It was December 2021 when I got scammed to the tune of £25k in a bitcoin sting. I feel incredibly ashamed even writing these words. However, even though it’s very embarrassing to own up to the fact that I made a set of stratospherically bad decisions, I also think it is important for everyone to know how easy it is for us to fall for the endless scams that are out there.
None of us think it will be us. We all think we know everything there is to know about being scammed but it turns out we may be more vulnerable to flattery, to interest, to get quick rich schemes than we think we are.
At the time, I was in emotional distress. My marriage had broken down and I had had to sell my family home. I wanted to take my children on holiday and was struggling to admit to myself and to them that I was broke and could not afford the lifestyle we had become accustomed to. I wanted to believe that I could triple my money in a week.
More than that, I was in a child-like state when it came to money – and had been for all of my adult life. I never took it seriously, spending as if it had gone out of fashion and being careless with my finances. I was one of those people who used to let bills pile up on my desk and refuse to open the envelopes because I was “frightened” of them. I barely ever checked my bank account. I was in total fear and denial around money.
I’ve never been particularly financially savvy, but I’m old enough to know that most things that claim to help you get a lot of money in a short period of time are usually fake. Yet still at the age of 55, I ended up losing a significant amount of money to a man who I trusted (but had never met).
Such was my shame at my fall from grace after my divorce, that when something flashed up on my social media algorithm in a post on Facebook apparently from the much trusted financial advisor Martin Lewis (who has absolutely nothing to do with this), I clicked. I was desperate to be able to take the children on holiday or even a weekend break away.
The company was called Royal FX (it no longer exists, having been shut down after everyone started complaining on Trustpilot). I was invited to make an initial £250 payment to invest in cryptocurrency. It showed up on a very convincing active web page which had a graph depicting my money going up and down in the crypto stock market. I then got a call from an advisor named Jort who sounded completely bona fide.
Jort was flirtatious and funny and sounded like a grown up and sent me texts and I got lured into this web of deceit. His sidekick George – the person who explained how to invest my money – sounded like a pukka Englishman. He claimed to have grown up where I lived and named pubs near my house.
They played on the fact that I didn’t know anything about cryptocurrency – which of course should have meant I shouldn’t have invested in it. It happened so quickly, as I was being told ‘you must buy X now or you will lose the investment of a lifetime’. I was told that as soon as the investment made money – which would be within two weeks – I would be able to claim it back.
Somehow, this all worked until after I had invested £25k in the space of two weeks and my bank called me and said “this is a scam”. I collapsed and burst into tears. I couldn’t get the money back as I had invested it willingly and the consequences were that money had absolutely gone. It is a very sophisticated scam which involves you putting your money into a wallet which means you are willingly converting your money into online currencies and the banks are not responsible for that.
However, once the dust had settled I saw that this was an opportunity – even though it was a horrible opportunity – for me to take a long hard look about my relationship with money. The truth is, I’ve always had a very difficult and emotional relationship with money, like many people do. I have an ostrich-like attitude – I have flung money all over the place and don’t think about it. What happened at the end of 2021 made me realise I had to grow up and take some financial responsibility.
I could also see that my relationship with money also reflected my other relationships that were defined by my lack of responsibility, lack of self-esteem and desperate desire to be loved. I thought that I was loved because of what I had – a beautiful house, a garden, wonderful holidays – rather than who I am.
I wouldn’t have learned any of this if I hadn’t been sucked in by the disastrous crypto scam of 2021.
I wouldn’t have been sucked in if I hadn’t had to sell my family home – and a major reason for us having to move was that I had been financially irresponsible. As a freelance writer and therapist, I was overworking, and close to burnout, yet money would come in and then go out and barely even touch my bank account.
As I contemplated the reasons behind my relationship with money I realised I’ve had a lot of conflicting messages around it since I was a child. My parents were both essentially socialists and I saw them give most of what they earned away.
My father made a lot of money as a publisher. He was not interested in possessions, but he was quite eccentric and would buy things like huge American cars. My mother was very careful with money. She still has the same pots and pans that she had when she got married 70 years ago.
In my childhood, there was lots of money but then my parents divorced and suddenly times were tight. I remember my mother being in a lot of financial anxiety. Like most families, nobody ever really talked about money in an honest way, so I had no idea how to take any financial responsibility and by nature I’m a bit cavalier. If you put all those things together, you end up with someone who has an immature attitude to money.
It wasn’t that I wasn’t used to making financial decisions. I have always been the breadwinner in my relationship so actually I’ve held the purse strings, however loosely. Now I knew I needed to get more adult about money and to stop panicking about it.
It took a lot of honesty to be very clear about this with myself and to confront the need for change. First I contacted my brother, who is very good with money because he is an economist. He drove down the motorway and sat down with me and talked to me about how I should manage my money. He put me in touch with his financial advisor.
I also talked to friends and other people who worked in financial services and they helped me come up with plans so that I could be a lot more financially savvy. They all told me it was absolutely necessary for me to have an understanding of my outgoings and incomings and I needed to take responsibility for what I was doing with my money.
I looked through all my expenses and realised I was running three gym memberships and had six Netflix accounts. It was a pretty eye-opening experience.
I am now a therapist, and in my work I often find that women feel frightened of money – mainly because their partners have been the ones who have paid for everything and managed their household expenses. This can really affect how they feel about their lives. They are also very worried about the fact that if their marriage breaks down they would be financially vulnerable.
I feel strongly that we all need to talk more openly about money, and teach children financial literacy from a young age. We are taught so many things but we’re really not told about what money is, how economies work and how to balance our personal finances.
The most helpful thing for me was to be brave and check my bank balances every day, which meant I became aware of where I was spending my money. I recommend that everybody does that.
Today I still battle a bit with my relationship with money and, like many people, I do get financially anxious. But I’ve also got much better at running a budget, being firm with people about money and not continually offering to pay for everything for everyone. It has made a huge difference to my life.
I’m much more able to say no to things, to weigh up what I really want and what I don’t want, to see value in the small things.
This has been a life changing experience. I never want to go through it again but the fact that I have grown up in my attitude around money is something I never expected to happen. I am so relieved that it did.