Nice to meet you all.
I am Japanese.
I was solicited by a Taiwanese woman I met through a matching site to trade overseas forex and opened an account with BTCUSBT investment limited.
I was instructed to get support for depositing and withdrawing money from her account manager, Kate, via "LINE".
I started trading on December 3, 2020, with 300,000 yen ($2,900).
She acted as my analyst and gave me trading instructions. Then I deposited 1.2 million yen ($11,500) as she instructed me to add more margin to make a bigger profit. (At this point, my total deposit was about $14,000)
On December 8, she instructed me to ask Kate to tell me about the VIP system.
1 cumulative deposit: $3,000 -> 20% reduction in transaction fees
2 Cumulative deposit: $50,000 -> 40% reduction in transaction fees
3 Cumulative deposit: $10,000 -> 60% reduction in transaction fees
4 Cumulative deposit: $150,000 -> 80% reduction in transaction fees
She instructed me to aim for a cumulative deposit of $30,000, but since cash alone was not enough, I felt it was too risky and once refused the instruction. However, I ended up selling my other financial assets to make the deposit. This was a big mistake. (Total deposit amount: $30,722)
On December 23, I told Kate that I wanted to withdraw all funds ($133,968).
Kate told me that I had passed the withdrawal review and that I should pay 20.315% ($20,974) of my earnings ($103,246) as income tax within three business days. Kate also told me that once the taxes were paid, the requested funds would be deposited into my bank account in three business days.
I thought this instruction was very strange. I asked why it was not deducted from my earnings.
Kate replied that she could not process the payment because the funds had already been transferred to "Tokyo Collateral Co.
I also pointed out to Kate that the tax rate should be different from the Japanese tax rate.
Kate replied that she didn't know, as it was managed by "Tokyo Collateral Co.
I submitted a withdrawal request from the CRM center on the web on December 24 just to be sure, and I received an email from BTCUSDT informing me that the withdrawal request was completed.
On December 25, I borrowed the tax money from my parents and applied for payment to Kate. I made the transfer to my Japanese bank account as instructed. Within the same day, Kate replied that she had received the tax money and submitted it to the "Tokyo Collateral Co.
I was very skeptical about this company, so on December 28, I asked Kate to tell me when my money would arrive.
The next day, December 29, Kate reported back to me. The next day, on December 29th, I received a report from Kate saying that the transfer of funds to my bank account had failed due to suspicion of money laundering. She also told me that I had to pay 20% of the application amount, about $27,600, as protection money in order to transfer the funds. He told me that the money would be deposited into my bank account within the same day. However, I was told that if I left the funds unpaid after January 15, I would be charged 1.7% of the applied funds daily as a custody fee.
I felt this was obviously strange. However, I foolishly borrowed the protection money from a financial institution and paid it in installments on January 12 and January 13.
Then, four hours after I made the payment, my analyst girlfriend reported that she could not log into my account. I also tried to log in and it seemed that all accounts had been deleted.
Of course, Kate did not report any payment received that day.
Please let me know what I can do to help. I feel very shame for wasting my parents' money. I don't want to be another victim like me in the future.
Sincerely yours