The fact that this new crypto mining innovation through telegram happens to be free is what's making it trend that much with many people getting interested to participate without even investigating to know about the source of these projects and their mission. Fair enough some others have been scammed of their funds by the request of conditional deposit of a certain amount of USDT for transfer fee eligibility to withdraw token only to eventually discover that they have been played a fast one on.
Very beginner mistake, to be honest. I never continue to pursue an airdrop that requires you to deposit some fund first before they give it to you. It is so obvious that the developers are just trying to make money out of everyone and not really serious about making the coin useful.
I would understand if an airdrop required some tasks but money? Forget about it.
Not every beginner is privy to these little yet helpful knowledge, they could also conclude it to be a serial part of the task to complete to be given your coin. For every new project the developers are known to be focused on building a community for it's project with stages of tasks to perform as the only criteria to get tokens when launch, hence developers are rather in the process introducing a fund deposit measure, any experience crypto person about airdrops will observe the signs asap and abandon it. Newbies/beginners are always in the habit of wanting to explore things that's the reason they easily fall for those scam schemes.