LEXINGTON, Ky. — Scammers posing as bank employees defrauded an elderly Kentucky couple out of $373,700 and used it to buy cryptocurrency, an FBI special agent said in an affidavit.
The agent, Chelsea Holliday, submitted the sworn statement in support of a request by the government to take $270,781 in cryptocurrency from an account associated with the alleged scam.
The FBI received a complaint in February from a bank that the couple, from Versailles, had fallen victim to a scam and wired $373,700 to a bank in California, Holliday said.
People had called the victims claiming to be employees of Community Trust Bank and Microsoft, and said the victims’ accounts had been hacked and they needed to move their money to protect it, according to the affidavit.
The victims allowed the scammers to have remote access to their personal computer and gave them usernames and passwords to access the victims’ bank and email accounts, according to the affidavit.
At the direction someone involved in the con, one of the victims opened a cryptocurrency account at a bank in California and wired money to it, according to the affidavit.
The money was used to buy bitcoin that was ultimately transferred to the account of someone in China, according to the affidavit.
At the time, that account showed a recurring pattern of deposits of bitcoin followed by immediate orders to exchange it for another cryptocurrency called USDT (Tether), followed by rapid withdrawals, according to Holliday’s affidavit.
In mid-February, an account associated with the user had a balance of 270,781 USDT, which had the same value in dollars. USDT is a stablecoin pegged to the dollar.
That is the account the government is seeking to forfeit. There is probable cause to believe the currency is the proceeds of wire fraud, Holliday said in the affidavit.
Federal authorities seized the currency in April. In a forfeiture action, the property is the defendant, so criminal charges are not required for the government to request to take it.
The court action could get back money for the victims.
The FBI reports that fraud against elderly people has gone up at an “alarming rate.” In 2021, more than 92,000 victims over the age of 60 reported losing a total of $1.7 billion, according to the agency’s annual report.
That was a 74% increase over 2020, the FBI said.
The FBI has a hotline at 833-372-8311 to report suspected fraud against older people. People can also make reports online at https://www.ic3.gov/Home/EF.
Several groups, including the National Council on Aging, AARP and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, have information on protecting older people from fraud.
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