Naum Lantsman was sure his cryptocurrency investments were making money. Every time he'd log on to the trading platform he was using, it looked like he was reaping windfall profits. But Lantsman, in fact, was one of a growing number of people who've fallen victim to cryptocurrency scams.

"I heard, and I read, but somehow I thought that I am not going to be one of them," he said.

Lantsman, 74, turned to cryptocurrency investments after the pandemic upended his life. He runs a business selling equipment and supplies to restaurants in the Los Angeles area. But many of them shut their doors when lockdown orders went into effect.

"I lost a lot of clients because a lot of them, restaurant and bars, they closed," Lantsman said.

At the same time, his retirement savings, which he managed himself, took a hit as the pandemic gyrated stock markets.

One day he was scrolling on Instagram and stumbled upon a post from a company called SpireBit. Its website says it is an "international financial broker" based in London and helps people invest in cryptocurrencies. Lantsman decided to try it.

An online friend and a false sign of success

After Lantsman opened an account, a company representative who called himself Pavel reached out on the messaging app Telegram. He wrote in Russian, Lantsman's native language.

They began chatting regularly, swapping details about vacations and families and commiserating about their shared background in the former Soviet Union.

Lantsman had initially transferred $500 into his SpireBit account. It seemed promising: When he signed in to his account, it appeared as if that investment had nearly doubled in a matter of weeks.

Over several months, Pavel goaded him to invest more and more of his money. Eventually, Lantsman poured his entire life savings, totaling more than $340,000, into the SpireBit account.

"When he logged on to SpireBit, he saw a very compelling fake platform that looked like money was being deposited, and that money was growing," said his son, Daniel Lantsman.

But it wasn't growing at all. The charts on his SpireBit account depicting earnings growth were fake.

Lantsman discovered this when he attempted to withdraw money from his account. SpireBit sent over a document purporting to be from Barclays, the British bank. It said Lantsman must send SpireBit 2% of the amount he was requesting as a "security measure." (A representative for Barclays confirmed that the document was forged.)

By this point, Lantsman was entrapped by the scam. When his son and daughter found out, it was too late. The money was gone.

"Obviously there's like a shame component to this and coming to reality and grips with 'Hey, I lost 100% of my family's liquidity,'" said Lina O'Connor, Lantsman's daughter.

Lantsman's story closely resembles that of another man who spoke with NPR. Aleksey Madan, 68, who also was born in the former Soviet Union, recently sold a home in Indiana and became involved with SpireBit. He ended up losing all of the money he made from selling his house to the scam.

He invested $137,000, then tried to withdraw it. Like Lantsman, he received multiple forged banking documents fabricated to look like they were from institutions working with SpireBit. Each contained demands for more money.

"They were always promising me they're going to send me money back," Madan said. "But it's always after owing them some other amount."

SpireBit declined to be interviewed for this story or to answer questions about any individual case. Instead, it sent a statement saying cryptocurrencies are volatile and losing money is always possible when trading in crypto.

"We have received your inquiry regarding the loss of money by our clients. We would like to draw your attention to the fact that the activities of our company are regulated according to the legislation of the country in which the head office of the company is located," SpireBit said in a Telegram message, which also included language about the risks of investing in cryptocurrencies that appears to be lifted from another website.

Don't Fall Victim To Scams

In some ways, cryptocurrency is the ideal vehicle for scammers. Unlike traditional banks, the federal government does not backstop crypto with insurance, making crypto investments especially risky.

On top of that, crypto transactions, which occur on an online ledger known as a blockchain, are pseudonymous and can be difficult to track down. Money often moves from one digital wallet to another, typically denoted by a string of numbers and letters, not a name, making figuring out who is behind a wallet a complicated process.