In a previous blog entry, I detailed how I was scammed out of thousands of dollars over several months by a woman in the Chicago area named Madaline Wampler. 

John Wiley and Madaline Wampler

Apparently I was not the only victim of hers. I thought after that I’d never fall for another scam. But the thing about scammers is that once they are exposed, they change their tactics to stay in business. And it seems I am among the first to fall for a new scam involving cryptocurrency trading and a fake website.

My story begins in Facebook.

Right after I posted that, a complete stranger posted a comment saying she agreed with me. Her name, at least that I saw, was Ahn Lee.

I looked up her profile and saw pics of the most beautiful lady….and she was a DOCTOR, a specialist in anesthesiology. In case you are wondering what that is:

https://www.medschool.umaryland.edu/anesthesiology/patient-information/role-of-the-anesthesiologist/

A common misconception is that an anesthesiologist is the doctor who “puts patients to sleep” before surgery. It’s true that this is part of their job, but it’s only a small part! An anesthesiologist is actually a perioperative physician, where “peri” means all-around. So, an anesthesiologist is responsible for patient care throughout the surgical experience: before, during, and after the surgery itself. An anesthesiologist also has many responsibilities outside of the surgical suite (operating room).

So her job was extremely vital! Anyway, here are some pics of her:

So tiny and sweet looking! So I friended her on Facebook and soon found her in other places:

https://www.instagram.com/medicalmyanne/

https://medicalmyanne.tumblr.com/

https://www.amazon.com/shop/medicalmyanne

She then started chatting with me in WhatsApp, with her number there being 347-343-3474, which is indeed in New York City, where Ahn said she lives. She told me she was of Vietnamese and Chinese descent, had a home in Florida, occasionally visited Texas, was 35 years old, her birthday was on October 9 and what really got my attention…..she was looking for a man to start a family with.  She also told me she was close to her uncle who was a university professor and an entrepreneur. And like her uncle, she made lots of money via investments.

A couple of weeks after we had started chatting, she told me I could make lots of money via trading in cryptocurrency, just as she had. And so she introduced me to Coinbase.

https://www.coinbase.com/home

She directed me to wire money to Coinbase, so I sent it $1000. Then she directed me to send that money on to another site:  SOLanding.

https://solandingmarket.github.io/

And she began teaching me how to invest with this site:

And because of my investments, I made a small profit and then I withdrew all my money back.

That was in early September. Then she said I should invest more to get a bigger return. Over the course of the rest of September and early October, I wired more money to Coinbase and then transferred that money in turn to SOLanding, a total of $15070 dollars. And again through trading I made a profit, a HUGE one! And this was the result:

So now I had 30267 dollars to my name! I then requested that I withdraw all that money. And you know what they told me? That I needed to send an additional $4540 as taxes before I would be allowed to withdraw the 30 K in my assets. I was also told my account in SOLanding would be frozen if I did not pay within 72 hours. 

In a panic, I contacted Ahn and she told me she would help pay the rest if I could send most of it. I believed her, so I wired to Coinbase an additional $3200, thus nearly draining my checking account. Ahn asked me to tell her how much I sent so she could send the rest.

Apparently she kept her word, since when I later contacted the customer service department of SOLanding, they told me my taxes had been paid. So again I asked to withdraw my assets. They requested my bank account numbers so they could wire me all the money I requested. And then I waited……..and am still waiting. But meanwhile, Ahn Lee disappeared from Facebook, claiming that her account there had been hacked and then she also disappeared from WhatsApp. I have no more contact with her and likewise SOLanding no longer responds to my questions or demands. I have been totally cut off!

Acting on advice from an employee at Chase Bank, I contacted Coinbase and asked for help. I asked if they had ever heard of SOLanding and they said they had not. As soon as I saw that, my heart sank like the Titanic.

I now believe the following.

1. The person who contacted me in both Facebook and WhatsApp wasn’t the real Dr. Ahn Lee, but an imposter using me to get money for SOLanding, their actual employer. 
2. SOLanding is a FAKE website that takes the funds from unsuspecting investors and practically steals them after allowing for “investments” that seem to be successful.
3. Coinbase is a legitimate trading site and is not to blame for all this. I could have done all my trading with that and not taken the impostor’s advice to send so much money on to SOLanding.

So now with this blog entry, I have exposed SOLanding as a scam operation and I hope an investigation can be done by law enforcement to shut that site down! Even as a victim of it, I am determined to prevent others from being duped as I was! And of course…..I WANT MY $15000 BACK!!!