How I’ve Lost 2K Euros

I concluded that some people are very naive, and yes, I am one of them.

Nowadays, we spend almost our entire life on the Internet, in most cases trying to make money from anything we can.

I don’t know about other countries, but in Romania, it has become a trend to try to make money from apps you hear about on the Internet. So what kind of apps? The types of apps in which, for example, you invest 1000 euros, in about a month, you recover your invested money, and then the money will continue to come without doing anything. Cool, right? You can’t wish for anything more, do anything, and have an income of thousands every month.

But it turned out that the truth is not as shiny as we all imagined. Yes, there are apps from which you can make money, but not this large amount. Let’s leave crypto aside. In crypto, no one promises you that you will receive a certain amount of money. You assume that you can make money to live the rest of your life or that you can lose everything you have invested in just a second. Instead, in this app I will talk about, they promise you that after you invest a certain amount of money, you will have a thousand annual income without doing anything.

What I found out recently, these apps work based on a pyramid scheme. This app will pay old users from the money of new members, then they will receive payment from even new users, and so on, and it forms a flow of money sent from one side to another. In the case of these apps, they left the users with the impression that they were doing something specific, like giving likes on the Internet. At a given moment, this trickle of money stops, and the creator will leave with all the users’ money at the moment that seems most appropriate to him. The worst part is that you don’t know who the founders are and don’t know anything apart from the people who attracted you to use this application, which in turn were also attracted by others.

On Medium, almost everybody talks about and teaches you how they earn thousands of money, but now I want to share my experience and teach you what you shouldn’t do to lose money.

Without further ado, it is about Mafa.app. I found this app at the beginning of May from a friend who had also found it a few weeks ago on Youtube, so they have just created the app. It is an invitation-based app. You create an account using a phone number and invitation code from a friend or videos on Youtube. After you have connected, you will see an announcement that it is celebrating five years since they created the application. Bum, the first lie that makes you believe in the application and what it offers you. As an excuse not to look so stupid, they didn’t publish this ad when I created my account. To attract you, they will offer you a 6 euro welcome bonus, which you can withdraw if you invest money in one of their packages.

Vip0 is just another lie because if you have Vip0 you will not be able to withdraw any money.

At Vip1 you have to invest 100 euros, and you will have five things to do every day, which means you can like five posts on TikTok, Youtube, Instagram, or Facebook. 0.8 euros is the value of each task, a total of 4 euros per day, so after one month, you will have 120 euros, practically 20 euros extra in the first month. In the end, they add the annual income of 1440 euros, which you will never reach, because this kind of app does not last more than 2–3 months. And so on with the rest of the packages from the chart above.

At first, I was a little skeptical, but then I joined different Telegram groups, and many people said that they had chosen the priciest packages and received money quickly back. Others said they started to earn extra money in addition to the invested ones. So, I decided to risk myself. At first, I took the Vip1 package, but I was not satisfied with what amount I could earn, so I aimed directly for Vip4. Greed, I know.

“Nothing awakens the conscience like a lot of money.”― P Sainath

You had to create a Binance account to withdraw the money from the app. In the first days, everything went well, I got back about 320 euros from what I invested, and they immediately transferred the money to the Binance account. The problem appeared in the following days when people started complaining on Telegram that their money was no longer coming into Binance. So, I went through the tasks of that day, I tried to withdraw the amount I earned, and as I expected, it appeared on the app that they sent the amount, but I had not received anything in Binance. At first, I stayed calm and thought maybe, they had just delayed the transfer, but the next day still had no money. The people from some Telegram groups were already panicked and angry. The main group on Telegram, with admins from the app, was closed on the same day. After a few hours, they announced that there were some hackers on their app, and to be able to keep our account active and receive the rest of the money, we still need to deposit a certain amount ( about 50 euros, I don’t remember exactly).

And that’s how they fooled more than 10,000 people. Although most of us accepted that our money was gone, some people trusted these scammers and deposited that amount with the hope that they get the money back. Of course, it wasn’t like that. Currently, the app is closed, the people who created the app are probably now on the beach in the Maldives, or maybe they were caught by the authorities. We won’t know this very soon.

If at any time in this life you want to make money on the Internet, never try the easiest method. Nothing comes without work, especially this large amount of money. Don’t believe everything you hear and see on social media. I learned this from one of my biggest mistakes, and definitely, I will not repeat it. There are a lot of such apps that I won’t talk about now. I have just talked about my experience. But if you ever encounter this, do not believe in them, do not invest money in such a thing. Few people managed to have a small profit from this app, but more than 90% failed.

“It’s how you deal with failure that determines how you achieve success. “— David Feherty