School teacher loses over Rs1.9mn in fake 'Elon Musk' Bitcoin scam

LONDON: In a shocking incident, a British school teacher was conned out of over Rs1.9 million in a bitcoin scam by using the name of Tesla’s CEO Elon Musk.

According to the details, Julie Bushnell fell for a Bitcoin fraud that cost her over Rs1.9 million which she had saved for a new home.

Julie Bushnell said that she saw a story on a fake BBC website that claimed that Musk would pay back double the amount of any Bitcoin deposit. The fake website carried a story with a headline that read, “Tesla buys $1.5 billion bitcoin, plans to give away $750M of it.”

According to a BBC report, the fraudsters created a website that appeared similar to its own BBC News website to add authenticity to the fake news item.

The school teacher said that she paid £9,000 after reading the news on a website that resembled BBC and when no money came, she realized that she had been conned.

“it has affected me massively and I wish I can go back in time and not make those couple of clicks,” she added. She slammed the scammers for robbing her of her “dignity, self-respect, self-worth and strength” and said she now wants to raise awareness about such scams.

The fake website was still active and efforts were on to close it down.

In recent months, Mr Musk has often spoken about Dogecoin but rarely about Bitcoin. A day ago, the Tesla CEO said the electric vehicle manufacturer was suspending purchases with Bitcoin, triggering a slide in the digital currency.