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.
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.
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.
“Once I’d completed the tasks, they’d deposit all the money and profit made into a crypto wallet. Flora made it seem so genuine.”
An ActionFraud spokesperson said: “Action Fraud can confirm that it received the claim on 27 July 2023. It was assessed by the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau (NFIB) at the City of London Police but has not been passed to a police force for investigation at this time.
“With more than 850,000 reports coming into the NFIB each year, not all cases can be passed on for further investigation. Reports are assessed against a number of criteria which include the vulnerability of the victim.
“However, the reports most likely to present an investigative opportunity for local police forces, those where a crime is ongoing and those that present the greatest threat and harm to the victim or victims concerned, are the ones that are prioritised.”
The customer service team for the company said: “Our company hopes the lady can complete and withdraw her funds as soon as possible.”
