*****/****

I was added to a group on the app called Telegram. The group name is OVEX-Finance Company and it is run by Karin Risi, with her photo displayed prominently. She is in fact a high profile businesswoman in America, so it is possible her identity is being used. She is also prominent on Linked-In

I was told that if I invested R 5 000-00 I would receive a return within a week. I duly had to register with digitaltradeconnects.com where my wallet was shown. I paid the money, R 5 300-00, to a

MR M M NAPO who is with Capitec Bank, Account Number ***

This payment was made on 2024/03/04

They wanted to verify my ID, but when I only had an Identity Book and not an Identity Card, they said I had to pay R 10 000-00 to be verified. At this stage I suspected it to be a ****, but wanted to gather enough information so that I could take the evidence to higher authorities

This payment was made on 2024/03/05

A few days later I was told that my account had to be upgraded because my profits were too high, and they wanted R 35 000-00 to upgrade my account. Again, I wanted this last piece of proof before I reported it to the authorities.

This payment was made on 2024/03/11

My account was upgraded, so I tried to do a withdrawal of $ 5000-00

The system then asked for a withdrawal pin. Which I knew nothing about. I then e-mailed their support address at *** and received the following reply :

Hello investor Eric

They were about to send your payment of $5,000 now to your Bank account

and noticed that you need to pay the withdrawal pin fee due to the rise

of cryptocurrency, before we can send from our blockchain wallet to your

bank account. A fee of withdrawal pin in the context of cryptocurrencies

is a secret number that allows us to send USDT/bitcoins directly to our

investors. The private key is what makes our investors happy.

Immediately after this, you will receive your benefit. Your withdrawal

PIN fee will cost you 41,650 Rands. Note that the 41,650 Rands will be

added to your winnings and that will make you receive a total profit of

815,900 Rands. Thank you for trusting us with your investment.

Best regards, Support Team

DigitalTradeConnects...

I went to Nedbank, where I have my account, and opened a case of ***** with Nedbank. My case number is ***7.

I then went to the police station and opened a case of *****. Case Number : 109/3/2024

Now, two weeks later, I am still being pressurised to put even more money into that account with Capitec. Obviously I am not, but surely enough time has elapsed for some action to be taken - Capitec is a South African bank and I have given the authorities an account number and a name, yet they can keep de-*****ing people. Please can someone try and stop them because the group on Telegram has over 600 members, and they are actively recruiting. I am still in contact with the team leader, LEADER-KARIN_RISI, but I don’t know for how long I can keep her interested. There are five other "Finance Companies" running ****s on Telegram at the moment, so if anyone with some contacts and determination can get involved it would be much appreciated.