The Better Business Bureau recently issued a report saying there has been an 87-per-cent increase in online scams since 2015 in Metro Vancouver.
Now the BBB of Mainland BC said it had spoken with Donna Stark, a Burnaby resident who was directly affected by an elaborate cryptocurrency scam which she says cost her around $16,000.
Now the BBB is warning others.
Stark said she responded to an online ad that promised high-level growth for a small investment of $250 into a cryptocurrency that falsely claimed to be related to Elon Musk.
She says she was quickly contacted by a salesperson who worked with her for several days to confirm her private information.
Then, she was transferred to a “trader” who would help her make money through a Canadian mobile crypto trading platform app used to buy and sell Bitcoin.
Stark claims she was yelled at and degraded to believe that if she didn’t invest large sums of money, she would miss out on the opportunity to make money in the market.
RELATED: ‘Close call’: Mission woman nearly duped as scam reports skyrocket
“He (the salesperson) only left me alone finally once he took out every penny from my credit card and my chequing account,” Stark shared in her report to BBB Scam Tracker earlier this year.
“Then his partner phoned me […] to say the market crashed and I lost all my money. I knew that this was not true and the whole thing was a scam and that they got what they wanted from me. There was no one to phone as they used burner phones and I wrote but they never responded.”
@shinebox44
chris.campbell@missioncityrecord.com
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