to block the page as it’s been hacked. Such an absolute nightmare!

Do you feel sorry for me? Don’t just yet, it get’s worse!

Ok, so let’s continue from Tuesday. I lost my Instagram account and that was that. On Thursday January 27th, I was at work and I was on a break. I received a phone call around 11am and it was an automated voice message which said that it was the Crown Court calling me. I froze because if someone has committed a small crime it goes to the magistrates court, but if someone has committed a large crime it goes to the crown court. Well what crime have I committed? I am a law abiding citizen, well these days anyway 🙂 that was a joke guys! Anyway, the call said to press 0 to continue so I did. A gentleman then came on the phone and introduced himself as Officer William. He said that I was being contacted because my name has been flagged up as someone who is money laundering and my national insurance number has been used to open up 19 bank accounts. He then said that he would need to issue me with a case number, and an arrest warrant number because this could mean I could face prison time even if it wasn’t me.

Guys, at this point I looked like this…

So I’m really going to prison over Bitcoin? So ‘J’ has put me in trouble with the law over BITCOIN?!?!? like B**CH are you serious right now! Officer Williams and I spent about 45 minutes on the phone and he asked a lot of questions, some of these questions included information about my bank cards. If I’m honest I was just so shocked by everything, I don’t remember what I said on the phone and that is a huge issue. Towards the end of the conversation, Officer Williams said that he would need to speak with his manager about my case as it was very complex and then he would inform me on the next steps. He gave me his officer batch ID number and said that he would give me a call on Friday January 28th at 1:30pm to give me an update.

I currently have a lot of other personal business happening in my life so having this was adding more pepper to the soup and ion need dat!

It gets to Friday 1:30pm and I haven’t received a call. I then wait till almost 2pm and still no call comes through. I then decided to call the crown court and ask for Officer Williams. The lady I spoke with on the phone took down my case number and said to me that this wasn’t a case that was registered and there was also no arrest warrant which had my name on it. The lady also said that if the person I spoke with said they were an officer, they would be a police officer and although officers work out of the court, they do not use the court’s facilities and therefore I wouldn’t have received a call from a police officer. The lady then advised that I call the police and find out who this officer is.

I then spoke with a receptionist at the police department and he said that he didn’t know Officer William and he looked up the batch number which I was given in the system and nothing came up for this officer. At this point I was like…

The receptionist then said to me, I’m really sorry to say this but I think you have been scammed twice in one week. Guys, it was actually a double homicide! How crazy is it that I would receive two separate scams days apart. I was then advised to speak with the action fraud team so they can look in to the case further and investigate. After providing all of the details of what happened, I was given a criminal reference number and this is to protect me if ever someone who has my details tries to use my identity for fraud in the future.

What an exhausting week huh? I really feel like this month has been one year.

I wanted to share this story to raise awareness of scams and also to share some tips on how you can PROTECT yourself from the evil powers out there.

How do you stop yourself from being scammed?

1. Don’t trust anyone on social media. You can’t assume that the person behind the account is the person. If someone that you know messages you on social media directing you to something or asking you to do something always text or even phone that person and check that it’s actually them before going ahead with it.
2. Do not give out any personal information to strangers, not even your email address like I did. I’ll be honest I have been scammed before but it was a bank scam where they were asking for my bank details. I’ve never been asked for my email address and even I didn’t know that you could gather so much information from an old email address that was barely in use.
3. If you see any strange activity on a friend’s account or someone you know, block that account immediately and report it.
4. Use Two-Factor Authentication on all your social apps. If you don’t know what that is please Google it. This includes WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Email, LinkedIn etc this means that when hackers try you, they are going to have to endure a much harder process to get your account.
5. Don’t fall for phone calls from legitimate companies. Scammers can impersonate Royal Mail, HMRC, Court, Police, Banks and so many other recognisable organisations. If you receive a call or email from an organisation about anything, even if it involves you potentially facing jail time, say to the person that you will call the company yourself and check everything and cut the call.
6. Don’t be pressured in to acting too quickly. If someone contacts you and wants you to do something immediately DON’T.

Those are my 6 tips to protecting yourself from scammers. There is a lot more information out there on how to protect yourself as there are door scams, relationship scams, investment scams, mail scams, email scams, phone scams just to name a few. Social media scams have definitely been more on the rise and this is why we all have to protect ourselves.

How has this experience made me feel?

I now feel as though I have to be on extreme HIGH alert with everything I do. This was a huge lesson to be learnt and really was an emotional rollercoaster for me. I haven’t been put off Bitcoin or trading at all because I know that is real and that wasn’t the issue here. It was putting my trust in someone I don’t know which was the issue and that is something I will NEVER do again.

Anyway, we move and I’m going to put this behind me.

See y’all in the next article :)

Love Boohema

xxx