Adam Roarty is a journalist covering sports betting, regulation, and industry innovation for CasinoBeats. His coverage includes tax increases in the UK, covering breaking stories in the ever-evolving landscape of US betting such as the...
Read Full BioMrBeast is offering a $100,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of scammers who defrauded Catena Media co-founder Erik Bergman of $1.25 million.
Bergman took to YouTube this week to give further details of the scam in the hope that someone will come forward with information on the perpetrators.
In the video, the Swedish entrepreneur says, “I feel so stupid, and so ashamed. At the same time, it feels important to share my story.”
He goes on to detail how the scammers deceived him into donating money to MrBeast’s clean water project. They created fake group chats to build trust before convincing victims to invest in a fraudulent cryptocurrency project.
In addition to impersonating MrBeast’s profile in the chat, the scammers also pretended to be Stake owner Ed Craven, YouTuber Adin Ross, and Mark Rober.
Bergman released the complete chat logs from group conversations and private messages, as well as six phone numbers used by the scammers. He also discloses the blockchain transaction hashes for the two cryptocurrency payments he made, totaling $750,000 and $500,000.
He was encouraged to make a second payment after the fake Ed Craven’s attempt to invest in the project was rejected. Speaking to Next.io, Bergman said, “They rejected him. Then after they had rejected them, they said, ‘Okay, the price is up now, but you can invest again if you want’. And then he invested on that price, after being rejected and still going in. After that everyone else followed him.”
It is unclear how many people were targeted by the scam and how many were fake accounts created to give the impression of legitimacy.
MrBeast Promises Reward if Scammers are Arrested
If anyone can use the information to identify the criminals, MrBeast says he will reward them with $100,000. The YouTuber replied to Bergman’s post on X, stating, “Anyone who gives us information that leads to an arrest I will reward you with $100,000.”
MrBeast runs a genuine clean water project alongside Rober. The project is titled Team Water, with the stated goal of “Raising $40M to give 2 million people clean water for decades.” So far, the charity has collected money to fund 41,637,010 years of clean water.
Bergman is also an active philanthropist, having donated $6.2 million to various charities. While Catena Media has struggled of late and was forced to slash its workforce earlier this year, Bergman also founded Great.com.
The project is reportedly the world’s first nonprofit gambling affiliate. It offers users an online casino guide with demo slots, and donates all of the profits to charity.
If anyone has information relating to the case, they can contact Bergman directly through the Great.com website.
