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It all started out 'very small, very friendly'

“I was doing a little bit of trading myself. I'd seen something on social media. I clicked on the link, I got contacted, and it basically went from there. It all started very, very small, very friendly, introduced to different brokers, and over a five-month period, it was built up and built up,” says Chris. It was an elaborate scheme, designed to build his confidence in their trading platform over time so that he felt safe investing larger and larger sums of money.

“I was the one that was actually doing the trades, not them,” says Chris. “I wasn't giving them my money, and they were trading it - I was sat there with an account, seeing everything, all the different coins, Ethereum, Bitcoin, and everything else like that. And I was sat there on the computer, and he would be inviting me over the phone, saying ‘Right, buy this, buy this, and then leave it for a few days,’ and you'd see it making money.

“This went on for maybe two or three weeks. Looking back now, right from the beginning, he would tell me about how the institution basically was the enemy, how the banks don't want you to do this, because if you're transferring your money via crypto, then you're not using the banks, and the banks aren't going to get their money, so they're going to lose billions upon billions.”

In fact, the scammer groomed Chris to ignore the very warning messages his bank would give. “Everything he said made sense to me, and so I started moving money through my bank accounts,” he says. “The bank would ring me up and say: ‘Is this a legitimate transfer?’ And I'd say yes. He’d tell me all the questions before the bank asked them and he’d tell me the answers [to give].”

He was relaxed with the scammer and 'totally under their spell'

Chris feels embarrassed to admit the extent to which he fell under the scammer’s spell. “It's a very embarrassing thing to say, but I was suckered, and I was groomed – we were swapping photographs of kids and families and all this sort of thing, and you're totally under their spell.”

One thing Chris considers carefully is why he found the investment scam so tempting. “If I'm brutally honest, I wanted to be able to have a life that I wanted. We wanted to get a second home. I wanted to provide for my kids, my grandkids. I think greed is the wrong word, but you get wrapped up in in the excitement and the thrill of it. It's like taking a drug. I was in such a good mood. The thing was, I wasn't keeping it to myself. I was telling everybody. I was trying to get everybody else in on it, because I thought this is such a great deal.

“With this sort of a scam it's not something that happens like instantly. This was over a period of five months, and we had good days where we made a lot of money and we had bad days when we lost so it all seems so real.”

When reality hit, he 'couldn't believe' he’d been conned

Eventually the mask dropped and the scam fell apart. Chris explains: “I decided that I'm going to cut my losses and try and get out with what I can. I pressed the sell button. Nothing happened. I couldn't believe it. I thought, no, there must be something up. I was trying to find every excuse in the world why this wasn't happening, and then that was it. It happened. And the feeling, the sickness and everything else. I didn't want to believe it. I didn't want to believe it for days.” Despite his realisation he had been conned, the criminals still pursued him. “They still contacted me. They actually even tried to get more money out of me saying I owed them money.”

In total Chris lost just under £250,000 – not including the gains he thought he had made through trading cryptocurrencies. “It was all my savings and a nice car, I sold that. I took a bank loan out… It started the downward spiral to losing my business and my marriage. I got to a place where I didn't want to be here anymore, and then I just suddenly realised how selfish I was being. So I just sort of just get up every morning, do what I do, trying to get back to where I was. But I am fortunate enough that I've got a service pension, fortunate that I've got good friends around me and support me. But the stages you go through are horrible. The feeling of shame that's the biggest thing. You're ashamed, you get angry… but it's the feeling of shame.

He contacted Money Box Live to warn other people of the risks and encourage them to be extra cautious. “You will [fall victim’] if you do not question every single thing. If it feels too good to be true, it is. Before this, I would have been there, stood on my soapbox saying there is no way you would ever catch me out doing this.”

Listen to Chris's interview and the special Money Box Live programme on cryptocurrencies.

If you've been affected by these issues or you're distress or despair and need support, including urgent support, a list of organisations that can help is available at bbc.co.uk/actionline

The information in this article was correct at the time of broadcast on 24 September, 2025.