Jill, 75, has lost huge sums of money after being taken in by a convincing fraud on Facebook featuring faked quotes from trusted entrepreneur Deborah Meaden, of Dragons’ Den fame
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A 75-year-old woman has lost more than £30,000 to a cryptocurrency scam featuring faked quotes from Dragons’ Den star Deborah Meaden.
The case highlights how social media sites and search engines are not protecting Brits from scams, according to Which?, the consumer watchdog.
Jill, 75, is a retired psychotherapist living in Cambridgeshire.
In 2020 she saw an advert on Facebook encouraging her to invest in cryptocurrency .
She trusted the ad, because it was on a legitimate social media platform and featured quotes from Meaden, a well-known entrepreneur and investor.
But the advert was a scam – and Meaden had nothing to do with it in real life.
After clicking on the advert, Jill was directed to an online form to input her personal details. She immediately got a phone call from a representative for the company involved.
The representative persuaded Jill to invest £250, after assuring her of the company’s credentials.
Over several weeks, Jill was persuaded to transfer increasing amounts of money to the representative.
She was also instructed to download remote access software in order to help her ‘with making further investments’.
During one remote access session, the…
