Well, hopefully, you'll make that $40 back with views for this story!

You did a great public service by putting yourself out in public like this.

I've often wanted to get onto Telegram or Whatsapp (both are used by these scammers) and have a little "chit-chat" with one of these doinks. I see these scam accounts all the time for various writers.

FWIW, it looks like the scammer's description of the "Medium writer's community" (there is no such thing, of course) is AI-generated.

I hope you make your money back with this report, and then some.

Dr. Yildiz, too, has had his account cloned, along with many others.

There are relatively easy software solutions for preventing this (I was a lead components engineer for PayPal years ago, so I know a bit). Medium needs to implement these fixes immediately.