Bitcoin Scammers Target 2 Elmhurst Residents

ELMHURST, IL – Scammers on Tuesday targeted two Elmhurst residents with a scheme involving depositing money into bitcoin machines, police said.

According to a report, a resident in the 400 block of South Stratford Avenue told police that he received a notification on his laptop stating he had been hacked. The resident called the phone number provided and spoke to a person who informed him he needed to withdraw money and deposit it into a bitcoin machine, police said.

The resident followed the instructions before realizing it was a scam.

A resident in the 100 block of West Brush Hill Road reported that she got a notification that her computer had a virus. She called the number provided and followed the same instructions, police said.

Police did not say how much money the two residents lost. But in a recent Western Springs case, a resident was out $11,000 in a bitcoin-related scam. It also involved people pretending to be the Western Springs police chief and representatives of Amazon and the Federal Trade Commission, police said.