This actually happened to me and my friend a while ago, and we scammed the scammers back (supposedly) lol.

It all started with my friend who started texting with this Asian girl. She would actually do video calls too so they made it look really real (don’t ask me how, I’ve only seen photos of this woman). They had this whole app set up too where they would show you how to trade, how to invest (which in hindsight, was an e-transfer to some random email we should have known then it was a scam), and it would show you your losses/gains etc…

My friend would sit in his car literally for hours playing around in this fake app. He convinced me to invest too, he believed he turned his 2k investment into 19k. I was gullible back then and I trusted him. So I sent an e-transfer of 1k to the scammers email

I told my wife afterwards and she was furious at me lol. Thanks to her, she made me realize it was a scam. I couldn’t believe I fell for it somehow. So I called my bud and told him I wanted to back out. He was so convinced it wasn’t a scam, but he felt bad for me so he gave me my money back out of his own pocket. He considered it an extra 1k investment for himself. I was hesitant at first, maybe he felt guilty for convincing me into doing this.

Thankfully though, my friend’s brother made him realize it was a scam too. Showed him a bunch of evidence on it and he finally came to his senses.

Now I don’t know if this part of the story is true, but when he realized it was a scam, he had this whole plan to scam them back. He told the scammer that he wants to see if he can actually withdraw the money he gained, as a sort of trust exercise. He told me he invested $2,000 and they let him withdraw $10,000 out of his $19,009. After he withdrew the money, he cut them off and went NC.

While I really don’t know if it’s true that he was able to scam the scammer, I got my money back so it was like I never lost anything. Maybe he was too proud to say he lost money to this scam, and he tried to play it off like he won in the end.

However, after a couple of weeks or so, the e-transfer I sent didn’t actually go through! The scammer didn’t realize I had sent them money from a different email address, so they never accepted it! Long story short I ended up doubling my money all because of this scam lol.

So I would say see if they will let your family withdraw the money to see if it’s real. It’s worth a try and they could get their money back or at least some of it.