This story is truly heartbreaking, knowing that a 72-year-old woman lost her entire life savings and inheritance, totaling $224,000, to crypto scammers. They used a deepfake video of Christopher Luxon, the New Zealand Prime Minister, to lure her in.
It's a very sad story and I wish that the woman will get support from police, government to catch scammers and recover her money back. It will be very long story and at this moment, I only can wish the woman best of luck.
Recently things are getting better and policemen are catching many scammers. The scheme is that hundreds of companies create scam call centers in countries where it's easy for foreigners to start a business, and then they form a partnership behind the scenes with politicians who protect them from the attention of the government, then they hire young people who speak foreign languages like English, French, Spanish and German, then young people call them and do every kind of dirty job to get their visa/card or steal a crypto from them. Then the company pays them some share of stolen money and that's how many young people make money. Gladly, the foreign police, especially German, USA and Netherlands police caught many scam call centre companies.
About this scam, she was too naive to believe that the man who called her is the NZ Prime Minister. She would have known that man is very busy with his powerful position, and she ignored one more red flag. How did a NZ Prime Minister call her just to invite her invest money into something, in this case invest in cryptocurrency.
They are old people, who grew up in a society where the word has value and that's why they are naive. Sadly, immoral people use that for their own benefit.