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OFFICES/CALL CENTERS: How do modern scammers work and how do they deceive our grandmothers?
This topic tells the shocking truth about how gray telephone fraud schemes work. Based on the real story of "Cipher" - a former specialist who became part of a large-scale criminal scheme - we will show how fake investment platforms work, who is behind the calls, and why pensioners are most often the victims.
If you or your loved ones are elderly, it is important to know how to protect yourself from fraud. This topic is a warning that everyone should see. We reveal the mechanisms of manipulation, the psychology of pressure and real consequences, including tragic cases.
Important: All information is for educational purposes only. We do not promote or encourage any illegal activity. We urge all readers to be careful on the Internet.
What you will learn from the topic:
Hello, friends, it’s me again. I recently shared with you The Ghost Protocol, a gripping tale of a former cybersecurity specialist who went dark to hunt for lost bitcoins. Today, I bring you something completely different, no less dark, but much more common – something that can touch any of us.
A reality that thousands of people face every day. The reality of phone scams. Behind every scam call, there’s a person. A person who once lived an ordinary life, had an ordinary job, ordinary dreams and hopes. Until one day, he crossed the line. Have you ever wondered who these people are? What led them to this? How do they sleep at night? Today, I’ll tell you the story of a man known by the code name Sipher.
A former tech support employee who, in five years, went from being desperate and unemployed to running a major fraudulent organization. And the price he paid for it. This is a story about how one letter can change everything. How the words of a stranger can awaken a conscience that seemed to have been buried long ago under mountains of money. I must warn you.
What you are about to hear does not justify scammers, does not make them victims of circumstances, it simply allows you to see the full picture, to understand the mechanism, to better protect yourself from it. And who knows, maybe among our viewers there is someone who is on the verge of a similar choice, someone who this story will help make the right choice. So, get comfortable, turn off your phone, ironically.
And immerse yourself in the world of Cipher, a man who made millions on lies, until one situation destroyed his world to the ground.
I never planned to become a scammer. No one does. October 15, 2018. I will never forget this date. Gray Monday in Dallas, Texas. I worked in tech support for a large Internet provider for almost 12 years. Started as an ordinary operator, worked my way up to a senior specialist. I was 34 and thought I would work there until retirement.
But one of my colleagues changed everything. That day, we were gathered in a conference room. Process automation, staff optimization, the development of artificial intelligence. Familiar words for anyone who has been laid off in the last decade. I listened to a presentation with pre-prepared slides, received a standard severance package and a corporate thermos as a souvenir. Twelve years of my life fit into one cardboard box, which I took out to the company parking lot.
I was sure that I would quickly find a job. I had experience, skills, recommendations. But a week later, I realized that there were hundreds of people like me. All that I knew how to do - solve technical problems over the phone - was no longer needed. Chatbots, automated systems, voice recognition. Every company I sent my resume to had recently completed staff optimization.
By early November, my money was running low. Mortgage, car loan, rent. I’d cut my expenses to the bone, but the numbers in my banking app were still dwindling. On November 25, I had $347.18 left in my account. My mortgage payment was due in a week: $1,200. Any prospects? None. November 22, 2018.
Thanksgiving. I was sitting at home, missing the traditional family dinner. No money for gifts, no mood to ask about work. Around 8 p.m., I got a text from a former colleague. Let’s call him Revan. We hadn’t spoken since he left the company two years ago. Hey, how are you? Heard about the layoffs. Want to grab a drink? We met at Omalis, a small bar near our old office.
Raven looked successful. An expensive suit, a new watch, the confident look of a man who has everything going well. I didn’t try to hide the fact that the situation was frankly lousy. After our third drink, Revan proposed to me. Financial consulting, he called it. Helping people invest in cryptocurrency and forex. The company he worked for, Nextech Marketing, was officially a digital marketing company. But the real business was something else entirely.
They called people and convinced them to invest in projects that didn’t actually exist. “Are you asking me to work in a scam call center?” I asked him point-blank. Revan didn’t deny it. Instead, he talked about the money – five to ten thousand dollars a month, flexible hours, how corporations screw people like us every day, without caring about our families, without thanking us for the years of work.
“Think about it,” he said, leaving his business card. A plain white card with a name and phone number. No logos, no addresses. If I had known what my choice would lead to then… For three days, I was beside myself, weighing, doubting, arguing with myself. On the one hand, an obvious crime, a scam, a fraud. On the other hand, there were mounting debts, despair, and the looming prospect of being left without a roof over my head.
On November 26, 2018, I stood in front of the Next Tech Marketing office in downtown Dallas. Gray skies, drizzling rain. The office was on the seventeenth floor of a modern business center. Nothing out of the ordinary, a standard workspace with partitions, computers, conference rooms. People with headphones were talking on the phone, others were typing something, others were discussing business by the coffee machine.
Everything looked absolutely normal and legal. Revan introduced me to the manager, a man of about forty in a perfect suit, whom they called "mentor." The conversation was short and clear. Yes, what they were doing was technically illegal. Yes, there were risks, but they were minimal if you followed the rules. But as it turned out later, there was still one nuance.
No real names, just code names, no personal contact with clients, no traces on the network, the company provides a secure connection. “It's up to you,” the mentor said, looking me straight in the eye. “But if you decide to stay, there's no turning back.” All the rejected interviews flashed through my mind. The empty bank account. The mounting debts. And so I made a choice.
“I'm with you,” I said. The mentor extended his hand. “Welcome to the team. From now on, you are a Cipher.” I crossed the line that day, not knowing that this journey would last five years. I didn't know that I would rise from a simple operator to one of the key people in the organization. I didn't know that I would be training others in the art of deception. And I certainly didn't know how it would all end.
I didn't know that one day I would find an email in my inbox from a woman named Marge Wilson that would make me unable to sleep at night. But that was just the beginning. In the next few days, I was about to learn how one of the most sophisticated phone scams in the United States really works. November 27, 2018. My first day at Next Tech Marketing. I arrived at 7:30 a.m.,
an old habit from my previous job. The office was almost empty, just a security guard in the lobby. At 8:00 a.m., Revan showed up. He smiled when he saw me. Punctuality is a good quality for our business. Come on, we need to set up your workstation. In the corner of the office, separated from the others by high partitions, there were five computers. Revan pointed to one of them. “This is yours. The login and password are on the sticker.
The VPN is already set up, you don’t need to change anything.” The first thing he showed me was the call scripts. Three main scenarios, each for a different type of client. Newbies in investing, people with trading experience, and retirees. Each has its own approach, its own hooks. “We don’t just call random people,” Revan explained. “We have a database of potential investors. We find some through social networks.
Some register on our decoy sites themselves. We have a special legend for each one.” At nine, the rest of the staff began to arrive. Revan introduced me as the new technical consultant. I was assigned a mentor - a young guy of about 25 named Kay. He had been working for the company for two years. “The first two weeks, you just listen to my calls?” Kay said.
“Then you try it yourself under my supervision. I think with your experience in tech support, you will get the hang of it quickly.” He was right. Working in tech support taught me the main thing. How to inspire trust in strangers over the phone? How to speak confidently? How to find an approach to any type. The only difference was that now I was not helping them solve their problems. I was becoming their problem.
As it turned out later, too big a problem. The first week I just listened. The scheme was much more complicated than I imagined. Calls are just the tip of the iceberg. There was a whole infrastructure behind them. Cryptonova – that was the name of our main bait. A non-existent cryptocurrency with a fake website, fake growth charts and a fake history of creation. Allegedly developed by former Google engineers, it promised a revolution in the payment system and monthly growth of 30%.
Clients were sent a link to a personal account, where they could track their investments. Of course, all the growth charts were drawn in advance by our programmers. The money went straight to mixers – services for obscuring the traces of cryptocurrency transactions. On December 10, 2018, I made my first call.
A man, 40 years old, a mid-level manager from Chicago. We found him through LinkedIn, he had recently been interested in cryptocurrencies, even wrote a couple of posts on this topic. I followed the script, but added my own phrases. I spoke calmly, professionally, exactly the way I used to explain to clients why their internet was down. Only now I was explaining why they needed to invest $5,000 in a non-existent crypto. Do you understand? Cryptonova is not just another coin. I said. It is an entire ecosystem developed by the best minds of Silicon Valley.
Its blockchain uses a unique consensus algorithm that makes it 70% faster than Bitcoin and three times more energy efficient than Ethereum. I sprinkled technical terms, knowing that my interlocutor understood them no more than I did. But it sounded convincing. Very convincing. We invite you to enter at the stage of closed sales. Before the official listing on the exchanges. This is a privilege only for selected investors.
When Cryptonova appears on Binance next quarter, its price will increase at least 5 times. He bought it and transferred $3,000 to the crypto wallet I specified. My first client. After the call, I felt a strange mix of emotions, pride in having done it, adrenaline from a successful deal, and somewhere deep down a pang of guilt, which I immediately suppressed with the thought of my empty bank account. Kiy patted me on the shoulder.
“Great job, Sifer, you have talent. I think you will go far in our business.” By the end of December, I was already working independently. Five to six calls a day, conversion rate was about 30%. Not bad for a newbie, as the mentor said at our weekly meeting. On December 28, I received my first bonus – $8.5 thousand in cash, more than I earned in two months in tech support.
That evening, I paid off my overdue mortgage and all my other debts. For the first time in a long time, I felt relief, but not happiness. I didn’t know then that this was just the beginning, that very soon I would not just call people, but develop entire strategies for deception, and that my clients would not only be random managers, but also wealthy investors ready to invest hundreds of thousands in thin air, beautifully packaged in the words “innovation”, “blockchain” and “the future of finance”.
In the meantime, I was just happy that I could pay the bills. The moral price of this joy seemed acceptable to me. How wrong I was. 2019 changed everything. By March, I was no longer a simple operator. A mentor noticed that my scripts were working better than the standard ones and offered me a new position - script developer and trainer of newcomers.
“You have a talent for finding people's weak points, Sifer,” he said during our meeting on March 15. “Your conversion is almost twice as high as the office average. We need others to adopt your approach. My salary has grown to 15 thousand a month, plus a percentage of each successful transaction made using my scripts.
I moved to a new apartment in a prestigious area of Dallas, bought a BMW of last year's model. Outwardly, I became who I always wanted to be. Inside - who I never wanted to become. In the summer of 2019, we launched a new scheme - Forex Elite. This time we targeted wealthier clients. I developed a multi-stage strategy, first small investments with real profit that the client could withdraw.
Then, when trust is established, an offer of an exclusive opportunity with a minimum entry of 50 thousand dollars is established. At that time, I did not yet understand the scale of what I had created. On July 12, we caught our first big fish - a surgeon from San Francisco. He started with 10 thousand, a month later invested another 150. He was personally led by Key, using my script.
Of course, he was unable to withdraw the money. The site suddenly stopped working, and the phones were disconnected. In the fall, our team expanded to 40 people. We had specialists in various fields - programmers creating fake platforms, designers developing convincing websites, analysts compiling databases of potential victims. We were no longer simple telephone scammers. We became a real cybercriminal organization.
I headed the training department. I supervised 12 operators. Every morning we started with a briefing, where I analyzed new scenarios and manipulation techniques. I taught them how to determine personality type by the first phrases of a conversation. How to induce fear of missing out. “How to create the illusion of exclusivity and urgency? Never push too hard,” I repeated to my students. The victim must think that she makes the decision herself.
Our task is to create the conditions for this solution. Among my operators, two stood out - Nova and Shell. The first is a former actress. She knew how to transform into different roles right during a call. The second, a former psychologist, masterfully read the emotional state of the interlocutor and adapted to it. They became not only my best students, but also the only people in the company with whom I communicated outside the office.
We often met at the bar about Melle, where it all began, and discussed new ideas for schemes, or simply talked about life, diligently avoiding the topic of our work. By the end of 2019, I had earned almost 800 thousand dollars. Money that I could not even dream of before. But the price was high. I stopped communicating with my family. It was too difficult to answer questions about my new career.
Old friends remained in the past. I did not make any new ones, except for the new one. Every evening, returning home to an empty apartment filled with expensive but soulless things, I opened a bottle of whiskey and tried to drown out the voice of conscience. Sometimes it worked. More often - not. In January 2020, for the first time, I seriously thought about leaving.
I counted my savings, figured out how long I could live on them if I gave up everything. But the covid-19 pandemic changed all the cards. On March 23, 2020, a mentor called us together for an emergency meeting. “Crisis is an opportunity,” he said. Millions of people are sitting at home in front of their computers. They are scared, disoriented and looking for ways to make money in the new conditions.
We need to adapt our schemes to the new reality. And we adapted. We launched CoronaSafe Investments, a platform supposedly offering investments in companies producing medical equipment and vaccines. I developed new scripts that play on fears of the future. The money started flowing like a river. In April and May 2020, we raised more money than we had in the entire previous year.
People gave us their last savings, unemployment benefits, even loans. And we took and took, without thinking about the consequences. I became the mentor's right hand, entered the inner circle of leaders. Now I was not just creating scripts and training operators. I was planning the entire strategy of the organization. And at night, I continued to drink whiskey, looking out the window of my penthouse at the lights of Dallas and wondering when exactly I lost myself. I received the answer only three years later.
In a letter from a woman I had never met, but whose words changed my whole life. By the beginning of 2023, I was at the top. Next Tech Marketing turned into a network of three offices with a staff of more than 150 people. We We operated dozens of fake investment platforms, each with its own legend, each aimed at its own audience. The annual turnover was in the millions.
The simple operator I was in 2018 was gone. Now I occupied an office overlooking downtown Dallas, had a personal assistant, and a team of eight script writers working under me. I was worth about $7 million. It seemed like the American dream. Except I still woke up in a cold sweat. And the whiskey didn’t help anymore. April 11, 2023. A typical Tuesday. I was scrolling through my email. One of the many fake ones we used to contact clients.
Most of the letters were standard. Withdrawal requests, which we ignored, of course. Questions about technical glitches on the platform. Sometimes threats to call the police. We ignored those, too, knowing that most victims were too ashamed to admit they’d been scammed. Among the dozens of such letters, I saw one with an unusual subject.
A farewell letter, Marge Wilson. I opened it. Just a few lines. Whoever you are, you from Forex Elite took everything I had. My entire family savings, my daughter’s college money, even the mortgage I took out on my house. $726,000. The bank is foreclosing my house tomorrow. I’m 71 years old.
I have no future. I hope you’ll be happy with my money. I can’t fight anymore. Goodbye. March Wilson. I read the letter three times, then checked the name in our database. Marge Wilson, 61, not 71 as she wrote. Widow from Portland. First payment of 15k due June 4, 2022. Last payment of 240k due February 2, 2023.
I contacted Shell. He was the one running her account. “And that old lady from Portland,” he said casually. Classic trust scheme. First they let you withdraw small amounts, then they talked you into mortgaging your house. They used a story about a hot investment in a biotech company developing a new drug for Alzheimer's. Her husband died from it, so I interrupted him. You know she's going to kill herself. There was a pause.
Look, Sipher, this isn't the first threat like this. They all say things like that when they know they can't get their money back. It's just manipulation. I wanted to believe him, but something about that letter struck me right in the heart with its simplicity and finality. It wasn't manipulation. It was goodbye. I couldn't concentrate all day. That evening, I didn't go home, but to O'Malley's, where it all started.
I ordered a double whiskey and opened my laptop. I found the Portland news for the last 24 hours. And there it was. A 71-year-old woman found dead in her home. Preliminary information is suicide. Name is being withheld until relatives are notified. 71, like the letter said. Not 61, like our database. But I knew it was her. It literally turned me inside out.
I barely made it to the bathroom. I stood there for a long time, leaning against the sink, looking in the mirror and not recognizing the person in front of me. April 12, 2023, I didn’t go to work. For the first time in five years. I turned off my phone and locked myself in my apartment. I went over in my head all the excuses we’d come up with for ourselves. They were the ones to blame for their greed. We were just taking money from people who could lose it. It was just a business.
It all went down the drain. Marge Wilson was a real person. With a real life, real pain, and real death. Because of us. Because of me. The next day, I went to the office and walked straight to my mentor. I’m quitting. I said without preamble. He looked at me in surprise. What happened? A woman from Portland. She committed suicide.
The mentor sighed. Look, it’s sad, but it’s not our responsibility. We offer investments, people decide for themselves whether to take risks or not. It’s a free market. We offer a lie, and you know it, I replied. I am no longer involved. Two weeks later, I handed over everything. Took my share of a little over three hundred thousand in cash. The rest remained in the company.
I did not want this money. I moved from Dallas. Changed my name, phone number, all contacts. Disappeared for those who knew me there. Now I live in a small town on the coast. I work remotely as an IT consultant, legally, with a normal salary. I transfer half of my earnings to a fund to help victims of financial fraud. It will not atone for my guilt, but at least it is something. I know that NextTech and similar organizations continue to operate, I know that thousands of people every day lose their savings, trusting beautiful promises.
That is why I am writing this confession. Not for forgiveness, I do not deserve it. But as a warning, if you are reading this and thinking about joining such a scheme - stop. The money is not worth what you will become. And if you are a potential victim, remember - no one will give you 30% a month without risk, no one will offer you an exclusive opportunity if it is really valuable. And if the offer sounds too good to be true, it is. My name is Sifer and this is my confession.
This topic tells the shocking truth about how gray telephone fraud schemes work. Based on the real story of "Cipher" - a former specialist who became part of a large-scale criminal scheme - we will show how fake investment platforms work, who is behind the calls, and why pensioners are most often the victims.
If you or your loved ones are elderly, it is important to know how to protect yourself from fraud. This topic is a warning that everyone should see. We reveal the mechanisms of manipulation, the psychology of pressure and real consequences, including tragic cases.
Important: All information is for educational purposes only. We do not promote or encourage any illegal activity. We urge all readers to be careful on the Internet.What you will learn from the topic:
- How scam call centers work
- Why are the elderly the main target?
- How they play on fears and hopes
- What words and scripts are used for deception - How to protect yourself and your loved ones
Hello, friends, it’s me again. I recently shared with you The Ghost Protocol, a gripping tale of a former cybersecurity specialist who went dark to hunt for lost bitcoins. Today, I bring you something completely different, no less dark, but much more common – something that can touch any of us.
A reality that thousands of people face every day. The reality of phone scams. Behind every scam call, there’s a person. A person who once lived an ordinary life, had an ordinary job, ordinary dreams and hopes. Until one day, he crossed the line. Have you ever wondered who these people are? What led them to this? How do they sleep at night? Today, I’ll tell you the story of a man known by the code name Sipher.
A former tech support employee who, in five years, went from being desperate and unemployed to running a major fraudulent organization. And the price he paid for it. This is a story about how one letter can change everything. How the words of a stranger can awaken a conscience that seemed to have been buried long ago under mountains of money. I must warn you.
What you are about to hear does not justify scammers, does not make them victims of circumstances, it simply allows you to see the full picture, to understand the mechanism, to better protect yourself from it. And who knows, maybe among our viewers there is someone who is on the verge of a similar choice, someone who this story will help make the right choice. So, get comfortable, turn off your phone, ironically.
And immerse yourself in the world of Cipher, a man who made millions on lies, until one situation destroyed his world to the ground.
I never planned to become a scammer. No one does. October 15, 2018. I will never forget this date. Gray Monday in Dallas, Texas. I worked in tech support for a large Internet provider for almost 12 years. Started as an ordinary operator, worked my way up to a senior specialist. I was 34 and thought I would work there until retirement.
But one of my colleagues changed everything. That day, we were gathered in a conference room. Process automation, staff optimization, the development of artificial intelligence. Familiar words for anyone who has been laid off in the last decade. I listened to a presentation with pre-prepared slides, received a standard severance package and a corporate thermos as a souvenir. Twelve years of my life fit into one cardboard box, which I took out to the company parking lot.
I was sure that I would quickly find a job. I had experience, skills, recommendations. But a week later, I realized that there were hundreds of people like me. All that I knew how to do - solve technical problems over the phone - was no longer needed. Chatbots, automated systems, voice recognition. Every company I sent my resume to had recently completed staff optimization.
By early November, my money was running low. Mortgage, car loan, rent. I’d cut my expenses to the bone, but the numbers in my banking app were still dwindling. On November 25, I had $347.18 left in my account. My mortgage payment was due in a week: $1,200. Any prospects? None. November 22, 2018.
Thanksgiving. I was sitting at home, missing the traditional family dinner. No money for gifts, no mood to ask about work. Around 8 p.m., I got a text from a former colleague. Let’s call him Revan. We hadn’t spoken since he left the company two years ago. Hey, how are you? Heard about the layoffs. Want to grab a drink? We met at Omalis, a small bar near our old office.
Raven looked successful. An expensive suit, a new watch, the confident look of a man who has everything going well. I didn’t try to hide the fact that the situation was frankly lousy. After our third drink, Revan proposed to me. Financial consulting, he called it. Helping people invest in cryptocurrency and forex. The company he worked for, Nextech Marketing, was officially a digital marketing company. But the real business was something else entirely.
They called people and convinced them to invest in projects that didn’t actually exist. “Are you asking me to work in a scam call center?” I asked him point-blank. Revan didn’t deny it. Instead, he talked about the money – five to ten thousand dollars a month, flexible hours, how corporations screw people like us every day, without caring about our families, without thanking us for the years of work.
“Think about it,” he said, leaving his business card. A plain white card with a name and phone number. No logos, no addresses. If I had known what my choice would lead to then… For three days, I was beside myself, weighing, doubting, arguing with myself. On the one hand, an obvious crime, a scam, a fraud. On the other hand, there were mounting debts, despair, and the looming prospect of being left without a roof over my head.
On November 26, 2018, I stood in front of the Next Tech Marketing office in downtown Dallas. Gray skies, drizzling rain. The office was on the seventeenth floor of a modern business center. Nothing out of the ordinary, a standard workspace with partitions, computers, conference rooms. People with headphones were talking on the phone, others were typing something, others were discussing business by the coffee machine.
Everything looked absolutely normal and legal. Revan introduced me to the manager, a man of about forty in a perfect suit, whom they called "mentor." The conversation was short and clear. Yes, what they were doing was technically illegal. Yes, there were risks, but they were minimal if you followed the rules. But as it turned out later, there was still one nuance.
No real names, just code names, no personal contact with clients, no traces on the network, the company provides a secure connection. “It's up to you,” the mentor said, looking me straight in the eye. “But if you decide to stay, there's no turning back.” All the rejected interviews flashed through my mind. The empty bank account. The mounting debts. And so I made a choice.
“I'm with you,” I said. The mentor extended his hand. “Welcome to the team. From now on, you are a Cipher.” I crossed the line that day, not knowing that this journey would last five years. I didn't know that I would rise from a simple operator to one of the key people in the organization. I didn't know that I would be training others in the art of deception. And I certainly didn't know how it would all end.
I didn't know that one day I would find an email in my inbox from a woman named Marge Wilson that would make me unable to sleep at night. But that was just the beginning. In the next few days, I was about to learn how one of the most sophisticated phone scams in the United States really works. November 27, 2018. My first day at Next Tech Marketing. I arrived at 7:30 a.m.,
an old habit from my previous job. The office was almost empty, just a security guard in the lobby. At 8:00 a.m., Revan showed up. He smiled when he saw me. Punctuality is a good quality for our business. Come on, we need to set up your workstation. In the corner of the office, separated from the others by high partitions, there were five computers. Revan pointed to one of them. “This is yours. The login and password are on the sticker.
The VPN is already set up, you don’t need to change anything.” The first thing he showed me was the call scripts. Three main scenarios, each for a different type of client. Newbies in investing, people with trading experience, and retirees. Each has its own approach, its own hooks. “We don’t just call random people,” Revan explained. “We have a database of potential investors. We find some through social networks.
Some register on our decoy sites themselves. We have a special legend for each one.” At nine, the rest of the staff began to arrive. Revan introduced me as the new technical consultant. I was assigned a mentor - a young guy of about 25 named Kay. He had been working for the company for two years. “The first two weeks, you just listen to my calls?” Kay said.
“Then you try it yourself under my supervision. I think with your experience in tech support, you will get the hang of it quickly.” He was right. Working in tech support taught me the main thing. How to inspire trust in strangers over the phone? How to speak confidently? How to find an approach to any type. The only difference was that now I was not helping them solve their problems. I was becoming their problem.
As it turned out later, too big a problem. The first week I just listened. The scheme was much more complicated than I imagined. Calls are just the tip of the iceberg. There was a whole infrastructure behind them. Cryptonova – that was the name of our main bait. A non-existent cryptocurrency with a fake website, fake growth charts and a fake history of creation. Allegedly developed by former Google engineers, it promised a revolution in the payment system and monthly growth of 30%.
Clients were sent a link to a personal account, where they could track their investments. Of course, all the growth charts were drawn in advance by our programmers. The money went straight to mixers – services for obscuring the traces of cryptocurrency transactions. On December 10, 2018, I made my first call.
A man, 40 years old, a mid-level manager from Chicago. We found him through LinkedIn, he had recently been interested in cryptocurrencies, even wrote a couple of posts on this topic. I followed the script, but added my own phrases. I spoke calmly, professionally, exactly the way I used to explain to clients why their internet was down. Only now I was explaining why they needed to invest $5,000 in a non-existent crypto. Do you understand? Cryptonova is not just another coin. I said. It is an entire ecosystem developed by the best minds of Silicon Valley.
Its blockchain uses a unique consensus algorithm that makes it 70% faster than Bitcoin and three times more energy efficient than Ethereum. I sprinkled technical terms, knowing that my interlocutor understood them no more than I did. But it sounded convincing. Very convincing. We invite you to enter at the stage of closed sales. Before the official listing on the exchanges. This is a privilege only for selected investors.
When Cryptonova appears on Binance next quarter, its price will increase at least 5 times. He bought it and transferred $3,000 to the crypto wallet I specified. My first client. After the call, I felt a strange mix of emotions, pride in having done it, adrenaline from a successful deal, and somewhere deep down a pang of guilt, which I immediately suppressed with the thought of my empty bank account. Kiy patted me on the shoulder.
“Great job, Sifer, you have talent. I think you will go far in our business.” By the end of December, I was already working independently. Five to six calls a day, conversion rate was about 30%. Not bad for a newbie, as the mentor said at our weekly meeting. On December 28, I received my first bonus – $8.5 thousand in cash, more than I earned in two months in tech support.
That evening, I paid off my overdue mortgage and all my other debts. For the first time in a long time, I felt relief, but not happiness. I didn’t know then that this was just the beginning, that very soon I would not just call people, but develop entire strategies for deception, and that my clients would not only be random managers, but also wealthy investors ready to invest hundreds of thousands in thin air, beautifully packaged in the words “innovation”, “blockchain” and “the future of finance”.
In the meantime, I was just happy that I could pay the bills. The moral price of this joy seemed acceptable to me. How wrong I was. 2019 changed everything. By March, I was no longer a simple operator. A mentor noticed that my scripts were working better than the standard ones and offered me a new position - script developer and trainer of newcomers.
“You have a talent for finding people's weak points, Sifer,” he said during our meeting on March 15. “Your conversion is almost twice as high as the office average. We need others to adopt your approach. My salary has grown to 15 thousand a month, plus a percentage of each successful transaction made using my scripts.
I moved to a new apartment in a prestigious area of Dallas, bought a BMW of last year's model. Outwardly, I became who I always wanted to be. Inside - who I never wanted to become. In the summer of 2019, we launched a new scheme - Forex Elite. This time we targeted wealthier clients. I developed a multi-stage strategy, first small investments with real profit that the client could withdraw.
Then, when trust is established, an offer of an exclusive opportunity with a minimum entry of 50 thousand dollars is established. At that time, I did not yet understand the scale of what I had created. On July 12, we caught our first big fish - a surgeon from San Francisco. He started with 10 thousand, a month later invested another 150. He was personally led by Key, using my script.
Of course, he was unable to withdraw the money. The site suddenly stopped working, and the phones were disconnected. In the fall, our team expanded to 40 people. We had specialists in various fields - programmers creating fake platforms, designers developing convincing websites, analysts compiling databases of potential victims. We were no longer simple telephone scammers. We became a real cybercriminal organization.
I headed the training department. I supervised 12 operators. Every morning we started with a briefing, where I analyzed new scenarios and manipulation techniques. I taught them how to determine personality type by the first phrases of a conversation. How to induce fear of missing out. “How to create the illusion of exclusivity and urgency? Never push too hard,” I repeated to my students. The victim must think that she makes the decision herself.
Our task is to create the conditions for this solution. Among my operators, two stood out - Nova and Shell. The first is a former actress. She knew how to transform into different roles right during a call. The second, a former psychologist, masterfully read the emotional state of the interlocutor and adapted to it. They became not only my best students, but also the only people in the company with whom I communicated outside the office.
We often met at the bar about Melle, where it all began, and discussed new ideas for schemes, or simply talked about life, diligently avoiding the topic of our work. By the end of 2019, I had earned almost 800 thousand dollars. Money that I could not even dream of before. But the price was high. I stopped communicating with my family. It was too difficult to answer questions about my new career.
Old friends remained in the past. I did not make any new ones, except for the new one. Every evening, returning home to an empty apartment filled with expensive but soulless things, I opened a bottle of whiskey and tried to drown out the voice of conscience. Sometimes it worked. More often - not. In January 2020, for the first time, I seriously thought about leaving.
I counted my savings, figured out how long I could live on them if I gave up everything. But the covid-19 pandemic changed all the cards. On March 23, 2020, a mentor called us together for an emergency meeting. “Crisis is an opportunity,” he said. Millions of people are sitting at home in front of their computers. They are scared, disoriented and looking for ways to make money in the new conditions.
We need to adapt our schemes to the new reality. And we adapted. We launched CoronaSafe Investments, a platform supposedly offering investments in companies producing medical equipment and vaccines. I developed new scripts that play on fears of the future. The money started flowing like a river. In April and May 2020, we raised more money than we had in the entire previous year.
People gave us their last savings, unemployment benefits, even loans. And we took and took, without thinking about the consequences. I became the mentor's right hand, entered the inner circle of leaders. Now I was not just creating scripts and training operators. I was planning the entire strategy of the organization. And at night, I continued to drink whiskey, looking out the window of my penthouse at the lights of Dallas and wondering when exactly I lost myself. I received the answer only three years later.
In a letter from a woman I had never met, but whose words changed my whole life. By the beginning of 2023, I was at the top. Next Tech Marketing turned into a network of three offices with a staff of more than 150 people. We We operated dozens of fake investment platforms, each with its own legend, each aimed at its own audience. The annual turnover was in the millions.
The simple operator I was in 2018 was gone. Now I occupied an office overlooking downtown Dallas, had a personal assistant, and a team of eight script writers working under me. I was worth about $7 million. It seemed like the American dream. Except I still woke up in a cold sweat. And the whiskey didn’t help anymore. April 11, 2023. A typical Tuesday. I was scrolling through my email. One of the many fake ones we used to contact clients.
Most of the letters were standard. Withdrawal requests, which we ignored, of course. Questions about technical glitches on the platform. Sometimes threats to call the police. We ignored those, too, knowing that most victims were too ashamed to admit they’d been scammed. Among the dozens of such letters, I saw one with an unusual subject.
A farewell letter, Marge Wilson. I opened it. Just a few lines. Whoever you are, you from Forex Elite took everything I had. My entire family savings, my daughter’s college money, even the mortgage I took out on my house. $726,000. The bank is foreclosing my house tomorrow. I’m 71 years old.
I have no future. I hope you’ll be happy with my money. I can’t fight anymore. Goodbye. March Wilson. I read the letter three times, then checked the name in our database. Marge Wilson, 61, not 71 as she wrote. Widow from Portland. First payment of 15k due June 4, 2022. Last payment of 240k due February 2, 2023.
I contacted Shell. He was the one running her account. “And that old lady from Portland,” he said casually. Classic trust scheme. First they let you withdraw small amounts, then they talked you into mortgaging your house. They used a story about a hot investment in a biotech company developing a new drug for Alzheimer's. Her husband died from it, so I interrupted him. You know she's going to kill herself. There was a pause.
Look, Sipher, this isn't the first threat like this. They all say things like that when they know they can't get their money back. It's just manipulation. I wanted to believe him, but something about that letter struck me right in the heart with its simplicity and finality. It wasn't manipulation. It was goodbye. I couldn't concentrate all day. That evening, I didn't go home, but to O'Malley's, where it all started.
I ordered a double whiskey and opened my laptop. I found the Portland news for the last 24 hours. And there it was. A 71-year-old woman found dead in her home. Preliminary information is suicide. Name is being withheld until relatives are notified. 71, like the letter said. Not 61, like our database. But I knew it was her. It literally turned me inside out.
I barely made it to the bathroom. I stood there for a long time, leaning against the sink, looking in the mirror and not recognizing the person in front of me. April 12, 2023, I didn’t go to work. For the first time in five years. I turned off my phone and locked myself in my apartment. I went over in my head all the excuses we’d come up with for ourselves. They were the ones to blame for their greed. We were just taking money from people who could lose it. It was just a business.
It all went down the drain. Marge Wilson was a real person. With a real life, real pain, and real death. Because of us. Because of me. The next day, I went to the office and walked straight to my mentor. I’m quitting. I said without preamble. He looked at me in surprise. What happened? A woman from Portland. She committed suicide.
The mentor sighed. Look, it’s sad, but it’s not our responsibility. We offer investments, people decide for themselves whether to take risks or not. It’s a free market. We offer a lie, and you know it, I replied. I am no longer involved. Two weeks later, I handed over everything. Took my share of a little over three hundred thousand in cash. The rest remained in the company.
I did not want this money. I moved from Dallas. Changed my name, phone number, all contacts. Disappeared for those who knew me there. Now I live in a small town on the coast. I work remotely as an IT consultant, legally, with a normal salary. I transfer half of my earnings to a fund to help victims of financial fraud. It will not atone for my guilt, but at least it is something. I know that NextTech and similar organizations continue to operate, I know that thousands of people every day lose their savings, trusting beautiful promises.
That is why I am writing this confession. Not for forgiveness, I do not deserve it. But as a warning, if you are reading this and thinking about joining such a scheme - stop. The money is not worth what you will become. And if you are a potential victim, remember - no one will give you 30% a month without risk, no one will offer you an exclusive opportunity if it is really valuable. And if the offer sounds too good to be true, it is. My name is Sifer and this is my confession.
