**Bitrue and Telegram are completely blameless in all this - please don't sue!**

If you read my post from last week about the TronHives bee game, you’re probably already convinced I’m a gullible fool. (I still love my bees though...)

Well, I more or less proved it last weekend by falling for perhaps the lamest and most transparent scam in CryptoWorld. Instead of hanging my head in shame and denying it ever happened, I’ve decided to hang my head in shame and talk about it - maybe it'll save some other poor n00b from having the same thing happen to them.

Because, to be honest, people must be falling for it otherwise the scammers would simply move on to some new scam. Right?

TL;DR – Don’t answer unsolicited PMs and don’t send money over the internet unless you’re sure you know where it’s going.

If you’re with me for the long haul, here goes… It all started when I came across a tweet talking about Bitrue (Bitrue is innocent in all this, just to be 100% clear!) and their Power Piggy staking rewards scheme. Sounds good, I thought, I’ve got some random coins just sitting about waiting to Moon, why not earn some interest on them while I wait?

(Even though it’s all going to kick off in Q4… Right..? Right..? Hello, Altseason, are you there?)

So I did what any greedy little piggy would do, I went over and signed up. Then I joined the Telegram group (again, none of this is Telegram’s fault!), because I like ignoring regular notifications from communications apps.

Within minutes of joining the group, I got a PM from an account named ‘Bitrue Helpdesk’.

It seemed so plausible...

“Wow!” I thought, “These guys are super pro-active!”

Now, in my defense, I was a bit distracted and I had just been reading up on the exchange, so in my mind this message was coming from some kind of helpful bot picking up on my cookies or something.

The conversation was actually quite pleasant. Bitrue Helpdesk was super-nice. They sympathised with the fact that I was having trouble verifying my phone number, but said they could help me get set up with the Power Piggy thing and POW I’d be on the gravy train!

All I had to do was provide my email address, they’d generate a unique escrow account and I’d send my future-millions over to start accumulating 7.3-10% interest! So simple!

And yes, dear reader, simple is what I am. Because I sent money.

Not a lot, mind you, I was really just testing it out. The penny dropped with me that I’d been had when this helpful bot confirmed my deposit and said, “LOL” – not the kind of thing I’d expect a bot, or a customer service rep, to say.

The penny has finally dropped...

At this stage I’d given up my 25 zerps as a bad loss – the price of the lesson, if you will.

So imagine my surprise when 30mins later I got a deposit in my Bitrue account of 26.8 XRP. Instant profit!

Thank goodness for greed!

Did this convince me Bitrue Helpdesk was on the level? Not a bit of it. Not least because in between the sending money and getting it back I had been contacted by three other scam accounts claiming to be helpful Bitrue people offering the exact same deal!

I love that this guy is so legit

At this point, I was actually having fun, and was 1.8 zerps up, so when I had both Bitrue Helpdesk and Bitrue Customer Support on at the same time I was able to tell them about each other. Needless to say, they were both certain the other one was a scam and only they had my best interests at heart.

Bitrue Helpdesk: "You shouldn't believe that" - LOL!

"Be cautious sir" - so caring...

Bitrue Helpdesk is still trying to persuade me to send more money – in fact, they called me this morning (I declined to answer - maybe next time...). When I pointed out that I’d looked at the ledger and saw their shady transaction documented in real time they tried to convince me it was nothing to do with me and that I should ignore the man behind the curtain.

The fact that I was able to check this makes me love crypto even more. I also love that in order to pull this off, they fell foul of the 20XRP minimum in a wallet rule. It's still there. Teehee.

I have his words - this makes everything OK

So, what did I learn?

Don’t be an idiot! Be careful out there! People are mean!

In case you think I’m being smug about coming out ahead, I’m really not. I was stupid, but also lucky - if the scammer hadn’t been so greedy my 25 XRP would have been gone!

When there’s a pinned message in a Telegram group saying “Admins and Bitrue support will never PM you first or ask you for money – anyone who does is a scammer” believe it!

So, yes, lesson learned – thankfully for free (or at a slight profit).

Incidentally, I have actually hopped on the Bitrue Power Piggy train and while it’s not what you might call Mad Gainz, there is a small return each day – which is 100% more than my bank gives me for depositing money with them!

Main Image by Gerd Altmann, via Pixabay