Pensioners scammed out of $1,700,000
UPDATE FROM AN SDC MODERATOR: We've decided it would be best to lock the comments section of this post to protect the member. That said, we want to issue a friendly reminder: We will NEVER tolerate personal attacks towards members who have fallen victim to scammers. It's not an experience we would wish upon anyone, and our main intention is to always keep seniors informed. Thank you for understanding.
My husband and I had worked hard all our life, working two jobs when interest rates were 17%. We also had four children. We saved and saved for our retirement and to ensure our children and grandchildren could be left a good amount of money when we passed to help them in this crazy world where living expenses have gone through the roof. Well a friend called us and told us he was investing in this Company and making quite a bit of money. That was our downfall. We thought maybe if we do the same we could make enough to pay off our children’s home loans.
we saw it advertised on Facebook and sent them an email, they responded. we were only going to invest a small amount around $2000 to see how it went. We started seeing money coming in and we were appointed our own Investment Manager. From then on we were coerced into putting more and more money in. Our Investment Manager would put us on to his accountant when we said no. He tricked us with his talking and we went ahead and did what he told us Saying once we get into the millionaires club our money would increase ten fold. We were told about arbitrage and after the investment manager starting doing that money was building up quickly. At times he even put money back into our account to make it look legitimate I suppose. He talked about his wife and daughter and built a great repore with us.
We had invested $1,200,000 and when it reached $3,000,000 we decided to take out the money And stop.
Well when we tried to draw our money out we were told we had to pay around $430,000 for their fees. We had told them previously that we had no more money to put in and I said to them that they were supposed to be taking out the charges with each investment they made. They said no, that wasn’t the way it worked.
We had no more money left, all our superannuation was gone. We needed the money so we drew on our house equity, thinking that when we get the money back we will pay the loan off straight away.
We lost everything. We had to sell our house to pay off the loan. We have little left and it’s our children that will now suffer when we pass. The Company was The Investment Centre. Because we could only send the Company $20,000 at a time via the exchange there were months of transactions daily for these amounts and the CBA did not ring us once or send an email or text asking where all this money was going. They refused to take any responsibility for duty of care and gave us not a cent back.
we have reported them to Scam Watch etc. etc. So all up we lost $1,700,000 and our house
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