The Time I Got Scammed for $643

106 followers

5 years ago

I always had a small issue with greed since I was a kid. Throughout the years of my childhood, I wanted all the Legos, WWE figures, Halo Mega Blocks, and Pokémon cards in the world. Although I was never that hard of a worker, I have dreamed of being rich often.

Worry

As I got older I've been worrisome about my future. I was fearful that I'd be like my uncle or like my father. Now don't get me wrong, they are great, loving, and wonderful people in my life. But one thing they do, they work HARD. My dad specifically wakes up bright n' early, brutally early, 5 AM, only to get home by 7 PM just so we can get food on the table.

I'll be honest, the idea of college or a full time job doesn't sound exciting to me. I didn't want to be like the rest of the family still paying off student loans and working most of their days.

My Experiences and Attempts

So I've been looking online how to make money since the start of summer 2018.

I ran into Alex Becker and there I learned the process behind drop shipping. BUT I had no money nor a job and no debit/credit card so I couldn't even afford a month of Shopify. I quickly left forgetting about it since most of the products I feel like I was selling weren't even close enough to the price I was selling them as.

Anyway, a few months, well, many months later I ran into this Dean Graziosi's Real estate online program. I was interested. But TOO interested. I still didn't have a debit or credit card and I still wasn't ready. So I stole my dad's credit card. The price was about $600 over the course of 6 months. I learned a bunch about housing and Dean definitely has motivational wisdom but later my parents found out and I had to cancel.

Let's face it I was broke with no job and wasn't interested in working hard and I couldn't do it

Amazon FBA

Then, I ran into another e-commerce technique called Amazon FBA. This guy who went by "kenithriley" on Instagram, (don't even bother looking him up this account doesn't exist anymore) he had some very luxurious cars, and seemed to live such an extravagant life. I began to notice that this Amazon FBA thing looked like it was very effective. By the time I found out about Amazon FBA I had a job and was finally making some money. But of course, I attempted to build a side income.

So I hit this guy up one day, turns out he claims he's 19 and drives a red Porsche 911 and an orange Lotus. I can't lie to you when I say I wanted that type of opulent lifestyle! Many other gurus online were selling mentoring for $300, $1000, and $400. This guy was only selling his for $180, I gave it my everything and bought it the first day I finally got my debit card set up so i can finally buy things online. I said to myself "In a few months I'll be making thousands." I even marked dates on my calendar the amount of money I'm supposed to earn by that time and created goals.

But turns out, this "mentoring" was just directions on how to sell on Amazon FBA, I watched the videos, but if I could be honest, I could've saved a lot of money by just googling all of this. Every I asked for help he'd say "Go back and watch the video" or "Just look closely" Although, sometimes he'd answer the questions, it really seemed like he knew what he was doing and he seemed genuine. He may have seemed like a crappy mentor, but he soon earned my trust.

I was soon saving up for buying my first product from Alibaba then onto Amazon FBA, I had over $450 from all the extra hours I asked for at work so I can make this happen. He then, about a few weeks later, texted me saying he can get me started. I thought that if he could get me started and he has more experience, I have a much higher chance of success. He even promised me an Amazon FBA account, FB ads, keywords, all that good stuff for free as long as I pay him $450 just to get started. He even claimed I'd be making $8000 a month guaranteed from this one product. I earned his trust from the last purchase and he gave me, well, sort of what I wanted. So...

One of the Worst Decisions I Made In My Life

I paid him the $450, with even stating it took me 50+ hours to make this with my minimum wage job. And since it was a high payment towards someone in a different country, it charged me an extra $13.50 for tax. As soon as I paid him I kept dreaming what it will be like in the next few months for me and how I was going to be making bank! I was so excited and jubilant!

I waited months and he told me about the product as time moved on. He kept me updated. He told me about ordering the bar code for it and how it will be in the site in about 4-5 days. I texted this dude at least twice a day and sometimes it would take him weeks to respond. Later, it ended up being months later and I became slightly skeptical. In the back of my mind I was still 99% sure that this will still work and this guy was still legit. I was even planning on quitting my job right after but I wanted to see if it was legit so thank God I kept it.

Few months pass and in late May 2019, he says he has the product up and ready on my account. He's about to give me the email and password for the Amazon FBA account. I get on Amazon login. He gives me it. I'm jumping for joy as I enter it in.

I entered it in.

Amazon login says "Email does not exist"

Uhhh...

OK, I try again. I then ask him "It's not working!"

He tells me, "Try Again"

It's not working!

At this time I am scared and I'm flooding the chat in text messages. He later texts me hours late and by this time it's 3-4 in the morning. His last words were

"Yo bro, you on?"

Quickly after he said that his account got banned and became known as "Instagrammer"

I was devastated I couldn't find him, even the emails he sent me were sent by bots. H

He was gone.

I really didn't expect this and I did shed some tears and felt stupid.

I was waiting for so long. But looking back I was delusional. I should've seen the signs:

He has many pictures of cool cars on his account but he was NEVER in the same pictures with the exotic cars.
It took him months to do this, he was probably doing nothing but scamming other people as they approached his account and fell in the trap like I did.
He was young and his first name wasn't even spelled correctly
He probably wasn't a real person since he had no Facebook, twitter or any other social media platform under his name.

There's no doubt about it, it is embarrassing the fact that I got scammed. I still feel stupid for falling for that. But I did learn an important lesson to not give your money to strangers. Silly I was.

After I realized I got scammed I became miserable and gave up for a while. I spent a total of about $800 towards attempting to get my first product on FBA but ended up not earning a dime. It's funny how the same guy who motivated me ended up stealing from me and demotivating me.

Later I stumbled upon a few rich-quick schemes that I almost fell for.

A few Months later I found out about Amazon Automation. I scheduled a call to later find out I needed $20,000 to get started. Ha, yeah right, it'll take me years!

I then found Wealthy Affiliate because I was yearning for that $20k. I honestly expected easy money obtained from affiliate marketing. But I was slammed with a reality check that I had to work hard and throw away the laziness. I realized that it was probably the most realistic ways to make money online. I am so far enjoying myself here and this wonderful community and working hard and giving it a lot.

I must be grateful, even if that means just making a living. It may seem that money is at the core of our lives but that's really not the case. If I work hard and smart, I will succeed. If I don't and let laziness cloak me, I will fail.

Next time, I just need to be more cautious

On the bright side, I am very blessed that I didn't give this guy thousands of dollars and did end up making the money back over time with my job.