No offense to you but I pointed out this was an obvious scam early on.
This same guy was posting on TorCardingForum some time ago, it took a while for me to find some stuff on what he was doing there but I eventually found it:
TCF reached a low point earlier this year, and I just happen to be in the middle of the story. A popular scheme over the past few years on forums has been a very simple ponzi scheme aimed at members of gaming forums, hardware acceleration forums, etc. There was a user on TCF who was semi-known and semi-reputable. He posted a scheme that looked something like this (original post gone) on the forum:
I've been involved in a lot of penny stock trading recently on the London OTC exchange after meeting a banker in a bar who told me about how to manipulate the market. I've made over £10,000 this month. He taught me how to read the markets and how to know what is going on. Here are some of my trades that I earned on this month:
*shows trades in the past with stock increasing 100%+
I'm now prepared to scale up this scheme and invite a select group of users to invest along side me and realize the same sort of returns I am. I am offering two investment packages:
Option 1. Minimum investment £5000. 5 slots available. I will send you a link to signup for a brokerage account and every few days I will send you a stock to buy and then notify you when to sell it. You don't pass me the money, you invest yourself. In return I get 20% of your profits.
Option 2. Minimum investment £100. I invest your money for you and you join my fund and I guarantee you a 14% return per week. 20 slots available (3 sold!)
Users would normally be skeptical, but the fears would be allayed by sock puppet accounts who would talk about the returns on Option 1. "Hey, try option 1 if you are nervous". Option 1 is just a distraction from the real ponzi scheme - which is option 2. Over the next few days he will post updated trades from option 1 showing their returns, with sockpuppet accounts talking up how much they made. Since option 1 then 'sells out' (but hey, we have a waiting list!) most users then signup for option 2, a little at first then bit by bit more and more.
Here is the ultimate irony of this ponzi scheme. Were you to go to the section of TCF where all those shitty tutorials are for sale (just as they are now on Evolution market) one of the tutorials for sale for a few hundred dollars was 'How to make $10,000 per month'. The tutorial was an exact description of how to run this ponzi scheme, word-for-word pasted in introduction section, the terms to use to make it appear like you know what you are talking about with trading (the guy who ran this scheme on TCF was an unemployed web designer) how to find the 'winning' stocks for Option 1, how to convince people to part with their money etc.
There is a brilliant writeup on WeirderWeb about the exact same scheme taking hold on the BlackHatSEO forums, the original article is down but the mirror on archive.org is still available and it really is worth a read.
Had anybody on TCF bothered to check their own tutorials they would have seen this. Worse yet, had anybody bothered to copy that original message and paste it into a search engine they would see hundreds of hits for the exact same original message on thousands of forums around the web. In 99% of those cases the thread is ignored, someone replies with 'scam!' or a moderator removes the thread.
But not on TCF. Not only were there plenty of people who bought into the scheme, the administrators of the site 'vouched' for option 1 as a legitimate offer. This is a rubber stamp meaning that the offer is safe. All throughout the forum thread whenever there was a doubter pointing out the obvious ponzi scheme elements of the scheme they would always be shouted down with 'but it is vouched!'.
The guy running the scheme would make some payouts, but he would setup the scheme with capacity slots, and if you withdrew money you would go back into the queue. The number of people actually invested was 25 times larger than the number of people he said were invested. The amount of money invested was around 100 times larger than the revealed amount of money invested.
The OP of the thread was late on payments just as TCF was shutdown for the last time and everybody was migrated to the new Evolution forums. At this time with the migration to Evolution, TCF had been down from their hack for a couple of weeks and nobody had heard from Samuraiprint - the guy running the ponzi scheme (or 'investment opportunity', in TCF parlance).
The old thread is lost, but here is a link to the new thread where the scheme continued on Evolution (thread title changed when it was realized that it was a scam):
Title: Samuraiprint/TCF topic: Invest and Multiply your money
Hi all,
Anyone tried this ?
I took option 2.
The 1 st payment and communication with Samuraiprint were perfect, but from last saturday and tcf down, it seems that it's not even the same person behind his icq.
Brief history : Saturday : On icq, he told me he will pay at 3PM, nothing... Same time, I registered to hbb, find that he had an old topic there under the pseudo stocktrading, and send him a pm. Pm was read but never answered. On icq, he told me to check at 9PM, nothing... All of that using some words that don't go with Samuraiprint usual language. Sunday : No icq cnx. The name of his tread on hbb was modified to fit the same exact tcf's one. Some posts from the op were also modified. Monday : I received an add from another icq # 653196796, telling me his other account got hacked and to give him 24 hrs to fix everything. He was able to give me the amount I invested to identify himself...but that could maybe be found in the history of the other icq... Today: He was online on icq but doesn't answer to me. Now he doesn't stop login and logout just few seconds after... Something wrong with Samuraiprint. 1/ He got hacked for real or 2/ It's a pretty scam. Who said : "what is too good to be true..." ?
reply 1:
MrMouse Member
Sounds like a scam.
reply 2:
well.. his thread at TCF actually in verified section. i did chat with him yesterday thou.. hes basically saying want to get rid of some members from option1, especially who doesnt have knowledge in stock market, probably impatient client or some sort he did tell me his icq acc and including email is hacked. so i ask him several questions,etc.. he got it right thou.. so i assumed his new icq account is not impostor. ive asked him if he will register here, he said no.. dont > have time for that, and registration already closed for new member long time ago anyway
reply 3:
I also invested with Samurai for option 2. This last weekend was supposed to be my first payout and pretty much what you said happened.
reply 5:
I know what you mean. Nothing about him pointed to being a scammer and he definitely knows his stuff. I really do hope this is just a speed bump and I receive the rest of my payouts and on time.
Samuraiprint shows up at reply #25, apologetic:
samuraiprint reply #1 screenshot
and so on .. the thread continues with "investors" not wanting to give up on the dream of untold riches, despite all the obvious clues. There are some sock puppet accounts that talk about being paid. It drags on for 7 pages, and eventually some users figure out that this guy has taken them for hundreds of thousands of dollars.
The guys who signed up to a carding forum with dreams of becoming rich with credit card fraud had been scammed themselves by the simplest of ponzi schemes. Like most ponzi schemes there are still victims who in the end refuse to believe they were scammed - it must be because samuraiprint was taken by the Mafia, or arrested for insider trading, or perhaps the Russians got to him.
On around the 25th of January the thread starts fading out. The admins come back in and post that it isn't their fault users got scammed with option 2 - they had only verified option 1! They also accepted no blame for not banning the user, and one admin admits that he himself had money tied up in the scheme.
What happens next takes this story from a crazy ironic incidents where amateur scammers got scammed to something that is borderline sheer lunacy. There was a semi-known user on the forums called 'Gold'. He was the type of user who would reply to almost any thread, just to get noticed and build up his post count. In 3 months he went from a nobody to being known on the forum, he sold stolen card data in the markets.
This is what he posted on the 31st of January, about a week after the last ponzi scheme collapsed:
gold post #1 screenshot
The sheer audacity of this guy - a week after the last ponzi scheme and another user who was obviously waiting his turn tries his hand at a similar scam.
You'd think these users would be wary by now, but here are the first 3 replies - reproduced verbatim:
Vouch for this user, have worked with him on various things with big money involved. I think I might buy a few slots soon!
two:
Extremely interested. Should have the funds to do this very soon.
three:
I vouch for him as well, he knows what he is doing and i am buying one for myself. cheers.
Here is a private message I got a day after this was posted:
Hey You really opened my eyes in regards to samuraiprint, but it was too late. However now a new listing that smells the same to me came up and I want to know your opinion. I would really like to avoid losing more money, what do you think of this?
He linked to the Gold scheme above. You can't make this shit up - these idiots are falling for the same thing twice in less than 2 weeks. I messaged the admins and after a long chain of messages going back and forward involving me trying to convince them that this was just another scam, they locked the thread:
I personally am not going to allow any type of investing here or on TCF regardless of status.
