Description

How I got scammed – James R Vander Schaaf 1/7/2024 If you've ever asked yourself the question: I just got scammed? When you asked yourself this question subconsciously knew the answer you were scammed but you can't believe it and you just lost a bunch of money. You are probably in denial, angry, upset, disappointed and depressed (you may be aware you are going thru the five stages of grief). For those that don’t know, these stages are denial, anger, bargaining, depression and finally acceptance. How could this happen to me? Everything seemed so right, so appropriate. And deep down, you sometimes felt that something was not quite right. You thought this was too good to be true. Guess what, it was? Here's the history of how I got scammed. It all started back on the 13th of November 2023 when I got a request on my YouTube woodworking channel to respond to someone (an attractive Chinese lady who called herself Lrene Zhang) who indicated an interest in my woodworking. We then switched to messenger on Facebook and chatted there and then she suggested we go to WhatsApp. It's a confidential encrypted method of communication nobody can access what you've been talking about. In the next days and the remaining part of November and December back and forth exchanges occurred where Lrene Zhang set a honey trap for me. Now for those of you who don't know what a honey trap is, it's typically an attractive young woman showing an interest in a male (young or older, but typically older). She makes the victim think she is very interested in him because he has all the characteristics that she finds attractive. Lrene and I talked about our interests and we talked about what had happened in our lives before. She claimed that she had been dealt a disastrous blow with loaning $500,000 to a friend in Hong Kong to start a restaurant. After the restaurant was started, she went back to see the friend and the friend claimed that she never gave him the loan. There wasn't any paperwork to document the transaction. She then contacted a lawyer and sued him but because there was no written contract, she had no success. Clearly, she was building sympathy in me for her plight. She also told me about a divorce that she had with her cheating husband and that she had given up talking with or having male friends. She wanted a new male friend she said and she thought I really fit the bill. When Lrene shared her story about her difficult relationship with men. I too shared my story about my life and some of the details and I shared that I had been scammed twice before. Lrene was very sympathetic to the fact that I had been scammed, she raised her voice even though we weren't talking directly on WhatsApp but with text language to indicate she was very dissatisfied at these dirty rotten scammers who had taken advantage of me. (Again, dear reader you can see that I was being manipulated). But the problem is I didn't see it at the time. I thought it was too good to be true. And I did some investigation. I questioned why was this young attractive very successful woman showing so much interest in me? And by very successful I mean she was the Overseas Marketing Director of Shiseido (an international and successful cosmetics firm) and her office was in Toronto, Canada. Over time she then told me she had an aunt whose name is Eileen Burbidge who was very successful with investments in Silicon Valley had worked with a number of corporations there and was a very successful venture capitalist and had led several companies to success. She indicated before that Eileen had been very instrumental in helping her out when she had these emotional difficulties and when she had these financial difficulties. She said that Eileen was a magician in the financial markets in the venture capital world in the world of crypto. Lrene said her Auntie had helped her with investments after her calamity with the Hong Kong restaurant. On WhatsApp she showed me a portfolio of thousands of shares of Apple and a very large position in Amazon! Lrene Zhang said because of my difficulties she was willing to introduce me to Eileen Burbidge. (Again, dear reader you can see that I was being manipulated). But guess what, Eileen Burbidge is a real person! Google Wikipedia Eileen Burbidge Google Eileen Burbidge. Check out this Forbes article. Here’s another: The queen of tech reveals two things you need to know to become a killer negotiator. Here’s her biography provided by Santander Capitol. However, as I was to find out later, the person Lrene Zhang introduced me to was in fact another scamming member of the team (and not the real Eileen Burbidge). I continued to be suspicious. I asked Lrene where she worked. Specifically, the physical location of her work? She said she worked in the Shisedo Office in Toronto, Ontario Canada, but refused to give me a physical address or her home address. I had coyly suggested I wished to send her a present and thank you note for listening to me. Back to Eileen Burbidge. Lrene said that her Auntie had helped her with a very special investment and it had worked out very well. She showed me a screen capture of the daily return of this investment (which was large and intriguing). However, she indicated there was a little catch to participating with Eileen in this world in investments: you had to obtain a voucher given out by the sponsor. She said she would talk to auntie and see whether or not there was room in the program for me. She said a voucher was required, a mechanism that would allow only me to get into this program. In her conversations with Auntie, she agreed that there were in fact only three positions left and that I could have one!!! What a setup!!! Lrene sent me a PowerPoint presentation which is about 10 pages long which I've attached to this document. Basically, the presentation proposes that the viewer get involved in a stable coin investment which would return between 1% and 2% per day. And talking to Auntie it turns out that she said the program was half completed and that it was normally a six-month program but three months had passed. I was skeptical: this sounded just way too good to be true. 1% a day is more than 365% a year because the program compounded. Now granted it was only for a remaining three-month program. But nonetheless would be very lucrative. Again, I was skeptical and so I asked for more information. I wanted to know more and had several conversations with Auntie asking detailed questions. The answers were not full and complete but we're crafted in such a way that believability was insured. In some ways I was talking to a very polished, cleaver and diabolical used car salesman. I decided to check it out a bit more. I found out your monies would be held in Safepal Wallet, a software wallet in the world of cryptocurrencies. The money that was in your wallet would be given 1% a day as a reward. Now the curious thing is that you didn't have to stake the money (move your funds out of the wallet) you just had to have it in your wallet. This sounded fairly good because I was concerned if the money would move out of the wallet, I could lose it. I decided to put a modest amount in. I scheduled a meeting with Auntie to get a copy of the software and to get involved. If you are familiar with decentralized cryptocurrency applications (Dapps), the explanation that I'm about to give is unnecessary. However, if you don't know a decentralized application is tied to a wallet and it's typically used to control funds that are lent from your wallet to the application for various purposes such as leveraging investments by borrowing loans, investing in derivatives and being used in all sorts of financial situations where capital is required. This is called a liquidity pool. Liquidity pools are used throughout the cryptocurrency decentralized application area. Next step: I download Safepal Wallet and talked to Lrene Zhang about this how to link to the Dapps program through Safepal and she provided me this link: https://www.zerionin.com/ She mentioned that she was very happy that I was successful in making this connection and that this was going to be very lucrative and beneficial for me. And guess what? Initially it was successful, and I was able to click on a button that gave me an instant 1% on my total capital in the Safepal Wallet. 1% of $5000 is 50 bucks. Try to guess what the next interaction with Auntie was all about: “James you should think about the potential of this program and maybe you wish to add more funds? James, we have other investors in our corporation who have put in several $100,000 and one of them has already made over $5 million”. I felt myself getting sucked in more and more. At this juncture, I was ready to either get some better verification or get out of the program. My daughter got involved, was concerned and sent an e-mail to the real Eileen Burridge and got back the answer: “I am not involved in giving any recommendations for cryptocurrencies nor do I have any invested money in cryptocurrencies”. This response was certainly a problem for my daughter - she thought for sure I was getting scammed. I also was suspicious - there were just too many inconsistencies or unavailable information or lack of verifiable references or unprovided addresses etc., etcetera. However, I looked at Safepal, I looked at the security in it, I did checks on other from other people that I know of in the crypto market who I respect and it all came back that Safepal was one of the best wallets out there it met all the security criteria and it was safe to use. The next feature really intrigued me. My money would never leave the wallet. In other words, it wasn't sent to the decentralized application. It stayed in the wallet, and money only came into the wallet, and the money that came into the wallet was the interest the 1% per day. I thought to myself how can this screw up? I concluded even if I don't completely trust the people, I'm protected by this software. Well, I was about to find out just how unprotected I was. But I didn't find this out until I had been in for approximately 3 weeks. Thinking I was ok, I sold my stocks and transferred all the cash from my TD Ameritrade stock trading account. This amounted to approximately $50,000. I also obtained a personal non-collateral type of loan of $10,000 and added that in. Well guess what happened next? Auntie said there was a new program that fit right on top of the existing one. Using the same software, using the same decentralized application link operating in the same way, and the benefits were in addition to what I had already received. I had several questions and the questions didn't really get answered. The questions were only referred to and used to create a system of palaver that was not entirely believable. However, humans are susceptible to greed. Humans are susceptible to thinking that they can make a great deal of money. Humans don't want to miss out. There is a term for this it's called FOMO all caps. Fear of missing out. When I asked more about the program auntie said click on the button that says find out. This event occurred on the 5th of January 2024. Clearly, I wanted to find out so I clicked the button. The details that were expressed were very intriguing and very appealing and not completely clear. It was if it was written in Chinese and translated into English. Auntie asked me to send her a copy of the details so that she could explain it to me. I did so and copied only the details of the program and erased all of the surrounding text. Then I made a screenshot of what was on my cell phone. I took some time to do this (reasoning: I didn’t want to pass on any invisible links that would potentially give a spammer a method to take my money). Whoops, I got ahead of myself. You'll recall that I had tried to find out if the people I was dealing with were real. My daughter had contacted Auntie and was very unsatisfied with the result. She came to me and expressed a strong misgiving for my continuation in the program. I told her that I was also trying to verify Auntie and also trying to verify Lrene. To verify Lrene what I had done was find out where the Shisedo offices in Toronto were and I decided to send a bouquet of flowers. The whole purpose was to find out if Lrene ever received them. If she was in fact in Toronto and if she picked up the flowers or had them delivered and I saw a picture of the flowers with her and confirmed from the florist in Toronto she received them, then I would have more believability. The florist attempted to deliver the flowers at the Shisedo headquarters which also turned out to be the warehouse. The warehouse people said they had never heard of a person whose name was Lrene Zhang. I sent a chat to WhatsApp Lauren and told her that Julia the florist delivery person was waiting at the warehouse for her to either pick up the flowers or to contact her and tell her when she could. And I gave her the number for Julie the florist. Julie told me later that Lrene had contacted Lrene and said she would pick up the flowers next Wednesday (this was the previous Saturday). So, I thought ok, this will either work out or not. A week later and 3 days after the Wednesday proposed pickup of flowers by Lrene, Julie sends me an email note indicating the following: Petals Flower Order #73146002067 Petals Flowers <[email protected]> Fri, Jan 5, 11:56?AM (2 days ago) to me <[email protected]> Hello James, We are emailing you in regards to your flower Order #73146002067 for Lrene Zhang. As of today we have not received a phone call back from the recipient to let us know when she will be back in the office to receive the flowers. We also called the Shisedo Markham office and they told us that there is no one by the name of Lrene Zhang that works in that office. So I just want to confirm the spelling of the recipient with you and if you have the recipient's direct phone number. If you can please let us know as soon as possible, so we can have the flowers delivered to the recipient. Thank you, Regards, Julie Petals 9390 Woodbine Ave, Unit #1B11 Markham, Ontario L6C 0M5 905 887 8080 www.petalsmarkham.ca Mon-Fri - 10am - 4 pm Saturday - 10 am - 3 pm Well, this was a solid indication of a scam. There is no Lrene Zhang working for Shisedo in Toronto, Canada. What I did was confront the fake Lrene on WhatsApp. She weasel worded and waffled her way to a non-answer, claimed that Julie was called several times and did not answer. Chats flew back and forth. I kept asking for detailed location of where she works and what a direct phone number was. She gave me an address: 181 Bay St., Toronto, ON MSJ2T3 Canada. I googled this address and found it to be a large office building with NO mention of Shisedo in any part of the building. Lrene asked me for Julie’s number, claiming that she didn’t know., etc., etc. I gave her the address and the phone number (which I had done before). She said she called and would pick up the flowers in a couple of hours, since she was busy working and had to finish reading a couple of business papers. While I was dealing with Lrene, Auntie (the so-called Eileen Burbidge) was rapidly working in the background. You will recall that I clicked on a button that explained the new program. Without me knowing this, when I did so, the Distributed Application (Dapp) software triggered a malicious event that drained all my funds from my Safepal wallet. All my funds were removed from my possession in the Safepal wallet. The screenshot from my cell phone shows this: Add these writeups: • Write up what I missed as an alternative method to withdraw all my funds before the scammer did.