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This is...not realistic on any level. I've been professionally investigating cryptocurrency scams/thefts/fraud since 2017. This is at least twice as convoluted

by smeej 2y ago

This is...not realistic on any level. I've been professionally investigating cryptocurrency scams/thefts/fraud since 2017. This is at least twice as convoluted a process as is necessary to separate people from millions and millions of dollars in cryptocurrencies if the site stays up for a week. People don't bother spinning up stuff like this when the easy stuff works just fine.

paulpauper 2y ago
Yeah a fake livestream of Elon Musk or Mike Saylor still makes hundreds of thousands of dollars/day undetected and untraced, no FBI involvement or arrests at all, still going strong to this day. Why waste time with this crap.
- redorb 2y ago
  I've been reporting fake tesla and space x accounts so often on youtube - that I eventually wrote a script to copy and past into the report. Most of the time they do get removed - sometimes successfully before the QRcode is displayed. They even bot the streams so it appears like 30-40k people are watching creating 'social proof'
- atlex2 2y ago
  Why does google video search still allow scam users to show up as ‘SpaceX’ on YouTube? Doesn’t YouTube have a unique username system??
  - kiba 2y ago
    I assume a lack of manpower and lack of concerted attention to specific scams. Another option is a Kafkaesque reporting mechanism in which a scammer took down their own videos before they could be reviewed by moderators. This is rarer but possible.
dullcrisp 2y ago
But don’t you want to buy the book to learn how not to fall for these scams?
landryraccoon 2y ago
I'm curious, do you advertise your services to the public? I have a relative who's been victimized by a cryptocurrency scam. Would you mind if I contacted you about it?
- atilla_bilgic 2y ago
  Dear landryracoon, Unfortunately, I have no services to provide for the recovery of the resources. After seeing an increase in these kinds of scams in my social circle, I have compiled that book to share my professional knowledge to spread knowledge with everyone. One of my readers has recently reached out to me about the examples and this has motivated me to start writing these articles for reaching out to more people. I have no issues to get contacted and I would like to help as much as I can.
yieldcrv 2y ago
As a counterpoint it is very realistic. If you ever launch a token and run your own telegram channel, all sorts of specialists come out the woodwork with extremely convoluted schemes The sad thing is that the legitimate ones look just like the illegitimate ones My first top exchange listing was through a DM I’ve done partnerships with no name exchanges that turned out fine, also initiated over unsolicited DM been scammed a few times by people that didnt deliver, and had no intention to both the legit and illegit ones have no references because their clients are all other token projects whose community needs to feel everything happened organically scammers take advantage of this desire for secrecy it’s really just all about niche and specialization
- lolinder 2y ago
  > both the legit and illegit ones have no references because their clients are all other token projects whose community needs to feel everything happened organically I realize that you probably have no clue how this sounds, so I'm going to translate this sentence into how it sounds to those of us outside the crypto world: > Both the scammers-of-normal-people and the scammers-of-the-scammers have no references because their clients are all scammers who don't want their marks to know that it's a scam Please do correct me if I'm somehow misinterpreting the reason why it is so important to these "legit" contacts that secrecy be maintained lest their "community" find out.
  - yieldcrv 2y ago
    Its not important and I didn't say the reasoning was good, you’ll just be hard pressed to get that level of validation from any provider until that intermediary space gets more regulated In the mean time there are a separate category of people that take advantage of that structure, resulting in a high cost low trust environment, where people are willing to take gambles anyway, as the upside is always additional liquidity
    - lolinder 2y ago
      I think you're missing my point, which is that in the middle of describing an environment where you can't be confident of anyone's honesty, you acknowledged that even the "legit" actors who aren't trying to scam you are trying to keep things a secret from their "community" so that it can appear to them that everything is happening organically. What that says to me is that you're in a community of scammers, so it's hard to tell the difference between someone who's out to scam you and someone who's just out to scam some plebs.
Animats 2y ago
Yeah. That particular scam sounds like the old "binary option" scams out of Israel. Those involved large numbers of people, typically recent immigrants to Israel, working in call centers to con people. The scam binary options brokers were not only rigged, cashing out was next to impossible. Those were finally shut down, after the Times of Israel published a many-part expose, "Predators work at night"[1] Also, one of the big operations tried spamming Wikipedia really hard, which resulted in so much pushback that it attracted significant negative attention to the scams. The people behind those scams were not punished much, and pivoted to crypto, "contracts for difference", and other related scams. For the simple scams, see r/metaverse-blockchain. This is currently full of pump and dump memecoin scams, promoted as such. Get in and out before the dump is the pitch. Of course, the issuers of the coin are guaranteed a gain, while, collectively, everybody else loses. There is no "metaverse" component to these coins any more. There used to be claims that the money being raised was going to develop a 3D virtual world. A very few of the "metaverse" coins actually got something going, but most just took the money and ran. Even the ones that got something going didn't do a very good job. The result either looked awful or was so expensive to run server side that they could only run it for special events. There's several new crap memecoins each week. The promotions look like they come from a template. This looks like a low-effort operation. Where's the SEC when you need them? (Mostly dealing with higher-dollar scams, actually. They bring the hammer down on one or two crypto scams per month, but there are so many.) [1] https://www.timesofisrael.com/tel-aviv-binary-options-firm-advertises-for-predators/ https://www.timesofisrael.com/tel-aviv-binary-options-firm-a...

by smeej 2y ago

paulpauper 2y ago

Yeah a fake livestream of Elon Musk or Mike Saylor still makes hundreds of thousands of dollars/day undetected and untraced, no FBI involvement or arrests at all, still going strong to this day. Why waste time with this crap.

redorb 2y ago
I've been reporting fake tesla and space x accounts so often on youtube - that I eventually wrote a script to copy and past into the report. Most of the time they do get removed - sometimes successfully before the QRcode is displayed. They even bot the streams so it appears like 30-40k people are watching creating 'social proof'
atlex2 2y ago
Why does google video search still allow scam users to show up as ‘SpaceX’ on YouTube? Doesn’t YouTube have a unique username system??
- kiba 2y ago
  I assume a lack of manpower and lack of concerted attention to specific scams. Another option is a Kafkaesque reporting mechanism in which a scammer took down their own videos before they could be reviewed by moderators. This is rarer but possible.

dullcrisp 2y ago

But don’t you want to buy the book to learn how not to fall for these scams?

landryraccoon 2y ago

I'm curious, do you advertise your services to the public? I have a relative who's been victimized by a cryptocurrency scam. Would you mind if I contacted you about it?

atilla_bilgic 2y ago
Dear landryracoon, Unfortunately, I have no services to provide for the recovery of the resources. After seeing an increase in these kinds of scams in my social circle, I have compiled that book to share my professional knowledge to spread knowledge with everyone. One of my readers has recently reached out to me about the examples and this has motivated me to start writing these articles for reaching out to more people. I have no issues to get contacted and I would like to help as much as I can.

yieldcrv 2y ago

As a counterpoint it is very realistic. If you ever launch a token and run your own telegram channel, all sorts of specialists come out the woodwork with extremely convoluted schemes The sad thing is that the legitimate ones look just like the illegitimate ones My first top exchange listing was through a DM I’ve done partnerships with no name exchanges that turned out fine, also initiated over unsolicited DM been scammed a few times by people that didnt deliver, and had no intention to both the legit and illegit ones have no references because their clients are all other token projects whose community needs to feel everything happened organically scammers take advantage of this desire for secrecy it’s really just all about niche and specialization

lolinder 2y ago
> both the legit and illegit ones have no references because their clients are all other token projects whose community needs to feel everything happened organically I realize that you probably have no clue how this sounds, so I'm going to translate this sentence into how it sounds to those of us outside the crypto world: > Both the scammers-of-normal-people and the scammers-of-the-scammers have no references because their clients are all scammers who don't want their marks to know that it's a scam Please do correct me if I'm somehow misinterpreting the reason why it is so important to these "legit" contacts that secrecy be maintained lest their "community" find out.
- yieldcrv 2y ago
  Its not important and I didn't say the reasoning was good, you’ll just be hard pressed to get that level of validation from any provider until that intermediary space gets more regulated In the mean time there are a separate category of people that take advantage of that structure, resulting in a high cost low trust environment, where people are willing to take gambles anyway, as the upside is always additional liquidity
  - lolinder 2y ago
    I think you're missing my point, which is that in the middle of describing an environment where you can't be confident of anyone's honesty, you acknowledged that even the "legit" actors who aren't trying to scam you are trying to keep things a secret from their "community" so that it can appear to them that everything is happening organically. What that says to me is that you're in a community of scammers, so it's hard to tell the difference between someone who's out to scam you and someone who's just out to scam some plebs.

Animats 2y ago

Yeah. That particular scam sounds like the old "binary option" scams out of Israel. Those involved large numbers of people, typically recent immigrants to Israel, working in call centers to con people. The scam binary options brokers were not only rigged, cashing out was next to impossible. Those were finally shut down, after the Times of Israel published a many-part expose, "Predators work at night"[1] Also, one of the big operations tried spamming Wikipedia really hard, which resulted in so much pushback that it attracted significant negative attention to the scams. The people behind those scams were not punished much, and pivoted to crypto, "contracts for difference", and other related scams. For the simple scams, see r/metaverse-blockchain. This is currently full of pump and dump memecoin scams, promoted as such. Get in and out before the dump is the pitch. Of course, the issuers of the coin are guaranteed a gain, while, collectively, everybody else loses. There is no "metaverse" component to these coins any more. There used to be claims that the money being raised was going to develop a 3D virtual world. A very few of the "metaverse" coins actually got something going, but most just took the money and ran. Even the ones that got something going didn't do a very good job. The result either looked awful or was so expensive to run server side that they could only run it for special events. There's several new crap memecoins each week. The promotions look like they come from a template. This looks like a low-effort operation. Where's the SEC when you need them? (Mostly dealing with higher-dollar scams, actually. They bring the hammer down on one or two crypto scams per month, but there are so many.) [1] https://www.timesofisrael.com/tel-aviv-binary-options-firm-advertises-for-predators/ https://www.timesofisrael.com/tel-aviv-binary-options-firm-a...