Re read the story. You definitely missed that part. But there are easy ways to avoid these scams. NEVER, but NEVER hand your money over to any individual, or "brokerage" whose reputation you can't check on, or respond to unknown phone numbers or websites. Also, there's a wealth of info online about hoe to avoid scams, as well as some pretty funny youtube channels of scammers being baited and exposed and even arrested due to the work of hackers who hack into scammer computers and reverse the connection.