His job was to separate me from my money: Juanita’s Story
This story is part of Operation Shamrock’s Survivor Stories series.
Operation Shamrock’s mission is to raise awareness of pig butchering with everyone, everywhere, all the time.
Our goal is to educate the public, mobilize collective action, and disrupt the operations networks of transnational organized criminals to prevent further harm.
Names and other personally identifying information have been changed to protect the victim’s identity. To read other stories or take action against pig butchering scams, visit www.operationshamrock.org.
“I have to keep telling myself that I’m a victim and I didn’t do anything wrong.” That’s how Juanita started a conversation with the team at Operation Shamrock.
A mammographer by trade, Juanita has worked in radiology for 40 years. She supervises more than 50 people at a large hospital. She teaches breast cancer awareness, serves on advisory boards, runs support groups, and is unquestionably a pillar of her community. She’s a smart, successful, strong woman who has to remind herself every day that what happened to her wasn’t her fault.
Juanita met “Brandon Miller” through an online dating site. He showered her with constant affection and attention. They texted and talked on the phone. They prayed together on a daily basis. He asked after her well being and sent her food to make sure she was eating. It was magical.
About two months into their relationship, Brandon started talking to Juanita about investments. A customer owed his construction business a lot of money and he suggested sending it to her to invest. Several days later, Juanita received a FedEx package from a person she’d never heard of with a check made out in her name for $100,000.
Like anyone receiving a check for that amount from a person they don’t know, Juanita was immediately suspicious. She went to the local police department, filed a report, and asked if they could determine if the check was real. The officer chuckled and said the best way to determine that was to deposit the check and wait to see if it cleared. Unsatisfied, Juanita called the issuing bank. They said it was a valid, legitimate check. So she deposited the money in her account.
Two weeks later, the check cleared and Juanita did a wire transfer to invest the money in cryptocurrency. She followed that up with an investment of $40,000 of her own money. She saw positive returns on these investments and wanted to invest more. So she borrowed from her retirement account to make more investments. $25,000 wire transfers were followed by $50,000 transfers until she’d removed $400,000 from her 403(b) and invested it all. That was followed quickly by $155,000 taken from a HELOC.
Meanwhile, Juanita’s relationship with Brandon continued to deepen. “We were going to spend our lives together,” she said. Brandon sent her money to pay for a lavish 60th birthday party. He spoke to her niece. They planned a trip to Santorini and she gave him a copy of her passport.
It was after she shared her passport with Brandon that things really took a turn for the worst for Juanita. He compromised her passwords and started accessing her accounts. She started seeing bills for purchases she hadn’t made or authorized. A credit card went from no balance to owing $90,000. Credit unions she’d never heard of started sending her letters about loan applications she hadn’t made. Her credit score plummeted from 780 to the low 400s.
That HELOC from which Juanita had withdrawn $155,000 to buy crypto suddenly had nearly another $200,000 withdrawn from it. By withdrawing money and then immediately paying it back with fraudulent ACH transactions that would never clear, Brandon was ultimately able to withdraw more than the value of Juanita’s home from the HELOC.
You’ve likely figured this out by now, but all of the crypto investments were also fraudulent. Juanita wasn’t buying Bitcoin, she was simply transferring money to “Brandon” and his criminal associates. Between the fake investments, credit card transactions, and HELOC loans, Juanita was taken for more than $875,000 in total.
Looking back, it all seems so obvious to Juanita now. Brandon was trained to play on her emotions and she fell for him. “His job was to separate me from my money,” she said. She considered herself “one of the sharper tacks in the box” but smarts aren’t always enough in the face of ruthlessly professional scammers who’ll stop at nothing in their efforts to psychologically manipulate victims.
Juanita is still sifting through the wreckage left by Brandon. She’s making monthly payments to restore her retirement accounts. She’s preparing to lose the home she’s lived in for 32 years. “I don’t know where the strength is coming from, but I have to fight,” said Juanita. “This is my livelihood. I’m not looking back, I’m looking forward.”
At Operation Shamrock, we hear tragic stories like Juanita’s every week. It’s a classic tale of pig butchering. We share these stories to educate the public about what a scam victim looks like.
