True story

I got scammed for $1.25 million!!

And now MrBeast is offering a $100,000 reward

I feel ashamed and stupid even typing this. But I’m going to tell the whole story anyway.

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The call

A few weeks ago my phone lit up with an unknown number. I answered — MrBeast.

Total shock.

We’d met years back when I donated $1.2 million to TeamSeas, but we hadn’t really talked since — and now he was calling from a new number.

n the background I hear Mark Rober, and together they ask if I’d be willing to chip in for a new project — building wells in Africa to bring people clean water.

I told them I’d think it over, and Jimmy quickly spun up a group chat with me and Mark to keep the conversation going.

A few days later, after sitting with it, I finally messaged them back:

“Ok guys, I’m in!”

Jimmy shot back right away: “How much are you thinking?”

I told him straight — one million dollars.

His reply? Absolutely legendary.

He followed it up with the perfect GIF — pure Jimmy style. This was exactly how he talked in private chats.

The very next day, he went on Twitter and announced that I’d donated one million years of clean water.

This part matters. Jimmy and I also talked about me joining when they went to Africa to film the wells. He said a trip was planned for early next year and that I’d be welcome.

I wanted to go so badly. But with my wife pregnant and our baby due in March, the timing was tricky. I hoped it would land in January.

Instead, the trip was set for February — just weeks before the due date. I was disappointed, but I had to pass.

They wrote a lot longer messages, but I’ve simplified it here so it easy to read on the video.

If you want to see the full chat logs you can go to Great.com.

Ok, they continue:

They added me to a group called “Team Water TopG’s” — and I actually laughed. It felt exactly like something Jimmy would name a private chat for his biggest donors.

It instantly reminded me of how he reacted when I told him about the million-dollar donation.

I dropped into the chat mid-conversation, and the very first thing that popped up was a voice message from Jimmy.

In it, he’s talking about feeling sick and a few other random things.

Then Mark jumps into the conversation.

And then I notice another name pop up in the chat — Adin Ross.

Seeing Adin in there was pretty wild. I don’t know a ton about him, but I had seen him interviewing Donald Trump before.

And he just did Team Water stream with Jimmy and XQC.

And then Tobi Lutke writes:

And if you’re not familiar with Tobi — he’s the founder of Shopify, with a net worth of around $12.6 billion.

He had already put in a $1.5 million donation to Team Water.

And then Ed Craven adds:

And he is this old:

And has this much money:

And he donated $3,000,000 to Team Water

On top of that, you’ve got Jimmy and Mark — and to me, they’re two of the most impressive people on the planet.

Take a moment and picture what it felt like to be inside this chat.

I couldn’t believe I was part of it.

Everyone was joking around, trading banter, messing with each other. I kept typing a message, then deleting it because it didn’t feel cool enough. I tried again, deleted again.

I just sat there staring at my phone, buzzing with excitement and nerves.

I honestly felt like a 13-year-old kid desperate to fit in.

Then Jimmy’s tone shifted. He suddenly sounded more serious, more professional, and he wrote:

From there, he laid out the real purpose of the chat.

A little later, Jimmy sent me a private message on WhatsApp:

I was thrilled to hear they were now planning another trip in October instead. That meant I could actually go without worrying about missing the birth of my baby.

Jimmy said his assistant, Ellie, would send me the details.

Sure enough, Ellie texted soon after: we’d meet in Dubai on specific dates, asked which airport I preferred to fly from, and said all costs would be covered by Jimmy.

I thanked him — and then, importantly, I asked a question.

He says congratulations… And then:

So, I write Jimmy on WhatsApp:

And he replies:

I was beyond excited — this felt like a dream coming true.

I told my wife, and she lit up just like I did. We hadn’t traveled alone since our son was born four years ago, and this felt like our last getaway before the new baby arrived.

Then Jimmy dropped a new message into the group chat:

Once again, I’ve trimmed the messages here for clarity. If you want the full transcripts, you can find them on here.

Now, here’s the thing: I know almost nothing about crypto. Honestly, it didn’t excite me at all.

But Eddie was fired up.

And I knew he was deep into the crypto world.

Tobi, on the other hand, seemed a little more cautious — more like me.

But then Mark jumped in, speaking with a really convincing tone.

Basically, saying that it’s a very good investment.

Jimmy says,

The pitch boiled down to this: Coinbase, one of the biggest crypto exchanges in the world, was about to launch its own coin.

Because of Jimmy’s supposed marketing deal, we’d get in early — at a massive discount.

Here’s the problem: I’d only touched crypto once before, back in 2018, and I lost around $1 million.

Part of me wanted nothing to do with it. I was scared of crypto. I didn’t understand how it worked.

Another part of me wanted revenge for those old losses.

But honestly, the biggest part — and this sounds ridiculous — was the 13-year-old kid in me who just wanted to belong to the cool crowd.

If they were excited, I wanted to be excited too.

A few hours later, Jimmy messaged the group again.

Mark is in.

Adin joins.

And so does Tobi.

And Ed.

Like I said, I really don’t know crypto.

But I trusted Jimmy. I trusted Mark. And I figured the rest of the guys knew what they were doing.

I also didn’t want to show up on this trip as the only one who hadn’t joined the investment.

The problem was, I didn’t have that kind of money sitting in crypto — and they said everything had to be transferred within just a few days. Moving that much in from fiat would take too long. I’d miss out.

So, I called the only friend I knew who could move that kind of money quickly — let’s call him Bobby.

I told him about this insane group chat, how Tobi, Ed, and Adin were in it. I told him about the trip. About how excited I was. About the crypto project.

His reaction: “Wow, if MrBeast is backing this, and all those guys are in, this sounds amazing!”

He asked if he could get in too. I offered him a share of mine.

Then came a flood of questions I couldn’t answer.

So I set up a group chat with him, me, and “Ellie.”

The back-and-forth went on for a while (I’m skipping the details here — if you want everything, it’s all on Great.com).

Eventually, Bobby called me back. We decided to go for it. Even though we didn’t fully understand the project, we trusted the group’s judgment — and we wanted to be a part of it.

We split it: Bobby would take $250k, I’d put in $500k.

He got the wallet address, and within hours he sent $750,000.

It all happened so fast. I barely stopped to think. I was still too star-struck just being in this chat with these people.

The very next day, something wild happened.

Ellie wrote in the group chat that there had been an issue with Ed’s transaction — the money had been sent back to his wallet.

Ed was frustrated, asking if it could be fixed.

The response? No. It was too late. Round one was closed.

I was stunned they’d turn down someone like him.

Then Jimmy messaged the group again.

Then Jimmy added that Ed could get in on this new round.

This time, Ed jumped in right away.

Once again, the chat lit up.

Mark was in.

And Adin.

I got back on the phone with Bobby.

I told him how they’d turned down a billionaire for being too late — how he’d missed the chance to buy in at 15 cents, but now a new round opened at 30 and he jumped on it anyway.

I told him the rest of the group was piling in too, and that it was moving fast.

And once again, we fell for it.

Within a few hours, Bobby sent the money — this time $500,000.

The very next day, Jimmy wrote again.

The chat exploded again — everyone piled in.

I called Bobby and we decided to join too. We were literally about to hit send when something tugged at me.

Wait.

I glanced at Adin Ross’s phone number.

It had a British country code.

But isn’t Adin American?

I opened Google to check.

That was… strange.

Was this whole thing fake?

But then I remembered — I had asked Jimmy to confirm my wife could come on the trip. That had to mean it was real, right?

I scrolled through my Messenger chat with Jimmy. Nothing.
I checked the group chat with Mark and Jimmy. Still nothing.

Finally, I opened WhatsApp.

And there it was.

I looked closer at Jimmy’s number — and realized it wasn’t the same on WhatsApp as it was on Messenger.

That didn’t have to mean anything. When he first called me, he mentioned he had a new number. Maybe he just used a different one for WhatsApp.

Still, I decided to be sure. I messaged him in our original group chat with Mark:

“Hey guys, I just want to confirm this Coinbase thing?”

And Jimmy replied:

His reply hit me like a punch to the stomach.

I immediately sent him a screenshot of the WhatsApp messages.

And he replies:

I called him.
“Please tell me you’re fucking kidding me?” I blurted.

He wasn’t.

I hung up and dialed Bobby. “Don’t send any more money — it’s a scam.” Thankfully, he hadn’t sent the next transfer yet.

My wife was in the room; her face said everything. I sank onto the couch and just stared. I was gutted.

It hit me in waves: the first call weeks ago — that really was Jimmy. The TeamSeas fundraiser — real. But the person posing as someone on his team? Not real. The WhatsApp “Jimmy”? A scammer. Someone had probably seen Jimmy’s tweet about the donation, found my private number, and built a scam that targeted me directly.

I felt utterly stupid. Ashamed. $1.25 million — gone.

My head was a mess: anger, panic, grief, regret. I called Bobby again, bracing for anger. Instead he was kind — he told me he wished he could sit beside me. I started to cry.

I’d been scammed before — when I was 20 a “friend” ripped me off for $3,000. That one ate at me for years; I never told anyone or went to the police. The shame was worse than the money.

This time, the next morning, I did something different. I messaged my family and closest friends and wrote, simply: “I feel ashamed. I feel stupid.” Saying that made the rest of the conversation possible. The support I got back was overwhelming — my brother’s reply is one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever read.

For a couple of days I cried, screamed, punched the air. I didn’t know what else to do. Then I started writing. I wrote a long post about what happened.

And it goes super viral.

Getting millions of views, and thousands likes, comments, and retweets.

Most people mocked me — called me an idiot, said I deserved it, or laughed at my expense.

But then something else happened — and it surprised me.

A lot of people reacted to my post by sharing their own stories. So many messages said the same thing: they’d been scammed, too, and kept quiet out of shame. That hit me hard.

One message stopped me cold:

“I’m currently battling depression because I was scammed.
I’ve attempted suicide twice.
It was everything I had.
Your story helped me in so many ways.
Thank you.”

Reading that gave me goosebumps. Even with all the embarrassment I feel, I realized how important it was to speak up — how important making this video could be.

There’s still one huge part of the story I haven’t shared yet, but before that — if you’ve ever been scammed or cheated, you know the shame I’m talking about. It makes you want to hide. It makes you stay silent.

Scammers rely on that silence.

(Pause. Look into the camera.)

If you can, take one second and like this so it reaches more people and chips away at that shame. If you’re a journalist, please write about this — there are so many people who would feel less alone reading it.

Okay — last part.

I went to the police, but so far there hasn’t been much progress. I don’t have high hopes for justice from that route.

Then Jimmy posted this:

So now, I’m turning to the internet.

On the homepage of Great.com, we’ve published everything — the full chat logs, every phone number, all of the crypto transactions. There’s also a form where you can share any evidence or tips you might have. If you want to help us solve this, that’s the place to go.

And if you’re writing about this story, please link to that page and mention the reward. The more people who see it, the harder it becomes for scammers to keep getting away with this.

Thank you for reading.