Complaint Review: Miguel Karam Bencatel Canhao

I was scammed Miguel Karam Bencatel Canhao in Brazil. He scammed me out of $5100 USD in cryptocurrency before blocking me on all of his social media networks and whatsapp.

I met Miguel Karam at the Rio de Janeiro bus terminal on my recent trip to Brazil while waiting for a bus to São Paulo. At the time he was really nice to me and outgoing. We exchanged WhatsApp numbers and the next day he offered to show me around São Paulo which I agreed to. After I returned home he stayed in touch with me and that is when he scammed me.

He started messaging me everyday asking me how I was doing and telling me about his life. One day I told him about a souvenir model sword I wanted to purchase in the liberdade district of São Paulo but didn't and the scammer offered to go purchase the sword for me and send it to my address. The store where he was going to purchase the sword from is called Profighters and is located in the Sogo Plaza Shopping mall off Av. da Liberdade. He first tried to do the purchase using my Chase visa credit card. However, Chase flagged the card transaction as fraud, coming from Trevor Enterprises LLC. After the failed credit card purchase, Miguel Karam suggested payment using bitcoin. After the sword purchase, Miguel then charged me two more times, first for shipping. Two days later, Miguel claimed that he failed to fill out the customs declaration correctly and told me I would need to pay the fine to get the sword delivered. Needless to say, Miguel never sent the sword and it has never arrived at my house.

After the first bitcoin transaction, Miguel knew I had cryptocurrency, and, cryptocurrency became his new favorite subject to talk about. He would continue to discuss cryptocurrency advice with me daily. But the next scam involved him telling me about a worthless coin called grass (app.getgrass.io). I signed up like he told me to and noticed I was "earning" quite a bit of "grass" coin on their website. I asked Miguel how to cash out. He said he needed to put a program on my computer to convert the grass to etherium and he asked me to download anydesk. Once he logged into my computer  on anydesk, Miguel Karam distracted me on a video call by asking about how clear the water is in the United States. He then logged into my coinbase account and sent my entire cryptocurrency balance to a "random" bitcoin and etherium address that he claimed was my grass account. In reality, however, Miguel Karam sent my bitcoin and etherium to his account and then I checked the hash ID I saw that the cryptocurrency forwarded to the same address I had sent for the sword purchase. He would later forward all of the cryptocurrency to his binance account.

After this incident Miguel Karam Bencatel Canhao continued to contact me daily by text on whatsapp, saying he was on a business trip in Rio Grande do Sol for the next week and then he suddenly blocked me from WhatsApp and all of his social media accounts the monday following the scam.