Aleksey Madan never thought the day would come.
This week he received a $140,000 check in the mail from Massachusetts officials. That was the full amount Madan had lost after falling for a get-rich-quick crypto scam.]
“How would you feel if all your money was stolen and you never expected to get it back, then you did?” said Madan, 69. “It feels amazing. I’m overjoyed. And also in shock.”
Those funds were among the hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of cryptocurrency Massachusetts authorities seized from a fraudulent operation that targeted Russian-speaking seniors online and, in some cases, stole their life savings.
The Massachusetts Attorney General’s Office began investigating the company, known as SpireBit, following an NPR investigation last year detailing the stories of two victims who were lured into an investment scheme, only to realize it was a sham after they transferred large quantities of money into SpireBit’s cryptocurrency wallets.