Ahmim, Crypto_Dotar, Crypto Bountyes | BM for Questionable Projects

[holydarkness]

Foreword: I think this is the first time I write on this board. I'm not really sure if my topic would suits better on Reputation or on Scam Accusation, but since one may argue that the person in question did not directly scamming the community and instead just facilitating the scam projects through a very careless DD --if they did any-- for the campaign they managed, I think Reputation fits better.


Flag type-1 against Crypto Bountyes: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=trust;flag=3185


I've put this case on my plate for a few weeks since the first case against ahmim raised, took a glance at their post history, and frowned upon the findings of the bounty campaigns they managed. Couple that with a negative feedback given for bounty abuse [though at that time I didn't look at the reference link], I commited myself to give their projects a sweep when I have time at hand.

Today's the day.

So, first thing first, ahmim and Crypto_Dotar was found to be a connected bounty abuser by Stalker22 back in 4th of February 2023.

Now, these are the campaign started by each of them, where most of them are followed by red flags found by several users:

ahmim:
Bounty thread:

• [Bounty] 💥EPNOC The Next-Generation Hybrid Crypto Exchange 💱 10000$ Token, found to be plagiarizing whitepaper by yours truly, holydarkess, a.k.a. me
• 💥[Limited]💥 Pi Chain Bounty Campaign. Budget: 7000$ BNB | 4 Week., found to be plagiarizing whitepaper and fake team profile and several other red flags by, uhh... I think it'll be more to the community effort as everyone is pitching in
• [💥 Limited Open💥] Lamina Trade Bounty | 100k$ worth of LAMT Token | 4 Weeks.💥, found to be plagiarizing whitepaper and fake team profile, first unearthed by albon
• [💥Bounty Open 💥]Fratun Coin Bounty | 5k$ Busd + 5k$ Fratun Coin | 4 week 💥, well, haven't thoroughly check this one, but a quick scan informed me the project is an MLM with no team and a very vague roadmap, which I wouldn't be surprised if it ended an exit-scam as well

Crypto_Dotar:
Bounty thread: [Open] Millennia Token Community Bounty | 350$ Usdt | 1 Week, found to be plagiarizing whitepaper and fake team profile, by albon

The interesting thing about those projects is that all of them didn't have a representative here, didn't create an account or ANN, simply doing bounty --which I think will not be paid at the end of the period-- which I believe was done deliberately  in order to make their exit-scam easier, with the bounty's purpose is like what examplens said,

[...]
They are obviously not interested in this forum, except to collect more retweets and sharing of their story.

a.k.a., more exposure to the clueless to invest on those hit-and-run projects. I wouldn't even be surprised if all of them were ran by the same team --if not one person-- who deliberately choose these this bounty-manager-wanna-be with poor reputation, knowing they won't bother doing any background check.


Edit: ahh, almost forgot, the purpose of this thread is to ask whether it's fair to leave both of the account --owned by the same person-- negative feedback for this issue, or would that be seen as unfair, given some more reputable BM also has one or two questionable projects which passed their screening and leave a dent on cryptocommunity, and they didn't tagged. So, does a negative feedback deemed appropriate or should it be just a slap on their hand with a ruler?


Edit 2 [13 June 2023]:
Another of their alt, Crypto Bountyes come with another questionable project, Plagiarized Whitepaper - MetaSystem Token


Edit 3 [15 June 2023]:
Adding a flag against Crypto Bountyes on the top part of this post

[1714201355]

1714201355

[Falconer]

This forum does not moderate scams, so any bounty hunter or potential investor is only required to do due diligence on altcoin projects. They have to be held be responsible for their decisions, so even if managers have a good or bad reputation, they are not responsible for any losses suffered by investors or bounty hunters.

There were a lot of unreputable managers in the board, some very bad, but always some highly reputable managers there. However, regarding the legitimacy of the project, everyone is required to conduct their own tests without relying on the manager's reputation.

[Rikafip]

given some more reputable BM also has one or two questionable projects which passed their screening and leave a dent on cryptocommunity, and they didn't tagged

This can happen even to the more experienced bounty managers but what's important though is what they do after they find out that project is scam, and how many times that happened to them. Once or twice can happen to anyone, but if every 2nd bounty turns out to be a scam, then its obvious that manager doesn't really care what he is promoting.

So, does a negative feedback deemed appropriate or should it be just a slap on their hand with a ruler?

I don't think that it would be wrong to leave negative feedbacks on those two accounts. They obviously don't care whether project is scam or not because if they did, they would lock bounty campaign threads immediately after finding out that projects they are promoting have serious red flags.

[holydarkness]

given some more reputable BM also has one or two questionable projects which passed their screening and leave a dent on cryptocommunity, and they didn't tagged

This can happen even to the more experienced bounty managers but what's important though is what they do after they find out that project is scam, and how many times that happened to them. Once or twice can happen to anyone, but if every 2nd bounty turns out to be a scam, then its obvious that manager doesn't really care what he is promoting.

So, does a negative feedback deemed appropriate or should it be just a slap on their hand with a ruler?

I don't think that it would be wrong to leave negative feedbacks on those two accounts. They obviously don't care whether project is scam or not because if they did, they would lock bounty campaign threads immediately after finding out that projects they are promoting have serious red flags.

They --and by "they" I'm referring to one person with two different account-- have four, not only two projects with similar red flags. I think it is quite agreeable that they don't care, like you said.

Regarding their reaction towards a warning, that's a bit complicated, aibon as the OP of Lamina accusation thread had warned them on the 28th and they locked the thread after. But if we inspect closely, the campaign has ended on 26th, so it doesn't really matter whether the BM locked it or not.

Thank you for the input, though, I'll leave a negative feedback with regards to their campaign quality.


Edit:

Jay-suss, I think I really need my sleep, my brain started to working slower and slower, I forgot that I want to add one interesting thing I found upon slipping into their tg channel.



I've never joined a TG campaign --at least not that I can remember-- so I'm not sure if this is normal or not. Is it? Wouldn't it mean the participant spamming and unethically talking and promoting their projects on other projects?


Edit 2: for aibon's reply below mine.

Upon leaving negative feedback on Crypto_Dotar I just realized that someone has raised a type-1 flag against them, and it's currently active. I wonder if it's necessary to raise similar flag for ahmim. I have to say that your argument has its merit, and a part of my logic agreed with it, but the very last part of my opening post prevail on the battle with myself for the ethic on raising flag; which is why I also still abstained from Crypto_Dotar's flag.

I think I'll take it to sleep and think about it more thoroughly tomorrow with a clearer head whether it's appropriate to raise a type-1 flag against ahmim with consideration of the long term sake of newbie investors... if no one had raised it already during my beauty sleep.

[albon]

Edit: ahh, almost forgot, the purpose of this thread is to ask whether it's fair to leave both of the account --owned by the same person-- negative feedback for this issue, or would that be seen as unfair, given some more reputable BM also has one or two questionable projects which passed their screening and leave a dent on cryptocommunity, and they didn't tagged. So, does a negative feedback deemed appropriate or should it be just a slap on their hand with a ruler?

Although the negative feedback on both accounts will not make this an obstacle for this manager to continue to promote scam projects, the most important thing is to open a flag about the Bounty Manager; this will be useful to guests/newbies as a warning message will appear to them at the top when they open the topic of scam bounty.

I see that this manager is selfish and only wants to benefit from the fees for promoting these projects, which I think he promotes for free, but he does not care if the investor will lose his money or if the bounty hunter will waste long hours for nothing.

We can say that even trusted Bounty managers can promote projects that are not real, but do you see them repeating their mistakes hundreds of times?

Anyone can manage a bounty, but why does he not gain experience in doing research, or why does he not learn from a well-known bounty manager who helps him get a legit bounty, and why does he promote the project without obtaining guarantees from the project owners he deals with?

[yahoo62278]

Edit: ahh, almost forgot, the purpose of this thread is to ask whether it's fair to leave both of the account --owned by the same person-- negative feedback for this issue, or would that be seen as unfair, given some more reputable BM also has one or two questionable projects which passed their screening and leave a dent on cryptocommunity, and they didn't tagged. So, does a negative feedback deemed appropriate or should it be just a slap on their hand with a ruler?

Although the negative feedback on both accounts will not make this an obstacle for this manager to continue to promote scam projects, the most important thing is to open a flag about the Bounty Manager; this will be useful to guests/newbies as a warning message will appear to them at the top when they open the topic of scam bounty.

I see that this manager is selfish and only wants to benefit from the fees for promoting these projects, which I think he promotes for free, but he does not care if the investor will lose his money or if the bounty hunter will waste long hours for nothing.

We can say that even trusted Bounty managers can promote projects that are not real, but do you see them repeating their mistakes hundreds of times?

Anyone can manage a bounty, but why does he not gain experience in doing research, or why does he not learn from a well-known bounty manager who helps him get a legit bounty, and why does he promote the project without obtaining guarantees from the project owners he deals with?

I cannot say I 100% agree with your opinion here as far as a flag goes, unless you can prove the manager set out to scam participants. You prove that and I'd be on board. Seems like a lot of users are quick to get pissed off and lynch a manager. Usually it's the bounty hunters.

I think nearly every manager has been fooled by a team. We can do a call or 2, check LinkedIn profiles, escrow/hold the tokens, or whatever and it still end up not working out. Unless you escrow/hold the value of the bounty campaign in a stable token, you are risking everyone not getting paid.

Now I can agree that a decent number of the bounty managers are shit and likely do not do any sort of check, but I don't think they legit set out to scam participants. I think they get contacted, accept the job, get paid their $50 a week fee, and teams disappear on them and the hunters. The teams are the scammers. The manager should do a little more to protect the hunters but what? most companies are not going to agree to escrow 100k in a stable coin. Most managers that get offered these jobs are low ranking and accept them trying to build a rep IMO.

Best thing for hunters to do is stop joining these bounties ran by unknown managers. We all know that's not gonna happen.

[examplens]

Edit: ahh, almost forgot, the purpose of this thread is to ask whether it's fair to leave both of the account --owned by the same person-- negative feedback for this issue, or would that be seen as unfair, given some more reputable BM also has one or two questionable projects which passed their screening and leave a dent on cryptocommunity, and they didn't tagged. So, does a negative feedback deemed appropriate or should it be just a slap on their hand with a ruler?

I think we should start here from the beginning.
assuming that the manager is new to the business and just wants to get references and build a portfolio. That's why he accepts every project (although I don't think the word project is adequate here) without any verification. if there is some profit, great, if not, it doesn't matter. Certainly, the quality of the campaign itself is of no interest to anyone.

It is quite possible that at this moment such managers do not see the big picture of the whole business, so I think that we should at least try to educate them. before any negative tagging, he should be invited here for a discussion and he should express his position on all this. maybe he will adopt some constructive suggestions and learn something new that would definitely affect the quality of his work.
every beginner should at least try to help them better understand how this community works and the responsibility they bear when they promote something.

of course, if he just ignores this kind of attempt to help, it only confirms my position that you quoted. They don't care.

[holydarkness]

Edit: ahh, almost forgot, the purpose of this thread is to ask whether it's fair to leave both of the account --owned by the same person-- negative feedback for this issue, or would that be seen as unfair, given some more reputable BM also has one or two questionable projects which passed their screening and leave a dent on cryptocommunity, and they didn't tagged. So, does a negative feedback deemed appropriate or should it be just a slap on their hand with a ruler?

I think we should start here from the beginning.
assuming that the manager is new to the business and just wants to get references and build a portfolio. That's why he accepts every project (although I don't think the word project is adequate here) without any verification. if there is some profit, great, if not, it doesn't matter. Certainly, the quality of the campaign itself is of no interest to anyone.

It is quite possible that at this moment such managers do not see the big picture of the whole business, so I think that we should at least try to educate them. before any negative tagging, he should be invited here for a discussion and he should express his position on all this. maybe he will adopt some constructive suggestions and learn something new that would definitely affect the quality of his work.
every beginner should at least try to help them better understand how this community works and the responsibility they bear when they promote something.

of course, if he just ignores this kind of attempt to help, it only confirms my position that you quoted. They don't care.

Interesting insight, I could agree and see a reason when someone new to a field and tried to build their portfolio, there could be a tendency of being myopic, where they only focused on "the now". After all, expertise is something that comes with experience. Although, I have to rebut that there is a line --be it fine or thin-- between being careless and couldn't-care-less on reputation building.

Nonetheless, I've messaged ahmim about this thread, hopefully they would engage on this discussion once they're online.

[Aanuoluwatofunmi]

I didn't support either what they might have done wrong but you need to understand that the forum has its own ethics of conduct which lies on the rules abd as long as a member does not trespass against those rules they are free, now left for you individuals to take caution and watch well whom to trust, what you promote, who you work under or things you do here, as long as the user has alts either connected or not doesn't mean he had done something wrong because at the end your observations may be wrong, nothing outside the forum rules here stays or get away with whatsoever thing they do.

[Falconer]

Best thing for hunters to do is stop joining these bounties ran by unknown managers. We all know that's not gonna happen.

I agree with this one, but bounty hunters will just blindly join in and promote any new project even if it's managed by someone with no reputation. I don't think we mean to discourage them from trying their luck by joining every bounty, but most of the promises teams make are bogus once they reach their own goal.

Stop joining bounties whose managers are not in good reputation and unknown managers, they are a waste of time and if they get paid then I don't think it's worth it.

[yahoo62278]

Best thing for hunters to do is stop joining these bounties ran by unknown managers. We all know that's not gonna happen.

I agree with this one, but bounty hunters will just blindly join in and promote any new project even if it's managed by someone with no reputation. I don't think we mean to discourage them from trying their luck by joining every bounty, but most of the promises teams make are bogus once they reach their own goal.

Stop joining bounties whose managers are not in good reputation and unknown managers, they are a waste of time and if they get paid then I don't think it's worth it.

Bounty hunters only lose a few minutes joining a bounty. It literally takes 1-2 minutes to retweet a few tweets, same for facebook, only a few minutes to do other tasks such as copy/paste an article, discord, instagram stuff, or whatever else is offered. So this is why they join the lottery of every bounty out there. They know they only waste a few minutes to join and hope they get paid on 50% of what they join.

[Awaklara]

Stop joining bounties whose managers are not in good reputation and unknown managers, they are a waste of time and if they get paid then I don't think it's worth it.

worth it or not, the bounty hunter will not care. they have lost nothing but their time. earn a few dollars for doing some retweets during the campaign. they already know the results that will be obtained, whether it can be sold or even just a shit token.

I still remember there was an account that created a fake bounty campaign, and who would have thought that the thread would also be filled with POA. from there we can see how the nature and character of the bounty hunter.

[_BlackStar]

I still remember there was an account that created a fake bounty campaign, and who would have thought that the thread would also be filled with POA. from there we can see how the nature and character of the bounty hunter.

Obviously it's sad, but they can't be stopped.
Even if they get scammed, don't get paid, get caught cheating, or whatever else renders their account unusable, they'll just create dozens of other newbie and continue with the same thing.

Most of the bounty tokens are dust, but some of them get high hype which also benefits the bounty hunters. I think that's what motivates thousands of user to do this again and again.

[holydarkness]

Updating with previous and recent development:

I reached to ahmim the day after I raised this thread to inform them about the existence of this reputation discussion and in hope that they'll engage to it, which they only replied with an as short as possible answer as shown on the image #1 below. Nonetheless, they updated their group with a rather positive note that I hope was made as the outcome of this issue, as seen on image #3, which followed by the absence of any bounty made by ahmim or Crypto_Dotar ever since.

However, as it turns out, instead of refraining from bounties without escrow and/or avoiding questionable projects by conducting a tad bit of research before accepting a project like I thought they did, I stumbled upon another project managed by their alt, Crypto Bountyes, with yet another whitepaper plagiarizing project and no team, details can be found here.

So far, they currently managing three campaigns, MetaSystem Token which mentioned above, Pi4ur^#4 which... quite easy to tell how it'll end up [image #5], archived "whitepaper" is here, just in case, and CCFI^#6, that had a previous campaign managed by other bounty manager, which upon glancing at their own group, I don't think has a bright future either [image #7 and #8].

#1 #2

#3 #4

#5 #6

#7 #8

So, with this recent development, I once again resort the community's decision and advise. I left a negative tag on both ahmim and Crypto_Dotar --and Crypto Bountyes soon after this-- should a flag to warn clueless investors also be raised? In one side, I think they're not the owner the project, thus they're not directly scamming anyone and no one is --directly-- at a risk of losing money by dealing with them, nor there is a casual or written contract being breached, so none of the three types of the flags matched their case here. But, I'd like to think there is a fine line between naive due to the lack of experience and couldn't-care-less-as-long-as-I-get-paid in accepting to manage bounties.

I am well aware that the bounty hunters participating on their campaign mostly are newbies who couldn't care less with the quality of the project, they'll just protest later when the bounty didn't pay. But I think, if there is at least a yellow banner on every thread this manager raised, newbies will be more carefull on enrolling, thus less newbies will be likely to join and less exposure of the scam projects they're managed to the cryptocommunity.

Will a flag be considered appropriate or will it be considered an abuse of DT system?

[yahoo62278]

95 out of 100 bounties end up scamming in 1 way or another. Whether it be participants in the campaign not getting the promised tokens, investors getting the rug pulled out from under them, token not ever getting listed, rewards decreased in campaign, or whatever a very high number of bounties turn scam.

The managers should do as much research as possible before accepting a job, but even that doesn't save participants or investors from what the team has planned in the end. Most of these no name managers probably do not do any sort of research, they're only looking for a paycheck. If you'll notice, a lot are newbie accounts these days, so tagging and flagging them makes no difference.

In the end, it's the participants responsibility as much as the manager to do their own research and not promote a project they find out is a scam. Does that happen? Nope, people just blindly join bounties and pray they get paid the promised reward.

I think a flag is fine, but i think it'll be a waste of energy. I think the community needs warned that the manager accepts any and all projects that come their way, but i also think it is a hunters responsibility to research. So when I say wasted energy I just mean the manager will abandon their account n make a new 1 and hunters will not research anything.

[FatFork]

Crypto Bountyes was active today, saw all the negative tags on his profile and the whole scam accusation thread, and still didn't stop his shady campaign. It's pretty clear he couldn't care less.

When we check out their latest bounty, the MetaSystem Token. It's like a textbook example of a fake project and a scam just waiting to happen, no doubt about it. They straight-up copied someone else's white paper and made up a fake team using edited stock photos for their profiles. Even the entire website is a total ripoff. It's like they grabbed some pre-made template that's probably floating around and I wouldn't be surprised if there are a bunch of other sketchy projects out there with the exact same layout.

I think the flag is justified and I will support it.

Besides, it turns out that ahmim and his alt accounts are already linked to a previously banned account, juwel509. So, we have a clear case of ban evasion going on here.

[avp2306]

Better to avoid any bounty campaign because all of them are just scam. If therr are people still willing to join on their campaigns or project its like they are tolerating the action made by those scammers so they should better learn to think for theirselves and do their own deligence so that no money from investors will be wasted also no efforts from them will be useless.

[holydarkness]

After mulling over it over a day, I am sending them a re-re-invitation to give their side of story to this thread before taking the step of raising a flag. Let's hope they decide to grace us with their presence.

Crypto Bountyes was active today, saw all the negative tags on his profile and the whole scam accusation thread, and still didn't stop his shady campaign. It's pretty clear he couldn't care less.

[...]

It also came to my awareness that the participant of their bounty group had also mentioned the scam accusation against MetaSystem, so it's quite safe to assume Crypto Bountyes, or whoever pseudonym they choose to use, is well aware of the current situation.

[yahoo62278]

The fact that the manager logs in and doesn't respond here(I assume they are aware of this thread), makes me think the team behind the project doesn't look on here or they don't care. That also makes me feel like hunters will have a hard time getting their rewards.

I would suggest the forum makes a user have a SR member account or higher to be able to manage, but the admins wouldn't ever agree and get involved. That would also just lead to more account sales most likely.

[holydarkness]

The fact that the manager logs in and doesn't respond here(I assume they are aware of this thread), makes me think the team behind the project doesn't look on here or they don't care. That also makes me feel like hunters will have a hard time getting their rewards.

[...]

I am sure they're very much aware of this thread and the latest accusation thread raised against them. I looked into my DM with them on TG earlier today and found that it's read [double checkmark] somewhere in between I sent the DM and today, which means they've been aware of the re-invitation and choose to be silent. On their group, they also made a post replying a user about CCFI and yet ignored the inquiry made by someone else earlier --the screenshot is on my previous post-- about the scam accusation thread of MetaSystem, further clarifying their stance of this allegation.

As such, I had to resort to the drastic measure of labelling their account and the threads they made --as well as future threads and evasion-account they'll make-- with type-1 flag banner with reference to this thread for a "more" in-depth explanation why I think the flag is justified as well as serving as the "single flag-explanations topic". I hope members of the forum can see that it is not my attempt of abusing DT and flag system, noting that the flag was raised not under the belief that anyone dealing with them is in direct possibility of losing fund, but rather indirectly, as in if they invested on the project whose bounty they managed, they're exposing themselves to the said risk.




Flag Type-1: feel free to exercise your judgement to support/oppose