The 24,000 euros from my neighbor

— A true story

Maria is fifty years old and works as a cleaner at Carrefour. She leaves home before dawn. We have been neighbors for years.

That afternoon, she knocked on my door looking worried. She told me she had 100,000 USDT in a Coinbase wallet and wanted to know how to convert it to euros.

I took her phone. Something sank inside me.

What she had wasn't USDT. It was a fake token: same name, same icon, zero real value. I explained with an example: casino chips can be exchanged for money, but if you bring fake chips to the cashier, they won't give you anything. That was exactly what she had in her wallet.

I asked how much she paid for those tokens.

She said: twenty-four thousand euros.

I said nothing. I thought about her leaving at five in the morning. I don’t know how many years it took her to save that amount.

Good Lord.

I told her there was no way to recover it. That she had been scammed. She burst into tears — not gradually, but suddenly, like someone who has endured too much.

When she calmed down, I told her the only thing she could do was file a report. That I would accompany her if she needed.

The scheme is always the same: someone recommends a platform to you → the numbers grow → when you try to withdraw, excuses appear to get you to deposit more → the person disappears.

Remember:

• If someone contacts you to recommend an investment, treat it as a scam
• The numbers in your wallet are not your money until you can withdraw them
• Buy crypto only on official and regulated platforms
• Before moving money, consult someone you trust

Maria paid twenty-four thousand euros for this lesson. I don’t know how many sunrises it cost her.

Hopefully, no one reading this will have to learn it the same way.