A story about immutable NFT from Natalia from Moscow

One day, I came across an article about passive additional income. Intrigued, I clicked the link and ended up in a Telegram group. I subscribed and occasionally checked in. In the group, people shared their earnings success stories, discussed strategies, and just socialized.

Some time passed, and tragedy struck—I lost my husband, with whom I had lived for 26 years. I was left alone, without a home or means of living. I urgently needed extra income, so I decided to try this method.

I sent a private message to the group administrator, asking what they did and how to start. He briefly explained that they made money on currency exchange rate differences. I decided to give it a shot and transferred my first 2,000 rubles. They offered me to buy tokens and immediately list them for sale at a different price. Fifteen minutes later, my account had 3,800 rubles. I was able to withdraw the money successfully. It was a test session.

After a while, the administrator, Ekaterina, informed me that the minimum entry for full participation was 25,000 rubles. I took the plunge and transferred the amount via a chatbot the next evening. By night, a group of five people was created, and the trading began.

It turned out that there were two newcomers in the group—me and a woman named Anna Koshkina. The experienced participants were excited that the session was going well. However, during trading, we had to deposit more money. By the end of the session, my account showed 639,000 rubles, while I had invested 350,000. "Not a bad profit," I thought. But it wasn’t that simple.

When I tried to withdraw the money, I was told I had to pass verification, which required an additional 500,000 rubles. That raised my suspicion. Immediately, the other session participants jumped into the chat, assuring me that their first sessions had been more modest, and verification had been cheaper, but this time, we had done so well that the fee was higher.

The session ended, and Anna, the other newcomer, started messaging me privately. In our conversation, she told me that her son was at war and that she was deeply worried about him. This touched me—I had just lost my husband. We began supporting each other, and in the end, we decided that since we had already come this far, we should deposit the money.

The transfers began. It was difficult because banks blocked large suspicious transactions. Anna and I continued to chat informally and support each other.

But suddenly, Anna told me that her chatbot wouldn’t let her withdraw money. Allegedly, the system was suspicious that she might have multiple accounts. She was offered to buy a "Merchant", which, they claimed, would allow unrestricted withdrawals to any bank card. The cost? 2 million rubles.

We reached out to Ekaterina. She responded that this was an unexpected situation and that not only we but also other participants, including veterans, were affected. One of them was offered to buy the "Merchant" for 3 million rubles, and he was even planning to take out a loan. My price was "the cheapest"—just 1.5 million rubles.

Things started to spiral. Anna kept asking if I had found the money. That’s when I began to have serious doubts, but I had already invested too much. I started rereading the forum, old messages, and analyzing participants' behavior. I noticed that the same people were always chatting. When I asked about it, they responded that they had known each other for a long time.

Then I looked closer at their "earnings": constant large deposits to their accounts—every day or every other day, more than 100,000 rubles. Yet, their expenses were tiny amounts. They supposedly didn’t work, just spent time at cafes, shopping, renovating their homes, and buying furniture.

Anna wouldn’t let me go. We kept talking for a whole week. She said she had already deposited the entire amount, in small portions to avoid being blocked. She claimed she had even started withdrawing money and assured me I would succeed too.

I gave in. I transferred almost everything. All payments were reflected in my personal account. But the moment I sent the last payment—everything froze. Twenty minutes later, my account was reset to zero, and all chats disappeared except for the chatbot. Anna vanished too.

And then it hit me: all this time, it was Ekaterina messaging me under the guise of Anna.

In the chatbot, I found the phone numbers I had sent money to (customer support had provided them for transactions). I messaged all of them on WhatsApp, telling them they were scammers.

Some numbers called me back. People asked what was going on. It turned out that they were all trading cryptocurrency on Bybit. I explained that their numbers had been used for fraud. They claimed they had been selling cryptocurrency, but the scammers had used their payment details, making it look like my transactions were coming from them. Some even sent me screenshots of their chats, where my payments appeared as their transactions.

Here’s what those who responded sent me.

Some of the screenshots show the names of the account owners.

That’s my story.

Maybe a bit chaotic, but the main point is: think twice. There’s no such thing as free cheese—except in a mousetrap.