Consumer complaint received 2025-08-17 00:00:00
Product: Money transfer, virtual currency, or money service — Virtual currency
Issue: Fraud or scam — 
Company: JPMORGAN CHASE & CO.
State: NC

Complaint narrative:
I was the victim of XXXX online crypto scams in 2024. The largest loss was to XXXX for about {$400000.00}. Next in line, XXXX, for about {$82000.00}, and finally XXXX, for about {$44000.00}. 

The thing they all have in common is that I was required to wire money from my bank account at JPMorgan Chase, to a handful of crypto exchanges as the first step. 

They all have a similar MO : first I was approached on XXXX by an attractive XXXX woman complimenting me on my photos. Some weeks go by with small talk and some romantic overtones. Eventually the woman suggests maybe I would like to invest in a passive income investment. They would get me to try a small amount, from {$500.00} to {$5000.00}. The returns would be quick and impressive, and in each case they would encourage me to make a withdrawal to prove that the fund was legitimate. 
At this point I would start to get a little nervous, and ask to have a video call with the woman who had introduced me to the fund. The women would not look quite like the photos they had shared with me and they always made their calls from a little office for the calls with a fake bookshelf backdrop. Then I was encouraged to invest larger amounts. Everything still looked encouraging and the profits were huge! Eventually I reached a point at which I wanted to retrieve some of my original capital and make a significant withdrawal. Thats when the problems begin. The withdrawal does not go through and when I inquire what the problem is, I am told there are various problems with my account such as suspicion of money laundering and penalties for suspected collaboration with other investors. Each problem requires a penalty fee ranging fro a few XXXX to hundreds of thousands of dollars. The fees can not be paid from the account balance, they must always be paid in new money, that is additional deposits to the account. Supposedly, when the penalty is paid, the withdrawal will be allowed to proceed, but as it turns out there is always another penalty fee around the corner, and the withdrawal is never allowed to happen. So the account balance continues to grow but I am never allowed to make a withdrawal. And then they tell you the account must be verified with the verification fee being a percentage of the total balance, meaning they are charging penalties on the penalties! Once I pay the penalties, I am informed that I took too long to pay and there are holding fees being charged for keeping my money from me. It never ends. I will detail the specifics of each of the XXXX funds I was involved with along with any contact info below. 

XXXX Account XXXX. XXXX My contact for this fund was a woman named XXXX XXXX, living in XXXX XXXX, XXXX XXXX. Phone # XXXX : XXXX and XXXX. She said she was from XXXX XXXX, divorced, with her parents and an 8 year-old son still living there. Her American name was XXXX, and her XXXX ID was XXXX / XXXX XXXX XXXX She said she was the owner of a beauty supply company based in XXXX, downtown LA. showed me a CA drivers license with address redacted to prove she was who she claimed to be. Initially, I tried to fund my investment with HFT with wire transfers. The site, then called hftcmc.com gave XXXX wire transfer recipients : XXXX XXXX XXXX Wing XXXX XXXX, XXXX, XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX Bank XXXX XXXX XXXX Bank XXXX, XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX, XXXX XXXX XXXX : XXXX Account : XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX house, XXXX XXXX XXXX, XXXX XXXX, XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX Bank XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX, XXXX, XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX : XXXX Account : XXXX Both individuals and their respective banks were flagged by Chase as scammers and Chase would not sent XXXX wires. So then I had to use an account at XXXX to buy XXXX and send it to XXXX. XXXX claimed it used block arbitrage and made profits from the tiny difference between cryptocurrencies on different exchanges. You could place an order ranging from {$5000.00} to {$1.00} XXXX, for anywhere from 3 days to 15 days and your profit would be somewhere between 2 % and 3.5 % per day. This rate compounded so depending on how much you invested, you could double your money in about XXXX weeks. 
I decided that I would risk {$100000.00} for XXXX weeks, double it, and return the initial capital to my bank account. Then things went sideways. I placed an order for {$50000.00} XXXX and the order came back for {$580000.00}. I couldnt get out of it without paying an unspecified penalty. My friend said she would help me fill the order and ended up contributing about {$200000.00}. But I had to come up with the rest. I maxed out my companys line of credit ( $ XXXX ), cashed in my IRA ( $ XXXX ), and borrowed $ XXXX from my mother. After applying for an extension to meet the deposit deadline, I finally got the full $ XXXX together, only to be told I was suspected of money laundering, and there would be a penalty to pay. After I paid the penalty, there was another extension fee. And on and on. So since that initial order, I have never been allowed to withdraw any funds from the account. The latest ransom demand is they say that because the SEC has classified cryptocurrency as a bond, I must make a deposit of 25 % of my balance to verify my account. The verification fee is {$2.00} XXXX! Somewhere in the middle of all this, XXXX put up a warning that they were changing to a different server, having been accused of a scam. So they changed over to hft-az.com, hosted by bifrostwallet.com. Also, somewhere in the middle of all this my friend said that XXXX had closed her account due to a scam report, and she moved our communications to XXXX ( XXXX @ XXXX ). 
So my current status is that my account is locked. I can not invest or place any more orders. My balance is nearly {$18.00} XXXX, but I can not touch it without sending another {$2.00} XXXX in new money. I have engages with their " customer service '' to no avail. For all purposed, my initial investment of about {$400000.00} is gone. 

Screengrabs from HFT site and customer service : https : //www.icloud.com/sharedalbum/ # XXXX SDX ID XXXX SDX.com Same MO : XXXX woman likes my XXXX photos. Her name is XXXX XXXX ( XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX, says she is from XXXX and lives in XXXX, NY. We talk about possibly meeting. She sends me pictures of herself, but they turn out to be photos of a Korean car show model. She invites me to try another crypto trading site called XXXX. The website appears legit and they claim to be XXXX regulated. I downloaded their XXXX app from sdx.com. The trades must be done at specific times according to research from her auntie. We try a few XXXX dollars, try a withdrawal, all seems good. I deposit {$10000.00}, and make another $ XXXX in profits. I go to make a withdrawal, and everything goes sideways again. I am told that my withdrawal address is abnormal and I will have to pay a penalty fee to restore my account to normal. I pay the fee of $ XXXX, but because it is crypto, it comes in slightly more than the requested amount. They then tell me that the payment must be exact to the XXXX, and because I overpaid, my account has been considered a higher level security risk, and I must pay an additional $ XXXX to unlock my account. My friend swears she has used the fund for over a year and a half and she will personally guarantee that if I pay the fee, I wont lose my money. So I pay the additional $ XXXX, and of course, theres another penalty, this time a holding fee for keeping my money while I was trying to raise the penalty funds. The holding fees are compounding daily so I will lose my entire $ XXXX balance if I do not pay the new $ XXXX penalty in XXXX days. I ask my friend to make good on her personal guarantee, and she of course comes up with excuses why she can not keep her word. I give up on both her and the site and cut communication with her. My $ XXXX is gone. I had numerous " discussions '' with XXXX XXXX XXXX, but all I got was a series of increasing demands for more money. 

XXXX customer service on Telegram ( @ XXXX ) Owned by six-group.com XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX, XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX JPX ID : XXXX Another attractive XXXX woman from XXXX, XXXX XXXX XXXX, from XXXX XXXX. She moves our communication to XXXX ( XXXX XXXX @ XXXX ), but says thats her work address, and moves again to her personal account ( XXXX XXXX XXXX ). She suggests I try a XXXX site trading gold options, called XXXX, based on tips from her auntie. She had me download their XXXX app from jpxtradex.com. I tried a few XXXX dollars, and sure enough, each trade makes a profit of exactly XXXX XXXX. I try a small withdrawal and everything works smoothly. She says I should make another deposit to get my balance up to {$5000.00}. Then she says if I can get it to {$10000.00}, my profit will be XXXX XXXX per trade. She offers to loan me {$4000.00} to get my balance up. And sure enough, the trades make XXXX XXXX each time, but she insists I should only trade XXXX XXXX  of my balance on any XXXX trade. After about a month, my balance is up to about {$40000.00} and I decide to withdraw half of it, to help pay back the loan I took from my mother. And of course thats when the trouble begins. First they tell me I must pay taxes on my withdrawal of 22 %. And the taxes can not be withheld from my balance, I must deposit new money to cover the taxes. After I do that, they hit me with the suspicion of money laundering penalty ( sound familiar? ). It takes me a few weeks to pay that, and then they hit me with several more penalties, some arising from the fact that the withdrawal address I gave them initially no longer works because both XXXX and XXXX have banned me from buying or selling crypto in the meantime, for unspecified reasons. After another XXXX months, my balance is up to {$82000.00} with all the accumulated penalties, and they decide to hit me with a moneyholding penalty of 20 % of my balance, because its taken me so long to pay the various penalties. Latest ransom demand is up to {$17000.00}, which I can not raise, so my account is locked permanently. I have attempted reasoning with XXXX customer service, but they just keep reiterating their demands for more money. 

Finally, this past XXXX, XXXX sent a customer service message out of the blue, admitting that they had found " a female user from XXXX, nicknamed XXXX, had been involved in long-term illegal operations with a staff member of XXXX XXXX, suspected of illegally manipulating account transactions and making illegal profits. '' When I responded that with their admission, they were responsible for releasing my funds, they responded by blocking my account and deleting all prior customer service messages. 

https : XXXX XXXX customer service on Telegram ( XXXX @ XXXX ) Screengrabs from XXXX website and customer service : https : XXXX XXXX XXXX Conclusion : It is beyond coincidence that each of these operations uses exactly the same techniques, and the women who are fronting for the sites even use nearly identical language when encouraging the victim to come up with additional capital. Their little fake offices for the video calls feel like a call center/boiler room, and I have no doubt there are many more women and sites involved fleecing older men out of their retirement savings. I hope that the above information can be used to put an end to at least the XXXX sites in question.

Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation