Could the CMOS battery have died in your laptop, which has caused it to not detect the SSD? I have seen a dell laptop do that, and the AHCI/RAID setting caused it to not boot as well. Perhaps check if your BIOS setting for UEFI boot/legacy boot setting has also changed?
As for replacement, a new SSD is a cheap debugging step, and worst case you can put it in an enclosure and use it as a portable disk. I would try replace the SSD (after ruling out the legacy boot settings).
I don't think laptop prices are coming down any time soon, so if all else fails, you may just have to suck it up. Perhaps checkout second hand marketplaces?
I'm guessing your email and some passwords were leaked recently. The scammers are hoping that you:
a) have a chatgpt account already
b) are lazy with your passwords and reuse them across services.
Or
c) will click on of the verification code links and let them in
If they get lucky, they get an openai account in your name that they can fraudulently abuse. It costs them basically nothing to try, and theyll be doing it across millions of accounts.