I grow bored by our chat so I do what I knew from the start I was going to do and I challenge Adam.

He doesn’t seem that bright and is zero craic and unwilling to deviate from his script. He will just be able to see exactly what I am doing on my computer and will act as my guide while I transfer €600 - by my reckoning - to my bitcoin account. He won’t have access to my computer at all, nothing like that. Adam sounds slightly miffed - insulted even - at the suggestion that me giving him the six-digit Anydesk code for my laptop might give him access to my machine. I ask if this is going to give him access to my computer. He sounds happy and asks for my Anydesk number. I tell Adam I have it on my laptop already. As it happens I am wearily familiar with Anydesk because it is what the eternally patient Irish Times IT team sometimes need to get remote access to my laptop when they have to fix things I have broken. He asks if I am familiar with an app called Anydesk. In even better news, Adam assures me my windfall will be tax-free.įeigning excitement, I ask Adam what 1 per cent of €60,000 is but he brushes my maths question aside and assures me that we will get there.

To unfreeze it I need to transfer 1 per cent of the total value of my €60,000 back into the frozen account, after which I will be able to transfer the total amount back out of the newly defrosted account, and into an account of my choosing. The first thing he needs to know, he repeats - almost as if reading a badly written script - is that my account has been frozen as a result of my inactivity in the crypto market. I ask Adam what I can do to access this windfall and he assures me that he has me covered he will take care of me. I know virtually nothing about cryptocurrencies or how to buy them and I certainly was not wise enough to invest in them back in 2017. If he knew anything about me, he would know I’m really not the bitcoin type. He pauses for half a second, as though consulting an exchange rate calculator, before telling me that it’s about €60,000 based on today’s rates.

Anydesk scammers