Business Name Used:
None
Date Reported:
2024-05-11
Victim Postal Code:
00000
Total Dollars Lost:
$ 5000
Scam Description:
For years, I’ve had a friend (I’ll call him “Mike”) telling me about a great investment he made, with a huge imminent payout. He’s made legit business deals for years, so I thought it was related to those. Imagine my shock when a mutual friend of ours (“Sam”) told me he was approached to get involved with the “investment.” And it’s the Dubai bank money scam. Yes, a British Lord has tons of money being held in a bank in Dubai, and the only way to get it out is to bribe a bank official. And everyone who contributes for the bribe will get 5x – 10x their money back. I’ve been hearing about this scam for years (usually the Nigerian version), and was shocked to find out that Mike fell for it. But he didn’t just fall for it once. He’s been paying into it for five years, and is in for several hundred thousand dollars! Sam’s reaction when told about this was “Yeah, that’s almost certainly a scam…”, but Mike won’t hear of it. He’s convinced the payout is coming soon (possibly as early as next week). They just need more money. At the lunch, Sam was offered a 5x return if he could pay $10k. Sam demurred, and Mike texted it was a no-go, and the response was “tell him he’ll get 10x!” Yeah, that’s not fishy at all. To complicate matters, it sounds like Mike may have been bringing in other people over the years; he’s a generally respected and trusted member of the business community. So this will be devastating to him and his reputation. And the psychological impact could be traumatic. What does someone do when they realize they’ve been scammed for five years and lost hundreds of thousands of dollars? Luckily, it sounds like nothing serious was risked, so Mike won’t lose his house or anything. He’ll just have a very thin retirement. Honestly, I don’t know what to do. I’m talking to more mutual friends (one of whom, it turns out, did invest a little money!), and we’re going to try and investigate.
