Court documents obtained by 9NEWS reveal how a Douglas County woman was duped by someone pretending to be a cryptocurrency guru on Instagram.DOUGLAS COUNTY, Colo. — A private investigator and federal agents sought to help a woman recover some of the money she sent to a scammer after she was fooled into believing she was talking with a cryptocurrency founder on Instagram.
9NEWS found the woman originally reported the scam to the Douglas County Sheriff's Office. A report from the agency describes how the woman believed she was engaging with Vitalik Buterin, the creator of the cryptocurrency Ethereum . "The false Instagram post said that anyone who would send 1 ETH coin would receive 2 in return," a police report reads. A graphic from a fraudulent cryptocurrency website that appeared in a Douglas County Sheriff's Office report.
"This case was turned over to the Secret Service. This case is not prosecutable on a local level due to the suspect being in Kazakhstan," the police report says. Paul Sibenik, CEO of CryptoForensic Investigators, said the amount lost in this scam is larger than what people typically lose in such schemes.