In the r/CryptoScams subreddit, user Tayatatev posted a warning and asked everyone to spread it as far and wide as possible. He got burned himself by the combo of the Telegram group t.me/Whalepum***ectz and the site alphacopytrades, and he laid out in detail how the scheme unfolded.

It all started with a $250 payment for some kind of trading service. After that, the victim was offered the AlphaCopyTrades platform and told he could start with a modest $100 — and he sent that amount too. Then things got interesting: right after the deposit, he was suddenly told he needed to throw in another $100 ASAP, or his trade would get liquidated. Even though before he put any money in, they'd flat-out assured him nothing like that would happen.

According to the post's author, from there on out it was the standard pressure toolkit — artificial urgency, promises to make up for the losses, screenshots of supposedly profitable trades and withdrawals.

The most valuable part of this post is that the victim didn't just take their word for it — he checked. Tayatatev cross-referenced the winning trades from the Telegram channel's history against actual market prices, and it turned out that several positions had entry prices that didn't match the real market quotes at the stated times. In plain terms: the screenshots are drawn up.

The victim also said he's kept all the correspondence, screenshots, wallet addresses, transaction details, and other evidence, and asked anyone who's run into these guys to message him. One special request — share the post so someone else doesn't lose their money.

The comments boiled down to a universal truth about making money in messengers. User carlosT84 wrote in Spanish that every Telegram group about making money is a scam, that he's never come across a legit one, and that the only real use Telegram has is piracy.

User n0irbyte just said thanks for the useful info.

User npaladin2000 came up with the perfect name for the platform: Telescam. According to him, it's always a scam there, and nobody on Telegram knows a way to get rich.

A classic multi-step play: a paid service to get in, a minimum deposit to build trust, and then extortion under the threat of liquidation. Fake trade screenshots are easy to bust by checking them against real quotes — it's worth using this trick any time someone in Telegram flashes profit charts. The money sent to AlphaCopyTrades and the Whalepump group has nowhere to come back from, and any offers to help recover it are most likely round two of the same scam.