Lost all my life savings in a Solana Memecoin Ponzi Scheme
It all started when I met this kid in college. He’s a year older than me and he claimed to be a crypto millionaire. Me and a couple of my friends asked him how to make money just like he did. He created a group chat and told us to zelle him. I trusted him because if I ever got scammed, I knew his whole name and information. I threw in $500, and a few days later he zelled me $1K. I got to know the guy well and showed me his Lamborghini Urus and lied about living in a $4M mansion. I wanted to invest more. I put in $2.5K. He told me I made $56K. The only things I found weird was that why would he still be enrolled in a college if he’s a multi-millionaire? After putting in the $2.5k, he nonstop made excuses why he couldn’t send the money. He sent me fake screenshots from Phantom saying “Under Review”. Even though every Phantom transaction is instant because it’s decentralized. It only took me a few weeks to find out he just highlighted and used the inspect element on his computer to change the words and numbers. I told him I needed to pay off my credit card, and he sent me $5K. I asked him a few days after that, “what about the $50K or whatever other amount you owe?”. He snapped back and went “legally I don’t owe people anything, there’s no contract”. Technically he’s wrong since it’s considered Fraud by Deception. He still promised the share, but things started getting weird. He said he was building another liquidity pool, and he told my friend and I to “find new people” to invest. I asked a few friends of mine who were skeptical, but invested anyway. The individual running the scheme “went on vacation to Greece” over winter break. We had no money because we invested again and he ghosted me for the entire month. My friends who went to Greece with him said he never showed up. Another red flag. When he “got back from vacation”, he made another coin and told me the same, “find me 3 new people”. As greedy as I was back in, I ignored the red flags and found a few of my friends. This kid promised returns straight out of his ass and there was no blockchain proof of him having these funds. During that week with the new coin, my friends started demanding me for the money back. I pulled out a cash advance on my credit card and venmo’d them. This was in late January. From then till now, he’s made nonstop excuses and reasons why he STILL can’t send it. I went on Solscan to see where the money ACTUALLY went, and almost all our money went to Stake.com. I realized that he used Stake to wash the stolen money, but also you need to wager 100% of the deposit in order to move it somewhere else. So this entire time, he was just gambling our money on an offshore crypto casino. I was shocked and felt sick to my stomach. I am out $9,000, my credit line is frozen, and I got about $500 in my savings. I reported him to his and my local police department, the FBI, and the FTC. His texts were rather incriminating so I have a huge advantage here. He bypassed KYC with fake ID’s and photoshopped utility bills for Stake & multiple exchanges. However there is a chance he can flee the country since he’s a dual citizen. Im seeing my family in europe this summer, but when I get back, I will have no money left. Please don’t ignore the red flags like I did. For I knew this guy in person so you really can’t trust anyone.