Now I am curious if these are purely scam attempt or what? I am also curious if all these incidents are tied somehow.
someone is trying to scam and fuck you over at the same time is what i think.
You can't be surprised there are scammers and imposters on Telegram. It's very easy to change your username into something that looks like something else.
it's even worse than that, scammers leave the username field empty and just put the legit @username of the account they are impersonating in the bio.
if you do not paying close attention, it's easy to think you are talking to the real person if that the only thing you check.
It's almost as if it's designed to facilitate scamming.
that's a stretch imo, but telegram is definitely one of the apps you need to stay sharp on, else you will get scammed.