Over on r/CryptoScams, user Salty-Muffin5225 described a situation the community figured out in about two minutes flat. The guy is 16, decided to try trading for the first time on the advice of a random person who recommended a site called samcolliochampion. He put in $50 — a small test amount. And that's when the games began.

To withdraw his own $50, the site demands he first deposit 500 — only after that will they hand over a "verification code" for the withdrawal. Then, out of nowhere, $10,050 showed up on his balance as supposed profit, even though he hadn't had the chance to trade anything yet. But that came with strings attached too: to withdraw 5,000, you need to deposit 250; to withdraw 10,000 — 500. And to top it all off, the same "advisor" announced that the minimum withdrawal is actually $1,000. The guy asks the community if this is normal.

Spoiler: no, it's not, and everyone knows it — including the OP himself.

The top comment from Heyxdlmao fits in two words: obvious scam. Perfect_Jicama_8023 admitted he stopped reading right after the first sentence about advice from a random person. The OP clarified that the advisor was from TikTok, to which BubbhaJebus replied succinctly: that's even worse.

SecureWriting8589, one of the subreddit's top commenters, broke it all down: it's a 100% advance fee scam, and whoever recommended the site is a scammer. The balance on the screen, he says, is just meaningless numbers, every dollar sent is gone for good, and nothing more should go out. fedput added a technical detail: the scam site was only created a few months ago, which is easy to verify through the domain's history.

misterecho11 stressed that none of what's described has anything to do with real trading, advised cutting off all interaction with the site immediately so they can't squeeze any more money out of him, and laid down the golden rule: never, under any circumstances, pay money up front to get money later. npaladin2000 pointed out the awkward detail that the guy isn't even old enough to legally trade — but that didn't stop the scammers, since they never asked his age. They don't care; they just steal.

BubbhaJebus, in a separate comment, laid out the red flags: a random person from the internet recommending a crypto exchange with a sketchy name is a scam alert all by itself, and demanding payment to withdraw your own funds simply doesn't happen on any legitimate platform. The money, sadly, is lost — but there's a silver lining: the lesson came early, whereas some people lose tens and hundreds of thousands to schemes like this.

On the relatively positive side: Few_Mention8426 noted it's good this happened now, when there isn't much to lose, and that the guy probably won't fall for anything like this again. Fit-Hat-3156 agreed — glad it only cost $50 — and advised sticking to well-established, top-tier brokerage platforms.

The rest of the comments follow the same script. SignificantDig6125 repeated that the words "random guy" alone were enough to make the diagnosis — a thousand percent a scam. Positive-Promotion54 asked the rhetorical question of why you'd ever deposit money in order to withdraw money, and suggested telling the scammers they'll be reported to the Secret Service — and actually doing it. autohaul recommended deleting the site, walking away, and cutting off the whole conversation. Scrappy001 warned about the second wave: the $50 is gone, and anyone who now promises to get it back will also turn out to be a scammer, albeit a low-rent one. sorrowedwhiskypriest snarkily wondered whether the guy should even be trading at his age. And Tall_Run_2814 left some universal advice: strangers on the internet are not interested in making you rich — burn that into your memory for good.

This is a textbook example of a scheme where fake on-screen profits are used as bait while withdrawals get blocked under the pretext of extra deposits. The $50 can be written off as the price of a cheap lesson — the key now is not to deposit 500 while staring at that $10,050 balance, and to ignore the recovery scammers sliding into his DMs.