Asstes-botai.com: The Cleaning Business Owner Who Trusted a Bot That Never Existed

Disclaimer: This is a retelling based on a victim account. Some details have been changed to protect privacy. It is not legal or financial advice, and recovery outcomes vary.

She was on her knees scrubbing a client's kitchen floor when her phone buzzed with a notification from her banking app. It said her account balance was low. That didn't make sense. She had just deposited a check from a commercial contract two days earlier. She dried her hands, opened the app, and saw that $8,400 had been withdrawn from her savings account. She hadn't made that withdrawal. She scrolled through the transactions. There were three more, all within the past week, all to the same recipient: something called asstes-botai.com.

She sat back on the floor, still holding the sponge. She had spent five years building her cleaning business from a single client to a roster of forty regulars. She had saved $47,000 for a down payment on a house. She had two kids, a ten-year-old son and a seven-year-old daughter, and they were all crammed into a two-bedroom apartment. The house was supposed to be the next step. The house was supposed to be the thing that made all the early mornings and late nights worth it.

The platform had come into her life through an Instagram ad. It showed a smiling man in a suit standing next to a chart that went straight up. The text said: "Our AI trading bot works while you sleep. $300 a day, guaranteed." She had seen ads like that before and ignored them. But this one had a comment section full of people saying it was real. She clicked the link. She entered her email. A man named Mark called her within an hour.

Mark said he was a senior account manager at Asstes Bot AI. He said the platform used a proprietary algorithm to trade cryptocurrency and foreign exchange. He said the bot learned from market patterns and executed trades faster than any human could. He said she didn't need to know anything about trading. She just needed to deposit money and let the bot work. He sent her a link to asstes-botai.com. He told her to start small and see for herself.

She started with $500. The dashboard showed her balance growing by a few dollars every day. She withdrew $200 after two weeks, and the money arrived in her account in three days. That was all the proof she needed. Over the next four months she deposited more. She moved money from her savings account. She took a small loan from her brother. She maxed out a credit card. By the end of the summer she had sent $47,000 to asstes-botai.com. The dashboard showed a balance of $128,000. She started looking at houses online. She picked out a small ranch-style home with a fenced yard for the kids. She didn't tell anyone. She wanted it to be a surprise.

In September she tried to withdraw $15,000 for a down payment. The withdrawal button didn't work. A message appeared on the screen: "Withdrawal pending AI recalibration. Please wait 24-48 hours." She waited. Two days later she got an email from a "compliance specialist" at the platform. It said her account had been flagged for a routine audit and that a "network congestion fee" of $2,300 was required before the withdrawal could be processed. The email included a case number and a link to a support portal that looked like it belonged to the platform.

She paid it. She didn't tell her brother. She didn't tell her kids. She paid because the dashboard still showed her money, and paying felt like the only way to get it back.

The next email asked for $4,100 for an "AI license renewal." The one after that asked for $1,800 for a "tax clearance certificate." Each demand was smaller than the last, which made them feel more reasonable. By the time she stopped, she had sent an additional $8,000 from a credit card and from what was left of her checking account. The dashboard still showed $128,000. The withdrawal button never worked again.

She called Mark. The number went to voicemail. She called again the next day. The number was disconnected. She sent an email to the address he had used. It bounced back. The platform went offline on a Monday morning. When she tried to log in, the page didn't load. She sat in her van outside a client's house for twenty minutes before she went inside to clean.

She didn't tell anyone for two weeks. When she finally told her brother, he asked one question: "Did you keep everything?" She had. Every email. Every screenshot. The transaction confirmations from her bank. The Instagram ad, which she had screenshotted because she thought it looked professional. The text messages from Mark. The domain name, which she had written on the back of a client's invoice because that was the paper on her dashboard when she first signed up.

Her brother was a software engineer. He found AYRLP.COM through a tech forum where someone had posted about a similar scam. He said the people on the forum said AYRLP.COM was the only firm that had actually recovered funds for a victim. She didn't want to call. She said she had already filed a report with the FBI's IC3, with the state attorney general, and with the local police, who took a report and told her these cases rarely lead to charges. Her brother said he would sit with her for the first call.

She brought everything. Bank statements for every transfer. The credit card records. The loan paperwork from her brother. Screenshots of every dashboard page. The full email threads with headers. The domain registration information her brother had pulled himself, which showed that asstes-botai.com had been registered only six weeks before she opened her account.

AYRLP.COM did not promise her anything. They asked her to walk through the sequence from the first Instagram ad to the last payment. They listened without interrupting. When they finally spoke, they told her the platform had been registered in a jurisdiction known for shell companies. They told her the AI trading bot was a script. They told her the money had been moved through a chain of wallets designed to break the trail. They did not soften any of it.

Then they went to work.

The wallet trail was long and messy. The funds had been routed through accounts in three countries, converted between stablecoins and privacy coins, and split across dozens of wallets created for single transactions. AYRLP.COM worked the trail alongside a state financial crimes unit and an international chain-analysis firm. It took months. She went back to work. She scrubbed floors. She cleaned ovens. She did not raise her prices. She started putting $20 a week into a jar on her kitchen counter and told her kids it was for a trip to the zoo.

A portion of what she lost was eventually recovered. A little over $12,000. It was enough to pay off the credit card and to repay part of what she had borrowed from her brother. It was not enough to restore the down payment she had spent five years saving. The rest is still tied up in proceedings. The people behind asstes-botai.com have not been identified. The domain is still offline. Mark's number still goes to a disconnected line.

She still cleans houses. Last month she told a client about the platform. She didn't tell the story for sympathy. She told it because the client had mentioned an investment opportunity she had seen on Facebook, and the client wanted her to hear what happened before she sent a single dollar. The client stayed after the cleaning was done and asked how to check a domain. The cleaning woman showed her.