When Irene Gee received a direct message on Instagram from her chihuahua’s groomer last month claiming a bitcoin mining opportunity earned him over $13,000 from a mere $700 investment, she was eager to get on board. After all, she knew him, he presented photos of the deposits to his bank account as proof — and, anecdotally, she’d heard countless stories about people making money on crypto.
He ultimately directed her to wire over $7,700 across four transactions addressed to a woman named Tricia who he claimed was his “mentor” — one to the mobile payment service Cash App, another to Venmo, and two to Zelle. He told Gee the more she invested, the more she would get back.
But Gee, 44, never got paid and the person requesting the payments turned out to be a thief who hacked her groomer’s account.
Gee and two other Instagram users share with Yahoo Finance their experience dealing with an elaborate money-flipping scam running rampant on Meta’s (FB) popular social networking platform in which fraudsters take over an account and masquerade as the user to target friends and family, soliciting cash transfers by promoting a fake investment opportunity. Once hackers receive payment, they hold their victims’ payments hostage and blackmail them into filming a video endorsing the scam by promising their funds will be returned. The scammers use the videos to target individuals who know the original victim personally.
Users at the center of such scams said requests for help…
