How I got duped by pump and dump

It was 15 July 2020, Robinhood was running promotions that they will give free stock to anyone opening brokerage account with them. I opened up brokerage account with Robinhood. But they give free stock only after you deposit $100 into their brokerage account. Robinhood promised they will give stock between $5 to $1400. I was feeling lucky. I quickly deposited $100 and in moments I received scratch card in application. Scratched that card as soon as it dropped on app. I got VBIV which was trading at $5 at the time. I was hoping bigger stock but i knew I would get stock only around $5. Next day I saw jump in VBIV stock by 2-3%. I googled about stock and found article that VBIV is working on pan corona vaccine. They explained how company is going to make lot of profit. I quickly purchased VBIV stocks with all money I had. For time I started with my normal life I even forgot about money I invested as I was thinking of it as long term investment. One month later I open my Robinhood account and I was shocked. I was 50% down. When all NASDAQ stocks were making all time high. Here my stock reduced my capital to half. Year later when I read about pump and dump and looked at VBIV chart and about paid promotional articles. It was too late. At the time of this writing I am still recovering from losses I made during VBIV pump and dump.