Anna Rogers was duped by a Facebook ad promising access to Tesla’s investment platform. She was sent to what appeared to be a reputable trading website. After spending $1,000 a day on Facebook ads, the Sydney woman was left out of money.
Anna Rogers was duped by a Facebook ad promising access to Tesla’s investment platform
While investing online might be profitable for some, a woman in Sydney was severely out of pocket after falling for a Facebook post. When Anna Rogers spotted a Facebook ad promising “access to Elon Musk’s investing platform,” she believed it was too good to be true.
But curiosity won out, and after being bombarded with the same ad on multiple occasions, the Sydney woman decided to look into it more on 3 February.
In the same conversation, Mark recommended that Ms. Rogers transfer $10,000 to a “buying and selling account” so that she could start generating income.
“For example, he clicked on the Bitcoin display screen, and I recall him saying, ‘right here you may buy one bitcoin for AUD$29,000, nevertheless the subsequent day you can promote it in the US market for $31,000 each coin.”
Nonetheless, because she believed the company was competent, Ms. Rogers decided to transfer $3,000 – the maximum she could afford – from her Westpac account.
Westpac refused the financial institution switch.
“In retrospect, I should have recognized this as an indicator of something not being correct,” Ms. Rogers recounted. “I wish I had told someone about what I used to do.”
When Ms. Rogers was contacted again the following day to follow up on the switch, she stupidly decided to withdraw funds from her Commonwealth Checking account as an alternative.
The dealer Mark would call Ms. Rogers every three to four days to update her on her financing, send her screenshots to “prove” it was professional, and push her to invest more money to achieve a “better return” for her. Ms. Rogers made her second $5,000 swap on February 26.
She was “embarrassed” by her knowledge of the transaction and wishes she had paid more attention to the warning signs. Posting a false advertisement on Facebook about access to Elon Musk’s funding platform was too good to be true, she admitted.
“Mark sending me a bogus document about ‘arbitrage buying and selling,’ insisting on payment by bank transfer, and never being reachable by phone at any point should have set off extra-alarm bells for me,” she said.
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