Yesterday, I almost fell for an investment scam on X. Luckily, my spidery sense told me that something was wrong. I took a second careful look and spotted how that scam worked… 😅
What appeared to me before I realised it was a scam
I follow a geopolitical analyst on X for his insightful analysis. Yesterday, I read one of his posts on the platform.
So far so good.
Then below this insightful post, I saw him posted this:
My strategy plan.
⤵️
🚀I share my real-time TRADE alert (entry & exit points) on WhatsApp, free to join ✅ Click below to join my group 👇
Here’s the link: [WhatsApp link]
➡️Reply “Join” to WhatsApp: [WhatsApp number]
I was curious about what he had to offer. I was not serious about trading stocks at this point, but wanted to know what stock trades this analyst was making.
I clicked on the WhatsApp link to send him a message. He subsequently sent me another link to join his WhatsApp group for his ‘elite traders’.
Something not right
At this point, my intuition indicated an inconsistency. The analyst’s business model is to sell his insights on Substack as a subscription. This raises the question of why he is involved in stock trading.
How the scam worked
If this was a scam, I had a suspicion of its method. I therefore reviewed his original X post.
Then I looked at his subsequent post (which was technically a reply to his original post) that enticed me to click on the WhatsApp link.
Then I saw it!
That subsequent post (technically a reply) was made by a completely different user name. That different user name had exactly the same profile photo of the analyst!
The ‘analyst’ reply on WhatsApp had exactly the same profile photo too.
Damn!
So, that subsequent X post from the ‘analyst’ was from the scammer. The WhatsApp message was from the same scammer.
I was almost sprung!
Aftermath
I reported that scammer on both X and WhatsApp.
I saw that at least 245 other people were sprung by joining the scammer’s WhatsApp group.