Yes I finally got scammed! I wanted to. I’ve been wanting to see how these scams work and obviously wanted to make a blog about it. So I decided to answer one of those annoying text messages we all get. Below is what happened over last weekend.
First of all I get this text message, now I got a lot of crap messages, but this one was addressed to me. They knew my first name so I was curious about that. It came in on the telegram application which I don’t use a lot but as far as I knew, they can’t tell what your name is. I thought they were just sending messages to random numbers.
Now obviously there’s a problem with this account because “Claire Wilson” says her name is Zelmira… there’s your first clue that it’s a scam. Let’s continue…
She says she got my name from my profile but I’m not sure that’s true. Actually my name and phone number are all over my website so there’s probably some tools that they have which made the connection. Whatever. She continues by basically saying that if I follow certain Instagram pages they will pay me. I’ve heard that this actually is possible so I wasn’t 100% sure it was a scam at that point. I’ve had people contact me asking me if I want to pay to promote my business and have people follow my Instagram page. So it is possible. She asks me to follow Tim Hortons on Instagram. I can’t imagine Tim Hortons would pay people to have them follow their account but let’s see where this goes.
I follow TH and that makes her happy! Then she puts me in touch with someone else, the “receptionist”.
The receptionist named “Safira” asks me to follow another page and send her a screenshot, which I do.
Then she asks me to create an account with “Newton Crypto Wallet”. I have never heard of them so I looked it up and it’s a real online wallet. Now I’m really curious how they’re gonna scam me!
She says they’re going to send me $15 U.S. dollars for following 2 pages. I was quite certain it was bullshit and there’s no way they’re gonna send me money. But they did! $20 Canadian. I really was surprised. But considering how much money they make from scams, that is a small amount for them.
So long story short they send me an invite to a group chat where they will post “missions” every day. You have to do 25 missions and you have to do them in order to get your money. If you do all the missions you will get $500 US everyday which is not bad for following Instagram pages. Well that’s what I thought it was. Obviously there’s a scam there otherwise i wouldn’t be writing a blog about it! So on the next day I start with the first mission which is to follow a page on Instagram. Easy enough. Now the second mission is more complicated…
I was kinda glad that the scam starts at mission 2 because I was worried about having to follow a bunch of pages all day. I mean if there’s 25 missions in 12 hours that means you have to check the group chat every half hour or so. Booooring! Again long story short, they want me to send money to “prop up” the crypto market and then I will make money back with a Commission. Basically if I send $80 they will send me $120 back and I make $40. As a side-note, manipulating markets is illegal. So they are asking me to break the law.
There’s no way I’m sending any money but I figured I could send them the $15 they sent me and then I don’t lose anything. But of course the minimum is 80… And finally, the scam is revealed! It’s possible they would have sent me the $120 with commission to keep me interested. And later get me to send more money. I say some people in the chat sending $500 or more. Those were probably all in on the scam. After I told her who I really was and that I was planning to write a blog about the scam she removed me from the group chat. LOL
In the end I was happy with myself. I got $15 from the scammers! But… the final kick in the pants is that I tried to transfer the $15 US they sent me to my Coinsquare account (where I do have some crypto). They wanted to charge me $12 to transfer! I would only get $3… WTF? Anyway I did learn a lot and I am sharing. Be careful out there and do not trust anyone who randomly contacts you. Remember, there is no easy money on the internet.