Fraudulent Online School: Eric’s Story
Scammers posing as educators tricked a young man into a fake investment.
This story is part of Operation Shamrock’s Survivor Stories series.
The world ought to be Eric’s oyster. He’s 25 years old. He’s worked a good job for the past two years. He has his own place in a big city. He is smart, empathetic, respectful, and devoted to his family.
Instead of feeling good, though, Eric’s grappling with an incident that changed his life in many, many ways. He’s dealing with the kind of thoughts that nobody at that stage of life should have to face. Even though in many ways he’s still just starting his life, he’s already grappling with how to restart it.
Eric Enrolls in an Investment School
The trouble started, as it far too often does, on social media. Eric saw an Instagram ad for a financial services “school” and was interested. He researched the school online and thought it seemed legit. It has a great website (which, it should be noted, is frustratingly still active). So Eric joined their WhatsApp group.
Shortly after joining, the group’s moderator reached out to Eric. They chatted about the program and the “professor” who runs it. The moderator told Eric they’d taught hundreds of students by showing them various investment schemes and helping them try to grow their money. All Eric had to do was sign up on their website and download an app from the App Store. Eric did just that, still thinking things looked legitimate.
The Scam Begins
The school put some starter money in Eric’s account and he followed their instructions to invest it. In short order, the initial investment grew by $400. So Eric moved on to investing his own money. First, he invested $3,000. Then another $2,000 and another $3,000 after that.
Eric’s account on the trading platform showed steady growth. The school’s moderator kept in touch and told Eric she saw something special in him. He had talent for this investing business. She continued to encourage more investment. Eventually, he invested all the money he’d saved in his two years of working.
The Missing Money
Then the bottom fell out. Preparing for an international trip to visit his parents, Eric tried to make a withdrawal. He could get any money out of the school’s system. So he reached out to the friendly group moderator who’d been encouraging him. She said withdrawals of the size he was making took time to process and that Eric just needed to be patient.
So Eric waited. Two days went by. Then a week. He tried multiple times to withdraw his money. He reached out to the professor, but received no response. This cycle repeated itself several times. Eric tried reaching out, attempted withdrawals, tried everything he could think of. He was met with silence and an inability to access the funds he’d deposited. He eventually realized he’d been scammed.
The Impact of the Scam
Eric quickly went from a 25-year-old who was doing the right thing — learning about investments, saving for his retirement, planning for a future — to a 25-year-old who’d lost everything. The money he thought he’d use to eventually take care of his aging parents had evaporated.
In the ensuing days and weeks, Eric’s mind went to some pretty dark places. The scammers hadn’t just stolen his money. They robbed his hope, his optimism, and his self-confidence. They ran off with the last remaining bits of his youth. They pushed him toward a deeply unhealthy place. And they did it all from an app Eric downloaded from an official app store.
We tend to focus on the financial losses suffered by scam victims. Eric’s story is a great reminder that the cuts go so much deeper. He went from a happy, successful, hard-working, young man to one pondering actions nobody should take.
There’s no one solution to the problem of transnational criminals bilking hard working people out of their money. There’s no easy way to protect the pocketbooks and psyches of people like Eric. The road to the solution, though, runs right past the front doors of the major technology companies. They can either continue facilitating scams through their official app stores or they can join us and start standing up for the Erics of the world.
At Operation Shamrock, we believe stories like Eric’s are far too common. We’ve shared what happened to Eric in order to educate others.
Do you have a survivor story? Connect with our team to share your experience.
