I found out about a company through Facebook that promised to help me trade using artificial intelligence. A man named Victor Novak contacted me via Facebook and offered me three investment options—basic, advanced, and super advanced. I chose the super advanced plan, which required a $600 setup and monthly investments via a trading panel. Victor also introduced me to a trader named Sergey Letovsky, who would assist me further.
Sergey helped me with regular stock trading initially and later offered a crypto arbitrage program, which was supposedly available to those who were already making good profits. We began earning substantial returns from the crypto arbitrage. Each time we made money, they encouraged me to invest more, claiming it would yield even better returns. Eventually, I ran out of funds to continue investing, and Sergey offered to cover the difference in exchange for a 20% commission, which seemed reasonable at the time.
The first time Sergey contributed additional funds through his PayPal towards Pinament Panel (the company), there were no issues. However, during the second round, he again sent funds directly to the company through his PayPal, but the third payment was placed on hold until October 9. The money was never in my PayPal. This delay, according to Sergey, created a problem with the investment, and we urgently needed to "replenish" the missing funds to complete the deal. I had to withdraw my remaining savings of $75,000 to cover the shortfall.
After the deal was supposedly completed, I requested a $50,000 withdrawal. They told me it would take a few days to process. Two days later, I received a suspicious email from the company, "Payment Trading," asking for detailed information regarding the PayPal transactions, including why the payments were different from my prior investments. This raised a red flag, and I contacted Sergey. He assured me that everything would be fine and instructed me to contact my account representative, Alexander Gersh.
Alexander informed me that an investigation was being initiated by an oversight bureau due to suspicious activity in my account. He stated that I needed to ask Sergey to recall the PayPal payments, which I did. Now, according to Alexander, there is a deficit in my account of approximately $267,500, and they are pushing me to pay this amount. They promise that, once paid, I could withdraw all of my earnings, supposedly totaling nearly $3 million.
I refused to send any more money, at which point they began to threaten me, claiming I would be under investigation and in serious trouble if I did not comply. Sergey also blamed me for his potential legal issues and pressured me to "do the right thing" to resolve the situation.
I understand now that this was a scam involving fake AI trading, cryptocurrency arbitrage, and fabricated payment issues. They played on urgency, fear, and promises of massive returns to manipulate me into sending money repeatedly.