Despite this click-bait look-like title, it’s a true story !
DISCLAIMER : this is the story of a social experiment, and I strongly suggest to avoid this kind of experience without knowing what you’re doing. It could lead to a real scam and you may loose money or worse.
Ok, let me explain
🥷 A few weeks ago, I’ve been contacted by an anonymous number on WhatsApp, a lady suggesting she was representing a company and she was proposing small jobs, and I could receive 20$ easily and even more later.
👀 I’m naturally curious, and in the mindset “know your enemy”, so I replied to understand what’s the catch/scam.
🎯 1st mission is simple, 3 Instagram posts to like and provide proof. I dit it, and the lady provide me a contact on Telegram to be paid, called “the receptionist” (John Wick style at the Continental 😅)
💰 The receptionist asked for a wallet address to send 20 USDT, and some information (name, age, job). I provided fake information, but real wallet address. (Real wallet address is not a risk, as it doesn’t come with login or identification information)
A few minute later, 20 real USDT were delivered on my wallet.
🥴 Really surprised, I continued the chat and the receptionist offers more missions but it became sketchy: send 100$ somewhere, and receive 140$, 10 minutes later (+a few Instagram post to like).
🚩 Definitely a big red flag for a scam !
The receptionist also provided a Telegram group, filled with thousand of posts of people posting proof of their “missions” and “gains”.
At this point, I declined and I’m trying to understand what’s behind all that.
🧐Troubling points
– A scammer that send real money first ?
– Hundred of users in a Telegram group showing proofs for days: it’s time consuming to create a such elaborate scam with 10k different screenshots and hundreds of profiles
– Screenshot of crypto transfer are always dated a few seconds before the post (like a real screenshot)
🚩 Red flags
– The greed factor is a well known scam technic
– “Easy” money is not real, there is always a looser somewhere
– Anonymous contact, code-name, cryptocurrency: classic in scam
– Screenshot are a little bit to perfect (no Android or iPhone toolbar, only a perfect cropped screenshot, each time) : generating a fake screenshot is not difficult
🔎 At this stage, I’m hesitating between 2 scenarios, all nasty:
– A simple greed-scam, to push you sending money and hope for more gains. Only troubling point is scammer that start sending you money..
– A elaborated laundering system : to clean stolen cryptocurrency, you send your real money to a “clean” wallet, and they send you back 130% of it from a dirty account (linked to robbery and probably monitored by authorities)
What do you think ?
The story repeats again, 2 weeks after, but this time through an SMS.
It lead me again to a telegram account, a lady again, proposing me a similar deal : “buying” theater tickets on a shady website.
A really fun, badly design website, with fake loading bar when “buying tickets”.
My mission, was to “order” 40 movies tickets, and I was promised 40€ this time. Once finished, no crypto this time, just a money transfer through Wise application, and I really received 40€..
Of course, the lady tried to get me to invest more money, but that’s where the scam take place !
