Troy Guggenhauer
Appearances
SCAMMERLAND
Escaping Starts With Stealing a Phone
I was angry. I was upset. I mean, I felt like an idiot. I even had thoughts of suicide, you know, at one point because I was starting my life over. And now here I am, not only without money, but $18,000 in debt. And wondering, how am I going to do this now? I tried to call my local police. And of course, they had no clue what was going on. They said there was nothing they could do.
SCAMMERLAND
Escaping Starts With Stealing a Phone
So all kinds of feelings just hit me all at once. When I started thinking about suicide, I realized really quickly that that's not going to help. Whoever took my money at the time, they don't care. They don't care that I kill myself. In fact, it's fine by them. That means I can't talk.
SCAMMERLAND
Escaping Starts With Stealing a Phone
I started looking online for this. They called it liquidity mining. I found it on Reddit. There were other victims as well. I learned pretty quickly that we got a major, major problem on our hands and. From that Reddit group, some of us folks got together. We formed a Facebook group. There's now about 300 of us, mostly victims. There's a few other folks on there.
SCAMMERLAND
Escaping Starts With Stealing a Phone
And it was through that Facebook group that I learned about the global anti-scam organization that I'm a part of today.
SCAMMERLAND
Escaping Starts With Stealing a Phone
No, not at all. I was told that the average losses of the folks who were joining us, who were finding our organization, I was told the average losses were around $90,000. It would be nothing for some folks to tell us that they lost $100,000, $250,000, half a million, a million dollars. They cashed in 401ks. They sold homes. They got other people involved.
SCAMMERLAND
Escaping Starts With Stealing a Phone
So my name is Troy Guggenhauer. I'm in Columbus, Ohio. I was living in New York City for 13 years, wanted to be in show business, moved back here in 2020. I now work at a data center. But before all of this began, Troy, he was actually an aspiring actor. When I was a kid, I wanted to be in the movies. I wanted to be a movie star, but when I went to New York, I was probably 35 years old.
SCAMMERLAND
Escaping Starts With Stealing a Phone
I was amazed. I was, I guess, incredulous because I realized that I'm not the only victim in this. Those of us who've lost money, we're not the only victims. This thing is so far beyond us.
SCAMMERLAND
Escaping Starts With Stealing a Phone
But I didn't want to go to my deathbed one day wishing that I'd done it. And it was quite a time living in New York City.
SCAMMERLAND
Escaping Starts With Stealing a Phone
It did. The biggest thing was that I wasn't sure what I was going to do with my life. If I wasn't pursuing acting, I really didn't know what I would do. So having no money and being, I was in my 40s at that point. So that was pretty much the lowest point in my life when I was scammed.
SCAMMERLAND
Escaping Starts With Stealing a Phone
Look up the Global Anti-Scam Organization. Our website is globalantiscam.org. If you email the press, press at globalantiscam.org. I answer the press email. Maybe I can save somebody or maybe they can tell somebody and save them.
SCAMMERLAND
Escaping Starts With Stealing a Phone
Yeah, I was starting my life over. So I had to find a job. And eventually I did. And then I thought, well, maybe I'll date. I don't really like online dating, but let me put my name in. Let me let me do some Facebook dating. It's free and whatever. What could go wrong with Facebook dating? So I signed up. And I got a message from a supposed girl who lived in Seattle.
SCAMMERLAND
Escaping Starts With Stealing a Phone
And we started chatting on a day-to-day basis about, oh, just about things. The weather. Did you eat today? What did you eat today? Where do you work? What do you do? Supposedly, this woman was successful. She was supposedly part Asian and part Ukrainian.
SCAMMERLAND
Escaping Starts With Stealing a Phone
Yes, she did. And it was this beautiful woman. So I was pretty excited to get to talk to a woman like this.
SCAMMERLAND
Escaping Starts With Stealing a Phone
The photo was actually an influencer in Hong Kong. Later on, I spoke to that person after I was scammed, and so it wasn't, clearly was not them. Those photos were stolen.
SCAMMERLAND
Escaping Starts With Stealing a Phone
It felt great. I mean, it's always nice to be loved and admired for who you are. It always feels nice to get that text of, hey, thinking about you and how are you doing? Did you eat today? Yeah. It's nice to get that stuff. I think probably every one of us would love to get that. Romance scams are nothing new.
SCAMMERLAND
Escaping Starts With Stealing a Phone
This is just a whole different version of a romance scam, and they really have it down to a science. Were you falling in love? I think I was falling in love with this person. It's kind of interesting how a lot of times we say things online, in social media or whatever, that we would probably never say with someone, we'd never say face to face.
SCAMMERLAND
Escaping Starts With Stealing a Phone
I think so. Yeah, I was definitely telling this person things that I would not have told them in real life. Certainly not as early as I did tell them.
SCAMMERLAND
Escaping Starts With Stealing a Phone
You fell hard. Yeah, I did. That trust build up very quickly, perhaps more quickly than it would have face to face. And I think I'm normally a trusting person and I wanted to trust her. But yeah, I've learned my lesson.
SCAMMERLAND
Escaping Starts With Stealing a Phone
she always wanted to compliment how good I looked in the morning. I would always get a good morning text and hope you have a great day. Throughout the day, there would be like, Hey, I was just thinking of you and I'm going to a meeting here. We're there hanging out with my friends today. Hope you have a great day. So it was these kinds of texts that,
SCAMMERLAND
Escaping Starts With Stealing a Phone
If you're in a real relationship with somebody that you may get or you may look forward to. And so it really turned into this online romance.
SCAMMERLAND
Escaping Starts With Stealing a Phone
And so I even asked her if we could do a video chat and got a very interesting response from that.
SCAMMERLAND
Escaping Starts With Stealing a Phone
So she told me that she was afraid of cameras. And the reason why she was afraid of cameras was because she was doing a video chat with a friend one day. The friend was driving a car. The friend got into an accident and died. And so because of that, she's afraid of cameras. I actually found out through documents later on that that is a canned response, a rehearsed response. Really?
SCAMMERLAND
Escaping Starts With Stealing a Phone
That's scripted? Absolutely it is. And they still use it today.
SCAMMERLAND
Escaping Starts With Stealing a Phone
Well, she never asked me to send her money. She told me that she was making money in cryptocurrency. She was mining Ethereum from her crypto wallet. And so she was making passive income, about $200 a day, every day, just from the USDT, the tether that was stored in her crypto wallet. And because it was in her crypto wallet, it was perfectly safe.
SCAMMERLAND
Escaping Starts With Stealing a Phone
It took me a while. When I first started it, I was actually making a little bit of money and I was withdrawing it to my wallet. But about three days in, I wake up one morning and all the money is out of my wallet. Now at the time, it was only about $5,000. And some words that had popped up said I had a contract that I needed to put $10,000 in. Okay. Okay.
SCAMMERLAND
Escaping Starts With Stealing a Phone
I messaged my girlfriend, online girlfriend, and I say, what's this? And this person says, oh, you're so lucky. Why? I got that too. And I made a lot of money. We're going to be so rich, honey. They use the honey and the deer, all the pet terms. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We're going to be so rich, you and I. It's going to be okay. Your money is safe. It's just in the mining pool. You're going to be fine.
SCAMMERLAND
Escaping Starts With Stealing a Phone
And not only did I have to get $10,000, but I had to do it within four or five days. So it wasn't a whole lot of time.
SCAMMERLAND
Escaping Starts With Stealing a Phone
No, there was nothing like that. It was it was online. You just fill out an online application and you're approved and the money's transferred to your bank account. But this is not something anybody had ever heard of. In 2021, when I was scammed, nobody knew about this stuff. Nobody had a clue about any of it. Not the media, law enforcement. There was nobody I could talk to. Nobody.
SCAMMERLAND
Escaping Starts With Stealing a Phone
In fact, my friends all thought, oh, sounds like a great deal. You know, I got all this money.
SCAMMERLAND
Escaping Starts With Stealing a Phone
Well, it got a little bit worse before it got better.
SCAMMERLAND
Escaping Starts With Stealing a Phone
Okay, the $10,000 is there. They said, hold on one moment. And then I looked at my wallet and it was zero. They had taken it out. Now I was furious. And I started texting them, where is my money? What happened to this? And I got a message back, your money is safe in the mining pool, but you're supposed to get $200,000 in Ethereum. I believe it was Ethereum is what they told me.
SCAMMERLAND
Escaping Starts With Stealing a Phone
But to do that, you have to pay the taxes. The taxes are $35,000. Oh, God. It was at that moment I knew I'd been scammed.
SCAMMERLAND
Escaping Starts With Stealing a Phone
I started messaging them that you don't pay taxes on money you don't have. That just doesn't happen.
SCAMMERLAND
Escaping Starts With Stealing a Phone
I messaged my scammer, my online girlfriend. I started asking her, what's going on? Oh, your money is safe. It's just in the mining pool. Just go ahead and pay the taxes. Maybe I can help you with that. I can help pay some of the taxes for you. There was no chance of me getting my money back. There was no chance of me getting any of it.
SCAMMERLAND
Escaping Starts With Stealing a Phone
Not even my, like, not even like, keep your, keep your bonuses. Give me my money back that I put in. They weren't going to do anything like that. And it was at that moment that I realized this, this is a scam. Of course, I didn't pay the 35,000, didn't have it. I couldn't pay it if I wanted to. And I told them that. So I, so I realized this is, this is some kind of scam.