Time to read: 14 minutes(s)

At the last moment, fact-checking and experience from a previous “gotcha” came to the rescue.

Sometimes even those who should be doubly vigilant fall for scammers' tricks. Journalists, for example. This happened once (and then almost happened again!) to a NeMoskva correspondent. In his column, he honestly recounts his mistakes and offers advice on how to resist scams in the future.

Sometimes it's good to find yourself in stupid situations. If only to remind yourself that the only true reward is the one earned through hard work and intelligence. And that the world is full of people who, in the words of O. Henry, perceive the money in your pocket as a personal insult.

Green Boots and Marketplace Dreams

I'll be honest: despite my profession requiring a critical approach to everything, I've fallen victim to scammers before. It's time to consider whether this profession is right for me... But I console myself with the thought that I'm a human being first and foremost, not a journalist, and everyone makes mistakes.

So, about six years ago, I really wanted a pair of green boots. Patent leather, elegant, they cost several thousand. I found them in some online store. I had some questions about delivery and sizing, so I wrote to the store's public support chat on VKontakte.

Pretty soon, a young man contacted me in private, introducing himself as a store employee. He answered all my questions and offered a discount on my size—"the last one in the store." But I had to hurry, or they'd take it away.

- Are you buying?

- Still would!

A fire ignited somewhere in my brain, somewhere near my cerebellum. What a bargain, for that price! In my head, I was already matching trousers to the boots and listening to the compliments from everyone around me—and so I didn't suspect a thing when he sent me the payment link, also on VKontakte for some reason, and not through the "Cart" section on the website.

I quickly transferred 2,5 rubles—and within half an hour I was cursing myself as much as I could. The payment confirmation never appeared on the website, and my recipient suddenly disappeared. So I bought myself a bit of experience and a rather unpleasant insight: in times of stress, emotions often get the better of me, and the desire for easy money clouds my objectivity.

I've carried on with this knowledge for the last few years, never once getting caught by either the bank's security guards or the police major. Even though they all went to great lengths to get it.

But the last incident almost changed everything.

Here, another small digression is necessary. Life is tough for independent journalists in Russia right now—and I'm not complaining. Work is increasingly dangerous, money is tight, society is polarized... And so, thoughts of changing professions (or at least supplementing them with some kind of stable and secure part-time job) often occur—and I assure you, I'm not alone.

At some point, I decided I wanted to open a store on Wildberries or Ozon. Over the past few months, I've been reading a lot about the topic, watching videos, and researching training. There are plenty of paid (and expensive) courses in this field, and avoiding the scams is quite an achievement. So, I'm a member of Telegram chats with real sellers and gradually consulting with them about the nuances. I'm writing to them, meeting new people—how else can I learn?

So I wasn't at all surprised when a girl named Aksinia Abramova messaged me. "Hello, I found you in the chat. Tell me, did you take the training from [blogger] Kristina T.?" she asked.

I watched Kristina's videos and didn't like them—too much fluff. I told my interlocutor about this, adding the name of someone whose training I'd really like to buy. Aksinia admitted that she'd initially wanted to open a store from scratch, without any training. And I, having watched plenty of YouTube videos, vehemently tried to dissuade her.

That's how we started chatting. We discussed where we studied, where we lived, and what we did for a living. Aksinia worked as a manager at a small IT company, but she passionately dreamed of breaking out of her financial slump. So did I, by the way. We quickly became informal.

Aksinia, by the way, is very pretty.

"A small financial pill"

A few days later, the girl asked me for help sorting out a conversation she'd recently started online. Aksinia was very wary of scammers, so she asked what I thought about it.

She told me that, like me, she'd met a girl named Veronika Lepestova in a chat room. They'd started discussing marketplaces and quickly become close. They'd confided that they were both divorced. Veronika explained that she'd previously worked at IKEA, in the strategic planning department, and now, like many in Russia, had been "laid off."

This hit her hard: "I'm just a careerist by nature; I've dedicated my entire life to work. I was always the first one in and the last one out. Basically, I lived for my work," Veronica wrote. This is why her husband left.

Aksinya was impressed by this.

"Don't lose heart," she encouraged. "Such a smart girl will definitely find a decent job."

Aksinia sent me her entire correspondence with Veronika. She repeatedly asked for my VKontakte account so she could forward the messages, but I, a suspicious and experienced journalist, refused. Then she sent me a PDF file containing her entire chat.

After the IKEA incident, Veronica admitted she was planning to start a business. She didn't specify what it would be: "I don't like sharing plans until it's done." She did, however, say that until the business takes off, she's temporarily being supported by a small "financial pill."

To avoid a long explanation, she forwarded Aksinia a social media conversation with a certain Nikolai Birkalov. According to the messages, one of IKEA's top managers gave Veronika his contact information while drunk at a birthday party. And this is the first question Nikolai asks the "newcomers"—how they heard about him. The problem is that his field is too specific and doesn't tolerate random people.

These are bets on football matches with a predetermined outcome.

"I'm just a middleman."

At first, Veronica doesn’t really understand the subject: “I heard that you negotiate with team players, and they play according to your plan.”

Nikolai denies this, saying he's merely an intermediary:

– I provide confidential information, including accurate results of sporting events, on a commercial basis.

The scheme is simple: after learning the match results in advance, Nikolai notifies his "clients." Their number is always limited to avoid suspicion. For the inside information, the clients pay him tens of thousands of rubles. It's no small sum, but by placing the agreed-upon bet with bookmakers, they receive hundreds of thousands. This is all thanks to the bookmakers' high odds for predicting the exact outcome.

Nikolai is both tactful and strict. He explains to Veronica the terms of their "collaboration"—no joint bets, no "test games," and no disrespect at all.

Veronica understands and agrees.

Nikolai explains to her in detail how to place a bet and which account—it must be in cryptocurrency—to pay for the insider information.

“Never place more than one bet at a bookmaker,” he teaches, giving a list of trusted bookmakers.

All these are well-known Russian companies.

Along the way, the man explains why, despite knowing the results of the matches, he doesn't place bets himself: Nikolai had a football background, and therefore, by law, he is "prohibited" from betting on matches.

He also answers the question about taxes: if the winning amount is more than 15 thousand, then the bookmaker pays the taxes. (And this is true so).

Veronica is intrigued—Nikolai has answered all her questions convincingly. She wants to participate, but access to inside information for the upcoming match is already blocked.

"That's a shame. When's the next one?" she asks. Nikolai promises to contact her as soon as everything is cleared up.

A week later, he informs Veronica that there is a vacancy.

She agrees, but just in case, asks for proof that the outcome of the previous match was "predicted." Nikolai forwards her an earlier correspondence with another client, Veronica finds the match results and is convinced – the prediction was correct.

She sends him over 40 rubles in crypto. Done! The next match is in the Turkish third league. Veronica places her bet, and it pays off. She's happy.

After this, messages about several more bets flash through the correspondence. They all invariably end in winnings. A couple of weeks later, Veronica apologizes for "disappearing for a while." She explains that her brother has returned wounded (apparently from the Special Forces). She went to visit him, and now her brother wants to join in the "game," too.

"If he receives his winnings on a card, could there be any problems?" the girl asks. Nikolai assures her that there won't be: "The funds are deposited to the account details after taxes and with a provenance record."

"This is a working option."

After reading this dialogue, Aksinia was amazed: “You have revealed something new to me) I am trying to sleep, but I can’t,” she wrote to Veronica.

According to her, she earned an average of 250 rubles net per match. Starting in February 2024, she placed a bet almost every week for over six months. Of course, there were no games during the offseason.

As an example, Veronica sent Aksinia a screenshot of her last payment—it showed a receipt for 390 rubles credited to her personal account.

"Damn, if this really works, I don't know... I'll kiss you when we meet😅," Aksinia wrote emotionally – and, understandably, asked permission to write to Nikolai.

Veronica didn't mind.

But in our correspondence with her, Aksinia did not seem so inspired.

“Do you think this is a scam or not?” she asked.

"Of course," I replied immediately. Offering insider information on match results is one of the most notorious types of online scams.

But a worm of doubt settled in my head. The dialogues sent to me seemed too natural. Behind Aksinia's words, I saw a slightly naive but very diligent girl. Emotional, desperately trying to get her life back on track. Nikolai's style was dry, formal, and yet extremely precise in its wording. No flirting, jokes, or innuendo—pure commercialism. And finally, Veronica was mature, experienced, and treated Aksinia's enthusiasm with genuine concern.

"It'll be easy to uncover the setup," I thought. "Most likely, the matches in the correspondence are just made up. I don't even know any teams that third-rate."

I checked the sports websites and was surprised to see that the result Nikolai had cited to confirm his "insider" was real. Moreover, I monitored the odds—they were exactly what they were for the predicted score. And by betting, say, 10,000 rubles, it was possible to win all 400.

And it seems that absolutely everyone knows that fixed matches occur in the football world.

A thought vibrated in my mind: "What if it's true?! What if this is the chance of a lifetime – he found me himself? I was mentally sending signals to the Universe, just like the business gurus advise!"

Of course, it sounds ridiculous to imagine such a stroke of luck when you're trying to convince a girl she's being cheated on. But in recent months, I've had a lot of unexpected expenses. Money was tight, and I felt a visceral urge to believe that what was happening was real.

Aksinia seemed to have similar doubts.

“I really want to try, but I’m afraid,” she admitted.

How I understood her!

god eyes

Trying to control my emotions, I delved into further verification. The correspondence with Birkalov mentioned a top IKEA manager who, supposedly at a birthday party, confessed to Veronica about his "part-time job." I Googled him. "N. worked at IKEA for 15 years, starting as a manager and ending up as the head of a department."  

Everything came together!

I dug into Nikolai and Veronica's VKontakte accounts. They looked absolutely realistic—here's a photo of a young Veronica posted a few years ago. The main page is full of comments, reposts, and vacation photos. Birkalov's story is similar. A respectable man, photos on the steps of a plane, in an apartment—everything was just as I imagined.

I wandered around the room for a while, sighing loudly.

"What if I tell Aksinia I can make a bet? Let her try it, and I'll join in later," I thought. And I immediately felt ashamed—how rude! After some thought, I decided to offer her a compromise—making a bet together, splitting the "entry" fee between us.

But it was still scary.

Then I went further—it's no secret that many Telegram bots these days provide access to various leaked databases. The most famous of them is "Eye of God," but there are others. I started searching for Veronica and Nikolai there. And I found nothing. Simply zero information.

This was what was most alarming – even if a person doesn't publish their personal information online, it often ends up in the public domain thanks to hackers who break into the systems of government agencies, banks, and companies. So, you can find information about almost anyone in chatbots. But here – zero. Search engines also yielded nothing except links to VK pages.

This couldn't have happened if these people were real. And another thought occurred to me. I used several photo search services (from the obvious Yandex-Pictures up to here it). I downloaded images from Veronica and Birkalov's page and uploaded them to the system.

That's when everything became clear.

"She's not real"?

The service returned several VK profiles with identical photos to Veronica's. And one of them turned out to be even more complete and "real." It was from this profile that the images were stolen, which were used to create Veronica's fake profile. Of course, the real girl had no connection to her—and her name was different.

And Nikolai... In reality, he turned out to be a mid-level Ukrainian businessman.

"What bastards!" I thought, and hurried to write to Aksinia. Still thrilled by my findings, I informed her that she—and almost I—had nearly fallen for the worst scam of our lives.

I sent her links to the real "Veronica" page.

"Wow, you're saying she's not real?" Aksinia was stunned.

I explained everything to her as best I could.

And then it dawned on me.

Of course, you're laughing now. But it only really dawned on me then.

Following my usual method, I uploaded Aksinia's photo to a search engine—and, of course, her profile, like all the others, turned out to be fake. This entire charade—with the questions about Wildberries, the detailed correspondence sent to me, the role-playing—was originally designed solely to get me to buy into the "insider" betting story.

When I described all this to Aksinia, the recipient on the other end didn’t even try to deny it.

"Terrific. Now that's some internet skills," he replied (and it was him).

I sent him a photo of a big pile of shit downloaded from the Internet, blocked and deleted all correspondence.

And then I spent a long time thinking about what had happened.

It took me several hours—and a lot of nerves—to uncover the scam. It's not a given that I would have ultimately sent the money—the "entry ticket" seemed enormous, no matter what the outcome. But I vividly remember how my brain lit up with anticipation of a freebie. I think anyone who's ever fallen for a similar scam can relate to that feeling.

Financial difficulties have greatly diminished critical thinking, and these compelling dialogues… The story with Aksinia was brilliantly crafted! Those who want to start a business are clearly saving money and dreaming of increasing their capital. And how gracefully they wove the story of the "wounded brother" into the correspondence! I think many a military man would have fallen for it.

Overall, at the end of the day, I even gave a little applause to my well-thought-out “scam.”

What conclusions did I draw for myself after this story?

Haste and obsession are the main enemies of objectivity. It's clear that scammers use different schemes. In the case of phishing links and data theft, attentiveness is the most important thing. But in my case, and when they call from the "bank" or "police," calm is the best solution. Monitor your state. If you feel your mind "exploding," take a breath. And be sure to check everything. If there are photos or names in the correspondence, search for them online (I described how above). Check the history of the VKontakte page (for example, this one). bot will show what the account looked like in the past).

If it’s an “acquaintance” writing, call him and find out how real his “request” is.

And most importantly, even if you fell for a scam, it doesn't reflect poorly on you. Forgive yourself, learn from it, and remember – you simply "bought" life experience this way. Use it now!