Scams: Mum loses over £26,000 to cryptocurrency work-from-home scam

Great-grandmother loses life savings to scammer A single mum is revealing how ended up £26,000 in debt after falling for a convincing cryptocurrency ‘work-from-home’ scam. Ogo Ezeaka, 34, shared how she ‘lost everything’ after signing up for an online side hustle to supplement her income outside of her job in IT. The Northampton native is now struggling to make ends meet after taking on the role which involved her uploading pictures to a website which earned her cryptocash. However, it turns out Ogo had to buy the rights to the photographs before doing this with her spending ‘real money’ and earning crypto. As well as this, she had to pay a fee to get her crypto and another to keep selling which led to her taking out loans. Crypto scammers are turning to new methods Overall, Ogo is paying off £18,000 in debt to the crypto account after being tricked by the work trainer who convinced her to take on the side hustle, as well as a £6,000 payday loan and £2,500 interest. She explained: ‘£1,000 turned into £3,000, which turned into £8,000. After two weeks, I saw my balance fall to minus £18k. ‘The scammers have taken everything from me, and they don’t care. I thought the job would give me some good experience and help to pay my childcare costs as a single-income household. The fraud victim was contacted by a recruiter called ‘Flora’ on June 21 via WhatsApp who told her about a role which was flexible and offered home-working. Scammers are using WhatsApp to trick victims SUBSCRIBE Invalid email We use your sign-up to provide content in ways you’ve consented to and to improve our understanding of you. This may include adverts from us and 3rd parties based on our understanding. You can unsubscribe at any time. More info This supposed recruiter said to Orgo that the monthly base salary was £2.800 with a 0.5 percent commission. The single mum was also told that she would start her job within the week and get paid £460 every five days. Ogo added: ‘A few days after I registered, Flora gave me some tasks to do. I still don’t really understand it myself – but every day, I was given three tasks to do. I’d have to register 40-50 products in an app, each of which had a price attached. “If you successfully submit a product onto the website, the value of it will be added to your in-app balance. Trending