Animal Shelter Long Haul Scammer lendingaccount

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Animal Shelter Animals

Reddit user "lendingaccount" reports someone mistakenly contacted them, thinking they were an animal shelter worker. Despite the initial mix-up, they developed a close friendship. The contacte helped them invested around $10,000 in standard cryptocurrencies with their assistance. As they demonstrated their own profits in another cryptocurrency, "lendingaccount" became more interested and invested more money, reaching a total of approximately $70,000. Their friend then introduced another currency and gave them sole access to the account, sending significant amounts of BTC/ETH for investment. When the first currency was about to go public, they encountered a problem. To unlock the currency, they needed to have $100,000 in their account. Their friend then claimed to have successfully unlocked their account and provided a screenshot as evidence. However, when "lendingaccount" tried to unlock their account, they were informed of changed rules that required additional funds. Unable to afford the additional investment, "lendingaccount" attempted to withdraw their funds but was unsuccessful. Shortly after, both websites used for purchasing the currencies went offline. "lendingaccount" discovered that their $100,000 USDT had been sent to a random address, confirming they had been scammed.

This exchange or platform is based in United States, or the incident targeted people primarily in United States.

About None

"I was recently scammed for all my savings (about $240,000) by someone I thought was my best friend.

I first got into contact with this person when she randomly texted my number, asking me if I was a worker from her local animal shelter, since she wanted to adopt a dog. I told her that she must have the wrong number since I live in a different state, but since I also happen to volunteer at a small animal shelter (and so does my mom) I gave her some good advice about what she could do. We kept chatting very happily after that and seemed to hit it off.

We kept talking for many hours every day about many things, and one of the things she was very excited about was some new crypto currency that she thought will be the next bitcoin. I had always been thinking about investing in crypto, but knew very little about it and told her I wasn't interested, but she didn't seem to mind at all and we just kept talking about other things.

As time went on she showed me screenshots of her currency and how much it was rising, so I asked her to help me just learn and start investing in the standard crypto currencies. She helped me with every step for many hours, and eventually I invested ~10k in the standard currencies like ADA, ETH, etc.

Eventually I saw how much money she was making on her currency, and asked her to help me invest in it too. Again she spent many hours teaching me, basically the way it works is you make an account on her currency's website, and send some standard currencies (BTC/ETC/USDT) to your account there, and charge/exchange the standard currency for her currency.

I started with investing just $5k, and over time I trusted her more I invested more, eventually up to about $70k. Everything seemed to go very well and (it seemed like) I made a ton of money. Per her recommendation, we would hold the currency until it was about to go public and then take our profits. We talked about how we would have a lot of money and also be able to help many people and animals with that money.

Then she let me know of another currency she thought would be very successful, but this time she was only able to get one code (needed to unlock an account). She said that since she trusted me so much, I could be the one to open the account and have sole access to it, and she would send me BTC/ETH to my address when she wanted to invest in it.

So that is what we did, and her second currency worked basically like the first one (with how you exchange BTC/ETH on the website for this new currency). I invested about $70k into this currency over several weeks, she sent me probably around $400k in BTC/ETH which I then exchanged for this currency as well. She really gained my trust by trusting me to handle hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of her money, so I thought surely she couldn’t be scamming me either.

Eventually, the first currency we invested in announced that it would go public soon, so we prepared to cash in our profits. This was around 3 months after initially talking to her, and we had been talking for hours every day like best friends. But there was a problem, it seemed that we needed to "unlock" the currency first before cashing it in, by having $100k in USDT/ETH/BTC in our account.

She unlocked hers first and even sent me a screenshot with her millions of dollars worth of USDT. It took me about a week longer to move my funds from coinbase into the new currency’s website. When I finally moved my funds into the new currency's account, it wouldn't let me unlock it, and she told me the website had changed the rules and I needed to put in a lot more money now. I did not have more money though, and I told her that, and I tried to withdraw some of my $100,000 USDT out of this website, but it did not let me.

A few days later, both of the websites I used to buy those currencies went offline. My "best friend" said she would see what was going on and help me recover my money. I never heard from her again. Today is exactly 1 month from when the websites shut down and from when she was last online.

I am no crypto expert, but today I believe I was finally able to at least track my 100k USDT from that account. I saw it was indeed sent away to some random address shortly after the website went offline, so of course I now know for sure that I have been scammed."

This exchange or platform is based in United States, or the incident targeted people primarily in United States.

The background of the exchange platform, service, or individuals involved, as it would have been seen or understood at the time of the events.

Include:

• Known history of when and how the service was started.
• What problems does the company or service claim to solve?
• What marketing materials were used by the firm or business?
• Audits performed, and excerpts that may have been included.
• Business registration documents shown (fake or legitimate).
• How were people recruited to participate?
• Public warnings and announcements prior to the event.

Don't Include:

• Any wording which directly states or implies that the business is/was illegitimate, or that a vulnerability existed.
• Anything that wasn't reasonably knowable at the time of the event.

There could be more than one section here. If the same platform is involved with multiple incidents, then it can be linked to a main article page.

The Reality

This sections is included if a case involved deception or information that was unknown at the time. Examples include:

• When the service was actually started (if different than the "official story").
• Who actually ran a service and their own personal history.
• How the service was structured behind the scenes. (For example, there was no "trading bot".)
• Details of what audits reported and how vulnerabilities were missed during auditing.

What Happened

The specific events of the loss and how it came about. What actually happened to cause the loss and some of the events leading up to it.

Key Event Timeline - Animal Shelter Long Haul Scammer lendingaccount

Date	Event	Description
July 13th, 2021 6:27:07 AM MDT	Reddit Post	Post is live on Reddit.

Technical Details

This section includes specific detailed technical analysis of any security breaches which happened. What specific software vulnerabilities contributed to the problem and how were they exploited?

Total Amount Lost

The total amount lost has been estimated at $240,000 USD.

How much was lost and how was it calculated? If there are conflicting reports, which are accurate and where does the discrepancy lie?

Immediate Reactions

How did the various parties involved (firm, platform, management, and/or affected individual(s)) deal with the events? Were services shut down? Were announcements made? Were groups formed?

Ultimate Outcome

What was the end result? Was any investigation done? Were any individuals prosecuted? Was there a lawsuit? Was any tracing done?

Total Amount Recovered

There do not appear to have been any funds recovered in this case.

What funds were recovered? What funds were reimbursed for those affected users?

Ongoing Developments

What parts of this case are still remaining to be concluded?

Individual Prevention Policies

No specific policies for individual prevention have yet been identified in this case.

For the full list of how to protect your funds as an individual, check our Prevention Policies for Individuals guide.

Platform Prevention Policies

Policies for platforms to take to prevent this situation have not yet been selected in this case.

For the full list of how to protect your funds as a financial service, check our Prevention Policies for Platforms guide.

Regulatory Prevention Policies

No specific regulatory policies have yet been identified in this case.

For the full list of regulatory policies that can prevent loss, check our Prevention Policies for Regulators guide.