I was approached by a lady from china who goes by the name "jiang lin" on wechat. She claims to be from a well-to-do family from beijing and has an "uncle" who is a financial expert.

After a couple of text exchanges she introduced me to invest in a cryptocurrency known as "obb", trading on a cryptocurrency online platform known as "bftbit" (www.bftbit.com). Bftbit turns out to be a fake trading platform and obb is a non-existent cryptocurrency. Once monies are deposited into bftbit it goes directly to the scammers, although on bftbit it reflects as deposited into your bftbit account and no matter how you try to withdraw the monies, the withdrawal status would remain as "processing".

In the beginning i was very skeptical and refused to believe her. But a moment of greed and "too smart for my own good" led me to foolishly believe in her and lost an unrecoverable sum of s$14,500.

The modus operandi:

1) she would first introduce that she had been into this obb investment for 3 years under the guidance of her financial expert uncle who guides her to invest at the relevant time on bftbit which most of the time would be profit-making as the uncle knows the market.

2) she would ask you to invest in a small sum of us$500 first which would make profits after 2 rounds of investment on bftbit. She would also provide step-by-step guidance [i.e. buying of cryptocurrency on huobi (an authentic ans well-known cryptocurrency exchange incorporated in singapore), transferring of currency from huobi to bftbit, making trades in obb on bftbit and withdrawal and transferring of a small sum of currency from bftbit to huobi (this withdrawal is to make one believe that bftbit is an authentic trading platform but in fact the withdrawal is done by the scammers)]. From there, she would entice you to invest in us$10,000 as her uncle predicts that a big market trend is coming, thus earning more profit.

3) she would then suggest to make a joint trade of usd$20,000 which would require us$30,000 as security deposit. In order to gain your trust, she would transfer us$40,000 into your bftbit account. Once you transfer your us$10,000 into the account it is gone forever.

4) at the time when you (and her) are jointly trading on the obb big market trend, the trading system would stop for unknown reason and when you refresh the trading system you would realise that the joint trade suffers an 80% loss. From there, she would claim to be your fault and ask for refund of her us$40,000.

5) a much serious concern is that in setting up your account with bftbit you need to furnish a copy of your nric which is at the scammers' disposal.