TechFlow news: On March 20, according to Business Insider, George Chryssanthou, an 80-year-old resident of New York, fell victim to a scam and lost nearly $285,000. He has since filed an arbitration claim against Charles Schwab with the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA).
On January 17, 2025, scammers impersonated “Microsoft Technical Support” and called Chryssanthou, claiming they needed to fix software issues—thereby gaining remote access to his computer—and falsely asserted that his account had been hacked. The scammers then induced the victim to provide verification codes, after which funds were wired in multiple installments over several days to an account named “Coinbase Inc.” at Cross River Bank in New Jersey. Individual wire transfers ranged from $18,000 to $90,000, totaling $284,650; the funds were immediately converted into cryptocurrency and transferred out. Chryssanthou only discovered his account balance had dropped to zero when he logged in on January 29. The FBI subsequently informed him that the likelihood of recovering the funds was extremely low.
In September 2025, Chryssanthou retained attorney Adam Gana to file a claim with FINRA, accusing Charles Schwab of failing to fulfill its supervisory obligations—including failure to verify and intercept unusually frequent wire transfers and suspicious recipient accounts.
