Scam Type
Romance Scam
Business Name Used
Unavailable
Date Reported
October 14, 2024
Postal Code
95123
Total Dollars Lost
$ 800000
Scam Description
A person name Jack Gao approached my sister on LinkedIn in April/May 2024 and developed a romantic relationship. He said he worked in San Francisco at OpenAI. They have never met in person. He introduced her to a crptocurrency platform qexbit.xyz. He presented himself as a user of the platform and “knows how it works.” The website proved its legitimacy by letting my sister withdraw $1K and $15K. My sister took a second loan on her house, $275K, and sent it to the platform. The website led my sister to believe she profited $2M. My sister then wanted to start withdrawing the money. They platform told her she needed to get to their “next tier level” and deposit $300K in order to withdraw the money. My sister convinced our mother to withdraw $300K from our mother’s 401K retirement account. My sister sent the $300K to the website right away. The website then requested $150K to get a certificate that’s needed in order to withdraw any money from the cryptocurrency platform. My sister withdrew $150K from her own 401K retirement account and sent the money to the platform. She was then told that she is in the “queue” to make withdrawals and that there are many users in front of her waiting to withdraw their money. The platform told her she can get out of the queue and withdraw her money immediately if she put in $400K for the membership fee. Jack Gao told her he had to go through all this himself and is willing to help her by putting $200K of his own money into the platform. She would then just need to put in the other half of the $400K membership fee. My family and I hired a private investigator. The PI confirmed there is no such person name Jack Gao that is in California and works for OpenAI. The PI was also not able to confirm the legitimacy of the the website qexbit.xyz or qexbit.org. We have already filed a FBI report on their website.
