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Questionable online investment platforms advertise hefty profits. A pensioner lost 300,000 francs.
An 82-year-old pensioner comes across a tempting advertisement on the Internet: They say he can make great profits on the stock market with just 250 francs. The retiree is curious about how it works. And he’s also hoping for a small boost to his pension.
He opens an account on the investment platform Invesacapital and deposits 250 francs. An alleged advisor from Cyprus immediately gets in touch. From then on he calls two to three times a week and tells the man what he should buy and sell. The retiree never decides about the investments themselves.
“The amounts kept getting bigger”
At the beginning he always makes a profit: “Sometimes 50 francs, sometimes 70 francs,” the person concerned tells the SRF consumer magazine “Espresso”. “After three weeks, the advisor said I should deposit another 250 francs so that I could make more profit.”
So the pensioner invests more and more, sometimes 500 francs, then 3,000 francs. “The numbers kept getting bigger.” In the end he deposited a total of 300,000 francs and the money seems to be increasing miraculously. His virtual online account shows 640,000 francs.
Now the 82-year-old wants to withdraw money, but the broker gives a thousand reasons to continue. The fraudsters now probably suspect that their victim could jump ship. All of the pensioner’s “investments” are suddenly massively in the red and his virtual account suddenly only has 80,000 francs left. A shock. The retiree wants to save at least this amount. But it is said that he is not allowed to withdraw any money. He has to continue investing to save his assets.
And then the “account” is suddenly at zero
When he logs into his virtual account one morning, everything is gone. He and his wife’s entire savings are lost. But the advisor insists that he has to invest even more money to win back what he lost. In the panic, the pensioner also sells his car.
Luckily, his bank convinced him not to transfer this money: it is the only savings the 82-year-old has left. Looking back, he wonders how something like this could have happened to him: “I’m angry with myself. And when I wake up at three in the morning, I can’t go back to sleep.”
He has now confessed everything to his wife and children. The son and daughter write warnings on the Trustpilot rating platform and report to “Espresso”. The 82-year-old wants to warn others about this scam: “I tell everyone: Don’t even start with it! Once you have made a deposit, you are in the clutches of these people.”
Invesacapital will pay back 100,000 francs
The Invesacapital platform writes to “Espresso” in a statement that the small print explicitly points out the risks of such investments. They would never have manipulated the pensioner. He always deposited money “voluntarily” and “without pressure”. Nevertheless, Invesacapital has suddenly paid the pensioner back 100,000 francs. He has at least a third of the lost amount back.