I Got Scammed by a Double of a Top Writer on Medium

I Thought Medium Is A Safe Space Until This Happened…

First of all, I desperately hope you read this. Jason Provencio, I’m truly sorry this is happening to your account under your amazing posts. I’m a true fan of your writing and Bouncin’ and Behavin’ Blogs. I never thought replying to one of your stories would end that way. I have already taken all possible measures to ensure the same thing is not happening to others, and I have reported the scammer to Medium’s support team.

Honestly, I’m so embarrassed that I fell for this scam, and I was seriously in doubt about writing this article and making my mistake public. But I came to love the Medium community, and now I feel I must protect others from this. I feel miserable about what happened and I hope everyone will be compassionate in the comments. I’m overwhelmed with strong emotions right now, and I want to get this message out to the Medium community as fast as possible.

Here is what happened…

I left a comment on Jason Provencio’s articles two days ago. The scammer left me a response a few hours ago.

As you can see, this person copied Jason’s profile picture and username, except for a little typo I overlooked. So, I found this response in my notifications and was happy about the invite. I made a lot of progress on Medium, and some writers who are way more successful than I am have started following me in the last couple of days. Therefore, I was not especially suspicious about receiving an answer from another established author. Since Bouncin’ and Behavin’ Blogs is a significant publication already, joining his community of writers would be the way to get in still. Unfortunately, I did not recheck the profile when I received the response; otherwise, I would have seen that it was fake. Now I realise the way the response is written is already suspicious coming from someone who knows how to write…but I didn’t think about that at this point.

A Telegram Conversation with a Scammer…

So, I contacted the scammer on Telegram.

There is a registration fee of 70$ to join a group of Medium authors who are serious about writing. At this point, I’m thinking:

“Well, makes sense. If you want to create a community with people who are serious about what they are doing and aren’t on Medium thinking it is only a place to make quick money, then you need to do something to keep everyone from entering.”

I was interested in joining something like this because connecting with other authors is one of the best parts of Medium, and I was hoping for valuable insights from people who have already succeeded with their writing. I filled out that registration form. It sounds like a dream to meet amazing authors like Zulie Rane, Eve Arnold, Renuka Gavrani, etc. I hope you also read this so you know that your names are used to trick new writers in hopes of meeting the people they look up to.

So, I had a discussion about with a scammer about the feeling that something seems to be off with his methods (kind of ironic to think about now…). The thing is that at this point I still believed this to be the real Jason Provencio and that is why I was telling myself that being scammed by a top writer on Medium would be the biggest scandal and must therefore be impossible. That led me to believe that I might be paranoid for no reason because why would he risk losing an established account with 42k followers only to make 70 bucks with a scam? So I sent the scammer 40 bucks because somehow this compromise restored some of my trust. Once again, I only now realise how stupid I was while typing this and I’m still embarrassed to make this public but here goes nothing.

Instant regrets…

Of course, my gut feeling was right. Here’s how everything ended:

Of course, I lost forty dollars. But above all, I’m incredibly mad and disappointed in myself, and I lost a bit of faith in humanity again. I had a gut feeling I didn’t fully trust, which is the result. It’s one of those lessons life teaches you, I guess.

Final thoughts

Honestly, this ruined my day. I woke up this morning, being super excited that I got the most reads on my posts yesterday since joining Medium, and this was a hard reality check that, contrary to my incredibly supportive little audience, not everyone who is signing up for Medium wants to contribute something and make the world a better place. My overall positive experiences during the last few days made me think that this is the entire reality of Medium. I learned my lesson, and I will not be discouraged by it.

I was so excited when I got added as a writer for ILLUMINATION a few days ago and planned to submit something more pleasant the first time. But now it has turned into this article, and hopefully, this way, my warning will reach as many people as possible on the platform. After finishing this article, I realised that this has already happened multiple times before, and there are already articles published about this topic, for example, by the founder of ILLUMINATION, Dr. Mehmet Yildiz, who has been cloned in the past. So, I questioned whether my article still provides value to the community. Still, I decided to submit it anyway since it shows the honest perspective and feelings of someone who has fallen for the scam.

Writing a post about what happened while waiting for an answer from the Medium support team helped me calm down. I hope nothing similar is happening to any of you and Medium is taking the proper measures to combat this. If you read this, Tony Stubblebine, please protect Medium and its fantastic community.

Thanks for reading,

Babett