An elderly man who lost £35,000 in cryptocurrency scams which used AI-generated social media advertisements has been left feeling “broken”.
Eddie Rushe from Lurgan, County Armagh, fell victim to three separate scams over 18 months.
His son, Michael, says his 82-year-old father was “groomed” by scammers, who he believes were working as part of a syndicate.
Although Mr Rushe feels embarrassed, he wants people to be aware of what scammers are capable of.
Wanted to leave a ‘nest egg’
Earlier this month, new figures from UK Finance showed that in the first half of 2025, criminals stole £629.3m through scams and payment fraud.
That is up 3% on the same period in 2024, when around £611m was taken.
Prior to November 2023, Mr Rushe’s life centred around his family and his greyhounds.
He didn’t have a computer and had no idea what cryptocurrency was.
But this changed when he saw social media advertisements on his phone promoting an investment opportunity.
He believed the adverts had the backing of Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, Piers Morgan and Martin Lewis.
Their faces had been used in the fraudulent AI-generated online advertisements
Martin Lewis has previously warned people about his image being used in fraudulent advertisements online.
But Mr Rushe was not aware that the images were fake and said he was motivated by a desire to leave his family a “nest egg”.
“When I leave this earth I want them to say he looked after us while he was here and he was looking after us when he was no longer here,” he told News NI.
How did the scam work?
After seeing the adverts, Mr Rushe contacted the scammers by mobile phone.
His son described the way the scammers enticed his father into making an investment as “grooming”.
After the initial contact Mr Rushe was assigned a woman called Sophie as his “financial adviser”.
Sophie called Mr Rushe every day, sometimes twice a day.
First she persuaded him to close his bank account and open another with a different high street bank.
She then suggested he buy a laptop to allow him to access his crypto account more easily.
Having taken photos of his driver’s licence, she also stepped him through opening a second account with an online bank.
Three months later and after hundreds of phone calls, Sophie guided Mr Rushe through a process that moved £13,000 from his account to the online account and onto the scammers.
However, once the final transaction was complete, there were no further calls and Mr Rushe’s money was gone.
What happened next?
Three months later, Mr Rushe suffered a stroke after having fallen and hit his head.
His son Michael believes the stroke was brought on by stress having recently admitted to his family that he had been scammed and felt upset at having lost so much money.
Mr Rushe said he felt enormous relief after telling his family but added: “I wasn’t proud.”
A year later, Mr Rushe was targeted twice more by scammers.
Michael believes once one scam was successful, the scammers passed his father’s details on to another team.
The new team told him they knew he had been scammed before and reassured him they were legitimate.
Hoping to claw back some of the money, Mr Rushe was conned out of another £20,000.
Michael said he has “noticed a big deterioration” in his father’s health, both “mentally and physically”.
Michael is continuing to engage with the Financial Ombudsman Service in hope of recouping some of his father’s money.
He believes banking institutions should have done more to protect his father and vulnerable people like him.
The scammers have not given up. Eddie still gets at least one call a day from them, but now he knows not to answer.
‘Anyone can fall victim’
Jim Browning, a ‘scam baiter’ who hacks the computers of fraudsters attempting online scams, said anyone can become a victim of scammers, particularly as “what they are good at is social engineering”.
“They are incredibly good at convincing people that they’re legitimate,” he told News NI’s The State of Us podcast.
“Anyone can fall victim to a scam, simply because you’re up against a network of professionals. They will know exactly what to say to you.”
Mr Browning uses a fake name and keeps his identity secret for fear of reprisal from criminal gangs who run scams.
He has amassed more than four million followers on his YouTube channel where he posts videos of him exposing scammers and is also a regular contributor to the ‘s Scam Interceptors programme.
He said investment scams, like the one involving Mr Rushe, often involve fake companies that look “incredibly convincing” and, in one instance, even sponsor a national football team.
“These guys are so good at what they do, they cover all their bases, they get accreditations that they need.”
They also often target people who have been scammed before, he added.
“If you have ever been scammed, and unfortunately a lot of people have, you will tend to find that you will get more phone calls, more emails, more SMS’ as a result, because your data, sadly, is being sold in other countries.
“Scammers prefer people who have been scammed before because they are unfortunately more likely to be scammed again.”