It's September 23rd, 2026, and it's been a rough few days for Jerry Banfield. I launched a new meme coin on Robinhood, and a couple of days before that, I had been tricked by a social engineering attack. A TikTok account with hundreds of thousands of followers, which I went and reported, pretended to want me on their show. I just posted the pictures on X to try and get the account taken down. Long story short, and I'll tell the long version in a minute, they ended up tricking me and getting malware on my computer through Microsoft Teams. I got hacked for tens of thousands of dollars. They took control through Teams, then they ended up stealing tens of thousands of dollars from me and rugging the coin I had just launched on my followers. Absolute chaos.
On top of that, I had an application for dating. I just took it off and put an email address on jerrybanfield.com/date instead, because most applications were people putting fake names and fake profiles, and then putting the phone number to the St. Petersburg Police Department or the St. Anthony's Behavioral Unit, which I took the time to Google before I actually messaged it. So, haters or trolls, you need to be a little bit smarter than me.
Losing $20,000 in One Afternoon
Oh my gosh, this hack has left me thinking maybe I need to just move in with my mom or something. This is utter financial destruction. I put $5,000 into this in Ethereum, and it was worth about $20,000 when these guys stole it. I'm assuming they're guys; they were all guys on the Microsoft Teams call. They rugged the coin and got $14,000 directly out of the coin in my wallet. Then they took thousands more off of MaxFi, which added up to about $20,000. I'm just like, man, this is so ridiculous. I might need to just quit. The thing to quit is trying to have this house on my own. I really need to make about $5,000 a month in income, after taxes are taken out, just to be able to afford this house, and I love this house.
Maybe it's time to get serious about fixing my finances. I was hoping I could just earn lots of money and pay for everything. Maybe I still can. But this hack yesterday was a real wake-up call. That's a devastating loss right there, not just to me, but to the community, the people who had bought the coin. The MaxFi team was exceptional, stepping up and putting their money in to keep the token afloat, and now it has an incredible story and could take off. But I'm wrecked.
What's amazing is that you'd think this would just ruin me emotionally. Ironically, dealing with the woman I called the queen pulling away was more difficult than having $20,000 stolen from me and having to defend my reputation. People were very angry when the coin pumped from a few thousand in market cap to a hundred and some thousand and then tanked over 50% when these hackers stole the funds from me. I also had to spend hours and hours reformatting my PC and securing all my accounts, so I've hardly had time to film any videos. I had to erase yesterday's vlog because I filmed it right before this happened.
Feeling Under Attack From Every Direction
This is crazy. I'm under attack. Everything I'm trying to do, someone is sitting there actively trying to sabotage it. The eBay listings: I hope those are real bids for $17,000 for two of my shirts, but the eBay listings look like they've been sabotaged. The dating applications have been so bad I can't even tell who's a real woman, because most of them are not. Then I'm like, okay, is there one real woman in here? I can't even be sure at this point. And I don't want to get catfished or hacked again. So I'm feeling really defeated today. I've been banned online. I've been canceled, demonetized, and now I'm getting taken down by hackers, scammers, and trolls. It's ridiculous.
Part of me thinks I should just go work for my friend, who has a landscaping company. I can make a little less than $200 a day just doing landscaping and get some real exercise. I could move in with my mom, do landscaping a few days a week, help her out, and pay down my debt. I could be just fine doing that. But no, I've got to keep doing these videos, because there are a lot of you who really care about them. I need to figure out how to make it harder to mess with me.
I got my computer set up again, and I had to go back through all my AI stuff, hours and hours of it, and I still haven't got OBS set up where I'm comfortable live streaming. Then I have a conference I'm going to next week. I have my kids every night, and thank God for the kids.
At the Park While My Wallet Was Drained
Yesterday everything was going awesome. This meme coin was printing money. Everybody was having a great time. I went to the park and took a little tennis ball practice basket, and I threw a bunch of tennis balls to my son. We were having a great time. I came back and my wallet was just gone. Well, it wasn't totally gone. They left $75 in there, which today I guess they got bored and cleaned out too. I'm like, here, you took $20,000, go ahead and have the $75 also. I'm not going to send eight transactions to clean $75 out.
I am grateful they didn't get to my ICP, because I had a more advanced security setup for my ICP, and that seems to be what they were really after. They got lucky with this meme coin. What I'm really proud of is that I didn't beat myself up too much. I'm like, eh, this kind of stuff happens.
There were red flags on the Microsoft Teams call. None of the guys had cameras on. I instantly could have spotted fakes if one of them had a camera on, because they were impersonating a real podcast that's on NPR. And it was on Sunday afternoon too. Do you think real podcasters are going to be doing work on Sunday afternoon? Probably not. They're probably going to be hanging out with their families. I shouldn't have used Microsoft Teams, but I was excited to present ICP. Okay, I need to harden my security setup going forward.
I'm lucky they weren't able to steal my YouTube accounts and take those out before I changed all the passwords and locked them out of all my Google accounts. That would have been a real pain to get back. Fortunately, I had all my stuff set up on Google. I saw an email that my account was used to sign in on id.ai. I got on my computer, changed the passwords immediately, and signed all the other devices out, but they managed to grab my MetaMask wallet before I did that. I didn't realize they'd had Google account recovery set up on it.
Why Dating Hurts More Than Losing Money
It's funny how dating has been so brutal emotionally that losing $20,000, and looking at potentially having to move out of this house I love and asking my mom tonight if I can move in with her, emotionally doesn't even seem as bad as having a woman I was really into just fade away. So this is why I think dating is so important. At the same time, though, I probably was more desperate with my dating because I've been living by myself, being a little lonely, and hoping my dating and my finances would go together, so that a woman could move in with me or I could move in with her instead of moving in with my mom.
A Silver Lining: Time With My Mom
I like to think the silver lining is that my mom is almost 70, and she's not in good health. My friend's mom is dying, and it's really been a little wake-up call for me. Maybe this is a great opportunity to spend some time with my mom while I still can. My mom needs a lot of help. She has a ton of stuff around the house, and she could really use my help.
My mom keeps getting ripped off by contractors who charge her double or triple what they would have charged somebody asking harsher questions. For example, when I was married and we needed a new air conditioner, I paid less than $4,000 for a brand new air conditioner, completely installed. Somebody came along and charged my mom $20,000 for a new air conditioner and to clean the ductwork. That's at least $10,000 more than she should have paid. If I'd have been there, I'd have been like, no, get out of here talking about $20,000. That's ridiculous. We'll call somebody else. And she's had the same thing happen other times too.
My mom broke her hip before, and she needed her sister to come stay for about a month. Even though I was right across the street, I wasn't helping at the time. At this point, maybe it would be really good for me to be there and help my mom out, and my mom could help me out, if I end up moving in with her.
Building My Own Community Platform
I'm thinking of making a complete Jerry Banfield all-in-one social media platform, like Skool, directly on my website. I'm going to test it out and see if I can build that. It'll have direct messages, you'll be able to post publicly, and it'll have a private chat. Then I can have a closed community where I don't have to worry about scammers and trolls. If a woman wanted to date me, she could just join that and send me a DM. It'd be super easy.
Still Saying Thank You
I've been getting wrecked with doubt too. I'm like, man, everything I try is getting annihilated. I'm getting attacked from every direction. You could even argue that with my night out on Saturday night, I'm sabotaging myself too. Although that was fun, and I'm grateful for that fun, because yesterday was not fun.
What's kind of miraculous is that I'm able to say thank you. Even as I'm awake in the middle of the night wondering what the hell I'm going to do for money, and wondering what I can do with my business, feeling like such a failure, I'm still saying thank you in the middle of all that. Thank you for this experience. I still went to play tennis with my friend this morning. I still take my son to school and pick him up.
I still do what I need to for my kids. And I still try to show up and make videos, even though I don't really want to talk about this right now. I'm tired of talking about it. I've talked to several of my friends, and the MaxFi team was extremely helpful. When my account got hacked, the Discord server went nuts. Everybody thought I had rugged all of them, and they were saying everything you can imagine, from what I should do to myself all the way to "I'm going to come sue you in small claims court over a hundred dollars." I was trying to help everybody make money and have fun on a meme coin that meant something, instead of these other random cat or dog meme coins. Hopefully that will work out for all the holders, now that I'm completely out of it.
The House, the Debt, and Dating
I would love to keep this house I'm in. I thought having a house would be really helpful for dating, but you know what? It doesn't seem like having a house has mattered hardly at all for dating, because all the women I've dated have had their own place, as far as I know. Every woman either had her own place or at least had a bedroom and a roommate. So having my house has not helped me at all for dating this year.
Good God, I've tried so hard this year at dating and got annihilated. I've tried so hard with my content creation, and the ICP community goes off on me when I try to provide some constructive feedback. I get into meme coins and get my wallet hacked. I'm lucky I didn't lose all my YouTube accounts. Lucky, or really, I was ready and had all the security set up. And maybe they had other people they were trying to hack besides me. My God, I've tried so hard and gotten so far, but in the end it feels like it didn't even matter.
Here we are. I have $90,000 in credit card debt now, and there's $2,000 a month in minimum payments on that. If I keep making what I've been making but I don't have to pay rent, I can easily make the minimum payments, especially if I can continue to grow my business system and keep getting more ad revenue. And boy, I'm glad I don't quit easily, because this is ridiculous. This is crazy. This is just nuts.
So You Want to Be a YouTuber?
If some of you think you'd like to be a YouTuber like me, think again. This is what you're in for. I had somebody message me saying, "Oh man, I want to do what you do. I want to quit my job." I'm like, don't. This is not something the average person is cut out for, and the more you're an average person, the less you're going to do well on YouTube. I'm a bit unusual, which is why I do well on YouTube. That makes me feel like I'm doing a good job, and I'm not going to quit, even with my dating life being difficult.
Misfortune or Good Fortune?
I'm thinking that sometimes things that look like misfortune in the short term are actually good fortune in the long term, and vice versa. This hack in the short term looks purely like misfortune, right? But in the long term, maybe I'm going to get to have some really nice time with my mother. And maybe if this meme coin had blown up, I wouldn't have gotten desperate to the point where I'm like, I've got to stop paying rent, man. This is bad.
When I kind of joked a little bit a month ago with my mom, saying if this doesn't work out I can just move in with her, she was pretty toxic about that. So if I can't move in with my mom, I'll be looking to move in with somebody else, preferably somewhere I can stay the night with my kids, because I don't want them to have to stay at my ex's house every night. We're going to have to do our best with this.
Reporting It and the Slim Hope of Getting It Back
I'm going to need to report this to the FBI also. I've already reported it to TikTok in multiple ways, because that's where the scam originated. I need to report this to the FBI for my taxes too, because there's the $5,000 I put in plus the capital gains, and then $20,000 total. That's a big crime somebody committed, stealing this money from me. And it's real nice that, at least in the short term, they're probably just going to totally get away with it.
You can see where the money's parked on the blockchain. Everybody's asking me if I can get it back. Yeah, sure, if they suddenly had a change of heart, like "Amazing Grace." Maybe if they're listening to "Amazing Grace" and have a change of heart, they'll just send the money back to my account. But judging from the fact that they stole the $75 I left in there, I'm not counting on it. I was like, you took $20,000, I'll just give you the $75 as a tip. I was just wondering when they were going to clean the rest of the account out, which somebody decided to do today. Maybe they'll have a change of heart and send it all back, and that's about the only realistic shot I have of getting it back. So I'm looking at filing a report with the FBI for cybercrime.
How the Scam Worked, and Forgiving Myself
I'm grateful that I forgive myself for this. I see what I did. I was overly excited. I was open-hearted. I was trusting. With a random account on TikTok, no matter how many followers it has, that's obviously not a good idea. I should have asked more skeptical questions, like, "Hey, why are all of you in Microsoft Teams without pictures of your face? Why do all of you have your cameras off?" They tricked me by saying they needed me to change shirts for a better thumbnail. It turns out that when I stepped away to get another shirt, they were quickly going into the Windows command line and throwing in malware installations.
The thing I am happy about is that this makes a good story. This does make a good story. It adds to the interesting saga of Jerry Banfield, and I'm grateful for all of you who watch and support.
Figuring Out My Content Strategy
I'm trying to figure out the best content creation strategy too. It seems like clipping from live streams and doing live streams can work. Some of the live streams had some great content, and others of them did not. You all seem to watch the videos I film from start to finish like this one the most. You seem to like those the most, so I'm going to try to make those my first priority, and then if I can slip in a live stream, we'll do that. I've usually been doing six videos a day, but I've barely been able to do one the last few days dealing with all this. And then I have a conference I'm going to, so I'll just do my best.
Picturing the Thieves
It sucks to think about them getting away with this. I actually was kind of laughing, picturing them laughing at me and how dumb I was, like, "Oh, look, he just lost a meme coin. Get it, get it." I pictured them sitting there egging each other on: "Yeah, swap that. Let's go." I pictured them having a great time stealing from me. These are legitimate organized criminals. These were not amateurs. These were people who were very good at role-playing. These were professionals. They probably steal a lot of money from people. They knew what they were doing. Maybe not the top professionals, though. If they were a bit more professional, they'd probably have done more due diligence on my accounts and realized there was more there than just some crypto.
But I should have done more due diligence on them too, and I'd have realized this might be a scam. I should have asked AI, "Is this legit?" Because when I asked Gemini about it afterward, Gemini immediately knew this was a scam and that other people had been ripped off the exact same way. That makes me feel both better and worse at the same time. I'm sad this has happened to other people, and happy that, hey, I'm not the only one who's been tricked in the exact same manner.
I'm talking to Ashley Cummings about doing a live stream or a podcast with her. I've really enjoyed talking to her in the last week and doing a couple of live streams with her. She'd been messaging me first most days, but she hadn't responded yesterday, so I actually reached out to her today and said, "Hey, how are you doing?" Man, I'd love to just figure dating out, eliminate the confusion, and then explain it for all of you. That's what I'm trying to do: figure life out as best I can and explain it to you.
No Point in Beating Yourself Up
Some things I've figured out very clearly, and I hope you'll take them with you. There's no point in beating yourself up. I don't have any guilt, remorse, or shame about having somebody steal $20,000 from me. This is definitely the worst crime anyone's ever committed against me, and it's certainly worse than anything I've done to anybody else. So that really takes the jackpot. What made it a lot easier is that I didn't beat myself up. I just thought, okay, what next?
Part of that is because my mind is flexible. A lot of our pain comes from our minds not being flexible. I did have some denial when I looked at my MetaMask account and saw that instead of $20,000, it said $75. My first thought was, this must be wrong. That's impossible. Then I checked the activity log, and it had happened while I was at the park with my son. Then denial came in: this can't be happening. But after that, mental flexibility came in. New reality: you just got hacked. You'd better explain that to the people who are going to be pissed off about this, who are DMing you on Discord asking why you sold. You'd better address them first. And you'd better take down your videos promoting the coin until you get this sorted out.
Now the coin probably has a better narrative than it would have had if I were just holding it. It's truly a community launch now, so arguably the coin is better than it was before. It'd be great if the coin went on to make millions, even if I didn't get any of it. But the MaxFi team is like, "Look, if it does really well, we've got you." It's so nice to see. When people act like these thieves did, it actually feels so good to see people act the opposite way. The MaxFi team has DMed me a whole bunch of messages today and yesterday.
The MaxFi team did damage control on the whole community in Discord. They stopped the community from ruthlessly attacking me, threatening to sue me, and saying things worse than that, over some of them literally losing $50 or $100. And that's how the MaxFi team is acting. It's so beautiful to see people who are actually nice and supportive and stand up for you. I'm that kind of friend too. If something happens in my friend's life, I'm there. I'm very interested to show up and see how I can help and how I can support.
Maybe that's what's beautiful about life. Having a group of people work together to steal from me is ugly, but having a group of people work together to support me is beautiful. And there are way more of you working together to support me than there are people trying to steal from me and sabotage me. So that makes me hopeful.
Looking for One Real Woman
I would love to find a woman to date. I changed my page to email, and I'd love to get a real email from a real woman who's actually interested. About the only way I can even think to verify that at this point is to have a woman actually get on video and say, "Hey, Jerry, saw your page. This is me. Very interested to talk with you," and attach a video like that to the email. That way I can sort out who's fake and who's just trolling versus a real woman.
I love the idea of a woman somewhere in the world who watches my videos and is like, wow, that's my king. This is an amazing man who gets destroyed, loses money, gets wrecked publicly in front of everybody, and still shows up and talks about all of it. I'm making every effort I can to at least get that TikTok account taken down and give the FBI all this information. I don't hold out much hope they're going to be able to do anything, but if somebody else made a similar report, maybe at some point they could get these guys. So picture somebody who doesn't quit after being canceled and demonetized and hacked and doxxed and threatened and catfished, who's still balling, just continuing, who's willing to move in with his mom.
Why I'd Rather Move In With My Mom Than Quit YouTube
I could probably make some big effort to get a six-figure job with all my internet marketing knowledge and try to keep my place, but I'd rather move in with my mom and keep doing YouTube, because I've quit YouTube and content creation enough times. I know there are a lot of you out there who feel about my videos the way I feel about a few creators I watch. I enjoy Bobby O's videos. I've been watching a bunch of Ashley Cummings videos, and I enjoy those. I enjoy Sarah Louise (Lunity111) and her videos. There are a few people I watch where I really enjoy their videos, and I actually miss them if they don't create. I know for many of you, I'm that person, so I try to make as much as I can for you so you have options on what to watch across different topics.
The last 24 hours, though, I'm like, I don't know if this is going to work. I don't know, man. Maybe I need to rethink my whole life. Moving in with my mom would take a lot of time to reorganize her house, and it could be challenging. Although at this point, I don't know that my mom is even as challenging as all these women I've gone out with who've just extracted value from me, extracted all kinds of free meals and stuff, and then ghosted and stopped responding. But it only takes one woman to actually have a great relationship with me to make it all work. Just because a few people extracted all this value from me doesn't mean that's what the whole world is going to do. And maybe I can help somebody else avoid something like this. I hope so.
This has been quite a journey. I'm kind of sad to think that, as much as I love this house, I might be moving out in a few months. That said, everything's temporary.
Three Hours of Sleep and a Moment Without Ego
I only got three hours of sleep last night. I woke up at about 1 a.m., and my mind raced the whole rest of the time trying to figure everything out. After hours and hours of meditating and lying in bed with my thoughts, I realized: you need to move in with your mom, or if not her, somebody else who doesn't need you to pay rent and whom you could help. You need to move in with somebody, live there for free, get these credit cards paid off at least, and relax.
Right before I became conscious of this life, I came out of the dream state, but there was no ego. This has been happening a lot lately. I let go of the dream state and I'm fully aware, but there's no ego. There's no knowledge of Jerry Banfield or who I love. I don't know who I am. And man, that was the best part of my day today. I felt so good. I felt so full of life and joy and love. As soon as I started to remember this life, it was like I put on 150 pounds of weights, where everything just feels super heavy. The first thing I remembered was being hacked, and then everything else exploded from there.
But you know what? Somebody stealing $20,000 from me can't steal my joy, because joy is who I am underneath everything. That's who I am. Even getting wrecked yesterday didn't ruin my day the way the day the queen withdrew did. When I realized it was going to be over with her, that was so much worse than somebody stealing $20,000 from me and the public relations disaster that came afterward as well.
Relationships Are Priceless, Money Comes and Goes
It really drove home for me how important relationships and people are compared to money. So many of us prioritize money so much. If you asked me whether I'd rather have back a relationship with one of the women I dated, like the queen, or have back the $20,000, I'd much rather have the relationship. Money comes and goes. People have money, people have houses, but relationships are priceless. Relationships matter much more than money, and so many people destroy precious relationships over it.
It's so sad, because family is so much more important than money, and yet many people will destroy family relationships to try to get some money. I know many examples of people just wrecking relationships with their family to take money. Guys, money comes and goes. Relationships are priceless. Relationships can come and go sometimes too, but they tend to be much more precious, difficult to acquire, kind of fragile, and sometimes easy to lose.
So if I had to choose between things going well with the queen or keeping my $20,000, I'd take things going well with the queen, or with many of the other women I dated this year. I'd take things going great with a woman over money, but I'll take things going great on both.
Looking Back From the Future
What's going to be great is when I have a woman I'm really excited about dating, and when I get all this debt paid down and I've got all kinds of money. I'll look back on this video and be like, it's good you got through this day. This day was hard, and it's good you got through it, because you wouldn't have gotten there without being here. If you want to make your life better, you need to go forward into the future you want and then look back on now.
I remember being so devastated a few times in my 20s that I just wanted to give up, and so many times over the last decade I've thought, thank God you didn't give up, because you wouldn't have gotten here. If you want to follow along with the rest of this journey day by day, it's all in my Daily Vlogs playlist.
Simplifying to One Offer
So that's enough. If you want to support me, all the stuff's there for you on jerrybanfield.com. I think I'm going to consolidate everything into one offer instead of selling calls and coaching and books separately. Then you can just DM me if you want coaching or a call or something, but I need to simplify. I want to sell one single thing all the time to everybody. And thank you to those of you who ordered the Cameos. All right, peace.