Wozniak loses $71,000 in bitcoin to thief
Apple co-founder fell for a scammer’s credit-card trick
Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak was scammed out of bitcoin virtual currency worth more than $70,000 in what he described as an “easy” act of fraud, according to a new report.
Wozniak said he bought bitcoins as an experiment.
“Bitcoins to me was a currency that was not manipulated by the governments. It is mathematical, it is pure, it can’t be altered,” he said at a conference in India, according to the Economic Times of India.
But however
“pure” the virtual currency may be, it’s traded among people, and people are not always pure of heart.
“I had seven bitcoins stolen from me through fraud,” Wozniak told conference attendees, the newspaper reported Monday.
“Somebody bought them from me online through a credit card and they cancelled the credit card
payment. It was that easy! And it was from a stolen credit card number so you can never get it back.”
Wozniak’s actual loss was much lower than the value that the seven stolen bitcoins hold today — about $71,000 — because he paid only $700 each when he bought them, the Economic Times reported.
The total number of bitcoins Wozniak bought was not revealed, but he said he’s sold all but one of them — because he didn’t want to watch the price every day.