Description

Hello, I was lured into a cryptocurrency investment group in late 2024 through a recommendation by an associate I trusted at the time. I began investing with one firm/group, then as I became profitable I was referred to a second group that I now believe were working in tandem. The groups are Spark Consulting and Dreamznet Alliance or DZA www.dreamznet.com. These are two very similar organizations operating on similar guidelines. They somehow determine how much you can afford to loose, encourage you to invest more to reach higher returns through reaching a tiered system ranked according to the amounts you have invested with them. When you reach a certain level, they present a no-loose trade and ask that you invest a higher sum which will propel you to and even better tier level. When you commit to this trade, they open the trade with slow gains which gives you peace of mind, then within seconds the trade turns negative and liquidates the entire amount that was invested. If there are funds left in your trading platform (chosen and operated by them) then you are not allowed to withdraw unless taxes and fees are paid. A classic pig butchering scam. I have all records and communications with their lead traders and “professors” and administrators. The major loss occurred with the DZA group, which are still operating on the Meta site WhatsApp. From these two experiences, I shifted to investing in US markets only and what I thought were US based firms with track records, SEC registration/licenses and licensed brokers. I talked with Fidelity but decided to go with Boston Partners who was offering potential clients with a certain amount to invest, an institutional account which allows for pre-market trading and access to IPOs prior to going public, as they advertised to me. I call myself doing the right amount of due diligence by investigating the lead broker and his assistants by way of website search and phone calls to their home office in Boston, and thought this would be the best place to invest long-term to replace the scammed funds. I did receive verification that the individuals did in fact work at Boston Partners, so I proceeded to open the account and invest. After doing so, they redirected me to their website and to WhatsApp for regular trading and communication, at which time I became suspicious. After a few trades I called their home office again to inquire about the lead trader/analyst and his assistants - explaining to the call screener/receptionist what was happening with my account being diverted to a different website and communication now preferred through WhatsApp. She suggested I speak with one of their senior managers. The manager advised that I had been diverted to a scam out of Asia, specificially China they believed, and that there were imposters posing as Boston Partners employees all set up to take customers from them and scam them out of their money. He said they have reported this to the FBI and SEC, FTC and suggested I do the same. He couldn’t explain how it happened, other than to say that they are doing a perfect job of impersonating their brokers and the website is nearly identical to theirs. Bottom line is $160,000 was lost to the DZA crypto scam and now I have $720,000 sitting in a scammers wallet somewhere (leaving me depleted of savings), yet completely visible to me as I am able to log in to the account on the fake Boston Partners website and see the amounts. I asked the imposter if lead broker and administrator about withdrawing part or all of my money and they protested demanding exorbitant fees and taxes to unlock the account for withdrawal, which I refused. I have heard and read that crypto recovery in these situations is possible with the right resources and when done in conjunction with law enforcement. I have reported all incidents to the FBI’s ic3 site and enlisted what I thought was a reputable recovery firm “Adriannotch” to handle the tracing, blockchain searches, and whatever other technical Web3 based techniques necessary to find the scammed funds. They did not ask for money upfront for recovery services, but are asking for 10% of any of my recovered funds, the funds which originated out of my wallets which I can claim ownership. Adriannotch claims to have found a wallet associated with DZA with over $1M USDT in it. They go on to tell me that DZA has been involved for some time scamming millions from US, Canadian and European victims, including myself as they further claim that they were able to trace the hashes and wallet addresses through many nodes of the blockchain to arrive at its resting wallet. Andriannotch is asking me to utilize an intermediary site https://webs.za.com/wconnect/wallets/index.php then open a new Trust Wallet to receive the funds. Now, I am suspicious of them as a recovery group / mechanism, wondering why they need a walletConnect site to retrieve the funds.