A San Jose widow is now at risk of losing her home after fraudsters drained hundreds of thousands of dollars from her by igniting a fake romantic relationship.
Margaret Loke says she was pulled into a relationship after meeting someone on Facebook, named Ed, who claimed to be a businessman from Texas and also of Chinese descent, reports ABC7 News.
Loke says a friend egged her to message Ed to start a conversation.
“She says, ‘Oh this is a nice guy… You just say hi to him, that’s it…’ I say, ‘We are from San Jose,’ and then he said, ‘Oh I like to, you know, meet people from San Jose, and I’m from Texas.”
The conversation quickly shifted to WhatsApp, where the scammer greeted her every morning, shared daily details, and called her “honey.”
“He says he likes me and I’m, we are Chinese…”
She says she leaned in and called him “love,” and Ed told her sweet nothings before saying, “he was rich, and all that.” Loke says that’s when the scammer started guiding her into crypto investing.
“He says, ‘Do you know anything about investing in this crypto thing? Why don’t I give you $15,000 to invest…’ So I said, ‘No, I have my own money.'”
Loke says she initially wired $15,000 and saw that her investments quickly made gains to the tune of $24,000 in seconds. Ed urged her to invest more so he could make more than a million dollars for her. Believing that the investment was legit, Loke says she wired $120,000 from her IRA account to the online account that Ed set up.
Once again, the app showed that Loke made big gains, prompting Ed to ask her to wire more money.
“Then he said, ‘Oh no, now you have to put in $490,000. So then I say, ‘Why so much?'”
Loke says Ed told her that he wanted her to keep investing to hit their goal of $5 million. Despite having doubts, Loke says she wired another $490,000 from her IRA account.
The money grew, and Ed pushed her to send more.
“I’m a simple person, I don’t know how to trade, so I follow him, whatever he tells me.”
This time, Loke says she wired the remaining $62,000 from her IRA account. But the scammer wasn’t done.
“He wants me to put in another $1 million, so I don’t have the money… He was on the phone with me, constantly pushing me and say, ‘You have to borrow,'”
Loke says she found a lender and obtained a $300,000 second mortgage, which she wired to the app. All in all, she sent $987,000, and the app showed her that she had $2.4 million. But when it was time to withdraw, Ed changed his tone.
“He freeze it. The money was frozen.”
Loke says Ed told her to transfer $1 million to unblock the account or lose access to all funds. He even told her to borrow money from friends. She says Ed went as far as to threaten legal action if she did not send the money.
“I don’t want we be enemies… my lawyers contact with you.”
In desperation, Loke says she sought the assistance of ChatGPT, which told her not to send the money because it was a scam.
To rub salt into the wound, Loke is now facing a huge tax bill after withdrawing a large amount of money from her IRA account in short amount of time.
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