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Investigating Logan Paul's biggest scam [video]

376 points by thm 4y ago

phonescreen_man 4y ago
For me the question is, when they lost a little, why go on to lose a lot more? I guess the gamblers galaxy was at play. Logan Paul and his ilk are masters of marketing and manipulation.
- gnuvince 4y ago
  I'm not an expert on this topic, so I'd like to know as well. My own personal theory is that most people, whatever their intelligence level, feel that they are smarter than the average person and their intelligence is part of their sense of identity. When people fall victim to a scam—when they are outwitted—that sense of identity takes a big hit and it's so hard to admit that they were not as smart as they thought they were, that they were wrong about who they thought they were. And so rather than doing the rational thing which would be to admit being deceived and not seeing through it, they double-down, they want to find a way to make the scam work for them, to prove to others, but mostly themselves, that they were not dumb, that they were the smart ones.
  - aswanson 4y ago
    Bingo. That's why the friend that points out you've been scammed gets more vitriol than the conman. They've basically, in objective terms, called the mark stupid.
- drcode 4y ago
  It's just the whole GameStop pump all over again: the people who lost money knew it was a scam, but were hoping they could sell when prices were still high Unfortunately for them, in this case it was so broken that not even the sales mechanism was functional, so they couldn't even dump the eggs straight out of the gate
- drowsspa 4y ago
  I think there's some truth to the whole "It's hard to scam a honest man". At the very least people would wonder whom they're making money off from
marban 4y ago
I wonder what went wrong in parenthood when kids have idols like this guy.
- Gelob 4y ago
  Nothing went wrong. You never watched something on tv when you were younger that your parents thought was filth and stupid?
  - paulgb 4y ago
    I did, but I fortunately didn't have $500k to “invest” in a game at the time.
  - coldtea 4y ago
    Yes. And that was a problem with parenthood back then too.
  - marban 4y ago
    No, I'm not aware of anyone getting scammed by He-Man.
    - iso1631 4y ago
      You benefited from strong regulations which covered television programming, and even stronger regulations about those aimed at kids. If NBC had broadcast scams in He-Man or Scooby Doo rather than the weekly moral messages they'd have been off air faster than you could blink. Regulation barely exists any more, except mainly to defend copyright owners.
    - chowells 4y ago
      He-Man was the scam. The entire show was created specifically to sell toys to children. Before Reagan's deregulation crusade in the early 80s, that was illegal.
      - godzillabrennus 4y ago
JumpCrisscross 4y ago
TL; DW? (Feel like this is a fair ask for video.)
- barnabask 4y ago
  https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=386p68_lDHA https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=386p68_lDHA
  - staindk 4y ago
    This is cool! BTW for anyone else interested - you can hit "show transcript" on any YT vid (with CC I'm guessing) - and follow along with the video and/or CTRL + F to find mentions of things. On most screens "show transcript" will probably be hidden behind the triple dot menu to the right of the like/dislike buttons.
- tromp 4y ago
  People dropped millions on tokens based on a celebrity's promise of those tokens being useful in a future fun game that lets you earn money. I guess the game never materialized.
  - JumpCrisscross 4y ago
    Oh, so securities fraud. Have complaints been filed with the states’ securities regulators?
    - spaceman_2020 4y ago
      I hope the SEC wakes up. The amount of scams I saw on Fintwit and Cryto Twitter in 2020-22 were absurd
      - dmix 4y ago
        This one is still only a year old roughly. SEC gears will probably start moving soon. This one is pretty blatant and very public.
citizenpaul 4y ago
The world has gotten too good too fast in many places. Hugh sectors of the "economy" are effectively scams and fake jobs to the point it is near the norm rather than exception. Kids grown into adults now have seen it their whole lives, they have been ripped off themselves repeatedly. Millions have donated to charities that were supposedly reputable for years to later find out they were stealing or using the money for their own benifit. Why would they not think of getting in on a scam for their own benefit for once. I don't blame the victims. They did however join a game with their earned money with intent to make more. Its not like they chose to fund cancer research or something beneficial. I don't feel too bad for the victims in this case, more just that I really despise the way society seem to be irreversibly headed.
- themagician 4y ago
  I feel this so acutely and I often wonder how other people don’t see this and it makes me want to scream. Almost everything new is some form of scam or scheme. Particular on social media (IG, TikTok, etc.) almost ever ad or sponsored post is a scam. I can imagine that growing up right now you must assume this is normal and just the way it is.
  - astrange 4y ago
    None of mine are. Though IG does keep trying to sell me Viagra.
- codegeek 4y ago
  "I don't blame the victims" I don't blame the victims as much as the scammers but I surely do put some blame on people too because Greed and/or desperation drives them to do things which are too good to be true. Most of us know better but still do it hoping it would pan out. There is no grift without grifters but there is no grift without gullible people as well. If you are giving some stranger money so that you can double it in a year without really understanding why, you should be blamed. My 2 cents.
  - lordnacho 4y ago
aphroz 4y ago
Another Coffeezilla case? He will soon be able to build a real 10M studio.
- valdiorn 4y ago
  This man needs a proper budget and press credentials. He should be in the running for a Pulitzer at this point.
  - LegitShady 4y ago
    press credentials do not appear in the constitution. they are just press assocation members recognizing themselves. your right to freedom of press is not contingent on having press credentials. i think coffeezilla is doing well with what he has right now ajd i dont known if big budget and fake recognition mean more than the grassroots recognition he actually gets without those things.
  - jerrygenser 4y ago
    I would hope he doesn't get too big or he'll have too much to lose and not be able to do the work he does. He hinted at this in his podcast with lex Friedman. He also mentioned another forcing function would be when he has kids he needs to reconsider he's journalistic risk.
  - maxbond 4y ago
    I feel like that would destroy him honestly. Kind of like how after SoftBank gave Adam Neumann $1B and told him to "get crazy," he succumbed to his worst instincts. Not to say Coffeezilla is a grifter, but I think Coffeezilla is thriving in part due to his constraints. If he had a huge budget and resources, he wouldn't be an agile nobody who could convince anyone to get on the phone and tell on themselves. He'd be just another news outlet, with too much to lose to act in the way he's used to.
  - nailer 4y ago
    I hope he has a proper need and the idea of 'credentialled' press is abandoned.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
xyst 4y ago
Throw him and his cabal of sycophants in prison with Sam bank man fraud
kodah 4y ago
I can't begin to understand what the perspective of someone who holds value in their head for NFTs is. Are they grifters themselves in an Amway kind of deal? Is there some actual use that I'm just totally missing?
- xmonkee 4y ago
  yes, everyone i know who’s into nfts is in it for short term hype-riding profits. Its grifters all the way down
- cmckn 4y ago
  I guess the charitable take is they’re just collectibles. As someone who has a moderate interest in collecting physical things (such as vinyl records) it’s hard to understand why anyone would enjoy “collecting” an entry in a data structure.
  - LarryMullins 4y ago
    Collection of products manufactured with the intent of being collectables is another thing I can't wrap my mind around. Intentionally rare baseball/pokemon/magic trading cards, beanie babies, funko pops... I just don't get it. If you're going to collect something, doesn't it seem more authentic to collect something that was never meant to be collectable but became that way as the passage of time attrited that thing? Things which became collectable organically, rather than being manufactured with the intent of being collectable, stand a much better chance of retaining their value and seem intrinsically more interesting. I guess in some cases the line is blurred. Like stamp collecting, and the existence of limited-run stamps originally intended to entice stamp collectors.
    - nerdponx 4y ago
      I don't get it either, but I think I understand why people do. First is that collecting stuff can be fun. There's an element of the "thrill of the chase" tracking down individual items, and of discovering new things, and of completing a project of some kind. There's also sometimes an element of belonging to a community, The hobby of collecting becomes an activity in and or itself. Second is that it's not entirely about scarcity. Baseball cards are desirable because people like to follow sports and athletes and stats. Funko Pops are desirable because people like pop culture and want figurines of pop culture figures. Fine art is desirable because it ostensibly looks nice (or fits some other definition of "art"). Most NFTs are also "art" or otherwise visually interesting, and moreover represent some kind of techno-futuristic optimism that appeals to people. Of course, things get a little hairy once "real money" gets involved. There are orders of magnitude more money involved than, say, rare books or Magic: The Gathering cards, and the fact that everything is digital and highly liquid (in the financial sense) makes it all seem a lot more accessible. And of course that accessibility, coupled with the thing being poorly understood and widely hyped, makes it a uniquely tempting arena for scams and financial speculation.
raphlinus 4y ago
Coffee's recent interview on the Lex Fridman podcast gives more background to these investigations, and specifically why you're not seeing them in mainstream media. Basically, Coffee is taking a lot of risk, as the scammers apply a lot of pressure, including legal threats and not so legal threats, to suppress knowledge of their wrongdoing. Mainstream media tends to give in to these threats, but Coffee is in a somewhat unique position of being able to take them on. I've lately become slightly addicted. The production style is appealing, and the stories compelling. The fact that people like Logan Paul are able to pull off these scams with little accountability says a lot about our modern times. I definitely recommend Coffeezilla.
- wyldfire 4y ago
  > Mainstream media tends to give in to these threats, Not sure which parts of the mainstream media you're referring to but certainly not traditional (legacy?) print media like NYT/WaPo. Maybe just maybe it's not interesting to big outlets because influencers like Paul have less influence overall than is apparent to the subcultures who follow them. NYT on Paul [1]. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/27/technology/crypto-influencers.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/27/technology/crypto-influen...
  - _fat_santa 4y ago
    The difference is breaking the story vs reporting on it after it has been broken. Had Coffee not put out his video series, NYT would have likely not been compelled to write a piece about it
    - jrumbut 4y ago
      I haven't followed this but I will take anyone's word for it that Coffee did break the story and cause the NYT to take notice, and that was great work. I think the objection is to the image of major media outlets living in fear of the Paul brothers. They regularly publish negative stories on people with much better lawyers, more influence, and scarier extralegal muscle.
darepublic 4y ago
The FTX scandal led me down YouTube's algorithmic path to coffeezilla and also cold fusion. Couple new subscriptions for me.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
xwowsersx 4y ago
The thing that kind of amazed me is the interviews with seemingly normal people who were victims of this scam. A common thing they said was "well I assumed this was legit because it's Logan Paul behind it. I trust him." It's hard for me to fully understand the naivete inherent in falling for someone like Logan's act and thinking he's somehow trustworthy.
- knaik94 4y ago
  I imagine it comes from people's optimistic belief that trust can be rebuilt and bad people can be reformed. When a public figure was disgraced so openly, by the entire planet, any kind of comeback indirectly reflects a positive change. If they were bad people, it's hard to understand why they are still popular. I am not arguing that any of that logic is correct, just sympathizing why Logan Paul was given a second chance by a lot of these people.
bambax 4y ago
> People saw Logan as different (6th minute) Different how? Isn't he the guy who went all the way to Japan to film bodies of dead people in the so-called "suicide forest" just to have a big laugh about it? How likely is it that this kind of personality will take your money and laugh about it, and laugh about it more if it ends morbidly for you? I know it's wrong, but I have a hard time feeling sorry for people who give money to someone like that. I mean, I'm sorry they're hurt and I'm sorry they're broke, but they really really should have known better.
- polishdude20 4y ago
  There's gotta be a line between victim blaming and outright victim stupidity. I think these people who fell for these scams may be on the latter half of that line.
  - agumonkey 4y ago
    > victim blaming and outright victim stupidity. the last decade completely removed people foresight in negative outcomes. it's always the system or the other party
  - Beaver117 4y ago
    I'm not sure how anyone can say with a straight face that they trusted and believed in Logan. I would sooner buy a bored ape than crypto from him. These scams are easy to see through I thought. But people ended up spending millions of dollars on it before it was even released?
- LarryMullins 4y ago
  > I know it's wrong Provided you differentiate feeling sorry for the victims and wanting the perpetrators brought to justice, I don't think there's any real social obligation to feel sorry for victims. Wanting justice can be justified by considering the corrosive effect crimes have on society as a whole, even though the direct victims don't deserve sympathy. For instance, when gangsters massacre other gangsters, I don't feel sorry for the victims (who lived by the sword, then died by it) but this lack of empathy for the victims doesn't temper my desire to see the perpetrators brought to justice. The trap is when you don't care about the perpetrators facing justice because you think the victims deserved it. That's a bad path to go down.
croes 4y ago
Is it just me or does Logan Paul sound like Trump in the beginning of the video?
- Quarrelsome 4y ago
  you can trace this back to the Pentecostal movement. They sound the same because they're all grifters.
mathverse 4y ago
I dont understand how rich people like Logan Paul and Andrew Tate are. To put it in perspective there’s a lot of startups with real useful products that have way less funding or revenue than people like this. How is this possible?
- bsaul 4y ago
  I wouldn’t be surprised if those people were actually faking everything, including their wealth. You can always rent a luxurious car for a photoshoot and pretend it’s yours.. My trust on anything happening on instagram or youtube has now reached 0
  - mathverse 4y ago
    I want to believe this because it would at least mean the reality is not really this grotesque. But to be honest (based on what some top Youtubers said about how underestimated is their public net worth) i think it's even more ridiculuous.
- jasonhansel 4y ago
  The obvious answer would be: our current economic system is inherently inefficient in allocating resources.
- xboxnolifes 4y ago
  Ultimately we exist in a society, a species even, that relies on persuading each other for support. Persuasion beats utility. Even very useful things often require persuasion to get people to use them.
  - kube-system 4y ago
    Humans also collectively generate more ideas and products in a single day than a single person could evaluate over their entire lifetime. Whether we realize it or not, no matter how DIY or independent we might be, we all rely on trust in others’ specializations to live anything resembling a modern lifestyle. People are quick to judge those who have misplaced their trust as “dumb” but trust is quite a difficult thing to evaluate, particularly when information asymmetry is involved. People who fall for scams usually do so in a very rational way, given the trust networks they have built for themselves.
avidphantasm 4y ago
Who is Logan Paul?
- jasonhansel 4y ago
  A youtuber best known for monetizing the corpse of a suicide victim.
  - raziel2701 4y ago
    I would also add that he's one of those people that benefit greatly from bad press. He's able to monetize the hatred. An article like this and the attention we pay him ultimately benefit him.
bmitc 4y ago
Is the system failing? How is this not all actionable from a standpoint of fraud, failure to pay / breaking contracts, and threats? Why are there no consequences for these people? Just like the influencer who intentionally crashed his plane. Paul and his manager are amazing in that they can’t even form a complete sentence. They’re just reaching for seemingly relevant words. It reminds me of Walter from The Big Lebowski when talking about amphibious rodents being illegal within city premises. https://youtu.be/oovqYtMy1BI https://youtu.be/oovqYtMy1BI
jmyeet 4y ago
It's never good to be a scammer. It's even worse when you don't need the money. Logan Paul by any estimation is rich enough to never have to work another day in his life. Scamming money from people who aren't is a whole new level of scummy. Crypto, despite all the Crypto Andys extolling its still unrealized potential virtues, has shown itself to be a wonderful vehicle for scamming people. The only real application is bypassing laws. That's not inherently unethical (eg sending money to Venezuelan family members) but it's also great for scammers. The more interesting question is why do people keep falling for this? The answer is ultimately despair. There is a recognition by many people that their circumstances are dire and they will likely never be able to improve their socioeconomic status. You have people who spend decades paying off student debt. Others who are every day risk of medical bankruptcy. And many younger people feel permanently locked out of having any kinf of housing security. Despair is fertile ground for scammers as people feel like this is their only way out, the hopes for the next Bitcoin to make them wealthy. At what point do people realize that this is a systemic problem? It doesn't have to be this way, particularly in the wealthiest nation on Earth.
appleaday1 4y ago
I was subscribed to Coffeezilla when he was like under 50k, it's really amazing to see the journey some of these people go through to get where they are today, we definitely need more people in this scene.
lowbloodsugar 4y ago
“… left investors feeling like they’d been led on…” I don’t doubt that these people really did think of themselves as investors. What a bunch of fucking idiots. They “invested” in video games loot from Logan fucking Paul.
DantesKite 4y ago
I haven't seen the entire video yet, but is there a chance for legal repercussions for Logan Paul? Or will he get away scot free?
MagicMoonlight 4y ago
Oh wow who could have possibly predicted that putting 500k into PonziZoo would result in the owner stealing all your money. It's clearly such a sensible investment.
IAmGraydon 4y ago
It's well known that one feature of a market bubble that is about to burst is rampant fraud. People are flush with cash and are therefore willing to take higher risk positions with it. This is compounded by the fact that they get caught up in the contagious social euphoria that occurs when everyone is making money. On the other side of this, predators like Logan Paul go into action to take advantage of it. This is exactly what happened here. Instead of buying things with actual value, these people spent millions to hatch virtual eggs that were sold to them by a shady internet personality. This theme played out in 1929, 2000, 2008 and now again. You see it everywhere, including the recent FTX collapse, Elon Musk's Dogecoin scam (among others), and on and on.
Justsignedup 4y ago
I just want to note: We have invested hard into a unregulated "currency" and now there's quite a bit of surprise and shock that regular financial protections like the ability to dispute purchases via credit cards are completely unavailable. Just looking at these stories, it is absolutely possible to do this with cash, but once it goes into this unregulated world, its magical how much they can get away with.
plaguepilled 4y ago
A lot of people are surprised that Logan Paul is seen as trustworthy and that believing him is an extreme lapse in judgement. To be clear, it is an extreme lapse in judgement. However, there are a lot of "little things" that make him accessible to a demographic of people. He talks in a way familiar to younger audiences. He participates in meme culture. He didn't get his fame from a "dad" job (the suicide forest bid and boxing I think? And just doing YouTube "stuff"). These are terrible reasons to trust someone but the critical thing is that they ARE reasons people choose to trust someone. Because in some cases, familiarity is the best yardstick for reliability some people have.
- europeanguy 4y ago
  > He talks in a way familiar to younger audiences. None of the victims in that video were "younger people".
  - plaguepilled 4y ago
    Yeah they were? They weren't teens but they were definitely young enough to think of themselves as young, which is more the point.
europeanguy 4y ago
As a general rule, I don't think we should blame the victims. If someone got scammed, we shouldn't go "well if they were smart enough they wouldn't have fallen for it". However in the case of pump and dumps, I would like to point out that the victims were trying to be successful pumpanddumpers themselves, but failed. These people didn't have a problem with putting their money on the line to try and sell to a great fool. For this reason I can't empathize much with these people (though of course it's still fraud and the fraudsters should still go to jail). I find it interesting to note that at least one of the victims there was aware of this to some degree. He's the guy who put I think 7k into it and says "I just wanted to hatch the eggs and play in the ecosystem". Someone who just wants to play in the ecosystem will spend $50 and buy call of duty, not $7k for pictures of eggs. No, this guy is perfectly aware that he was trying to be a fraudster himself, and now they it turns out he's the victim he feels the need to point out that he just wanted to play, I guess out of embarrassment. Yeah, right.
gardenhedge 4y ago
Coffeezilla is great. Loved the safemoon video
RektBoy 4y ago
If some psychologist made a study on people who believed Logan, that would be interesting read. To me, it’s unbelievable. Since Logan and his brother Jake has long history of scamming their fanbase over and over.

376 points by thm 4y ago

For me the question is, when they lost a little, why go on to lose a lot more? I guess the gamblers galaxy was at play. Logan Paul and his ilk are masters of marketing and manipulation.

gnuvince 4y ago
I'm not an expert on this topic, so I'd like to know as well. My own personal theory is that most people, whatever their intelligence level, feel that they are smarter than the average person and their intelligence is part of their sense of identity. When people fall victim to a scam—when they are outwitted—that sense of identity takes a big hit and it's so hard to admit that they were not as smart as they thought they were, that they were wrong about who they thought they were. And so rather than doing the rational thing which would be to admit being deceived and not seeing through it, they double-down, they want to find a way to make the scam work for them, to prove to others, but mostly themselves, that they were not dumb, that they were the smart ones.
- aswanson 4y ago
  Bingo. That's why the friend that points out you've been scammed gets more vitriol than the conman. They've basically, in objective terms, called the mark stupid.
drcode 4y ago
It's just the whole GameStop pump all over again: the people who lost money knew it was a scam, but were hoping they could sell when prices were still high Unfortunately for them, in this case it was so broken that not even the sales mechanism was functional, so they couldn't even dump the eggs straight out of the gate
drowsspa 4y ago
I think there's some truth to the whole "It's hard to scam a honest man". At the very least people would wonder whom they're making money off from

marban 4y ago

I wonder what went wrong in parenthood when kids have idols like this guy.

Gelob 4y ago
Nothing went wrong. You never watched something on tv when you were younger that your parents thought was filth and stupid?
- paulgb 4y ago
  I did, but I fortunately didn't have $500k to “invest” in a game at the time.
- coldtea 4y ago
  Yes. And that was a problem with parenthood back then too.
- marban 4y ago
  No, I'm not aware of anyone getting scammed by He-Man.
  - iso1631 4y ago
    You benefited from strong regulations which covered television programming, and even stronger regulations about those aimed at kids. If NBC had broadcast scams in He-Man or Scooby Doo rather than the weekly moral messages they'd have been off air faster than you could blink. Regulation barely exists any more, except mainly to defend copyright owners.
  - chowells 4y ago
    He-Man was the scam. The entire show was created specifically to sell toys to children. Before Reagan's deregulation crusade in the early 80s, that was illegal.
    - godzillabrennus 4y ago

JumpCrisscross 4y ago

TL; DW? (Feel like this is a fair ask for video.)

barnabask 4y ago
https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=386p68_lDHA https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=386p68_lDHA
- staindk 4y ago
  This is cool! BTW for anyone else interested - you can hit "show transcript" on any YT vid (with CC I'm guessing) - and follow along with the video and/or CTRL + F to find mentions of things. On most screens "show transcript" will probably be hidden behind the triple dot menu to the right of the like/dislike buttons.
tromp 4y ago
People dropped millions on tokens based on a celebrity's promise of those tokens being useful in a future fun game that lets you earn money. I guess the game never materialized.
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago
  Oh, so securities fraud. Have complaints been filed with the states’ securities regulators?
  - spaceman_2020 4y ago
    I hope the SEC wakes up. The amount of scams I saw on Fintwit and Cryto Twitter in 2020-22 were absurd
    - dmix 4y ago
      This one is still only a year old roughly. SEC gears will probably start moving soon. This one is pretty blatant and very public.

citizenpaul 4y ago

The world has gotten too good too fast in many places. Hugh sectors of the "economy" are effectively scams and fake jobs to the point it is near the norm rather than exception. Kids grown into adults now have seen it their whole lives, they have been ripped off themselves repeatedly. Millions have donated to charities that were supposedly reputable for years to later find out they were stealing or using the money for their own benifit. Why would they not think of getting in on a scam for their own benefit for once. I don't blame the victims. They did however join a game with their earned money with intent to make more. Its not like they chose to fund cancer research or something beneficial. I don't feel too bad for the victims in this case, more just that I really despise the way society seem to be irreversibly headed.

themagician 4y ago
I feel this so acutely and I often wonder how other people don’t see this and it makes me want to scream. Almost everything new is some form of scam or scheme. Particular on social media (IG, TikTok, etc.) almost ever ad or sponsored post is a scam. I can imagine that growing up right now you must assume this is normal and just the way it is.
- astrange 4y ago
  None of mine are. Though IG does keep trying to sell me Viagra.
codegeek 4y ago
"I don't blame the victims" I don't blame the victims as much as the scammers but I surely do put some blame on people too because Greed and/or desperation drives them to do things which are too good to be true. Most of us know better but still do it hoping it would pan out. There is no grift without grifters but there is no grift without gullible people as well. If you are giving some stranger money so that you can double it in a year without really understanding why, you should be blamed. My 2 cents.
- lordnacho 4y ago

aphroz 4y ago

Another Coffeezilla case? He will soon be able to build a real 10M studio.

valdiorn 4y ago
This man needs a proper budget and press credentials. He should be in the running for a Pulitzer at this point.
- LegitShady 4y ago
  press credentials do not appear in the constitution. they are just press assocation members recognizing themselves. your right to freedom of press is not contingent on having press credentials. i think coffeezilla is doing well with what he has right now ajd i dont known if big budget and fake recognition mean more than the grassroots recognition he actually gets without those things.
- jerrygenser 4y ago
  I would hope he doesn't get too big or he'll have too much to lose and not be able to do the work he does. He hinted at this in his podcast with lex Friedman. He also mentioned another forcing function would be when he has kids he needs to reconsider he's journalistic risk.
- maxbond 4y ago
  I feel like that would destroy him honestly. Kind of like how after SoftBank gave Adam Neumann $1B and told him to "get crazy," he succumbed to his worst instincts. Not to say Coffeezilla is a grifter, but I think Coffeezilla is thriving in part due to his constraints. If he had a huge budget and resources, he wouldn't be an agile nobody who could convince anyone to get on the phone and tell on themselves. He'd be just another news outlet, with too much to lose to act in the way he's used to.
- nailer 4y ago
  I hope he has a proper need and the idea of 'credentialled' press is abandoned.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

xyst 4y ago

Throw him and his cabal of sycophants in prison with Sam bank man fraud

kodah 4y ago

I can't begin to understand what the perspective of someone who holds value in their head for NFTs is. Are they grifters themselves in an Amway kind of deal? Is there some actual use that I'm just totally missing?

xmonkee 4y ago
yes, everyone i know who’s into nfts is in it for short term hype-riding profits. Its grifters all the way down
cmckn 4y ago
I guess the charitable take is they’re just collectibles. As someone who has a moderate interest in collecting physical things (such as vinyl records) it’s hard to understand why anyone would enjoy “collecting” an entry in a data structure.
- LarryMullins 4y ago
  Collection of products manufactured with the intent of being collectables is another thing I can't wrap my mind around. Intentionally rare baseball/pokemon/magic trading cards, beanie babies, funko pops... I just don't get it. If you're going to collect something, doesn't it seem more authentic to collect something that was never meant to be collectable but became that way as the passage of time attrited that thing? Things which became collectable organically, rather than being manufactured with the intent of being collectable, stand a much better chance of retaining their value and seem intrinsically more interesting. I guess in some cases the line is blurred. Like stamp collecting, and the existence of limited-run stamps originally intended to entice stamp collectors.
  - nerdponx 4y ago
    I don't get it either, but I think I understand why people do. First is that collecting stuff can be fun. There's an element of the "thrill of the chase" tracking down individual items, and of discovering new things, and of completing a project of some kind. There's also sometimes an element of belonging to a community, The hobby of collecting becomes an activity in and or itself. Second is that it's not entirely about scarcity. Baseball cards are desirable because people like to follow sports and athletes and stats. Funko Pops are desirable because people like pop culture and want figurines of pop culture figures. Fine art is desirable because it ostensibly looks nice (or fits some other definition of "art"). Most NFTs are also "art" or otherwise visually interesting, and moreover represent some kind of techno-futuristic optimism that appeals to people. Of course, things get a little hairy once "real money" gets involved. There are orders of magnitude more money involved than, say, rare books or Magic: The Gathering cards, and the fact that everything is digital and highly liquid (in the financial sense) makes it all seem a lot more accessible. And of course that accessibility, coupled with the thing being poorly understood and widely hyped, makes it a uniquely tempting arena for scams and financial speculation.

raphlinus 4y ago

Coffee's recent interview on the Lex Fridman podcast gives more background to these investigations, and specifically why you're not seeing them in mainstream media. Basically, Coffee is taking a lot of risk, as the scammers apply a lot of pressure, including legal threats and not so legal threats, to suppress knowledge of their wrongdoing. Mainstream media tends to give in to these threats, but Coffee is in a somewhat unique position of being able to take them on. I've lately become slightly addicted. The production style is appealing, and the stories compelling. The fact that people like Logan Paul are able to pull off these scams with little accountability says a lot about our modern times. I definitely recommend Coffeezilla.

wyldfire 4y ago
> Mainstream media tends to give in to these threats, Not sure which parts of the mainstream media you're referring to but certainly not traditional (legacy?) print media like NYT/WaPo. Maybe just maybe it's not interesting to big outlets because influencers like Paul have less influence overall than is apparent to the subcultures who follow them. NYT on Paul [1]. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/27/technology/crypto-influencers.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/27/technology/crypto-influen...
- _fat_santa 4y ago
  The difference is breaking the story vs reporting on it after it has been broken. Had Coffee not put out his video series, NYT would have likely not been compelled to write a piece about it
  - jrumbut 4y ago
    I haven't followed this but I will take anyone's word for it that Coffee did break the story and cause the NYT to take notice, and that was great work. I think the objection is to the image of major media outlets living in fear of the Paul brothers. They regularly publish negative stories on people with much better lawyers, more influence, and scarier extralegal muscle.

darepublic 4y ago

The FTX scandal led me down YouTube's algorithmic path to coffeezilla and also cold fusion. Couple new subscriptions for me.

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xwowsersx 4y ago

The thing that kind of amazed me is the interviews with seemingly normal people who were victims of this scam. A common thing they said was "well I assumed this was legit because it's Logan Paul behind it. I trust him." It's hard for me to fully understand the naivete inherent in falling for someone like Logan's act and thinking he's somehow trustworthy.

knaik94 4y ago
I imagine it comes from people's optimistic belief that trust can be rebuilt and bad people can be reformed. When a public figure was disgraced so openly, by the entire planet, any kind of comeback indirectly reflects a positive change. If they were bad people, it's hard to understand why they are still popular. I am not arguing that any of that logic is correct, just sympathizing why Logan Paul was given a second chance by a lot of these people.

bambax 4y ago

> People saw Logan as different (6th minute) Different how? Isn't he the guy who went all the way to Japan to film bodies of dead people in the so-called "suicide forest" just to have a big laugh about it? How likely is it that this kind of personality will take your money and laugh about it, and laugh about it more if it ends morbidly for you? I know it's wrong, but I have a hard time feeling sorry for people who give money to someone like that. I mean, I'm sorry they're hurt and I'm sorry they're broke, but they really really should have known better.

polishdude20 4y ago
There's gotta be a line between victim blaming and outright victim stupidity. I think these people who fell for these scams may be on the latter half of that line.
- agumonkey 4y ago
  > victim blaming and outright victim stupidity. the last decade completely removed people foresight in negative outcomes. it's always the system or the other party
- Beaver117 4y ago
  I'm not sure how anyone can say with a straight face that they trusted and believed in Logan. I would sooner buy a bored ape than crypto from him. These scams are easy to see through I thought. But people ended up spending millions of dollars on it before it was even released?
LarryMullins 4y ago
> I know it's wrong Provided you differentiate feeling sorry for the victims and wanting the perpetrators brought to justice, I don't think there's any real social obligation to feel sorry for victims. Wanting justice can be justified by considering the corrosive effect crimes have on society as a whole, even though the direct victims don't deserve sympathy. For instance, when gangsters massacre other gangsters, I don't feel sorry for the victims (who lived by the sword, then died by it) but this lack of empathy for the victims doesn't temper my desire to see the perpetrators brought to justice. The trap is when you don't care about the perpetrators facing justice because you think the victims deserved it. That's a bad path to go down.

croes 4y ago

Is it just me or does Logan Paul sound like Trump in the beginning of the video?

Quarrelsome 4y ago
you can trace this back to the Pentecostal movement. They sound the same because they're all grifters.

mathverse 4y ago

I dont understand how rich people like Logan Paul and Andrew Tate are. To put it in perspective there’s a lot of startups with real useful products that have way less funding or revenue than people like this. How is this possible?

bsaul 4y ago
I wouldn’t be surprised if those people were actually faking everything, including their wealth. You can always rent a luxurious car for a photoshoot and pretend it’s yours.. My trust on anything happening on instagram or youtube has now reached 0
- mathverse 4y ago
  I want to believe this because it would at least mean the reality is not really this grotesque. But to be honest (based on what some top Youtubers said about how underestimated is their public net worth) i think it's even more ridiculuous.
jasonhansel 4y ago
The obvious answer would be: our current economic system is inherently inefficient in allocating resources.
xboxnolifes 4y ago
Ultimately we exist in a society, a species even, that relies on persuading each other for support. Persuasion beats utility. Even very useful things often require persuasion to get people to use them.
- kube-system 4y ago
  Humans also collectively generate more ideas and products in a single day than a single person could evaluate over their entire lifetime. Whether we realize it or not, no matter how DIY or independent we might be, we all rely on trust in others’ specializations to live anything resembling a modern lifestyle. People are quick to judge those who have misplaced their trust as “dumb” but trust is quite a difficult thing to evaluate, particularly when information asymmetry is involved. People who fall for scams usually do so in a very rational way, given the trust networks they have built for themselves.

avidphantasm 4y ago

Who is Logan Paul?

jasonhansel 4y ago
A youtuber best known for monetizing the corpse of a suicide victim.
- raziel2701 4y ago
  I would also add that he's one of those people that benefit greatly from bad press. He's able to monetize the hatred. An article like this and the attention we pay him ultimately benefit him.

bmitc 4y ago

Is the system failing? How is this not all actionable from a standpoint of fraud, failure to pay / breaking contracts, and threats? Why are there no consequences for these people? Just like the influencer who intentionally crashed his plane. Paul and his manager are amazing in that they can’t even form a complete sentence. They’re just reaching for seemingly relevant words. It reminds me of Walter from The Big Lebowski when talking about amphibious rodents being illegal within city premises. https://youtu.be/oovqYtMy1BI https://youtu.be/oovqYtMy1BI

jmyeet 4y ago

It's never good to be a scammer. It's even worse when you don't need the money. Logan Paul by any estimation is rich enough to never have to work another day in his life. Scamming money from people who aren't is a whole new level of scummy. Crypto, despite all the Crypto Andys extolling its still unrealized potential virtues, has shown itself to be a wonderful vehicle for scamming people. The only real application is bypassing laws. That's not inherently unethical (eg sending money to Venezuelan family members) but it's also great for scammers. The more interesting question is why do people keep falling for this? The answer is ultimately despair. There is a recognition by many people that their circumstances are dire and they will likely never be able to improve their socioeconomic status. You have people who spend decades paying off student debt. Others who are every day risk of medical bankruptcy. And many younger people feel permanently locked out of having any kinf of housing security. Despair is fertile ground for scammers as people feel like this is their only way out, the hopes for the next Bitcoin to make them wealthy. At what point do people realize that this is a systemic problem? It doesn't have to be this way, particularly in the wealthiest nation on Earth.

appleaday1 4y ago

I was subscribed to Coffeezilla when he was like under 50k, it's really amazing to see the journey some of these people go through to get where they are today, we definitely need more people in this scene.

lowbloodsugar 4y ago

“… left investors feeling like they’d been led on…” I don’t doubt that these people really did think of themselves as investors. What a bunch of fucking idiots. They “invested” in video games loot from Logan fucking Paul.

DantesKite 4y ago

I haven't seen the entire video yet, but is there a chance for legal repercussions for Logan Paul? Or will he get away scot free?

MagicMoonlight 4y ago

Oh wow who could have possibly predicted that putting 500k into PonziZoo would result in the owner stealing all your money. It's clearly such a sensible investment.

IAmGraydon 4y ago

It's well known that one feature of a market bubble that is about to burst is rampant fraud. People are flush with cash and are therefore willing to take higher risk positions with it. This is compounded by the fact that they get caught up in the contagious social euphoria that occurs when everyone is making money. On the other side of this, predators like Logan Paul go into action to take advantage of it. This is exactly what happened here. Instead of buying things with actual value, these people spent millions to hatch virtual eggs that were sold to them by a shady internet personality. This theme played out in 1929, 2000, 2008 and now again. You see it everywhere, including the recent FTX collapse, Elon Musk's Dogecoin scam (among others), and on and on.

Justsignedup 4y ago

I just want to note: We have invested hard into a unregulated "currency" and now there's quite a bit of surprise and shock that regular financial protections like the ability to dispute purchases via credit cards are completely unavailable. Just looking at these stories, it is absolutely possible to do this with cash, but once it goes into this unregulated world, its magical how much they can get away with.

plaguepilled 4y ago

A lot of people are surprised that Logan Paul is seen as trustworthy and that believing him is an extreme lapse in judgement. To be clear, it is an extreme lapse in judgement. However, there are a lot of "little things" that make him accessible to a demographic of people. He talks in a way familiar to younger audiences. He participates in meme culture. He didn't get his fame from a "dad" job (the suicide forest bid and boxing I think? And just doing YouTube "stuff"). These are terrible reasons to trust someone but the critical thing is that they ARE reasons people choose to trust someone. Because in some cases, familiarity is the best yardstick for reliability some people have.

europeanguy 4y ago
> He talks in a way familiar to younger audiences. None of the victims in that video were "younger people".
- plaguepilled 4y ago
  Yeah they were? They weren't teens but they were definitely young enough to think of themselves as young, which is more the point.

europeanguy 4y ago

As a general rule, I don't think we should blame the victims. If someone got scammed, we shouldn't go "well if they were smart enough they wouldn't have fallen for it". However in the case of pump and dumps, I would like to point out that the victims were trying to be successful pumpanddumpers themselves, but failed. These people didn't have a problem with putting their money on the line to try and sell to a great fool. For this reason I can't empathize much with these people (though of course it's still fraud and the fraudsters should still go to jail). I find it interesting to note that at least one of the victims there was aware of this to some degree. He's the guy who put I think 7k into it and says "I just wanted to hatch the eggs and play in the ecosystem". Someone who just wants to play in the ecosystem will spend $50 and buy call of duty, not $7k for pictures of eggs. No, this guy is perfectly aware that he was trying to be a fraudster himself, and now they it turns out he's the victim he feels the need to point out that he just wanted to play, I guess out of embarrassment. Yeah, right.

gardenhedge 4y ago

Coffeezilla is great. Loved the safemoon video

RektBoy 4y ago

If some psychologist made a study on people who believed Logan, that would be interesting read. To me, it’s unbelievable. Since Logan and his brother Jake has long history of scamming their fanbase over and over.