A Telegram Tale of Scam, Deception, and $20 Earned!

You know how I enjoy writing about scams and exposing them. I believe that we should all stay vigilant and always be prepared to stay safe. Usually, the scammers are very predictable, they contact you first, and they say something similar to... "Hey, how are you, where are you from? How are your trades? Can I offer you a system to earn 50% profit etc etc etc" - I do not bother losing time with those. I block/report them and that's that.

But today something else happened. I was contacted by (what I thought was) a friendly person who was offering me a job! I was intrigued and kept talking to her (?) because I wanted to find out where the scam was. And I found it! But during the process, I was obliged to accept 20$ for my services :)

Read on!

Picture this. You are relaxed, working or doing something on your laptop and suddenly you receive a message on Telegram.

• Hi, are you Katerina? (well using your name apparently)
  I check the profile, unknown name and photo, no common groups so - I am immediately extra cautious.
• Who are you and why you ask?

Of course I searched for the company (a company with that name exists by the way), but when I asked this person for their last name, they did not respond.

She asked me my age, she said it is company policy.

To make the story short, I asked for details and she asked me to subscribe to a YouTube channel and send her the screenshot. I did that.

Then she sent me a profile of another person, mentioned as "The Receptionist"

I contacted the 'receptionist', because I wanted to take as many steps as possible.

She asked me to subscribe to another youtube channel and to send her the screenshot.

I did.

Then asked me to inform her of my name, last name, telephone, age, usdt address

I gave her incorrect info but a correct usdt address (of a wallet I barely use)

Guess what.

A few moments ago, I saw 20$ in USDT in my account!

She invited me to a group (history deleted as soon as I entered), where I was asked to complete missions/tasks (I saw that they were channel subscriptions). But at some point, they uploaded a message where we were asked to send them amounts, and receive a profit from that!

And that's it! Of course it is a HUGE SCAM!

I searched it online and I saw that users were sending them funds, and after that they were blocked so they had no way of understanding what was wrong and where their earned money was.

If you ask even now, why they paid me in the first place - and why it cannot be legit, please be extra careful.

They try to make users trust them. They pay a small amount to earn much much more.

Do not believe anyone who sends you message first.
Always understand how they found you, and in telegram move over to settings and make sure that you do not show your telephone number to anyone.
If you are not sure about someone, save their pictures and do a reverse search in google. You will see how many times the photo is used, it will probably be a stock photo.

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TL;DR Version

If you get contacted by an unknown person (telegram, what's app etc) and are offered a free lance job, be ware. They try to make you trust them, perhaps even pay you a small amount and from there on they will ask you for a deposit, to return extra profit to you.

Don't fall for it.

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Has something similar even happened to you?It was the first time something like this happens to me and it is the reason I spent so much time trying to understand their method.

If you ever receive a strange message, try to google it if you are unsure. The scammers always copy-paste messages, so you will sure be able to find something similar online that has happened to someone else.

Thank you for stopping by!

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