An announcement

[jtr1962]

As everyone here may know last year I was scammed out of $260,000. This and the loss of most of my business income due to the tariffs, and someone pirating our device, has caused me to finally run out of liquid funds. Within a few days my electricity, phone, and Internet are going to be turned off. As a result, I may not be able to post here for a long time, perhaps ever if I can't get back on my feet. If I can't continue to pay the real estate taxes the city will seize and auction off the house. I'll face being homeless for the first time in my life. Of course, I'm not going to live like that. I have cyanide tablets for such an eventuality.

I have a few days left with electricity. They have to give 24 hours notice before cutting my power. I haven't received that notice yet.

It's been a great run I had here with everyone. I hope it continues but in case not I wish you all well. I'll check in periodically as long as I'm able to before my power is cut.

 

[Mercutio]

Joe, have you examined City resources for addressing your situation? I do see that there are programs in your Borough and City-wide for helping out older persons as well as programs run by Con Ed. I'm not entirely sure what you might qualify for, but surely it is a better option to consider than your pills.

As I recall, you do have siblings. Are they in any position at all to help you out?

I am not judging you for your decision, and I do suspect that you've looked in to alternative options already, but at the same time I have to hope that you are not quite at the point of catastrophe and that there are still options to consider.

 

[jtr1962]

Here's the problem. I have assets but they're not liquid. My money in my retirement accounts is currently frozen until next January. It's a long story but the short version is I took out a rollover to get the scam site to release my account. Of course they didn't but Chase had a hissy fit that I had to liquidate my brokerage account to cover the rollover. At least I didn't miss the deadline and get stuck paying taxes on $135,000. So they locked the retirement accounts until next year so they don't have to deal with this again. Anyway, the fact I have assets disqualifies me from help from the city, as well as ConEd. It's great NYC has a system of safety nets but you have to be virtually broke to qualify.

My siblings are both living paycheck to paycheck. I only told my brother part of the scamming situation. He thinks I only lost $130,000, not twice that. My sister would go ballistic if I told her so I'm not. How can I explain to either of them that my bank accounts are nearly empty?
My last hope is that I get an order for control boxes and then I'll ask my friend to pay me a few thousand in advance. Hopefully that will be enough for ConEd to keep the power on for a while. They want about $8,000 for that. About half is unpaid prior bills. They no longer trust me to pay monthly, so they also want an amount approximately equal to a year's worth of my normal usage in advance. After that I'll be able to go back to paying monthly. Maybe I can talk them out of paying the advance.

I also need about $75,000 to get current on all my other bills. Unfortunately I borrowed money to keep me going, about $21,000 in total. Now I owe out about $65,000. You can guess the source of this money given the ridiculous interest but it was my only option.

I do have the cryptocurrency investment which is launching within a few weeks. If it does very well then I can easily repay all my debts. The problem is how to survive until then.

 

[mubs]

Truly sorry about your situation, jtr. Keep those pills away. Things will work out.

 

[Mercutio]

You do still have assets and presumably those do have value that exceed your current financial obligations to someone. There's probably an instrument to use those to get back on solid ground.

A Crypto IPO probably isn't a ticket to wealth unless you're set up as a pre-offering owner of the coin; almost all currency offerings are set up to be rug-pulls where the only people who receive wealth are the people who create the coin in the first place. Cryptocurrency is for the most part just a tool for money laundering. They exist more as a way to get around banking regulations than anything else.

 

[jtr1962]

I'm just going to ask if the members here can start a GoFundMe on behalf of me. Maybe you all have better knowledge of how to promote it so it actually gets donations. I'll give my bank account number for them to send the funds to. This is how desperate I am right now.

You know the background of my situation from this thread:

I've been scammed and I need help

Unfortunately I fell victim to an online crypto investing scam and I'm usually very careful with things like this. I have a considerable amount of money being held hostage. I already filed reports with the FBI and SEC. Here's the story: I was first contacted by a person named Xinyue Chen on...

www.storageforum.net

My current assets easily exceed my financial obligations by a large margin once Chase unlocks my retirement accounts BUT I have to pay taxes on everything I take out. My preference was not to have to touch these accounts at all until I'm forced to take RMDs at age 75.

 

[jtr1962]

A Crypto IPO probably isn't a ticket to wealth unless you're set up as a pre-offering owner of the coin; almost all currency offerings are set up to be rug-pulls where the only people who receive wealth are the people who create the coin in the first place.

I'm dubious this is a rug pull. There's a working cryptocurrency exchange behind it. This is similar to the IPO of the Binance coin. Anyone who got into that IPO did very well. The coin sold for about 10 cents in the IPO. Now it's going for about $600. It peaked at a bit over $1,000. Do the math. A $100 investment in the IPO became over $1 million. I don't think this one will do as well but 100x or more seems very possible. Right now I have over 2.8 million tokens. The launch price is $0.05, so my $25K investment will be worth north of $140K on launch. Some analysts think $1 or more this year is possible. That makes me a multimillionaire.

Cryptocurrency is for the most part just a tool for money laundering. They exist more as a way to get around banking regulations than anything else.

It used to be that way. More and more it's being used as currency. The nice thing about cryptocurrency is you can send or receive money 24/7/365, not just during normal banking hours.

 

[Mercutio]

I'm dubious this is a rug pull. There's a working cryptocurrency exchange behind it.

FTX was a highly regarded Crypto Exchange once upon a time.

I have no idea how to promote a GoFundMe. Social media? Does anyone here use that?