A Maniac in the Metaverse: How a Personal Obsession Became a Tool of Business Warfare

Sometimes reality turns out to be more terrifying than any thriller.
We're used to thinking that stories about maniacal stalkers remain somewhere on screen, born in the dark basements of screenwriters and directors. But what if such a scenario unfolds not in the movies, but in business? When not only people but also all the companies associated with them become the object of an obsessive mania?

This story tells how one man, having lost touch with reality, turned his obsession into a weapon against us. He stalked, interfered, tried to destroy – not just for money or profit, but primarily because of his obsession. And, as often happens with true maniacs, he didn't even realize how far he had gone.

This is a story about systemic bullying, about psychological violence, about how one person's paranoia can turn into a year-long campaign of pressure on businesses, their teams, and the lives of people. A story where the truth speaks louder than any accusations.

2022-2023 was a time when the whole world was talking about a future that was almost here. The word "metaverse" was heard in every tech blog, in every forecast from Gartner or Citi Bank, at every speech by Mark Zuckerberg. It seemed that just a little while longer, and we would all finally move into three-dimensional worlds.

The trend was picked up by the media, analysts, and major brands. Metaverse tokens and NFTs grew in price like yeast in the sun: every week saw new records, new startups, and new investors, confident that they were becoming part of the coming digital era.

People were drawn to this topic for various reasons. Some wanted to make money, others simply wanted to support the idea and interesting projects. It was then that Teleland emerged – a business metaverse, born at the peak of technological hype.

Teleland tokens began trading on Uniswap and OpenSea, and gradually an active community formed around the project, with a feeling that "we were at the origins of a new reality." But the real explosion of interest began when businesses came to Teleland.

Companies saw the metaverse not as a toy, but as a platform—a new showcase for brands, a place to show off their talents to the world. They began commissioning virtual showrooms, corporate offices, 3D product customizers, exhibition halls, and entire shopping malls from Teleland.

Teleland offered a unique model: "We'll develop a turnkey project and donate a plot of NFT land for its installation." It was a hit. The list of business projects implemented by the team grew monthly—each one representing months of painstaking work.

Creating 3D worlds is not cheap. 3D designers cost as much as top Silicon Valley programmers, and graphics processing power required significant investment. But the market was willing to pay. For companies, it wasn't just a fad—it was a ticket to the future. And with the right PR, it could even be a profitable investment.

Teleland was becoming one of the symbols of the new 3D era. It was at this moment, when everything was booming, when the project was inspiring and exciting, that a man appeared on the horizon who would one day decide to destroy everything we'd spent years building.

Amid the explosive growth of Teleland and the widespread belief in metaverses as the "new internet," an unusual heroine joined the project – an aspiring children's storyteller from Uzbekistan, Aizhan.

Fate took her far from her homeland: a successful marriage to an elderly millionaire, a move to Britain, new horizons. It seemed like everything was about to begin – but despite her efforts and her husband's generous spending, no one bought her books.

When the world began talking about metaverses, Aizhan saw an opportunity. She approached the Teleland team with a request to create a digital space based on her fairy tales – a magical place where children and parents could stroll, listen to stories, and learn about her book.

The project was ambitious. Impressed by her enthusiasm, Teleland gifted Aizhan a large NFT plot of land for the construction of her future virtual kingdom. Development began: every month, the team delivered major stages of 3D models, and Aizhan made payments regularly, completely satisfied with the progress.

Gradually, the project grew from a simple showroom into something more. The developers decided to create an entire game level—an interactive journey through her fairy tales, where characters and plots could be brought to life. This meant a significant increase in labor costs, but it also opened up truly magical possibilities.

Aizhan was delighted. Every couple of months, she recorded video testimonials expressing gratitude, sharing how the project had inspired her to believe in her dreams again.

Everything seemed to be going perfectly: the client was happy, the team was growing, the metaverse was evolving.

But no one could have imagined then that this very story - with the kind storyteller and her magical world - would eventually turn into a source of nightmare for the entire company.

Seven months passed. The project was complete: the storyteller's virtual world came to life, took shape and color, and became part of the Teleland metaverse. Aizhan approved the final versions, left another thank-you video—and it seemed everything should have ended on a high note.

drive.google.com Aizhan, video review of her building.mp4 But one day, she told her account manager something very strange. According to her, her husband—the same British husband who had helped her move to England—had been casually looking through her bills and realized that over the course of seven months, Aizhan had spent a substantial sum "on some 3D fairy tales" that a 90-year-old couldn't understand. A scandal erupted. Her husband demanded a refund—by any means necessary, or else leave the house.

The Teleland team was faced with the fact that a refund was impossible. During these seven months, the money didn't show up in the account—every payment immediately turned into salaries for 3D designers, programmers, project and account managers, server rentals, and thousands of hours of painstaking work. The project was completed in full, the result was handed over to the client, and the client even recorded a video testimonial of gratitude.

Then Aizhan chose a different path—deception. She began writing to the bank through which the payments were made, claiming she had been the victim of fraud. Her version of the story, to the bank, looked different: as if she hadn't ordered any digital world, but had simply purchased cryptocurrency. The money, they claimed, was debited, but the crypto was never transferred. And this happened seven times in a row over the course of seven months.

However, despite the absurdity of this claim, the bank didn't investigate. Without inquiries, without verification, without analyzing the actual situation, it simply rolled back all the transactions. The funds were forcibly debited from the company's merchant account.

For Teleland, this was a blow comparable to a cardiac arrest. A huge hole appeared in the accounts, the team was left without salaries, and projects without funding. A business that had recently been growing and inspiring was effectively paralyzed by a single lie.

And if the story had ended there, it would have been a financial tragedy. But Aizhan didn't stop there. What began as a refund for work completed and accepted soon turned into a full-blown campaign of total destruction of the business and its people.

After a successful "refund," Aizhan got a taste of easy money. Her failed career as a children's writer gave way to a new genre – fairy tales for adults, where magical creatures were replaced by real people, and morality was replaced by blackmail, lies, and cynical calculation.

She made no secret of her intentions. At one meeting, Aizhan openly, shamelessly, and frankly stated her "plan": she would unleash a wave of negative PR across the internet, accusing the company of fraud and deceiving clients, partners, and crowdfunders. And if we wanted her to stop and delete everything published, she would demand a ransom in cryptocurrency. This wasn't an emotional outburst or an argument – it was deliberate blackmail, cold-blooded and calculated.

From that moment on, a real nightmare began. Day after day, from morning until night, Aizhan bombarded the internet with her fake accusations and insinuations. In client Telegram chats, on partner forums, in founder groups. In articles, videos, and on review sites, her messages were everywhere: that Teleland was a scam and the metaverse simply didn't exist, that all clients were naive fools, that the tokens were fictitious and supposedly weren't even traded on exchanges, and that the developers were scammers.

But what made the situation worse was the end of summer 2024. The world had finally switched from metaverses to artificial intelligence, with the media writing about ChatGPT, Midjourney, and generative neural networks.

Interest in digital worlds waned. Metaverse tokens fell:

- AXS token of the Axie Infinity metaverse fell from $150 to $2.30, a 65-fold decrease
- SAND token of the Sandbox metaverse fell from $7 to $0.28, a 25-fold decrease
- MANA token of the Decentraland metaverse fell from $5.20 to $0.34, a 15-fold decrease

OpenSea reported a hundredfold drop in interest in NFT tokens. Meta was hastily shutting down its 3D projects and writing off multi-billion dollar losses. Against this backdrop, Teleland tokens also suffered, albeit to a significantly lesser extent than their competitors.

Those who managed to exit early earned hundreds of X's, while those who believed in the long-term prospects suddenly saw their assets turn to dust.

And it was against this backdrop of a perfect storm in the world of metaverses that Aizhan decided to play her dirty trick. She flooded Teleland chats, spreading lies and intimidating anyone who still believed in the project. Her messages were simple: "You'll lose everything, you've been deceived, run before it's too late."

The massive disinformation campaign had an effect. The number of metaverse users began to plummet. NFT owners panicked, and the price of the utility tokens plummeted in response to the increased activity.

The market is a living organism: it reacts to emotions. When a wave of negativity rises around a project, sellers increase and buyers decrease. Prices plummet.

So Teleland found itself caught between two fires – a collapsing market and a massive smear campaign. And if the first threat was part of the market cycle, the second became the personal war of one woman who decided she could do anything and no one could touch her.

What began as a lone wave of cyber-aggression quickly morphed into an organized operation. Aizhan worked tirelessly to gather a group of Teleland users ready to profit from the chaos. They made no secret of their embrace of the dark side: the slogan of their "campaign" was simple: smear, intimidate, force to pay.

This "gang" operated according to a well-oiled scheme. Every day, from morning until night, they bombarded the internet with lies and filth:

anonymous accounts on social media and messaging apps;
fake videos voiced by synthesized voices;
dozens of fake "anonymous investigations" and "investigative" articles generated by AI;
a slander factory where any nonsense was transformed into viral content.

But what's especially sinister is that they understood their impunity and exploited it. Anonymity, crypto, and the ability to work with generative tools gave them a mechanism for virtually untraceable influence. While smear campaigns had previously been the work of a lone wolf, now they were a massive, coordinated attack: the same lies appeared on dozens of platforms almost simultaneously, amplifying the panic.

The attack wasn't limited to Teleland. Other related companies were also targeted—the University of Innovations, the UPGRADE Mastermind, and the AI startup NEURO. But the most important thing was the people—the employees, contractors, and partners.

She sent severed heads and threats in private messages to all employees with whom she had contact and to the support team.

The goal was simple: to destroy the reputation, sow fear and mistrust among clients, crowdfunders, and employees, and thereby paralyze the work.

Dissemination of knowingly false information, blackmail, and the deliberate infliction of reputational damage are subject to criminal and civil liability in many jurisdictions. However, the anonymity and distributed nature of the attacks made conventional legal remedies slow and expensive.

A year of relentless harassment didn't yield Aizhan the trophy she desired. We never paid her the ransom, and her interest in the metaverse faded completely—and with it, her hope of easy money.

Then her strategy changed—Aizhan decided to mobilize her army, convincing "gang" members to file fraud reports en masse with the police. The gist of her message was simple and cynical. She explained that a dozen simultaneous complaints would create an avalanche of investigations, leading to the pressure being exerted on all the organizations being attacked and the people involved, to the point where their assets would be sold off "to pay off debts," and the gang members would supposedly make a handsome profit from this sale.

This was no longer just a smear campaign; it was an attempt to legitimize destruction through bureaucracy. The motive was openly criminal: not seeking justice, but creating a legal web in which the victim of the attack would become entangled and disintegrate. Filing police complaints is a tool that, when used en masse, can disrupt the operations of both individuals and companies to a level impossible to achieve with mere trolling and fake news.

It's important to note the legal aspect: the mass filing of false reports is, in itself, a criminal offense in most jurisdictions. But for us, this meant one harsh truth: the threat was now not only reputational and financial, but also institutional.

Aizhan decided to use the power of legal tools for criminal purposes. While previous attacks had been, albeit powerful, still a troll storm, we were now faced with a coordinated attempt to destroy both businesses and their stakeholders using police procedures.

Over the year, hundreds of pieces of evidence, letters, fakes, and disinformation have accumulated. A separate team was dedicated exclusively to working with platforms. We filed dozens of complaints and appeals to online resources, social media, and hosting providers. The reactions varied: some brushed us off, telling us to go prove our case in court; others immediately understood what was happening and promptly blocked the fake materials. Every deleted post or closed channel was a small victory in a war of attrition.

Aizhan has been hiding in Britain all this time, making legal action extremely difficult and turning an obvious crime into a bureaucratic maze. And proving a direct link between specific publications and the gang leader is nearly impossible given the anonymity and artificially created accounts.

But despite the hell she's created, her ruined reputation, and the businesses and teams she's destroyed, we still refuse to pay her compensation to make her stop. We know we're doing our job honestly – building innovative projects that are ahead of their time, creating unique digital platforms, and sincerely working for the benefit of people and progress.

And even now, when a dirty war has been waged against us for over a year, we won't give up. We will defend ourselves, we will uphold our name and reputation by all legal means. Because business isn't just about money. It's about principles, about trust, about people who don't run away when things are tough.

If there's one lesson every online entrepreneur should learn, it's simple: online, you're never safe from predators and scammers looking to profit at your expense. Don't rely on everyone's common sense, and don't believe that truth will always prevail. In the digital world, truth requires armor, and reputation requires constant protection.

Metaverses, blockchain, neural networks—technology changes, but human nature remains the same. Where there's success, there will always be someone who wants to destroy it for their own gain.