‘My father attempted suicide after crypto fraudsters tricked him out of £144k’

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Dear Katie,

I am writing on behalf of my father, a pensioner in his 70s, who has suffered with severe bipolar disorder for 30 years. He has lost more than £144,000 to a cruel scam which went on for four years.

In 2018 he was looking to buy a house with his partner and was taken in by Dragons’ Den-style adverts for cryptocurrency, which he thought might make a good investment.

At first, the advert encouraged him to make a small investment, but then he started putting more and more money in. Eventually he invested £30,000, but then when he tried to withdraw the funds he found he was unable to.

He realised he had been conned, which was, of course, devastating. In August that year he was sectioned under the Mental Health Act and spent six months in hospital.

Then, around a year and a half after his release from hospital, he was approached by a company claiming to be able to recover his lost cryptocurrency. Clinging on to hope of getting his money back, my father paid a total of £75,000 to this “firm”.

He was then informed that the money had been found and, what’s more, his investment had grown to £240,000. He was delighted. He found a lovely little property with his partner and committed himself to buying it.

On the day the £240,000 was due to be paid to his account, my father was informed that it had been stolen by a third party.

He didn’t know it at the time, but he had been conned again. He was completely distraught and had to withdraw from his property purchase, despite having paid all the solicitors’ fees.

My father was maxed out on all his credit cards and felt totally hopeless. In September last year, as a consequence of the stress of these fraudsters messing with his head, he tried to take his own life and ended up in a psychiatric hospital, this time for three months.

After discovering the fraud, I have been helping my father go back through his accounts. What I uncovered was terrifying.

Worse than losing all his savings, my father had been pressured into racking up £75,000 in personal debts by these crypto criminals. And he had no way of paying this money back. He is now destitute. Despite the desperation of the situation, my father’s bank, Santander, has refused to help.

Given the sophisticated and targeted nature of the fraud, its long drawn-out nature and how vulnerable my father is, I think this is so wrong.

– SM, via email

Dear reader,

People such as your poor father who suffer from severe mental health issues are more likely to fall victim to fraud than the general population. They are less likely to get their money back when they do and are more than twice as likely to fall into debt as a result.

The almighty pickle your father has got himself into here will, for many readers, be difficult to comprehend. But unlike most of us, your father sadly lacks the stability of mind to keep himself safe from harm.

These fraudsters clearly knew they were on to an easy target when your father first wound up in their clutches, which is why they stuck around for four years. You say they were busy conning your father even while he was in hospital recovering from severe bipolar episodes, which is sickening to think about.

These ruthless and calculating criminals – with no regard for the human suffering they personally inflict on people such as your father – tragically drove him to the point of despair. I was so sorry to hear he had attempted to end his own life. It must have been an awful time for you all.

I asked Santander to urgently review your father’s case and was surprised when it said the first time it had heard of his case was through your father’s MP just a few days before my contact with it.