Quebec woman loses thousands after clicking on a Facebook ad
CBC
Harpreet Sahota, a short-haul trucker living in Vaudreuil-Dorion, Que., was finding herself exhausted this summer, sometimes working six days a week and still not having much to show for it.
Then she got laid-off for a couple weeks, and decided she needed a new source of income — to find a way to work less, but still have enough to live comfortably.
That's when an enticing ad popped up on Facebook, offering her an investment opportunity. Sahota clicked and entered her contact info.
"Within five minutes, I started receiving calls from these different financial companies," she said, and one called LegalTrader.com caught her attention.
The representative promised a 70 per cent return on her investment.
"I thought, why not?"
It started with about $300 to open an account, but that small investment quickly snowballed into an avalanche. Sahota says smooth-talking representatives soon convinced her she was getting big returns on her investment, telling her she should invest more to make more.
So she sent more money. Then she was told she was losing funds, and she needed to invest more to get back on track.
"I took $15,000 from my credit line," she said.
"And we had some gold jewellery that my mother had for my marriage, saved, and we ended up selling that and using that money, and maxed out my credit cards."
While LegalTrader's website looks professional, searching the company's name turns up plenty of websites and forums accusing it of being an illegitimate business that scams people out of their money.
But Sahota, despite knowing there were some red flags, decided to ahead with it anyway, convinced by the company's agents that she would hit pay dirt.
She made direct transfers and payments with her Bitcoin wallet, a method of paying with the cryptocurrency.
"I got myself into debt," she said.
This story is a collaboration between the Investigative Journalism Foundation and CBC Saskatchewan.
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