When Malta-based entrepreneur Erik Bergman received a call from YouTube star Mr Beast earlier this summer, he thought it would mark the start of an inspiring philanthropic project.
Instead, it led to a devastating scam that cost him $1.25 million (over €1 million).
Bergman, the founder of affiliate marketing firm Catena Media and gambling company Great.com, told Times of Malta that Mr Beast (real name Jimmy Donaldson) was asking him to donate to a new charitable campaign which would construct wells and provide access to clean water across Africa.
The call, while unexpected, was not too far-fetched, Bergman said. Four years earlier, he had donated $1.2m to a similar campaign, also led by Mr Beast.
Bergman agreed to join the campaign, dubbed ‘Team Water,’ pledging to donate a million dollars for the cause.
Mr Beast welcomed the news enthusiastically, telling his 33 million followers on X that “Erik from great.com just donated 1,000,000 years of clean water”.
Mr Beast announcing Bergman’s donation on X.A week later, Bergman was contacted by someone who described himself as a Team Water representative, inviting him to join a private WhatsApp group chat with a handful of other major donors to the campaign.
Bergman suddenly found himself added to a private WhatsApp group chat with some of the biggest names in the online world, all of whom had already publicly declared their support for the Team Water campaign.
Aside from Mr Beast, the chat featured YouTuber Mark Rober, Shopify founder Tobi Lutke, streamer Adin Ross, and billionaire entrepreneur Ed Craven.
An invitation to Africa
After a few days of idle talk on the group chat, Mr Beast invited the group to Malawi, where they would see the work being carried out on the wells.
Again, the invitation didn’t seem too good to be true. Bergman told Times of Malta that he had previously been invited on a similar trip, only to turn it down for personal reasons.
Mr Beast’s invitation to Malawi.That’s when Mr Beast introduced a new opportunity, telling the chat that donors to the Team Water campaign could invest early at a discount in a new crypto investment he had set up with crypto giant Coinbase, as a sign of gratitude for their charitable donation.
Bergman, who is far from a crypto expert, was hesitant at first but eventually relented when he saw his fellow chat members jump on the bandwagon.
“There was peer pressure, I didn’t want to be the only guy going on this trip not to have invested in this coin,” he told Times of Malta. “I looked at it more as a social investment. Being in a business venture with these guys could open so many doors”.
He was put in touch with Mr Beast’s harried and overworked assistant, who told him that she would be sorting out the logistics of the coin investment and the trip.
Bergman ended up investing $1.25m into the coin, spread over two transactions.
A red flag
Just as Bergman was preparing to issue a third payment, he spotted something unusual.
The American streamer Adin Ross appeared to be using a British number on the WhatsApp chat. Trawling through the other chat members’ numbers, he could see that they were all American, but realised that Mr Beast was using a different number from the one he used to call him all those weeks ago.
At this point, Bergman reached out to Mr Beast’s original number to ask whether the coin was real.
“Hell no, what is that?” came Mr Beast’s reply. “They’re scamming your ass”.
The real Mr Beast confirmed the scam.That’s when it dawned on Bergman. Someone had spotted Mr Beast’s tweet announcing Bergman’s donation to the Team Water campaign and constructed a WhatsApp chat designed to scam him out of his money.
Although the Team Water campaign was genuine, as was Mr Beast’s original phone call, none of the people in the chat were real, there was no planned trip to Africa and the crypto coin investment was a complete fabrication.
“I was speechless, I didn’t know what to say or do. My mind went blank,” Bergman said. “I went through every emotion imaginable – stress, regret, shame, panic, anger, sadness.”
He quickly reported the matter to the police, but has had little luck tracing the scammers so far.
$100,000 reward
Bergman said his first experience of being scammed, with an acquaintance duping him out of $3,000 when he was just 20 years old, led to years of shame, with him keeping it secret.
This time, he took the opposite approach, immediately telling his loved ones of what happened and going public with his experience, in the hope of making people aware of the dangers of online scammers.
Bergman is now hoping to crowd-source information that can help identify the scammers, asking people who have had similar experiences to submit information through his website.
Meanwhile, Mr Beast has offered a $100,000 reward to anyone who provides information that leads to the scammers’ arrest.
‘My life is the internet, but I still fell for it’
Bergman says his is a cautionary tale, showing how even the most tech-savvy people are not beyond the reach of scammers.
“I’m raised in the internet generation, my entire career has been in the internet, I thought I was too smart to fall for it, but I still did.”
“Looking back, everything was believable, nothing seemed too good to be true,” he said.
Bergman, who runs several successful online businesses, says he never expected to fall for a scam like this. Photo: Facebook/Eric BergmanBergman says he’s far from the only local victim, telling Times of Malta that the same entrapment scam was being adapted to Malta’s business sphere.
In one case, he said, the celebrities being impersonated in the WhatsApp chat were not global names like Mr Beast, but top executives of local igaming firms.
Bergman says that despite his anger, he can’t help being impressed by the scammers’ sophisticated techniques.
“I suspect they were using AI to mimic Mr Beast’s writing style,” he said, noting how the scammers used identical language, complete with similar typos, to those used by the YouTube star.
They even went through the trouble of making him empathise with Mr Beast’s fake assistant, claiming she was staying up late at night to get things sorted.
“I didn’t ask her too many questions because I felt bad for her,” Bergman says.
“It feels like I’m playing a really good football team and they score a beautiful goal from the halfway line,” Bergman said. “I hate that it happens, but I can’t help being impressed”.