If You’re On Instagram, Here’s Why You Should Take Florida Man’s Advice
If you’re one of the more than 2 billion people worldwide who use Instagram at least once a month, there are a lot of reasons you should take Florida Man’s advice.
In fact, this particular Florida Man has 42 thousand reasons why you should listen to him.
FLORIDA MAN STRIKES AGAIN!
DATELINE – Miami and the Saga of a Florida Man-slash-victim who would prefer to remain anonymous and will tell you why momentarily.
I’m not on Instagram a lot.
When I am, I post maybe a picture of my guitars or picture of my dogs, maybe something baseball-related, but I do seem to get a lot of private messages from girls, women, early twenties, maybe mid twenties.
They are all smoking hot.
Not all of them have command of the English language, which is the first clue that, hmm, this person might not be real.
Every once in a while though, one of these messages gets your attention and you look at the account.
This one’s from Anne.
Anne seems real and is really pretty. There’s a lot of pictures…a lot of them.
There’s only a couple pictures or their private accounts that you can’t see.
“Are you hiding all the joy?”
Anyway, Anne reaches out to me, Hey, are you hiding all the joy somewhere?
Like what?
She came back with, I think you’re hiding all your joy. Maybe you could share some of yours with me.
I said, I’ll pass. Thanks.
Anne responded with, well, I just thought it would be fun to share each other’s joy.
And I just let it go at that.
Lots of pictures. It looks like a real account. She’s smoking hot.
It started on Instagram
And I think that’s what happened with Florida Man who lost $42,000 in a cryptocurrency investment
scheme that was built on a relationship that started on Instagram.
It started back in December of last year. It ended abruptly last month.
The victim, we said he wants to remain anonymous, said she surprised me because when I asked
her to prove she was real, she agreed to a video call. And she looked pretty similar, but not exactly the same.
He thought, well, maybe it’s due to photo filters.
Federal agents said it’s likely the women, the women in the photos has no idea that she’s
being used in romance schemes because these bots, they just grab pictures and they post
them.
You’ve probably seen this happens a lot on Twitter where one person’s picture is used
for multiple accounts.
Well the victim said I became suspicious because she wasn’t the exact girl, but he started
investing.
Her her suggestion first, it was small amounts of $500,000 in each instance.
He saw financial gain and he was able to get access to his money.
He’s thinking, well, this sounds like a good deal.
Well, that’s when things fell apart because that’s when she suggested that he move his
money to a different site. She promised him gains of 1% a day.
The victim described this website as a sort of video game. He saw the numbers go up, but when he said I’d like to withdraw some of the money, he was told he would have to pay to withdraw the funds.
The victim said I saw my money going up and down, but it was a trap because my money was
already gone.
Even the bank said don’t do it
He’d been suspicious. He had even gone to Bank of America and the bank cautioned him, don’t take the money out. It’s a risky investment.
Well, because it seemed as if he was making profits, he transferred the funds and lost
$42,000 in the process.
By the way, according to the US Federal Trade Commission, reported losses from romance scams
totaled $1.14 billion in 2023 with median losses per person of about $2,000.
Romance scams are the highest reported losses for any form of imposter scam, according to
the US FTC.
So we can all take a lesson from Florida Man and save a lot of money in the process.
MORE EPISODES OF FLORIDA MAN STRIKES AGAIN