Chapter 8: The Fee to Get My Own Money Back

Monday Night, Week 1

First day of the second term. The residence smells of floor cleaner and somebody's burnt toast, and Lina is back, with a new haircut and a bag of her mother's dumplings hidden in the freezer behind the peas. The background picture on my phone is now a photo of the family card from our fridge. Lina said it was the most typical Tess thing she had ever seen.

Marcus was in the lab this morning, but something is wrong. He looked grey, as if he hadn't slept, and while we set up our microscopes he kept taking his phone out under the bench, putting it away and taking it out again. At lunch he said he wasn't hungry and went for a walk instead. I asked if he was all right, and he said, "Just tired. Long journey back." After a break he usually tells me about his mum's cooking. Today he said nothing at all.

I nearly asked him about the app, and then I didn't. Grandma said to make sure he knows he never has to hide from me, and I think the way to do that is not to chase him. Tonight I sent him a message: "Biscuits from my grandmother in my bag tomorrow. I'm saving you three." He wrote back, "Thanks." Just that.

Wednesday Night, Very Late, Week 1

It is almost three in the morning. I am writing this because I can't sleep, and because I want to remember what happened in the right order, for Marcus, in case he needs it.

At twenty past one my phone buzzed. It was Marcus: "Are you awake? Sorry. Can I call?" I went into the kitchen at the end of our floor, and I called him.

For a while he couldn't say anything. I could hear him breathing, and I just waited, the way Grandma waits for me. Then it all came out at once.

During the break, Marcus wanted to take some money out of the platform to help his mum with a bill and to pay his rent for the new term. He pressed the button to withdraw. A message appeared saying that his account was "under security review" and that, to "unlock" withdrawals, he first had to pay an "unlocking fee". The "account manager" wrote to him the same evening, very kind and very sorry. She said this was "normal for gold-level accounts" and that the fee would be returned together with his withdrawal. He paid it on Saturday. It was most of what was left in his real bank account.

On Tuesday came a new message. Before the money could be sent, he had to pay a "tax" on his profits, and the tax could not be taken from his balance; it had to be sent separately. Tonight there was a third message. Because the tax had not arrived in time, there was now a "late processing fee" as well, and if he did not pay both by Friday, his account would be "closed and the balance lost". There was a countdown on the screen. It was the same kind of countdown as the "bonus window" in week 9.

"I haven't paid the tax," Marcus said. "I haven't got the money. I was going to ask my mum." His voice broke when he said "my mum". Then he said, "You told me. You told me in week 11, and I didn't listen, and now I've lost everything. I'm so stupid, Tess."

I said, "You are not stupid." I said it twice, because the first time he didn't hear it. I said that the people who did this built a whole beautiful app and wrote to him every single morning for weeks, and that they did all that work because a trick like this doesn't need stupid people. It works on kind people who are worried about money and want to help their families. I said that the person responsible is the person who took the money, not the person who trusted them.

He said he had hardly slept for four nights. He couldn't eat, and in lectures he couldn't think about anything else. He felt as if he had dropped his whole life down a hole.

I asked him, as gently as I could, whether he felt safe tonight. There was a long pause. Then he said yes, he was safe, he was just very tired and very ashamed, and he was glad he had called. I told him I was glad too. I told him that if that ever changed, if he ever felt like hurting himself, he should call a helpline or go to a hospital right away, and that in an emergency he should call the emergency number, and that he could also call me at any hour. He said he would, and I believe him.

We made a plan for the morning with only two steps. First, do not pay anything else: not the "tax", not the "late fee", nothing, whatever the countdown says. Second, at nine o'clock we would sit down together and call his bank. Then we talked about nothing for a while, about the lab, our professor's ties and Felix's dragons, until Marcus said he thought he could sleep.

I keep thinking about the countdown. It is so clever and so cruel. A person who has already lost money is the easiest person to rush, because every hour feels like the last chance to save what is left. And I think what the people behind the app fear most is exactly what Marcus did tonight: stop, and tell someone.

Thursday Night, Week 1

A long day, and in a strange way a good one. Ms Okafor says that writing things down in order is one of the most useful things a person can do, so here it is.

At nine, Marcus and I sat in a small group room in the library. He took out his bank card and called the number printed on the back. He did not use any number from the app or from the "account manager", and he did not search for a bank number on the internet, where he might have found a copy. He told the woman at the bank what had happened and read out the date and amount of every payment he had made to the platform.

The woman at the bank was calm and kind. She said the bank would look into the payments and make a note on his account, and that he should report what happened to the police as soon as possible. She did not promise that any money would come back, and she was honest that it might not. Afterwards Marcus said it helped that she was honest.

Then we made a folder on his laptop called "Platform". Into it went pictures of every screen in the app, every message from the "account manager", the old messages from the investing group and from Coach Dex, the "About" page, and every receipt and bank line that showed a payment, all with dates. Marcus wanted to delete the app and the chats, because just seeing them made him feel sick. But the bank had said to keep everything, and later Ms Okafor said the same. Nothing in that folder is a reason for shame. It is a record.

At eleven we went to the student money advice office. It is in the building behind the main library, with a sign on the door saying that the advice is free and private. The adviser is Ms Okafor, whose photo has been on my wall since the first week. She has short grey hair, a cardigan the colour of moss, and a way of sitting very still while you talk, so that you never feel rushed. She made Marcus a cup of tea before he had said a word.

When he had told her everything, she said, "Thank you for coming. I want you to know that you are not the first student to sit in that chair with a story like this, and you will not be the last. It is never the fault of the person who was deceived. The people responsible are the ones who did this to you." Marcus looked at the floor for a long time. Then he nodded. I think it was easier to hear it from her than from me, because she is not his friend; she is someone whose job is to know.

Ms Okafor said that a demand to pay more money before you can take out your own money is one of the clearest signs of a scam there is. She said: stop paying, which he had already done. Keep every record, which we had. Report it to the police and to the official offices. She showed him how to find the official offices himself, on their own websites. She helped him write the reports in short, plain sentences, with dates and amounts from the folder. She said she could not promise that any money would come back, and that he should not believe anyone who did promise it, especially anyone who contacted him first.

Then she did something I didn't expect. She asked Marcus about his rent, his food and his mum, and she made a plan with him for the next few weeks: which bills come first, whether the university can let him pay his rent in smaller parts, and how many extra shifts he could work without hurting his studies. I am going to ask my manager at the campus café whether there are extra shifts for him there too. Then she asked how he was sleeping. When he told her, she gave him the details of the university's support services for students and said that a doctor could help with sleep and stress too.

At the end, Ms Okafor said something to both of us, looking at Marcus but including me. She said that losing money in this way can weigh very heavily on a person, and she wanted us both to know this: anyone who ever feels like hurting themselves should contact a helpline or a medical facility right away, and anyone in immediate danger should call the local emergency number. She said it simply, as if it were as practical as a budget. I had said it last night in the dark, and it was good to hear it again in a bright room, from someone who knows.

Marcus called his mum tonight and told her everything. He said that she cried, and then she said she was not angry, she was proud of him for telling her, and that money can be earned again but a son cannot. He told me this outside the library, then went very quiet and looked at the sky for a while, and I looked at it too.

Sunday Evening, Week 1

Marcus said I could tell Grandma, so I did. First she asked whether he had eaten today. (He had: Lina's mother's dumplings. Lina gave him the whole bag without being asked, which is very Lina.) Then Grandma said she had a fable that she hadn't told for a very long time, because it was a sad one, but she thought it was the right one for this week.

Grandma's Fable: The Toll at the Bridge

There was once a river with a wide meadow on each side. The voles lived on the near side. On the far side, a stoat built a big dry storehouse, and a narrow wooden bridge to reach it. "Bring your seeds across to my storehouse," he told the voles, "and they will be safe from the floods all winter. Whenever you want them, just come and fetch them."

Many voles carried their seeds across the bridge. One of them was a young vole called Moss, who wanted her winter seeds to be safe. Every week the stoat told her that her pile was the best in the storehouse.

When the first snow came, Moss went to fetch her seeds. But in the middle of the bridge there was now a gate, and a weasel sat beside it. "A toll," said the weasel. "Three seeds to open the gate." Moss had only a few seeds at home, but she fetched three and paid.

A little further on there was a second gate, with a second weasel. "The river's share," said the second weasel. "The river must be paid for keeping your seeds dry all winter. Ten seeds."

"The river did nothing for my seeds," said Moss. "I carried them myself." "Ten seeds," said the weasel, "or the gate stays closed. And if you do not pay by nightfall, your pile will be given to someone else."

Moss stood on the bridge in the cold. She looked ahead and saw a third gate further along, newly built, with fresh wood shavings still lying under it. Then she looked down at the dark river. And she turned around and walked back the way she had come.

On the near bank, the old beaver who kept the dam was mending a branch. Moss told him everything. She cried, because she had paid three seeds and lost her whole pile, and because she felt foolish.

The beaver listened. Then he said, "Every gate on that bridge was built after you crossed it the first time. They are not for the river. They are for you." He gave her some of his own bark and seeds to see her through the snow. The next morning the two of them went from burrow to burrow, and wherever a vole was packing seeds to pay the toll, Moss told them what she had seen from the middle of the bridge.

Moss did not get her pile back that winter. But no other vole paid the river's share. In the spring, the voles built their own storehouse on the near side of the river, where they could see it from their doors.

The second gate is the "tax", and the fresh shavings under the third gate are the "late processing fee". Every gate is built after you cross. Moss turned around in the middle of the bridge, and I think that is the hardest place of all to turn around, because you have already paid, and going back feels like losing twice. Marcus turned around in the middle of the bridge too. And the beaver didn't tell Moss that she should never have crossed. He gave her his bark and walked with her, like Ms Okafor's tea, and like Lina's dumplings.

What I Checked This Week

A demand to pay more before you can take out your own money is one of the clearest signs of a scam. An "unlocking fee", a "tax" that must be sent separately, a "late fee", a "security review" that ends only when you pay: firms that are allowed to look after people's money do not work like that. If you meet this, the checking is already finished, and the answer is to stop paying. Each new fee is another gate built after you crossed, and paying it does not bring the money any closer.

Call your bank using a number you already have from the bank itself, such as the number printed on your card, not a number from the platform, from a message, or from a search result you aren't sure of. Then report it to the police and to the official offices in your country, such as the office that supervises banks and investment firms and the office that takes reports of fraud. Find their contact details yourself, on their own websites, which you reach by searching for them by name.

Keep every message, every screen, every receipt and every bank line. Put them in one place, with dates, and do not delete the app or the chats before everything is saved. These records are what the bank, the police and the official offices need. Making the folder also turned Marcus's fear into a list, and a list is something you can think about.

Get help with the rest of life too. Our university's student money advice office is free and private, and Ms Okafor helped with the reports, the rent and the sleep. Many schools and universities have something similar, so it is worth asking. A doctor or the support services can help with sleep and worry, and asking them is as practical as calling the bank.

Last of all: nobody who was deceived is stupid. The person responsible for a scam is the scammer. Marcus told someone, at twenty past one in the morning, ashamed and frightened, and that was the bravest and most useful thing he did all year.

Things to Talk About as a Family

Tess's diary closes for this week after some very hard days and one better one. It is worth noticing what helped Marcus most. It was not someone telling him what he had done wrong. It was a friend who answered the phone at twenty past one in the morning, and an adviser who made tea and said plainly that it was not his fault.

Here are some things you might talk about together. If one of you were ever caught in a situation like Marcus's, what would make it easier to tell the family? What would you most want to hear first? Do you each know your bank's real contact number, and where to find it without searching online?

One small thing to try together: each of you find the number on the back of your own bank card, or in your bank's own papers, and agree that this is the only number you would ever use to call your bank when you are worried. Then say out loud to one another something like this: "If you ever lose money, or feel trapped by a message, you can tell me at any hour, and I will not be angry." And remember, as a family, that if anyone ever feels like hurting themselves, the right step is to contact a helpline or a medical facility right away, and in immediate danger to call the local emergency number.