Writers Beware of Scammers on Medium!!!
Stay vigilant and cautious, as there’s a special kind of human scum lurking on Medium, ready to deceive you and steal your money
This image was created using an AI image creation program
Medium members read the full post here.
Introduction
Hello, my dear readers and loyal followers!
Today, I have dedicated this article to a serious and important topic: Writers Beware of the Scammers After your Money here on Medium.
I’m unsure if you’ve had such experiences or encountered this type of person on this platform, but I’d like to share my experiences and thoughts with you and warn those who haven’t yet encountered a scammer on Medium.
I don’t understand why these people engage in this kind of fraud and crime, as it requires a lot of effort and time, and the amounts they try to steal from us aren’t that significant.
Perhaps it’s about the number of scams they perform, so if they execute many, the earnings proportionally increase, making it a numbers game.
In my opinion, scammers would be better off spending all that effort and time on something useful, like writing content or any other online job, earning money legally without harming anyone.
Of course, this is just my opinion and surely won’t inspire any scammer to have a change of heart and accept my advice. But I believe it’s not just about the money; it’s also about the adrenaline rush that theft and fraud give to this type of person, the excitement that occurs in their heads due to the impending criminal act.
How does the scam work?
From my experience with these scammers, I see that they mostly prey on people’s egos, greed, and inexperience in the online world.
The first thing they do is find someone with a fairly large following who is well-known in the Medium community and steal their profile picture and name.
Then they create a similar profile with the same picture and a very similar name and start looking for potential victims, who are usually new to the platform or in the early stages of building their name and brand on Medium.
You can notice the difference between the real profile and the fake one by the number of followers because the fake profile usually doesn’t have any or very few followers.
The first time I encountered such a despicable human being, I had no idea what was happening and a guide like this would have been very useful to help me fend off the scammer’s attack.
Unfortunately, I was completely alone then, and only my natural caution and suspicion towards anyone asking for money upfront saved me from losing money.
One person I knew, who had a considerable following and with whom I had communicated before, wrote a very nice comment on one of my articles and, as a cherry on top, invited me to join a community of new talented writers on Telegram.
I felt great and honored by the invitation to this special group of writers and, without much thought, I looked for the person or group on Telegram and joined them immediately.
The usual communication on Telegram started, getting to know each other and introducing the group’s rules in which I was supposed to participate. Everything seemed so wonderful, like a dream come true, just what I needed.
The group offered mentorship in writing and assistance at every step, but most importantly, it promised the possibility of earning a lot of money quickly through writing articles for various clients.
When they introduced me to everything that would happen in the group and of course, emphasized the potential for significant earnings from writing, and praised me as a writer, they asked me to pay a small fee of $100 to participate in the group.
The moment they asked for money upfront, without me signing anything making any agreement, or speaking with any responsible managers in the HR department, a red flag went off in my mind, signaling a warning.
I immediately remembered the old saying that if something seems too good to be true, it usually isn’t, but rather a scam.
Coupled with the request for money upfront and all the other red flags in my mind, I concluded that this whole affair was highly suspicious and most likely a scam.
I asked the person on Telegram to connect me with the HR department of that writing agency and posed a series of unpleasant questions for him, to which he had no real answers.
Of course, there was no HR department, and he had thousands of excuses for every new question I asked, so I directly told him that I knew this was a scam and that he would never get my $100.
At my words, he completely changed his tune, turning from a refined gentleman into an irate animal who started insulting me on all levels.
He called me stingy and said every agency takes money upfront, then attacked my writing, saying I had no idea what I was doing and would never earn a cent from writing if I didn’t accept his offer, and finally started cursing at my family and me.
I stayed calm because I realized I had struck a nerve and thrown him off balance, telling him I would report him to Telegram, Medium, and finally the police, and that I had saved all our correspondence (which was a bluff).
Within seconds, amidst curses and insults, he deleted all profiles and everything he had said to me, disappearing from the network.
This image was created using an AI image creation program
So, to briefly sum up this scam:
- The scammer creates a fake copy of a well-known profile on Medium.
- They find an inexperienced victim and praise their writing in the comments, inviting them to a non-existent group of writers on Telegram or WhatsApp.
- If the victim falls for the scam, the next step is to exploit their greed by promising large earnings from writing in a very short time, offering mentorship and assistance in writing within the group on Telegram.
- If the victim is still interested, they explain the group’s rules and ask for a small fee of around $100 for group entry expenses.
- If the victim hesitates, they belittle their writing, saying they will never succeed without this group.
- If the victim pays the money, all profiles are deleted, and the scammers disappear in a flash. If the victim realizes it’s a scam, they are thoroughly insulted before the scammers flee and delete everything.
Conclusion
These are my experiences with scammers on Medium, and it would be very beneficial if the administrators took some action regarding this issue.
For the time being, we users are limited to blocking and reporting potential scammers and waiting for the administrators to respond. Until the administrator checks and blocks the potential scammer, there is still a chance for them to deceive someone.
I hope my article and the experiences I’ve been through will help new and inexperienced members spot the scammers in time, block them, and report them.
If you want to support my work buy me a coffee for $1.
Greetings and until my next article!
Neo77
