So I almost got scammed of USD$3k the other day...

Writing this to educate others on the techniques these highly organized scammers conduct their schemes.

So a few weeks ago some dude wished me "Happy Mother's Day" on Instagram and we started chatting (I do chat with random strangers if I find them interesting.) I noticed he invested in bitcoin so I asked him about it. Then from there he started to tell me how he was so rich and a CEO of an investment company at the age of 32. I told him I was interested to learn how to draw trend lines etc and he said he would teach me. (Of course most people wouldn't teach strangers online for nothing, but I just continued to chat and see what it would lead to. Have an open mind right?) 

So he asked me to add him on Whatsapp but I said no because I only used Whatsapp for work. Then I asked him to add me on telegram instead. On telegram he started to teach me about trading using bilaxy. For some odd reason he kept wanting me to deposit money into it so that I could learn to trade in real time. I did some research on bilaxy and it had such poor reviews. Then I told him about it and he said he has been using it to trade and he didn't have any issues with it. Anyway I made an account with a password that wasn't used with any other account I had, just to take a look. And then I realised the bilaxy he was using was "different" from the bilaxy that I did research on. (As you read this you might be thinking omg why am I still talking to him...but let me explain that later). So the bilaxy he was using was apparently the "decentralized" type, while the bilaxy I researched about was the "centralized" version. If you are into crypto you will know that decentralized exchanges is less regulated. Some people don't like "centralized" exchanges because officials like the govt can regulate you. And this dude pointed out that having the govt regulate you is "scary", because they have "control" over your assets. (Haha in my head I was like, no I like regulations because the govt protects me - I am actually supportive of PAP lah.) Also, the bilaxy website had so many grammar issues. It's crazy how people can still get scammed even though the terrible grammar and vocabulary already shouts SCAM lol. Imagine if scammers actually had great English, how much more money they would actually make! (Lol me I almost got scammed, please read on to see how.)

But okay I just continued to chat with him but deflected his pushes to "trade in real time" by saying I was really busy with baby (which was true anyway). Then he changed his tactic and told me that Ethereum liquidity mining using DApps would be more suitable for me. So this is the one that "got" me, even though the site was full of bad English. Because I could actually leave my assets in my Coinbase wallet and the DApp would track how much USDT was inside my wallet and give me ETH dividends based on that. Sounds quite safe right since the USDT was in my wallet?! So I deposited 500USDT and paid a small network fee of less than SGD$10. (This is probably how they get your wallet address). And I actually did get dividends! So I thought it was legit, and wanted to pump in another 3k USDT because the more you add the higher your dividends. But luckily my skepticism got the better of me and I did more research about this liquidity mining and found this video which saved my $$:

So after that, I quickly withdrew all of my money from coinbase wallet. The dividend I earned was actually enough to cover my expenses so I didn't actually lose money. (You have to withdraw from the DApp too, and luckily I managed to withdraw the first time.) But there was still some dividend left inside after I withdrew the first time, and when I tried withdrawing the second time, the value was stuck inside even after 24h (which is the max duration they said was required for processing). I decided to forgo that second withdrawal since it was not much anyway, and deleted coinbase wallet from my phone. Phew!

You might think I was naive but other than these, he was actually giving pretty good financial advice. I sold off some stocks and made money before the market dipped because of his advice. But now he told me I can do those so called "sales people" jobs - basically another scam type of job (or MLM-ish thingy, so it's not exactly a scam and you can actually make money off it but only if you recruit others because that's how you get the most earnings). But it really is an amoral job since at the bottom of this "MLM hierarchy", you have to write fake reviews for shops on Taobao, Amazon, Lazada etc. Sad right, a lot of the ratings you see online could actually be fake. We consider this amoral, but actually expensive commercial ads do the same thing lol. #capitalism But this is worse really, because they trick people into joining since you have to "invest" a small amount to join their "membership" before you are allowed to fake-buy stuff to write reviews.

Also one funny thing I noted about that dude was that whatever topic I raised would somehow go onto his instagram feed. I asked him if he played any instrument, he said guitar, and then the next day he uploaded a vid of himself playing guitar. (It was terrible though). I asked if he invested in Bear Bricks, he said no but the next day he posted photos of some. Funny right?

So beware! Do your due RESEARCH and DIVERSIFY your investments wisely. Get a proper job and if anything is too good to be true, it probably is!

TTFN <3