Trusting middle-aged couple's lives ruined after answering call from man saying he was federal agent

A trusting Alabama couple were conned out of thousands of dollars after answering a call from a Bitcoin scammer pretending to be a federal agent.
Dale Brown lost $13,000 last week after falling victim to the conman using the controversial currency.
She told WHNT the ordeal started when she answered a phone call from a man who identified himself as a federal agent.
The scammer convinced Dale that her identity had been compromised in drug dealings, and she had to help their investigation by moving all of her money into a Bitcoin account.
'The scammer had me so scared and so terrified about the drug stuff, and he said that they were watching me 24 hours a day and all of this stuff,' Dale said.
With the scammer still on the phone, Dale went to her bank to withdraw the money and was then guided to a Bitcoin ATM in Decatur.
'She didn't want her name associated with drugs, and they just operated on her possible guilt; I think they tried to make her feel guilty or stupid,' her husband, Charles Brown, told the local news station.
'They talked her into removing money from our savings and checking account and putting it into a Bitcoin machine.'
The scammer then sent her a QR code to open a Bitcoin account where she deposited the $13,000 that she can never get back.
'My best friend in Florida had to tell me that you did not do anything wrong,' said Dale. 'She said it's nothing that we could have helped because they played on my emotions.'
The Browns experience is just one of many Americans who have fallen victim to increasingly common cryptocurrency scams.
In February, an Alabama man pleaded guilty to hacking into the SEC's X account to post a crypto fraud.
Eric Council Jr., 25, admitted he hacked into the SEC's social media account and posted a fake message in the name of the then Chairman Gary Gensler.
The message falsely claimed that the SEC had approved BTC Exchange Traded Funds, temporarily increasing the value of Bitcoin (BTC) by more than $1,000.
Council and his co-conspirators managed to gain access to the SEC's account through a SIM swap.
A SIM swap refers to the process of fraudulently inducing a cell phone carrier to reassign a cell phone number from the legitimate subscriber or user’s SIM card to a SIM card controlled by a criminal.
As part of the scheme, Council used an ID card printer to create a fraudulent ID with a Gensler's information obtained which he from his co-conspirators.
He used the fake ID to impersonate access to the Gensler's phone number for the purpose of unlocking the SEC’s account.
Council’s co-conspirators then accessed the account and posted in the name of the SEC Chairman.
Council received a $50,000 payment in Bitcoin from his accomplices for his role.
In March, President Donald Trump made a dramatic U-turn over a 'critical industry' he once described as 'a scam.'
He announced the names of five cryptocurrencies he expects to include in a new US strategic reserve of cryptocurrencies, spiking the market value of each.
The announcement marks a complete reversal in Trump's thinking on the industry which he shared his frustration in 2021 by describing Bitcoin as a "scam" affecting the value of the US dollar.
'Bitcoin, it just seems like a scam,' Trump said in June of that year. 'I don't like it because it's another currency competing against the dollar' while adding that he wanted the dollar to be 'the currency of the world.'
Last month, Trump said in a post to Truth Social that his January executive order on digital assets would now create a stockpile of currencies including Bitcoin, ether, XRP, solana and cardano. The names had not previously been announced.
More than an hour later, Trump added: 'And, obviously, BTC and ETH, as other valuable Cryptocurrencies, will be at the heart of the Reserve.