How I was Scammed Of $400 In December 2021

Good day great steemians. Happy to be here with you again today. I hope all of you are doing great. That's so wonderful.

I have come to share with you how I was defrauded recently. Although, it was an event of last year, but because it was December, I term it recently.

I'm a freelance writer, and I write articles for clients and get paid after I complete my job. Of course, that's the convention in the industry. You need to deliver the job before you expect any pay, and we have accepted it like that.

I have always worked through freelance networks like Fiverr and Upwork. Of course, with those platforms I mentioned, scam can never be an issue. That's because they act as the middlemen between the buyers of service and the sellers.

But then, there's a little problem. Big spenders in the writing industry are hardly found on those spaces. That's because there's a fierce competition therein.

I had worked with them for about 2 years and thought I needed to up my game. One day while browsing Facebook, I stumbled upon a post. It discussed the methods of getting high paying clients outside Fiverr or Upwork.

So, I skillfully followed one of the discussants whom I perceive is experienced in the game. His name is Chisom. In other to get his attention, I begged him to mentor me. In return, I promised to write articles for him, because I learnt he also owns a blog.

Screenshots of my chats with Chisom before the bad news

Screenshots of my chas with Chisom after the bad news

He didn't hesitate to turn my offer down. That could be devastating if you can relate. His reason was that he was not ripe for mentorship. Chisom, however promised to give me tips on how to get foreign clients that would pay very well.

Obviously, he did load me with a lot of tips. I was pleased with him because I haven't seen a nice person like him. You can Imagine the quality of the information he expose me for free, and with no string attach.

I quickly ran with those tips, and just less than 48 hours, I got an offer. His name is Shohan, and he claimed he is a Canadian living in Malaysia. The offer was to write 60 articles over a period of 3 weeks.

As part of the job description, I needed to deliver them in three batches. Each 20 I deliver within 7 days he offered to pay $400. What that means was $20 per article of minimum of 500 words.

You can imagine, the best I ever got in both Fiverr and Upwork was $10 for articles of minimum of 1500 words. And he offered to pay that high.

It appeared incredible to me so, with joy I ran to Chisom to seek advise. He gave me the most honest advice I could ever get. In his very words, "for newbies using this method, the chance is 50-50. You either get your pay or get scammed.

He however, advised me to ask for pay per article for a start. And if things goes fine, we should go with the old plan. I went back to Shohan, but he refused with words, "I told you before, Mann. You must complete 20 before payment".

With that, I started writing the articles without consulting Chisom, because I feel I was disturbing him. When I finished the first job and sent to Shohan, he replied saying "it's okay, Mann".

His response motivated me and I scheduled to write 3 articles daily in order to beat the deadline. Although, the volume was smaller than anything I had even written for close to good pay, but the level of research work was massive.

That made me struggle to meet up with 3 articles daily. But with that amount of money I was expecting and the review I got from him, I eventually worked so hard to beat the deadline.

From that moment, there was a great twist. As soon as he learnt I have completed the first batch, his response level changed. The guy who had replied all my chats within two minutes replied this one after two hours. He rather apologized for replying late, and said he was having fever.

Shohan however, promised to pay me the next day. He pleaded I give him time to check all the articles. I didn't have any option than to accept his excuses. I asked him the payment channel he would like to pay through, he said, anyone. I quickly sent my PayPal details.

Based on his promise, I waited till noon before chatting him up. He replied instantly, "wait". I was anxious to get my first $400 within just 7 days. That's over N200,000 just for a week work. I would check my email every 10 minutes, even spam.

After about 2 hours without any payment alert, I went to messenger to ask why he hadn't sent my pay, only to discover he had blocked me.

It was like dream to me. So, I logged out and in just immediately. It was still showing just, "Facebook User" inside of his name. Then I knew I had been scammed.

Although, I didn't believe he had blocked me, which made me to continue checking severally, but found the same result. Having accepted my fate, I just have to found a way to console myself.

Though, you may say, I wasn't scammed of cash, but if you know the value of what Shohan took from me, you wouldn't say that. It may not be as high as what he offered according to my past jobs, but he took away my whole 7 days with hard labour. That's 168 hours of work steady research. I didn't step out of my house throughout the period, because I didn't want to disappoint. If you monetize it properly, you will not but agree with me, I actually lost more than $400 to that Shohan of a man.

Sorry I didn't show the screenshot of my chats with Shohan. His replies disappeared fro the log. So, I did deem it fit to be shown, because it's a one way thing.

Thanks everyone for coming.

Special shout to:

@focusnow
@ijelady
@ngoenyi
@udyliciouz
And others