Woman hopes scam story helps others from becoming victims

SAVANNAH, Ga. (WTOC) - Scams on social media are constantly evolving and can cost their victims hundreds, even thousands of dollars that they’ll often never recover.

According to the Federal Trade Commission, more than 95,000 people reported about $770 million in losses to fraud initiated on social media last year.

One week ago, Savannah resident Caitlyn Porter thought she was getting an inside track on a money-making opportunity from a cousin on Instagram.

“She even talked like she was my cousin. No reason to believe it wasn’t her,” Porter said.

It turns out her cousin’s Instagram had been hacked and was just convincing enough to hook Porter into the scheme.

“After I’d been convinced by, you know, a blood family member that it was ok, I took my tax refund and I invested it,” Porter said.

Porter invested one thousand dollars, and was led to believe that’s all she’d need to multiply that many times over in a Bitcoin mining money making opportunity.

Porter says she was put in contact with a woman who was supposedly guiding her through the Bitcoin mining process, and directed to a website that looked legit.

“It has stocks, and numbers, and a trade market at the bottom and copyrights, an address and phone number an email address and even a chat box that helped customers...it was like a customer service,” she said.

Almost instantly, Porter’s “earnings” account on the website quadrupled, and eventually climbed to $7,000. But she’d never see that money. In fact, she’d hand over thousands more before she realized it was all a scam.

“My heart sank. My stomach just...I mean, this is everything I have. I’m a single mother of two children, and my refund was supposed to be used wisely and I’m very good with my money, I manage it very tightly,” Porter said.

“It looks like you’ve made $20,000 with a $100 investment. Then you’ve got to pay all these fake taxes and all these fake fees...all this other fake stuff so that way you can get that money out, and you just end up losing all your money,” Det. Jason Lloyd said.

That’s exactly what happened to Porter.

“When the mining was complete, she told me I could withdraw the money back to my CashApp wallet. When I tried to do this, the website company emailed me and said, since you’ve made so much money in such a short period of time, you have to upgrade to a gold account,” Porter said.

Porter says it took a lot for her to share her story, initially embarrassed she fell victim. But she says she’s speaking up so no one else must go through this, too.

Det. Lloyd says the more people who do speak up, the better case investigators can build against those behind the schemes.

“We just get little pieces of information from each individual, it’s harder to make the connection and try to figure out where this is happening,” Lloyd said.

If you want to report fraud, click here and/or here.