Over on r/CryptoScams, user Low_Blood_3790 is warning about a scheme operating under the Cyberafx banner. Some guy is putting together trading pools through his Telegram while hyping them up on TikTok at the same time: joining a pool costs just $100, which you're supposed to send him in crypto. Sounds affordable — and that's by design. Then, once you've paid, a second bill suddenly pops up — another $87 for IT and payment processing. According to the author, all the transaction "proof" the scammer sent around in Telegram is fabricated: he's got the screenshots in hand, though he hasn't actually posted them in the thread yet, and there are no links to them.

The commenters got to work fast and straight to the point. User misterecho11 offered his sympathy and summed up the key thing: money that's already gone isn't coming back. User UpbeatFix7299 quipped that if this guy could actually trade, he wouldn't have to be begging passers-by for pocket change on social media — and later added that this whole industry runs on greed and inexperience.

User KEC112992 zoomed out a bit: no Telegram trading group can be trusted, and an internet stranger who's dying to help you make money is almost certainly a scammer. User roninconn asked the question that hangs over this whole story: why do people send non-refundable money to a stranger just because the guy has a social media account? UpbeatFix7299's answer was short: greed and zero experience.

Bottom line, this is a classic advance-fee scam: a small entry fee, then an endless drip of extra payments for fees, verifications and unlocks, until the victim finally stops paying. Pretty trading screenshots can be whipped up in any editor in five minutes, so they don't count as evidence. A genuinely profitable trader has no reason to be collecting hundred-dollar bills from a TikTok audience.

No independent reports on Cyberafx can be found anywhere in the open, and the author keeps promising screenshots without actually attaching them. The whole story rests on the victim's word — though the scheme is so cookie-cutter that there's really no doubt about the diagnosis.