‘I thought I had done my research:’ Woman’s life savings wiped out by fake financial adviser

ATLANTA — A metro Atlanta woman lost more than $120,000 to a fake financial adviser who had stolen the identity of a legitimate investment broker at a major financial firm.

“I thought I had done my research,” the woman told Channel 2 Consumer Investigator Justin Gray.

She is going by Yvonne as she shares her story because she does not want to share her full name.

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Many family members, work colleagues and friends still don’t know about the financial nightmare she has experienced over the past two years.

“I pride myself on my common sense. My family would be the first to tell people, She’s the go-to,” Yvonne said.

It started with wanting to invest for her family’s future. It was on YouTube, that she learned about a financial adviser being raved about on social media.

That’s when Yvonne went to work doing her research.

She found the broker on FINRA, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority directory, and saw that the adviser was properly registered and licensed and worked for a big, familiar name, Fidelity.

She even called FINRA to double-check. Only then did Yvonne decide to invest.

She intentionally started small with $5,000.

“Because I’m a cautious person by nature, I didn’t want to just go full throttle,” Yvonne said.

Every few weeks, she’d get messages showing how her investment in crypto was growing, until Yvonne decided it was time to cash out.

That’s when she was told in an email that she’d have to pay taxes on her investment gains, under penalty of law.

Then came another email for more taxes. And yet another email stating that she’d need to pay thousands more for an international business permit certificate.

“They advised me to create an account at Crypto.com,” Yvonne said.

She sent multiple payments that drained her savings accounts. It added up to more than $120,000.

Suddenly, the investment adviser stopped responding and disappeared.

“The broker is legitimate, but someone had stolen the identity of the broker,” Yvonne later learned.

The woman Yvonne thought she’d been communicating with all this time is a real, legitimate financial advisor at Fidelity. But the crook had falsely assumed her identity.

“You didn’t do anything wrong. It’s something that could happen to anyone and you even took proper precautions,” said Channel 2 Consumer Adviser Clark Howard.

Federal Trade Commission data shows that in 2023 consumers reported losing more than $4.6 billion to investment scams, more than any other category of fraud.

It’s a 21% increase over 2022.

There were warning signs Yvonne did not catch, because she did not know.

That’s why Howard says he recommends new investors always go to a brokerage where they can meet in person, physically with the adviser.

“The problem today is so often we are so accustomed to doing business with people we never lay eyes on, and that’s what opens us up to crooks,” Howard said.

Yvonne reported the fraud to the FBI, SEC, FTC and Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

The only money she recovered was the initial $5,000 because it was sent through an ACH transfer.

The rest of the money was wired to a crypto account.

“It was a lifetime of work to me. My future,” Yvonne said.

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