I’m going to be 65 this year. I work for a company that has no health coverage, life insurance, retirement plan. I’ve been trying to invest on my own through the years, subscribing to various services, taking classes in person and virtually, all sorts of things to make enough income to leave this job. Now this job is relocating out of state and I will be looking at an ageism situation with regards to employment. I’ve been grateful for employment in general through the years and have been able to raise my 4 kids on my own. I work a 2nd job as a music teacher several nites a week that helps me to break even every month with rising cost of living. I do enjoy doing something meaningful, but it’s not that much $ and the 2 job sitch is exhausting. But THAT is not why I’m here. I wanted to give that as background. Like many my age, I get unsolicited invitations for this and that. I’ve gotten pretty good at weeding them out through the years and have not been victimized. Until now. Several months ago, I got involved with an online investing community, that through the weeks eased me into a place of trust–and hope. I thought it was a godsend if truth be told. It was for an ICO opportunity (Initial Coin Offering). Like an IPO for stocks, for new cryptocurrencies. It was allegedly a group “institutional” move. I started out for about a month of so just watching others on the sidelines because I was skeptical. I chatted with others (turns out they were about my age) in a chat and they reported they were having success. I eventually took the dive into the deep end. Initially investing smaller amounts. I had some rainy day money in my bank account. Gone. Then I had some stocks that were sitting idle that I closed and sent those proceeds. I converted my dollars into cryptocurrency and sent that. Bottomline is I converted all of my savings which amounted to about 50K to them. This is shaming to even write this here. It’s hard to even say these words because I’m a person if you met me, would never think I’d be that naive. There were yellow flags throughout the process, but the further I got into the deep end, the more I needed this to manifest as promised. There was a website that I was “trading” the new crypto I had purchased with my real money deposits. I watched those accounts grow. This sounds horrible so far. But THIS is not why I’m writing here. I would just write off this 50K to my stupidity and tell no one once I realized it was a scam. So here’s why I’m here: In order to get to “institutional status” for my account, I needed to have a 100K account size. With it would come tax advantages, etc. I didn’t have 100K. Heck, I had just cobbled together 50K liquidating this and that. The only thing remaining was a CC (and I wasn’t going to do THAT-“that would be stupid” I told myself). So instead I cashed in on my remaining resource–the equity in my home. I took out a Home Equity Loan to the amount of 101,500 @ 9.3% interest. I was on the cusp of withdrawing and I wanted to get the tax advantages. It went through without a hitch as I have great credit. I pay my bills on time, live within my means, don’t live fancy, no outstanding debts–I’m that guy. Then I tried to withdraw. I’m sure you can figure out what happened there. I was physically sick not only at the loss of an amount of money I have never had in my account at one time, but also sickened at the shame–stunned I could be that stupid. After all, I’m a clever, resourceful, industrious, intelligent person! So losing the 50K is well, I could just pick up a couple more part time jobs I suppose and work another ten years. But now there’s this 30 year $850 loan payment that will outlive me. I had plans for the Monopoly money I made: I was going to pay off my kids enormous college debts, give a nice wedding gift to my daughter to match her father’s, give a similar gift to my other 2 daughters who got married and I didn’t have the money at the time. I was going to pay off my mortgage, replace my 30 y/o carpeting, and give a large matching donation to my local church. I have some friends and family who need some assistance and I was going to help them. Instead, I let my dreams–my really nice intentions–blind me from the reality I was a victim of a malicious scam. The best outcome for me is to get this monster loan paid off in the next year or so–somehow! Thank you for reading my story.