Is VLC Trade MT a scam, or is it legit?

I met netizens through ig, and we had a great chat at the beginning. After chatting for a while, I talked about short-term trading. I felt that the amount was not very large at the beginning, so I wanted to try trading, and I also made a small profit. Then I talked about it again. I did make a profit from one transaction, but right after the transaction, I was asked about my next transaction and my thoughts on the transaction. I started to feel something was wrong. I checked VLC and found that there was negative information. Friends in the related industry also directly told me about VLC. At first glance, it seemed that it was not a regular exchange. I then used several excuses to ask the netizen to withdraw the amount of money and the amount stuck on the exchange, but he avoided the easy matter and did not read my last message because the URL that the netizen gave me before had been 165 The anti-fraud network locked me, and I sent an email to ask VLC but there was still no response, so I can't withdraw money now. Although the amount is not large, I am still stuck in VLC and cannot withdraw money.

Unable to withdraw funds, you must first pay USDT18,888.-

The person came to chat with me on ig, and then it became more and more familiar. That's how I realized it. He said that he felt that I worked very hard and did not earn a lot of money, so he told me to invest in gold. In the beginning, it was small amount of money. Later, he asked me to buy more, so that the profit will be more. So I invested more money. In addition, he has put his money into my MT5, so I won’t doubt it. He taught me to buy USTD from merchants on Binance, and then contact customer service to deposit funds to MT5 before making transactions. Withdrawal is made in the same way. In the first few times, I did get money sometimes, but later I thought I would make more money in the next transaction if I kept the funds. I have accumulated a certain amount of funds so far, so I want to withdraw them. As a result, the customer service could not be contacted, and the loss was about 80, which was only the principal.