Scam Type
Foreign Money Exchange Scam
Date Reported
Oct 04, 2022
Victim Postal Code
29615
Total Dollars Lost
0
Scam Description
My wife received a phone call from an individual named Andrew and eventually an individual named Martin Hopper, (who supposedly works for McKinsey International LLC) that she was eligible to receive funds from Costa Rica as a settlement for a money laundering scheme (Liberty Reserve Digital and several others) that handled digital currency options that she had invested in. Arthur Budovsky and others involved in those scams are now in jail. The SUGEF in Costa Rica (supposedly represented by a Edward Montoya) is now settling up with everyone that had used the options scammers. She was told she would receive $587,673.59 if she would provide information: a picture of her drivers license, a bank account they could wire the funds to, sign a Non-Disclosure Settlement agreement, and wire $3,376.74 to an individual in Costa Rica, who supposedly worked for a law firm handling the settlement. The agreement also stated that she would pay a firm, McKinsey International LLC, by wire 10.8% of the $587K within 30 days of receipt of the $587K. However the process would only start after the $3K was wired to the Costa Rica individual first, claiming the 3K was for legal expenses and registration fees with Costa Rica.
Since she only “invested” about $5000 in the binary options to begin with, the $587K settlement seemed extremely unlikely as a legitimate settlement amount. Seemed “too good to be true”. Mr Montoya claimed that they had already sent over 7000 settlement payments out of the Costa Rica bank account to settle individuals in Canada and the US. I calculated that would be over $4 billion dollars already supposedly sent out. But that was only a small portion of the over 250,000 people that were scammed by the original money laundering binary option schemes. If all 250K received $587K, that would be a settlement of over $147 billion. An extremely unlikely amount to handle the way this scheme proposes.
She did not sign the agreement nor send the $3K and are now reporting this to the BBB to investigate.
