More information on the OpenRigs scam:
https://www.bitcoinregime.com/2014/05/10/hello-members-of-the-cryptocurrency-community-important-info-about-openrigs-scam-please-read/-----
Hello, members of the cryptocurrency community.
This post is being made to alert everyone of two very large potential scams occurring in the cryptocurrency scene. OpenRigs and VertPay are two companies owned by the same person, a Reddit user who goes by fluffyponyza. The main concern here is OpenRigs’ history. Nearly twenty Reddit users have complained about never receiving their orders after weeks or even months after their original order, and many more users may have been scammed, but have not made a post about it. fluffyponyza has blamed these orders to be the result of customs delaying or even losing their packages, yet there are several key "flags" that these are not the result of accidents:
While delays are being blamed on the result of long customs wait times, the actual shipping service estimates from the shipping companies are much shorter than the estimated wait times on OpenRigs. Orders are still arriving weeks and months later than the estimates, and the majority have not arrived at all.
Extensive research has uncovered many users complaining about not receiving their orders. Out of all 20 users I found, only two users ever received their frame. One of the users who received his frame stated that its build quality was very poor, and included pictures to substantiate their claims.
OpenRigs has its own subreddit, /r/openrigs, in which users can use to post questions and concerns. After getting in touch with some of their customers, I have found out that these customers have made many posts about never receiving their order which were removed from the forum.
With most consumers being based out of the United States, and OpenRigs being based out of South Africa, fluffyponyza is immune to any scam reports in the US. As an international business cannot be sued in American courts, there is little to no legal action that can be taken against them. It is also unlikely that the courts in Africa would hear the case.
Out of their team members listed on VertPay, most if not all of them seem to be fake people created just to verify the claims on their website. Peter Kuhn, the CEO, claims he has worked in upper banking for ten years, yet not a single profile of his shows up on the net and there is no company nor article verifying these claims. Michael Marston, the sales director, claims to have worked for 15 years selling high end e-commerce solutions yet he too is not mentioned by any company and does not have any accounts. Arthur Pierce, their software engineer, has the exact same results. In fact, out of all seven team members listed on their website, there are only two that appear to be real: Brad Chun and Riccardo Spagni (fluffyponyza).
In order to help verify these claims, I sent an email to some of the users who has made a post about being scammed. Here are some messages received from these users talking about their experiences with the company:
"I haven’t revived anything and the tracking number they gave me was from years ago. Seems like a total fucking scam. Wish I could get a refund."
"I received my frames but it took a very long time. During that time they did respond to my questions but ultimately they never should have shipped to the US using that method if it were going to take 4 months to arrive."
"I wont be able to go into full detail because I’m on my phone and don’t really want to to type 5 months worth of waiting. Ordered it on Christmas day and still have yet to see it. They offered me a refund FINALLY about a week ago. Waste of $120. Go make one from home depot or Lowes for 3x cheaper. Also they wanted me to pay for the shipping upgrade after we had a fallout on reddit (WHICH HE DELETED). They eventually paid but it still went to the wrong state"
"I made the order on Nov 28th while they were having their ‘Black Friday’ sale. On Dec 4 I get an email saying that they can’t ship out my order until they get the goods to manufacture it. Dec 5 they told me my rig was being fabricated and Dec 19 I was told it was shipped and would receive a tracking number within a few days. On Jan 5 I emailed them asking what was up, and on Jan 7th they actually gave me tracking number. At this point it’s ~6 weeks after I ordered it, it actually gets shipped. The next thing i see is that on Jan 23rd, it’s status is now in ‘bag out’. Now, you can call it my fault or whatever, but until this point, I assumed openrigs was out of the USA. There’s nothing about South Africa anywhere on their page unless you go looking under the ‘Contact Us’ part of the page. It’s not in any confirmation emails and it’s not on the shipping page itself. The default currency is the USD, and it’s a ‘.com’ domain. I’m Canadian, I buy a lot internationally. Everything about their page from a first glance indicates it’s out of the US. It’s deceptive as hell to not indicate where it’s shipping. I’d imagine there would have been a lot less people who would have ordered had it been more obvious where it was coming from. So that’s why I thought there’s no problem with surface shipping – I get packages from the US via surface shipping in < 2 weeks at the very max. After I contacted them a few times, and they told me to go track down the product with Canada Post, I stopped hearing responses. I finally got the product earlier this month (May 2nd I believe), over 5 months after having ordered it – well beyond the point of it being useful. The build itself was lazy. It looked like they just sheared the aluminum to the right length and packaged it up. There was very sharp edges on all of the pieces and you could cut yourself really easily. There was also no included foot pads so you cannot put it on a floor you want to not get destroyed."
Concerned users have also made these key points about VertPay:
Website seems to have popped up 5 days ago * "Vertcoined signed" agreements don’t hold up in court * The non-real share model is most likely illegal in the States.
VertPay claims it is registered but shows no FinCen numbers, no MSB license, and no company registration info
No team members of VertPay have LinkedIn profiles or blogs
None of the team member pictures match any others in Google Image Search or TinEye. No online presence
The only mention on the net of any of their team members is Riccardo Spagni in relation to a poorly done site labelled "buttercoin" which looks liked a botched coin
The website whois lists POSTFACH 1609, Freising, Bayern as an address. This address does not exist
The website whois lists Peter Kuhn as the owner of VertPay.com
The only web listing for Peter Kuhn in Bayern is a listing for a vet clinic
Peter Kuhn’s site profile claims his a ten-year veteran of the banking industry, yet he isn’t on LinkedIn or any profile website or company website other than VertPay
In addition, one of /r/vertcoin‘s mods, jedigras, seems to be working directly with OpenRigs. In his most recent post, he confirmed that he not only works for OpenRigs but has become their US distributor. He says, "I’ve signed as the US distributor for OpenRigs.com." He also confirmed that he works for VertPay as well and that they are the same company. He says, "It turns out that OpenRigs and VertPay are real companies trying to build real goods and services around Crypto and Vertcoin, they have asked me to help oversee their operations because of my experience in payments and crypto, and I have agreed. You will find my name on their site."
The reason why this is being posted is to protect everyone in the community from being scammed. The evidence suggests that OpenRigs may have scammed thousands of dollars from people and fellow Redditors. The worst part is that now VertPay is asking for a $200,000 initial public offering (IPO).
A scam this large could seriously hurt not only the reputation of Vertcoin but also the credibility of cryptocurrency. I’m asking for this post to be stickied to achieve greater outreach, and for more users to learn about this scam.
All in all, I think this subreddit needs to distance itself as far as possible from VertPay, and I think fluffyponyza should be banned from this sub. For users reading this thread, please try to cut off all business with these companies, and also warn other members about this scam.
Thanks,
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