I was targeted through cold-texting by someone pretending to be a young woman from Malaysia who had contacted me by mistake. She was eager to establish a friendly text exchange and even suggested visiting my country, an offer I declined. She talked about becoming wealthy and helping others achieve financial freedom through cryptocurrency investment, and then offered to teach me finance. She introduced me to www.smoothlybi.com and proposed guiding me step-by-step in investing in a fictitious cryptocurrency called ‘wsry’ on this fraudulent exchange platform. This was presented as a confidential opportunity to invest in a currency supposedly slated for listing on major markets.

Scammer’s phone number: (601) 115-5996

I started with a modest investment of 100 USD, and she allowed me to withdraw small amounts initially, maintaining the pretense of being separate from the platform. The returns appeared remarkably high and consistent, at 3-5% per day, prompting me to increase my investment to several thousand dollars. She then claimed to attend a conference in Singapore, returning with ‘news’ that major developers would invest heavily in wsry, supposedly causing its listing price to double from 45 to 90. She urged me to set increasingly higher investment goals and to hold the investment until it reached 90.

As I prepared to sell, I found I couldn’t withdraw my funds, which had grown to 18,000 USD. The platform claimed I needed to pay personal income tax to an unspecified Asian tax authority, but I couldn’t use my investment for this tax. They demanded an additional 5,000 USD in tax to release my funds. This raised my suspicions of a scam. Further investigation revealed this to be a well-known scam, known as ‘pig butchering’. Realizing there was no hope of recovering my money, I found a scam alert forum to share and discuss my experience.

I want to raise awareness about this scam, which also uses another website: www.northstar.top.

My goal is to inform as many people as possible about this scam to prevent others from falling victim to it.