That sounds like insider trading because he says inside information So insider trading and he goes. So I am deep undercover here I'm running a covert operation to see if I can get to the bottom of the WhatsApp Facebook scam group So I send this guy a message I say he's pretending to be me I say hi Ross is this you and he says hello my friend, how can I help you game on the hunter becomes the hunted and I say I'm so excited to learn how to start trading. You know like I would say if I was chatting with me and he says before telling you my strategies I need to ask you a few questions and I'm like oh okay he says have you ever traded stocks before and at this point I think I know where he's going with this What I think he's going to do is he's going to say you know the the reason you're not making money is because you're trading stocks. You need to join my crypto scam.

He's not going to call it a scam but that's what he's gonna say that's what I think because I've seen this on in some of these other threads. so so I say yes I've tried but I'm not very good so he says did the stocks you trade before generally make you a loss or make you a profit and I said I lost so then um he says can you tell me a how much money you lost and again I don't want to lie to him So I'm like well my first big loss was about $15,000 which is true was trading a penny stock and then I had some profits and I just I'm I'm being vague because I don't want to lie and he goes because I will develop different trading strategies based on people's different situations and I'm like huh? Okay so I'm getting a little confused about where he's going with this. So I'm like then I had a few more losses and he's like what's the approximate total and I said well I definitely the first you know 15,000 then I made some and then I lost some so maybe 30,000 I'm being really vague and he goes okay I already understand your general situation. Now let me tell you how my profit plan works.

I'm like oh okay, great He says I recommend about five to eight big Rising stocks a every month about 1 to two a week. the profits on these stocks are about 15% to 50% or even higher and I say that is perfect. He says I will make an investment plan based on your funds. can you tell me how much money you are prepared to use to participate and I say well I can trade with my $25,000 account.

This is a little bit of a lie because I could invest more but I'm not going to I mean I have to be careful that I don't get tricked right? This is when they get into your head. You know they're very good at what they do. Next thing you know I'm going to be wiring 100 Grand to this guy because I'm going to get fooled so I have to be very careful. Okay so um then there was a message that was deleted I don't know I don't remember what that was that was on his side and he says okay, let's start our first first collaboration next week during the week I will prepare the plan and give it to my assistant.

There are some precautions please keep in mind and I'm like okay great So you'll tell me what to trade and he says the stocks I recommend are obtained through inside information. please do not tell others about it and I say oh my goodness that sounds like insider trading cuz he says inside information So insider trading and he goes and he says I will let you know when and at what price to buy, when I receive the news starting next week and when and at what price it will be sold and I say wow you make it sound so easy and he says let us wait and see making money is not as complicated as you think. Now if you have any questions, ask me and I say I have no questions I will await further instructions Now that's where we end right now. I haven't received my first piece of inside information now here.

here's here's what I think is going on: I I Now this could this could be this could be a language barrier because he doesn't speak English as a first language I'm quite certain of that. so this could be a language barrier Where he's saying this is you know, obtained through inside information so you got to keep it Hush Hush maybe or maybe he's actually saying this is obtained through Insider information which is then to make me feel that I'm complicit in committing a crime. So when I lose money which I will I'm I'm sure I won't report him to the cops. You know what I mean So so I actually I'm not sure which is which yet.

um, but but that's kind of what. I where I think this is going and so this seems to me to be a pump and dump scheme where he's going to tell me the names of stocks I mean I'm assuming that's what's going to come next is I'm going to get uh, the name of a stock he's going to say buy this and I'm going to pull up the chart and you're going to see it's already moved up a lot and it's probably all the Insiders you know who are buying shares or whatever and and it's just going to go up and as soon as I get in it's going to drop. That's that's my guess. Now the problem.

Obviously there's multiple problems here, but one of the problems is that he's pretending to be me and there are people out there who fall for this. They think that I'm texting them on WhatsApp which I would never do, but they think that's that's me and so he's making me look obviously terrible. So what I want to do is I for those that are interested I want to kind of walk you through and expose the the amount of the scam that I've so far uncovered. Okay, so let's jump onto the screen share.

Let me show you where it begins. So this begins with a Facebook advertisement. So this right here that you see on my screen. this is a screenshot I Got on my phone.

This is an actual real ad that somebody is running. This is a fake account. That's not me. that's not my account.

It's a fake account. but it looks like me. He's taking one of my pictures and he's saying I asked chat GPT to make me a day trading strategy and you know this is like a video I made. So they are running advertising campaigns.

Advertising campaigns cost money to run and it costs money especially to Target You know people in the United States Who are you know interested in trading? You know it's less money to run a campaign in some developing countries, but that's not who he's targeting. this cam. This advertisement came on my phone because he's targeting people like me I'm the demographic of a potential Trader So the fact that they are running ad campaigns tells me they're making enough money that they're actually able to spend money on the campaigns cuz some of the other scams that are going on right now. um I mean there's a bunch of them, but some of them are just people sending messages on social media and a lot of these people.

This is really sad, but there was a a a really interesting report about this on um on the news the other day about um, these scams that are running in Myanmar and they're run by some of them are run by Chinese gangs and there was this guy they interviewed who or maybe this was the New York Times I was reading. Anyways, there was this guy that was interviewed and he was recruited by a recruiter to work a job I think it's a translator and he's was living in China and the job was in Thailand so he flew to Thailand and then they brought him to his new job and they actually smuggled him I don't know how you say. Trafficked him across the border of Thailand into Myanmar into a compound with barbed wire, razor wire, fence everything and he became a prisoner. He actually became a slave in a way in this for this gang and his job was to sit every single day with like 100 phones in front of them just sending messages to people trying to get them to send them money to send to send them Bitcoin to fall for the Bitcoin scam Or send them gift cards and stuff like that.

So, but those scams, you know they're they're not spending money on ads. This is different. So there's a lot of scams out there. but this particular one, they're actually running an ad.

Now these have to be these fake accounts have to be manually reported to Facebook Facebook doesn't have any system so it seems that automatically blocks them. So just last week we've been reporting these pretty much every every week. So just last week there were 92 new impostor accounts pretending to be me that we reported to Facebook and the system of reporting is like super it's it takes a lot of time, it's not easy, and it feels like they kind of don't care and they're obviously making some money on these ads, right? These guys are paying Facebook to run these ads. So it begins with running an ad.

The ad then goes, um, the second step of the ad step or step one is it sends people, um, from here into a WhatsApp group. So this says take your first day trading course for free and it has you know, blah blah blah blah blah and this right down here when you click on it sends you into um, this WhatsApp group. So this was the WhatsApp group. Now we report these to WhatsApp as well.

WhatsApp doesn't seem to do anything about them and the problem just continues to get bigger and bigger. So it sends you into a WhatsApp group run by the scammers who are impersonating me. but they have. They listen I mean there? I'm not the only one who's this is happening to I I'm sure there's a lot of other people Traders successful people who have imposters who have kind of built these I don't know what you would call them, these scams around them I'm just one of those people.

Uh and and really, the the real victims here are are the people who are losing their money who are falling for it. I Mean it's it, looks bad, it's not. It's not great I Don't like having this. It doesn't look good that there's all these impostor accounts, but uh, but it's really the people that fall victim to it that are that are the victims.

the ones that lose the money. So step two, it sends you into this WhatsApp group. Step three: Um, they feed you into one of multiple people running fake profiles so this one says new friends If you want to get the latest high quality stock information, please click on the tutor's business card right? So this is my business. This is this is the one that she gave me.

so I'm sure for every different person in here, you know when someone logs into the group, they delete these messages and then they give you. You know they they probably have dozens of people like this. This person that I end up talking to who just sit there scamming people all day long. So I sent him a message right? So and then that's where I went into I sent him the message and that's where the conversation with him began on my phone.

So from there I send him that message and you know we start this conversation and he's telling me um, you know, asking me all these questions and this and that and even like I said at the very beginning I really thought that this was going to go into, um, you know the cryptocurrency thing. So one of the other scammers that I was talking to because I'm trying to, you know, figure out what's going on with all these guys. Um, he wanted me to open an account on a dummy website and this this dummy website. It's not.

It's not even a real website, it's a it's a fake website and you open an account, you deposit money and it shows you a balance and then they start increasing the balance the balance starts going up up up up up. This is called um they call it Pig happening. So they make you think you're making money, you're making money and then they're going to slaughter you. and so what they do is they tell you to add more money, add more money.

Keep adding money. but the system won't let you withdraw because it's not a real account. There's no money in it, it's just showing a pretend number and then of course if you try to withdraw it'll say error, error and then they ghost you and and that's it and you know this is this is happening and it's costing Americans billions of dollars a year That the most recent report was that it's costing billions of dollars a year cuz Americans are some people are falling for it now I This is one of the things that frustrates me because I try to be really clear with people like: I will never message you on WhatsApp I will never message you on telegram I I'm I'm never going to tell you to buy crypto stock I'm never going to or cryptocurrencies I'm never going to ask you to invest in cryptocurrency I Do not invest on behalf of any anyone, any of our members, any of our students, anyone. We all trade our own money.

so you know if you if you got a message and someone said hey, you know Ross I'm oh or hey I'm Ross um you know, send me your that's a scam That's a scam and it's great to report them. You can report these profiles but as soon as you report them they have Bots and there's 100 new ones instantly. So ultimately it is the platform um, providers that need to get on top of this. I mean we can only do so much reporting individual accounts, they they're so.

PR Pro Prolif prolific the number of of these scammers and and the different variations of them. Just the other day, within maybe 5 minutes, there were about 100 comments on my YouTube channel that were all pumping this cryptocurrency. I don't know which one it was, but you know I saw I blocked that one and then I got rid of all of them. but it was within within minutes.

It was like boom boom boom boom boom boom boom boom they they just all came flooding in because they're running some kind of Bot you know some kind of algorithm that just floods all these channels. So while I'm currently waiting for my first trade alert from this uh WhatsApp Facebook scammer I did get a uh a message of recent trades and so I was I was kind of looking into these I was like all right up you know, wheels up I'm like okay, uh, you know BC bcba I don't think I was able to pull that one up but Zv and Ftft you know I looked at these and I was like well none of these look like pump and dump to me. you know these are these aren't OTC Well I'm not sure what this one is but they're not OTC stocks. So so I actually don't think I see I Just got into the you know scam group.

so I don't know that they actually sent out these alerts I think this might be a madeup track record that they're sending so that when they send you when they send the next one out, it's going to be like, well look at our track record last time but but I My guess is that these weren't actually alerts because I I Don't think that really. that doesn't really make sense to me. It doesn't add up I Looked at the charts of them and you know up wheels up. I mean this is what's the float on Wheels up? um 10 million share float.

So you know? Yeah, it did make this big move back here, but it was on decent volume. I I mean was that whole thing part of a you know Chinese Gangs pump and dump I I don't know I don't I don't really think so. Ftft. Um, you know this one's a 13 million Flo I I don't think so I hadn't heard anything about and I don't know that I would but um, but I'm not sure about that.

So as of right now I I can't say for sure. You know, like if they actually sent these out as alerts. so I'm just kind of sitting and waiting for um for for the alert to come in. and I don't know, you know I I don't know that? um I'm not sure.

I'm I'm trying to kind of see what's going to happen before I report this profile. Um, but honestly, even reporting it's not going to do anything I mean it probably won't. It never seems to. I've reported a million of these.

Nothing. Nothing really seems to happen. Nothing really changes. they just go away and then they then they come back.

So this is this is an area where I think probably the main goal of this episode is to give you um, you know the the PSA All right I will never ask you to invest in a crypto account I Do Not invest on behalf of our students or members I Do Not private message anyone on WhatsApp or telegram. All right. All right. So these are just things that I do not will not ever do.

So if you get those kind of messages, you just have to know that those are not coming from me. Um and most recently um I have been spotted on a dating website I know but it wasn't me. I'm I'm being used as the catfish. What? I don't know what it what it's called when you know I'm the fish I'm I'm being put out as the good-look fish and listen.

So the woman sent me a message and said I I thought I was talking talking to you you know um on a dating app and listen I can't she's got great test taste in men I I can't I can't falter for that. Um, but I I had to break the news that it was not me. uh but she started to get suspicious when um I began asking her to send me gift cards. so you know? um I'm not on any of those apps and I'm never going to ask you to send me a gift card either.

Uh um, you know what I might ask is free to hit the thumbs up and fre to subscribe to the channel, but that's about it. So I you know this was the first. um anyway so we we sent a message to the dating app uh, website and I'm sure that I'm sure they get that all the time though, right? I mean people cat, there's a show about it. So there people cat fishing a lot you know this is a thing that happens I didn't expect that I my face would be used I mean part of me thinks like I should have known it would happen eventually cuz with a face like this like it's going to happen but and a body like this too.

but I I think it's important to recognize that you have to be vigilant and you have to stay alert. and I hope you guys share this with some friends because if it doesn't happen with you know a scam with with me it could happen with someone else. especially you know people that are vulnerable people that are you know in in a situation where they are desperate, they really need money, or you know they're lonely, or you know, like these things can happen and it could be really embarrassing. So my hope is that we can stamp this out and we can continue reporting the profiles and we can continue to put out episodes like this of spreading awareness so you guys know about it.

So none of you become the next victim and so you prevent your friends from becoming the next victim and you know the more we do that. You know if we all tell six people and they all tell six people, then the these gangs are going to be. they're going to lose their funding, they're going to lose their money and that's it. Um, you know I Was thinking about an episode of like Meeting My Scammer face to face.

but um, but you know I I This is this. This is like Ser This isn't just like someone you know down the road who's just being kind of like a troll. this is organized crime. Ultimately, I mean it's pretty, It's pretty organized.

it's they've got a real thing that they're doing here and they're targeting. uh Americans because I guess we we have more money. um I think I think originally this gang was operating mostly inside China targeting Chinese um people Nationals and then um I Don't know if they got shut down there in some way, but apparently it's It's a real. it's a real, problem.

So anyways I hope this is helpful for you I hope it makes you more aware of what's going on if you didn't check out my first episode on Scamer that I'll post um, a link to at the end of this video probably up in the corner so you could check that out. And unfortunately I have a feeling that this probably won't be the last episode. There's probably going to be another one coming soon. We'll see what happens with this guy.

obviously I'm not protecting his phone number I don't have any reason to. um, so you know I he's probably going to be on to me as soon as this video gets posted, but I'm going to try to find the next one and maybe I'll get something back from this guy. Maybe he won't find out, but um, but if he does, I'll be on to the next one and I'll keep you guys posted on what happens. All right.

So stay alert, stay vigilant, be careful. and I hope you thumbs up. Subscribe and share this episode with some friends. All right.

stay safe. I'll see you guys soon.