When we have the money in the bank we think that it is totally safe and no one will be able to access it. But there are always exceptions. We have the example in Kansas, United States, where a highly respected banker He took his clients’ money to buy Bitcoin. All because he received different WhatsApp messages that were a scam.
This is the story of Shan Hanes, a former bank manager who went to work at Heartland Tri-State Bank in the United States. But even these people who are so academically trained can be tricked into stealing all their money, and even other people’s money.
How to buy Bitcoins safely and risk-free
A scam that ended without the money of bank customers
The CNBC has collected this story where we see how this banker suffered the “pig butchering” scam. A scam within the world of crypto assets in which the scammer, known as a shepherd, has the mission of finding his victims and start to ‘fatten them up’. That is, build a relationship of trust.
With this relationship of trust already formed, what they do is persuade that person to make cryptocurrency investments in specific places. This happened to the banker, who in 2022 began buying Bitcoins with personal funds, and in 2023 he was already stealing thousands of euros from funds from clubs or even a church.
From that moment on nothing improved. As if it were an uncontrollable addiction, he began taking money from his daughter’s university fund and also misusing his position of power. As a bank director he could access investment or pension funds and make transfers. Obviously leaving their clients without those funds. Actions that were completely intentional.
He reached such a point by searching for money among the accounts that in one day he managed to transfer more than 6.7 million to a cryptocurrency wallet to acquire them. But since he didn’t see benefits, he sent more and more money, being 10 million dollars a day or 3.3 million days later.
He wanted to achieve great benefits. To do this, he got his employees to follow him to avoid the transfer limits and continue sending money to the wallet. But logically these large movements of money caused the bank to investigate and he ended up fired and with a sentence behind him.
Specifically, after three months of investigation by the FBI, the condemnation What this banker received was 24 years in prison for the theft of 47 million of dollars. This caused many clients to lose the money they had saved throughout their lives with no expectation of recovering it.
Images | Eduardo Soares Erling Løken Andersen
Via | Xataka Mexico
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