How I Almost Got Scammed Via Medium & Telegram
“Alberto, could you please explain to me what darkness here means?”
I remembered leaving a comment on my friend’s medium article long time ago.
“Ok. Contact me via Telegram at AlbertoWrites…” — Mr. Scammer.
It happened right after my morning chants when I was sipping my 1st cup of coffee. My inner child nudged me softly: But Lissa, why Telegram?
Why wasn’t it WhatsApp? I wanted to check in to see if my friend was alright. Afterall, we mirror-ed each other in a lot of ways. I contacted the-fake-him through Telegram not noticing that it wasn’t him.
On the side note, here is the real Alberto García 🚀🚀🚀, my friend from Madrid.
Let’s read the interesting story how scammers targeted published authors these days…
The Fake Alberto García
He replied to me a Hola, Maria.
For the 1st day, the fake Alberto chatted with me asking “What happened lately?”
I shared how I had not made my decisions to try out the full-time role in the French restaurant. And that I felt it was time to stop doing part time there. The fake Alberto suggested something.
He told me to return to the French restaurant and take up the full-time job offer but deliberate on leaving.
The scammer fake Alberto advised me to return to my favourite home restaurant. And this time, to also prepare leaving some time later on when I learned enough there.
The real deal began…
For many days of our conversation, he finally decided to bring in the fishing hook. The real deal started.
This fake Alberto claimed to have talked to the admin of an affiliate company. He had thoughts of recommending me to a side hustle.
He kept in touch with me till the next day. I even told him I hadn’t showered, whereas I was happily playing the token claw machine catching Pokémon toys at the nearby shopping mall.
He waited for me to sign up a membership. But he did not explain clearly what it was. He gave me a telegram ID to contact: Stephen Moore.
My little Maria nudged me a little louder, to find the comments which told me to contact him via Telegram.
Contacting my real friend Alberto Garcia.
This time, I decided to get down to serious mode. I wondered what happened to the real Alberto. Why telegram? We could have video-called and seen each other to talk directly.
So, when I got back to my real friend’s page, I was dumbfounded. The comment was deleted. No user found.
I sent a private message to my friend, Alberto, in Madrid. And the real writer-author-friend-mentor of mine in Madrid told me he did not ask me to contact him via Telegram.
He had reported the message I received to Medium. His real medium account is still active. I was so closed to being scammed.
The Fake Stephen Moore’s Conversations
The fake Alberto suggested me to contact Stephen Moore for more details. By this time, I had completed my decade of rosary prayers. My intuition said something wasn’t right.
Whenever someone offered me something that seemed dubious, I lost interest automatically. It would take me many days and months of prayers for revelations and confirmation.
I wanted to know what company Alberto was affiliating with. And the fake Stephen Moore said it was a community of writers with the system already provided. He claimed it was an extension of Medium.
I smell something fishy. It wasn’t Mastodon. It wasn’t the group of writers on slack group which Dr. Mehmet led. And the part that gave them away as scammers was when Stephen Moore said I needed to pay a certain amount of fees.
This time, the nudges my little Maria gave me grew louder inside. It was like Maria got angry and felt so insecure. My little Maria felt unsafe. My inner Maria was screaming Don’t believe! Don’t believe! This is the devil. He will cheat you!
I had the Telegram shut down instantly.
This time, I googled Stephen Moore and had seen he was a well-known person which the scammer impersonated. Here is the real Stephen Moore who wrote wonderful articles.
I am not the only one who faced this as of recent. Durgesh Pratap also encountered a similar situation. I had my ‘investigation’ and ‘curiosity’ stopped at 2nd person. Durgesh was brave to question from one scammer to another which accumulated to more than 2-persons involved. Read his story here:
How I Almost got Scammed On Medium? | by Durgesh Pratap | Medium | Medium
The scammer had been using famous or great writers like my friend, Alberto Garcia, Stephen Moore, and goodness only God knows who else.
I hope that you readers and writers would be extra careful with anyone who asked you to contact them via telegram. It seemed a trend of scammers going around on this Medium platform at this moment. Please do not fall into their tricks.
If anyone else faced similar account to my experience and Durgesh, I really hope you did not lose anything to these scammers. And I do hope that you write something about it so that people would be aware that such thing happened.
Good night,
Norlissa
