One victim lost their life savings of $375,000, and the second man lost $175,000, which he secured through a bank loan. That $500,000 is gone, vanished through the web of the Internet. One click by each man was all it took. And they are but one of hundreds of thousands who fall for such scams.
Take a look at the most recent hard numbers about scams from the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) latest report in the U.S. from 2024. This is big, big business in the global criminal world.
- Consumers reported losing more than $12.5 billion to fraud in 2024, a 25% increase over 2023.
- In 2023, 27% of people who reported a fraud said they lost money, while in 2024, that figure jumped to 38%.
- Most people (70%) reported a loss when contacted on a social media platform — and lost more money overall — $1.9 billion.
- Consumers reported losing more money to investment scams –$5.7 billion — than any other category in 2024. That amount represents a 24% increase over 2023.
- The second highest reported loss came from imposter scams, with $2.95 billion lost.
- In 2024, consumers reported losing more money to scams where they paid with bank transfers or cryptocurrency than all other payment methods combined. People reported losing more money through a bank transfer or payment ($2 billion), followed by cryptocurrency at $1.4 billion.
Doster, 33, a detective for only three years and Our Town Hero for his work, spent several months and many hours investigating this case, pulling together the disparate pieces of this puzzle from Malaysia to the U.S. His work led to the arrest of Lee Kah Poh, 29, a Malaysian national who flew here to collect the money and try to extend his scam operations. Poh is now in the Knox County Detention Center under a $1 million bond.
“This was a very sophisticated cryptocurrency investment scam run by a group or syndicate in Malaysia, and it’s the most broad-reaching case I’ve ever worked,” said Doster, a 2013 graduate of Powell High School and a 12-year KCSO veteran. “It has been and is a very complex case. They used texts, emails, texting apps like Telegram and WeChat, and social media, and when I opened his phone, everything on it was in Chinese, which we had to have translated by a woman in Tri-Cities who works with law enforcement at all levels.”…