A major cryptocurrency warning has issued after a woman lost £40,000 in a scam by criminals portraying themselves as Money Saving Expert (MSE) founder, Martin Lewis.
Pretending to be legitimate sources that people trust is not a new phenomenon, with it being a regular thing to get the trust of innocent bystanders to click on bogus links or hand over private details.
And now a new warning has been issued following the boom in price of Bitcoin, with Lewis at the core of the scam.
Advert
One woman appeared on ITV's This Morning where she revealed thieves who had faked advice from Lewis had stolen £40k from her.
Hiding her identity, 'Lisa' spoke to presenters Ben Shephard and Cat Deeley about the ordeal. Lewis himself then also waded in over on X (formerly Twitter).
With cryptocurrency scams rising by 23% in 2023, Lisa invested in a scheme via social media after believing it was backed by the MSE founder.
Deeley revealed that 'things quickly spiralled and before she knew it scammers had stolen £40,000 from her account'.
"Scared and too embarrassed to tell her friends and family, Lisa reached out to Trading Standards where she was helped by scams officer Janet Quinn," S Shephard added.
Explaining how she got scammed, Lisa said: "I had been looking at Bitcoin, this looks interesting, and then I saw the Martin Lewis 'advert'.
"I assumed if he thought it was a good idea, let's click the link and see what happens."
Lisa said that she now knows that Lewis is vocal about never putting his face or name to products for advertising purposes so as to protect his reputation and his followers. But at the time she had no idea.
Lisa said: "I received an email quite quickly from someone saying they were from a trading company, could we arrange a time to talk. I thought yep, because I'd initiated it I need to talk to him. He was very charming and said we need to open up a banking app... and an app to access my phone which I refused initially.
"But he spoke to me every single day. I now know he was grooming me. He persuaded me to download this app which then gave him access to my phone."
The man in question was 'Carlos', who charmed Lisa and lured her into a false sense of security before taking advantage.
Carlos' charm then disappeared and he became aggressive and a bully, applying for 11 banking loans using Lisa's personal details, alongside false financial information for a credit reference.
After putting an initial £200 in to the rogue scheme, a total £55,000 of loans were applied for by Carlos under Lisa's name, who started receiving letters through the post from the banking company's that Carlos had applied through.
Lisa revealed that her trading account and £100,000 that she had made with Carlos was then 'gone' and she was left with the £55,000 of loans to pay back.
At the end of it all after getting help from Trading Standards, she was £40,000 down.
Taking to X after Lisa spoke about her ordeal on ITV, Lewis said: "WARNING: With the Bitcoin price up, scammers are again using social media ads using my (or others) fake endorsement to pretend you’re buying it.
"In reality they are just trying STEAL YOUR MONEY."
Topics: Crime, Cryptocurrency, ITV, Martin Lewis, This Morning, UK News, Bitcoin, Social Media, Twitter
Tom Earnshaw