After losing nearly $1 million to a tech-support scam and spending years scraping by on Social Security, Vermont retiree Jeanette Voss has had a life-changing experience.
On Christmas Eve, the 71-year-old saw her stolen money reappear all at once, deposited directly into her bank account — with interest. The final tally? $1,033,000.
“Overnight, my whole life changed,” she told New Hampshire Public Radio (1).
For a crime that typically leaves victims financially and emotionally shattered, the outcome was nothing short of extraordinary.
Credit goes to United States Secret Service agents, who recovered Voss’s funds by tracking cryptocurrency wallets tied to an international scam ring.
While the recovery doesn’t erase years of stress and deprivation for Voss, it transformed what began as a cautionary tale into one of the rare feel-good endings in the world of cybercrime.
Here’s what happened to her, and how to protect yourself.
As the Vermont media outlet Seven Days reports, in 2021, Voss saw what appeared to be a legitimate tech-support alert pop up on her laptop, saying it had been compromised. She called the number on the screen (2).
Scammers posing as tech-support specialists convinced her that hackers had already stolen her Social Security number and her financial accounts were at risk.
They instructed her to move funds out of her bank account into cryptocurrency for “security”. Scammers favor crypto transfers because they’re fast, hard to trace and nearly impossible to reverse.
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Sadly, Voss transferred nearly everything she had — $950,000. When she realized she’d been scammed, she contacted her financial advisor, the Social Security Administration and the police. But she eared she’d never get her money back.
For over four years, Voss rationed her spending, avoided travel, flirted with tax trouble and was forced to rarely stray from her home. All she had was Social Security and food stamps.
Recovering lost money often takes years, and typically depends on sustained cooperation with investigators, the ability to trace funds to identifiable accounts or wallets and some disruption in the criminals’ laundering or operational chain.
