An Australian man lost his life savings after scammers used a fake Nick Cave video to convince him to invest $130,000 in a fake crypto scam.
Jake, 61, from Melbourne, lost the money after his favorite Australian musician convinced him to go for cryptocurrency micro-trading in 2023.
Despite not being a “money person”, Jake, who wishes to remain anonymous, decided to try his luck after seeing Cave’s false testimony.
The fake Cave swore by the crypto scheme in an AI-generated video posted to Facebook in which he claimed to have made thousands of dollars by doing nothing.
Jakes said his backing was the “icing on the cake” for a deal that seemed too good to be.
“I respect him a lot as an artist, so of course I think ‘shit, that’s icing on the cake,'” he he told news.com.au.
Looking back, however, he said it was “pretty scary” when dozens of scammers tried to catch him simultaneously after he interacted with the video.
The emergency aid teacher said losing the money left him financially crippled and excluded from his family.
An Australian man lost his life savings after scammers used a fake Nick Cave video to convince him to invest $130,000 in a fake crypto scam.
Jake met a man named Max while the “tsunami” of scammers was piling up in his inbox.
“This is a case of right time, right place – an absolute target,” he said.
‘There I was looking for something and it turned out I was in the right place at the right time. He didn’t seem pushy and seemed like someone I felt reasonably comfortable with.
The pair began talking on the phone and Max said he worked in an office in London.
Max managed to convince Jake to “invest” $370 in the micro-trading platform and told him to wait until the returns started coming in.
When Jake logged back in four months later, his account balance had skyrocketed to $67,000.
‘A normal person would see that and say too good to be true, see you later and hang up the phone. “I talked to people, I talked to friends, my own 16-year-old son said ‘this is stupid,'” Jake said.
“But when you have this strange carrot dangling in front of you at the right time and in the right space, you don’t listen.”
Max assured Jake that it was in the nature of cryptocurrencies to fluctuate wildly in value after the 61-year-old asked him if it was too good to be true.
By asking the question, Jake had inadvertently let Max know that he was a newbie to cryptocurrency trading, a naivety he later learned scammers “love.”
Despite not being a “money person”, Jake, who wishes to remain anonymous, decided to try his luck after seeing Nick Cave’s false testimony.
When it was time for Jake to withdraw the money, he received a suspicious letter telling him that his account had been flagged for possible money laundering.
The only way to access the cash was to pay a 10 percent security deposit to prove it was legitimate, which led Jake into a “vicious cycle.”
Every time he tried to withdraw money, he found another reason why he needed to deposit more.
In one month, Jake lost all of his $130,000 by making deposit after deposit ranging from $4,900 to $18,500.
Finally, Jake called a company in Sydney to help him withdraw the funds, but when he explained the situation to them they told him he had been scammed.
He had been purchasing “counterfeit currencies,” the company said.
Realizing he had lost all his money and there was no hope of getting it back, Jack said his “stomach hit the floor and my brain exploded.”
When Jake attempted to withdraw the money, he was told a 10 percent security deposit was required, which he paid, only to receive numerous other similar notifications requesting more cash.
Police told Jake they told him he was the victim of “criminal activity” that he prefers to think of as “digital theft.”
Jake’s mother and sisters have been unreservedly critical of his naivety and he said the scam has “broken” his family.
Now Jake is trying to raise awareness about online scams and the deceptive new tactics criminals are using to lure people like him.
Scamwatch reported that $43.4 million was lost to social media scams in the first eight months of 2024.
Meta’s crackdown on deepfake scams has resulted in the blocking of 8,000 pages and 9,000 celebrity scams in its first six months of operation since launching this year.
Celebrities seen in fake Facebook ads include David Koch, Gina Rinehart, Anthony Albanese, Larry Emdur and Guy Sebastian.
Andrew Forest is currently suing the platform for failing to remove scams featuring his image.