As a lot of us Millennials, Generation X, and Generation Z people do, we make friends on the internet. We find them on Discord, Instagram, Facebook, or Reddit. This story starts on Reddit.

The Reddit algorithm one day recommended a Reddit post of a Female looking for friends in the SF Bay Area. Described herself as a workaholic, and had lots of female employees that she thinks of as her “sisters”, but lacks any sorta of guy friend. I can’t find the original post. Something along the lines of friendship. Yes, Reddit isn’t the best place to meet friends or anything, but it does happen. Rarely. But no risk no reward. So I replied “Where in the Bay are you?”

“Lisa”

Or that is who she said she was. I have no clue. We talked on Reddit chat for a day or two. Background stuff. What she did for work, where she lived, etc. Supposedly lives in Daly City, and runs a massage or Spa just for women. Ok, cool I guess. She wanted to move to Wechat (her number is 323-679-8701, which is out of SoCal but lots of people have numbers the just keep….so beware of this number!)

This is the picture she sent over. Says she is 40. The talk continues and at some point she says she does some “trading”. Of course I ask what sort of trading, and it’s Crypto trading. I’m not into that, but said it was great that she was into that and could make money. She said it was easy. She could teach me. Wasn’t really interested, but she would bring it up over the next week or two as we chatted sporadically. To me, she was interesting, did a lot of things to run her “Store” (that is what she calls it). Just talked general what’s going on during the day, etc.

So about a month and a half into this, I had a medicate issue that Kaiser pretty much locked me up to fix (it wasn’t serious, but it required surgery). And this is when “Lisa” ramped things up like the scammer “she” i. While I was waiting for a surgery time for my issue, I chatted with a lot of friends, and watched a lot of movies. “Lisa” would frequently check in on me. Just “friend” stuff to see how I was doing. Was I eating, and sleeping well. Etc. Lots of my friends were doing that. But at some point, she suggested that I should really go all in and put a bunch of money into Crypto. I could make a lot, and she’d help. I had “seen” her make money. I saw that I was too.

So, while recovering, she wanted me to cash out my retirement. Luckily, my retirement is pretty locked up with the State of California (CalPERS). Like it’s nearly impossible to cash out unless you quit. She was not happy about that. Then she suggested trying to get a loan. Sure……and I did. $35k. And upon leaving the hospital, a few days later I did my first wire transfer of funds to Coinbase, converted the funds to Bitcoin, and then moved it to Onchain.

More Trading…..

So, we started trading. And it looked like we turned about $45k into almost $190k in a few weeks. Amazing. “She” was on fire. But she wanted me to put in more funds. I didn’t quite get why. She was going to put in more so we’d turn the $200k (if I added more) into $500k with her “contribution”, and then we could do 24 hour trades, and make lots of money. She showed several screen shots of “trades” she made. $600k in profits seemed amazing.

So I tried to actually move some more funds over. And I got blocked HARD by my bank. Which, in retrospect, I wish they had done sooner but…..you live and learn.

Then I tried to see if I could move some funds out without her. And it didn’t work. The transfer for $100 was “under review”. So when she came online next time, I mentioned it. I thought it strange. And the OnChain app’s “Support” was strangely NOT working. Hmmm…….

So at THIS point I decided to look into scams, and I discovered the this scam….and then I realized……that is what was happening to me. The feeling I had must be akin to a frog being slowly boiled alive. I felt sick…..depressed…….angry (mainly at myself for falling for this) and sad…….that this person whom I thought we actually had a sort of friendship going…….was lying to me from the start.<br>

So, I promptly told the scammer I knew I had been scammed, and I was disappointed in “her” and that I hoped Karma would someday catch her. Etc. I logged out of WeChat after making a download of all our interactions (and saving the pictures of “her” she sent).

Hard lesson learned. $35k lost. Yeah, that is going to sting for a while. I’m not going to lie. But the lesson is worth it I think.

But that is not the end of the story…..

Part two starts after I posted on, again, Reddit that I had been scammed. Etc etc. Kinda the general thing people do nowadays. Lots of comments saying I shouldn’t be in the “market”. (Is it really a market…..I don’t see it). But then I got a message from an user by the handle of “alonghardKnight”…….

Enter The “Coinbase Recovery Guy”….

This guy contacted me and said he was part of some Coinbase recovery team. He goes by @crypticetherium. That he saw my post of Reddit cause he was part of the Coinbase admins there. He said he “draw back” the funds using a Coinbase Recovery tool. Of course, I was highly highly suspect of this guy. I did look up if there is a Coinbase Recovery tool, and there seems to be one. So I was like “fuck it, I’ve already lost the funds, what more could happen.”

Turns out, a lot could. This guy, after a Telegram call, and giving him like the original Coinbase transaction hash from the $35k I put in. He said his “team” would look into it and he’d get back to me.

At some point in his Telegram messages, he had me create a new wallet in “Base” using some recovery codes. And then an hour or so later, I had $12k in 4-Way Mirror Money (which I guess is a scam coin?). So I was busy and he then said he’d walk me through how to convert that into Bitcoin and back over to Coinbase. Sounded good to me….And my limited understanding of how to convert…..it seemed I just need a little Bitcoin in there to pay the transfer fees.

Except, he said “No your conversation for your wallet is about 12% the transaction amount you have in your in the fake website so we’ve done a recovery of about 45% when you do the wallet prove of owner we’ll be able to try and migrate the 55% into the base wallet and you can withdraw to your coinbase account” (seems his English is a little off).

At that point, a little research came up with this coin basically costing half itself to be transferred to something else. I said, “yeah, no, this sounds like a scam. Thanks but no thanks.” I reported this to Coinbase and they said they never contact anyone like this. So….second time safe. I still have now $15k in W4MM which…..WTF do I do with it???

Hard Lesson learned…..

So, what did I learn. Obviously that Crypto is not my thing. There are just TONS of people taking advantage of people out there.

I think the second one, Vrik Putin, is particularly offensive. WTF man, Recovery Group my ass.

I do think the original scammer, “Lisa”, was quite skilled in her scam. I would watch out for “her”. It was so woven into the normal dialogue that I just believed her. I mean, well done lady. Well done. I still think you are a piece of shit for doing it to people, and myself, but it was masterfully done. You knew right when to get me, and you did.

I hope that my story will be a warning to those of use out there that get enticed by the Bitcoin wave. Don’t trust anyone you haven’t know for YEARS. And cover your ass. Don’t believe people want to help you. They want to steal your money. They don’t give a flying fuck about you. <br><br>If you are interested in posting your story on here, that would be great. Or if you have any words of wisdom, or how I can convert that 4WMM to something else without losing my pants….

Be careful out there people.