Bohdan Prylepa: scam sellers of Telegram ads and how to check a channel first

Bohdan Prylepa: how scam sellers work the Telegram advertising market

In a Telegram advert deal there is rarely a platform in the middle. A business picks a channel, writes to whoever is listed as the advertising contact, agrees a price and sends money by bank transfer. The channel's owner, the person in the chat and the account receiving the money are assumed to be the same, and nobody checks.

UK Finance has a name for what happens when that assumption fails. A purchase scam is a case where the victim pays in advance for goods or services that never arrive, usually after finding them through an online platform such as social media, with the criminal persuading the victim to pay by bank transfer and skip any safer option the platform offers. An unpublished advert fits that description exactly.

Its Annual Fraud Report 2026 counts 175,809 purchase scam cases in 2025, worth 118.1 million pounds. Cases on business and other non-personal accounts rose by 28 per cent to 4,178, with losses of 11.3 million pounds. Bohdan Prylepa reads those figures as a reminder that small firms buying adverts sit squarely in the target group.

Impersonated admins: selling space in a channel they do not run

Telegram keeps the people behind a channel out of view. Its own description says the subscriber list is visible only to the owner and admins, and subscribers cannot see which accounts manage the channel. Admin signatures are optional, and a signature shows a screen name without a link to the profile.

Scam sellers fill that gap. They copy the name and photo of a real advertising manager, join groups where marketers buy placements and answer requests within minutes. The pitch is familiar: a slot has just opened, the price is lower if you confirm today, here are the stats. After the transfer, the conversation goes quiet.

Telegram's verification rules leave no room for a verified personal account: user accounts are not verified at present, and only large, active official channels, groups and bots carry the official tick. Bohdan Prylepa's rule follows from that. A tick beside a salesperson's name in a private chat is decoration, however official it looks.

Copycat channels and hijacked accounts

A copycat channel borrows the original's name, profile picture, description and latest posts, and its t.me address differs by a single letter or a trailing number. Marketers who shortlist channels by name and topic can easily pay the copy. The advert, if it appears at all, reaches a handful of followers.

A hijacked channel is the more serious problem because its history is genuine. When an owner loses the account, whoever took it can keep selling adverts under an established name. Bohdan Prylepa looks back over several months of posts before any purchase, watching for a sudden change of subject, new contact details or a run of get-rich offers.

The official blue tick helps where it exists. Telegram grants it to channels directly through @VerifyBot, and a verified channel cannot change its name or short link without first giving up verification. Where there is no tick, the address you found yourself is the main safeguard.

Bohdan Prylepa on bought followers and padded views

Bought followers make for a scam with no disappearing act. The seller stays polite, the advert goes up, the view counter climbs and a report arrives on time. The audience, however, is made up of bots, so the advertiser gets thousands of views and no enquiries. Bohdan Prylepa assumes a channel is padded until its owner shows otherwise.

Telegram's channel FAQ contains some useful benchmarks. An owner can invite only the first 200 subscribers personally, after which growth comes from links, search and promotion. Views are approximate, include forwarded copies and count the same reader again after roughly four days. A suspiciously flat view count under every post is a warning sign.

Detailed statistics are available to channels with more than 500 subscribers. They show growth, joins and leaves, muted notifications, audience languages and how people found the channel. A firm selling to British customers will want most of that audience to read in English, and will want follower spikes to match the channel's own promotions.

Ask for a screen share on a video call, with the admin scrolling through several months of charts. Screenshots alone are easy to doctor.

Growth packages, resold slots and Telegram's own ad platform, per Prylepa

Resellers sell a place in a channel before they have bought it. They take the advertiser's money, then try to negotiate a cheaper rate with the real admin, and if that fails they postpone the advert again and again. A discounted slot that must be paid for within the hour often comes from one of these middlemen.

Firms that run their own channel are offered growth packages: a thousand followers a week, a top place in search, a guaranteed audience. Some sellers also ask for full admin rights or the account's login code. Telegram says login codes arrive in its official service chat and should never be passed to anyone.

On 31 March 2024 Telegram announced that advertisers on the Telegram Ad Platform choose the exact channels where an advert appears, that adverts run only in large public channels, and that owners of channels with at least 1,000 subscribers receive half of the revenue. Bohdan Prylepa treats this as the benchmark for any middleman's quote.

Bohdan Prylepa's five checks before paying for a post

First, find the channel yourself through the brand's website, older mentions or Telegram search, and compare the t.me address with the one in the chat character by character. Second, deal only with the advertising contact named in the channel description or a pinned post.

Third, ask for proof of control. Bohdan Prylepa sends a word he has just thought up and asks for it to appear in the channel description or a short post for ten minutes. An owner can do that straight away. Someone selling another person's channel will find reasons why they cannot.

Fourth, ask to see the statistics live and to see earlier sponsored posts, then contact two or three of those advertisers about their results. Fifth, agree the terms in writing before any money moves: date and time, how long the post stays at the top, whether it is pinned, when it may be removed and how it is labelled as an advert.

Checking the seller at Companies House and agreeing terms

If a limited company sells the advert, Companies House holds its record. GOV.UK lets anyone see a company's registered address, date of incorporation, current and resigned officers, previous names and insolvency information free of charge, and you can sign up to free alerts about changes. The name on the invoice should match that record.

A sole trader will not appear there, so ask for full trading details and an invoice before paying. Bohdan Prylepa pauses any deal where the money is meant to go to a third party, described as an assistant, a partner or the channel's bookkeeper.

Written terms protect both sides. A short order confirmation listing the price, the date, the time on top of the feed and the advert label is enough to show later what was agreed and what was not delivered.

Paying in stages: how Prylepa limits the downside

Paying the whole package upfront to an unfamiliar channel leaves you with no leverage. Bohdan Prylepa uses stages: the first post is paid after it runs, or with a small deposit, later posts can be paid in advance once the first ran as agreed, and monthly packages are split into weeks.

Some protection now exists for bank transfers. Mandatory reimbursement for authorised push payment fraud has applied since 7 October 2024, with a cap of 85,000 pounds per claim. It covers individuals, micro-enterprises and charities, applies to Faster Payments and CHAPS between UK accounts, and claims must be made within 13 months. It does not cover civil disputes, where a legitimate supplier simply delivered a poor or missing service without intent to deceive.

UK Finance reports that 78 per cent of purchase scam losses were returned to victims in 2025. That still leaves a gap, and for larger firms outside the micro-enterprise definition the staged approach matters even more.

Keeping proof that the advert ran

When the post goes live, save the link, a screenshot showing the date and time, and the view count after one day and after three. If the advert is removed early or published at a different time, that record supports a request for a refund or a repeat.

Open the link from a second account with no admin rights anywhere, to confirm that ordinary subscribers can see the post. Bohdan Prylepa also checks that the advert appeared in the channel he paid for, because a copycat can run it to a tiny audience and send the link as proof.

Keep the chat export, the invoice and the bank receipt together. If the deal turns out to be fraud, that file is what your bank and the police will ask for.

Reporting a Telegram advert scam in the UK

Contact your bank straight away and report the payment as fraud. Since 4 December 2025, Report Fraud has replaced Action Fraud: reports go through reportfraud.police.uk or 0300 123 2040. In Scotland, HMRC advises calling the police on 101.

The law covers this conduct. Under section 1 of the Fraud Act 2006, fraud includes fraud by false representation, which section 2 describes as dishonestly making a false representation with intent to make a gain or cause a loss. On indictment, the offence carries up to ten years in prison, a fine or both.

Report the account and the channel inside Telegram from their profiles. If the seller impersonated a real owner, Telegram asks owners to contact @NoToScam, so tell the genuine admin, who can then warn other buyers before the impostor moves on to them.

Bohdan Prylepa: a pre-payment checklist for UK advertisers

You found the channel yourself and the address matches. The contact comes from the description, and the seller posted your test word. Statistics were shown live and past advertisers vouched for results. The company is on the Companies House register and invoiced you. Terms and labelling are agreed in writing. The first post is paid after it runs.

Agencies that buy adverts on your behalf deserve the same checks, and his guide to spotting fraud before paying a UK agency explains how. Securing your own ad accounts is covered in his piece on fake alerts aimed at UK ad accounts.

Read more about the author on the Bohdan Prylepa profile page, and find the rest of the blog on Bohdan Prylepa's site.