The story of how i got scammed in my youth
Let me share an story with you
I got scammed two times in my life. Yes, i lost money, but i also gained something more valuable: knowledge. Allow me to share with you how everything happened, and maybe you will learn with my mistakes.
First Scam
When i was 20 years old, i started to recieve some nice money, working at my father's accounting office. My family wasn't rich, but i had the dream that i would be some day. It was enough to spent on some parties, and to keep some on a savings account.
One day, a friend of mine came to me with a wonderful proposal. He had another friend that invited him to a circle of investors. A secret circle, where very few people were allowed to enter, and the only way to join them was by invitation of a friend.
That friend started to tell me how amazing his other friend was to inviting him in, and a lot of stories about how this secret investor circle were making tons of money, with a very small amount of cash. He called them genius of investing.
Like i said, i had a dream of becoming rich, watching all of my father's clients,moving aroung huge amounts of money, so i believed my friend, and paid the $1k membership fee to that incredible society.
He also said that i would double that money in one or two months, and that i was allowed to invite 2 more people to the circle, and it could only be someone that i fully trusted.
Guess what? I didn't even had time to invite anyone else to the secret society, because two monts later, none of them could be found.
Sounds familiar?
Yes. It was a Ponzi Scheme. Amazing promisses, and a "suggestion" that you will make more money convincing people to pay money to join.
Take a look at the Picture below. How many people is needed for a pyramid scheme become impossible to sustain with only 6 people per level?
And that's how i learned the first lessons:
If it is too good to be true, it probably is.
It it looks like a ponzi scheme, it is a ponzi scheme
Second Scam
The second scam came a bit later, when i was around 26 years old.
At that point in my life i had already learned a bit about markets, how they work, how to make some money on them, and i even had some sucessful investments and trades.
Then came this Guru. That amazing guy, that promissed that he had the secret formula to always win on the markets. And he would teach it. For a price.
At that time, information wasn't avaiable as easy as it is today with the Internet, but that guy was being praised among the circle of traders that i knew. Even big players of the market were supposedly praising his ability to make a lot of money.
One time opportunity. He would show his trick to win the markets, and would only do it once. A one time only exclusive conference with na entry fee of only $10k.
Why not pay $10k to learn how to do 100x that?
Then i got greedy, and forgot my first lesson: If it looks too good to be true, it probably is.
After paying $10k for the conference (plus travel expenses), i still lost around $23k on the markets following his miraculous technique. Only at that time i exited the markets for some time, and went back to the books to try to understand what i was doing wrong.
One month later, the "Market guru" was being arrested for fraud.
A few more lessons learned:
Never forget again: Of looks too good to be true, it probably is
Never trust the "market gurus". Specially those that keep saying they never miss a prediction
Learn. Don't follow
The sad part of these stories is that the cycle Always repeat itself. Time pass, but people are greedy, but don't want to work hard and spend time to learn about things.
They all want the easy way.
Uneducated and greedy people are the perfect targets for Scammers, and i have to say that, these months that i started to get involved with cryptocurrency markets there is a lot of both.
So here is my advice:
If you are not the scammer, learn and think for yourself, or else you will be the scammed.
Cheers.
Good advice mate. It’s times like these that the scammers start to circle in their thousands.
It's the promisse of easy money.
When some asset start to hit the News, like bitcoin by the end of last year, that's when the vultures start to hover around our heads looking for an easy prey.
Yep, and sadly they find them. It sucks. But scammers will always be there.
$1k membership - whoa that's big. I got introduced to Ponsi scheme when I was 15yo or about. The entrance fee was 20PLN (~6USD) or 50PLN, I don't recall which, so the lesson was not as costly.
"if it looks too good to be true, probably is" is a great advice. Few years ago in my country, Poland, there was a bank like organization - Amber Gold offering "risk free" deposits at a good few points higher percentage than competition. It was a big swindle that many people fell for.
Another big red flag there.
There is no "risk free" investment. There is low risk and high risk. Even Bank savings account with very low interest rate have some degree of risk. Very low, but it is there.
Also promised return a lot higher than the rest of the Market is another big flag.
Well... I don't recall the exact wording of Amber Gold's advertisements. I think it was more like a guaranteed profit (just like bank deposits are advertised). The difference is, bank deposits in Poland are guaranteed (up to 100k euro per deposit) by a special governmental fund (in case of bank's bankruptcy). This Amber Gold's product, didn't have the warranty.
But you're right. With the government's warranty or w/o there is still a risk of money being stolen or of large crisis causing damage that no fund would cover, so there are no risk free investments. Cheers!
Oh the good old ponzi scam... who never fell for one of that right?
A lot of good information on this post, but i´ll take by heart this one:
I have been trying to do some trading by following the signals people sent on telegram groups, but all of them that i tried didn´t reach the target. When i asked the guys about it they said "Go to the paid group". And i was really thinking about doing that, but now maybe i´ll just study more about the techniques of trading...
Thanks for the good post!
Cheers!
Think a bit about it.
If their signals were so good, why would they sell them to make money?
Why spend time and money to create a structure to sell something when you could be using the same time and money to use those signals to get a lot of money?
The only signals i would trust would be ones from people that i know, that i talked about what is his strategy, and after he showed me some trading history.
Trading is a mix of feeling and knowledge.
Feeling to understand when the knowledge you have can be applied.
Here is a great book to start on the path of knowledge: https://www.amazon.com/How-Made-000-Stock-Market/dp/1614271690
It won't teach an amazing technique to be a millionaire, but it is a first step to understand what not to do.
I really like your post. I waas born in in India. I did not have very much money growing up. Before I moved to the United States years ago, my friend tell me he had some prepaid phone cards he could sell me. I asked him where he got them from & he would not explain. I wasn't sure what to think, but he was my friend. I needed the phone cards to call some of my fmaily that moved to the United States ealier. I had no weays to talk to them since they moved. I trusted my fiernd & bought a few cards. A week later when I tired to use one of the phone cards. It would not workl. I thought maybe I enterted the numbers wrong on it. I tried again. It said this card was exspired. I tries the others & the same thing. I could not beleive this. My friend sold me cards that were EXPIRED & already USED by people. This made me start to not trust people.
Then recently I have followed some people on twitter & facebook to learn how to buy bitcoin. I would pay good attention to what they say. I made a little in the beginning & then something bad happen. I started losing lots of money. This made me realize something very important. Never trust the "market gurus". Specially those that keep saying they never miss a prediction. You need to do your own searches to learn about the cryptocurency to learn about it more. Don't beleive what 1 or 2 people tell you. Please be safe steemit friends.
Like i said, if it looks too good to be true, probably is.
Markets are cruel. And there is a lot of Money in it, and a lot of people wanting to make Money in it.
There is a good reason why traders have a name for the Market player 'smart money' and 'dumb money', because they are exactly that.
And most of the times, the 'dumb money' is following some random 'advice' from some 'expert'.