He then lost a further $3600 ($3881) on a scam recovery service, later discovering they were in league with the original group of scammers.
“The sad thing was, we were in a reasonably good position (before the scam),” Cooper told news.com.au. “We’d paid off the land for a home we’d bought and we’d paid off the house.
“I’m starting to get shaky talking about it,” Cooper added, saying he felt “like a fool”.
Cooper blamed falling for the fraudulent scheme on the fact he is an “innocent country boy” and also the great lengths the cyber criminals went to appear legitimate.
For Cooper, it started in September 2018 when he was scrolling on social media and saw an ad pop up for a company called FXleader.com.
Clicking the link, he registered his interest and soon received a phone call from them.
“Within about a minute and a half, I had a guy call me just like myself,” Cooper recalled. “He knew all about general things, he just started chatting. He was a genuine Aussie.
“He said you’d be making money every day on the side.”
With the power of hindsight, Cooper remarked: “There’s some Aussie guy out there who has no shame.”
From there Cooper started trading on fxleader.com — which is not to be confused with FX Leaders, a legitimate trading platform.
Cooper didn’t hear from the Australian man again and was instead passed onto another scammer who called himself John Jordan, with a European accent.
It worked like a normal stock portfolio, with employees giving him market updates that matched with real-world events, such as investing in Apple because a new phone was coming out.
He was given a password for a login portal, had to verify his identity and the stocks dashboard changed in real-time.
“They strung me along for four weeks, in four weeks I put $307,000 in there,” Cooper said.
At its height, his stock portfolio swelled to US$386,000 ($623,000). “My money had risen quite well”.
