Greedy Goblin

Monday, June 15, 2015

Is this a scam?

I've been reading the 100B scam story on EN24 again and again in disbelief. Did I miss something? Because I don't really see what makes the mark pay the scammers 100B. Please read the story and help me out!

No, really read that story please!

Now, my problem: a scammer offers a great reward for an initial cost and then don't deliver. The simplest form is the ISK doubler in Jita offers 2B ISK for 1B ISK. It's a great deal, except for the fact that it's not true. The fake Goon recruiter offers the membership to the most infamous group and asks a pitiful sum and a bit of trust with "moving his assets to Deklein". Again: it would be a great deal if it was true.

But what the scammers offered the mark in this story was outright bad and a total disaster even if it was true. I mean, imagine if everything would happen the way as promised: then the mark would become a director of a totally useless highsec mining corp, which was at the time a member of a renter-smelling small and new alliance. He would also own a supercarrier in an alliance with no significant capital fleet (they only killed 3, lost 0 capitals and 0/0 supers/titans). Even if the scammers were 100% honest, this would end up with a bunch of dead miners on their way to Scalding Pass and 3 supercapital loss reports.

My point is that I wouldn't want this for free. Joining Karmafleet, PL Horde, BRAVE, TEST are leagues better options. What the hell made this guy give up everything he had for this "scam"? Sociality: he believed that being in an active corp is a great thing, even if the corp activity is nothing but highsec mining and idle chat. He found "friends" and wanted to help this "team" to grow, despite there was absolutely no sign of this ever happening.

The story is dime a dozen, with the only exception that the "leaders" were acting out of malice and not ignorance. Hundreds if not thousands of "highsec corps growing to get ready for nullsec" are doing the exact same thing, except for the leaders running away with the money (instead of just being exploded by pirates on the first gate during the "big move to null").

Socials are pathetic creatures.

21 comments:

Anonymous said...

What you should really write is "stupid people are pathetic", because social or not, that was pure stupidity. If someone doesn't have a clue, no playstyle is going to save him.

Anonymous said...

Need and Greed, Anon. Elias' need to be part of a group, and to feel significant within that group, coupled with his greed for property at heavily discounted prices - lead him, in this instance, to ignore any warning signs he may otherwise have heeded. Such people are easily manipulated.

This was a simple scam, once the work of setting it up had been achieved. Elias made it simple. You can hear the incredulity in the voices of the scammers as they go about their work of divesting him of his billions.

This type of scam seems to work well with marks that want to 'be someone' rather than 'do something'.

Such people tend to be well-represented among the group which Gevlon calls 'Socials'.

Robert said...

You did the same thing. Groups rinsed you for billions under the pretence they were going to achieve great thing in your grr war, and nothing has been achieved. Like you, he wanted to try to be something and like you he went about it the wrong way and lost.

Gevlon said...

@Robert: they DID achieved great things, became top CFC killers. Being the best in fighting the only superpower left is pretty good.

Unknown said...

Sad story, sad to read that there are still fairly rich morons out there, having no clue what to do in EVE or how to achieve anything.
Although Gevlon managed to fund wellfare pvp and thus polish the killboards of all the recipients, he failed to see that goons/imperium(insert next useless neam here...
remain unaffected in their abilities.
Trying to stick goon's strategic consolidations to grr goons and not foziiesov seems so utterly naive that this might only convince newbies, ignorants and complete morons.

Being the the top CFC killer is as much e-peen as having the bigges wallet in eve, the largest collection of capitals or special edition ships or whatever.

Eve is a game, although many activites degrade to chores when EVE gets control over a player...
If Eve isn't played for dun and sheer entertainment, then something is wrong.

maxim said...

That last comment got me thinking.

There is exactly 1 merit to "games are supposed to be fun" argument, and that is: if you are willing to put in real non-(un-, anti-)fun work in the game, why are you putting it in the game and not in outside world? Certainly whatever you'll get out of it in game would be worth less than an rl achievement?

I accept this is mighty offtopic for the post at hand and wouldn't mind this comment not passing moderation. The only way to connect this to the post at hand is through the consideration that maybe the social that got scammed was trying to solve some RL issue (such as lack of friends) with his in-game behaviour

Anonymous said...

Not that i want to give this pathetic piece of schoolboy 'head in the toilet' psudo bullying crap any further head space or air time... but the alliance in question had nothing to do with this... and the scammer corp was kicked for non activity and because once in the alliance they didnt smell right... also... we dont rent :p

Gevlon said...

@maxim: in real life sports we put in non-fun training time and exhausting game time for the very fun "celebrate victory" time. Same for video games: most efforts are boring or grindy, but victory is sweet.

The bigger the target, the longer the grind but greater the victory. Some players go for "whatever frig come cross that gate", they wait a couple of minutes and get their tiny satisfaction of pwning a newbie in a T1 frig. Some hunt supers for weeks. I went after the largest coalition and if succeed, my story will be remembered as long as the server runs, like the Guiding Hand Social Club theft and the fate of BoB.

Anonymous said...

supcap deal without trusted thirdparty like chribba. has obviously no idea about risk management in any way. upfront payment and further billions to a total heist of roughly 1900 $/Euro worth in PLEX.

I hate to see that voice recording. But as it seems that is what drives these trolls. It's a good thing that this happened, maybe he or others will learn from this stupidity.

Anonymous said...

" I went after the largest coalition and if succeed, my story will be remembered as long as the server runs, like the Guiding Hand Social Club theft and the fate of BoB."

So what your saying is your basically looking for Eve fame then???I thought you were anti-social?

Gevlon said...

@Anonymous: "my story will be remembered". Not me. The story of the self-made man with no "friends" beating the "group of friends".

Anonymous said...

Perhaps, Maxim, you've met people for whom work is hugely enjoyable? Being active, busy at work, is their thing?

I blame the work/play divide on Genesis (the book, not the band). 'On the seventh day He rested' has given us license to toil for a while and then collapse in a heap and do nothing - if we wish.

Elias appears to be quite typical of the man who is fond of daydreaming himself into success, and likely therefore to fall prey to very clever scams. He toils at building Isk (or perhaps just buys PLEX), then somehow just switches off his intelligence and lets his daydreaming take over. With predictable consequences.

Such people are never able to form realistic plans, or to stick to them if they do. You see them all over New Eden, changing their training queue as the next 'big thing' looms towards them.

I guess I mean that 'fun' and 'work' are not mutually exclusive; Elias just had the balance wrong. If you want a Super, work for it. If you want Director roles, earn them. And have fun doing so.

There'll always be marks, in-game and out of it. In my own country, the mis-selling of Payment-Protection Insurance has revealed hundreds of thousands of 'marks', preyed upon by large banking/insurance concerns. If it seems too good to be true....

Nielas said...

"I went after the largest coalition and if succeed, my story will be remembered as long as the server runs, like the Guiding Hand Social Club theft and the fate of BoB."

Let's be realistic. It will probably be remembered as long as this blog is active. :)

I played EVE during the time when BoB was supposedly a big thing and I barely remember what all that was about. Was that the alliance that was disbanded because one of its leaders got bored and/or drunk?

Do you remember which WoW guild was the first one to beat Ragnaros or Onyxia?

Robert said...

"they DID achieved great things, became top CFC killers. Being the best in fighting the only superpower left is pretty good."
All they did was pad their killboards to appear as the top CFC killers, they certainly aren't "the best in fighting". Just like how you consider friglolling to be pointless, killing a bunch of expensive but non-strategic ships is pointless. Someone taking a single system is more disruptive than the people you pay to hunt for easy kills. Stats can say whatever you want them to, but facts, like the CFC being unaffected by this campaign, can be witnessed. I'm still waiting to see someone take down the goons, but it won't be here.

"Not me. The story of the self-made man with no "friends" beating the "group of friends"."
That is unlikely to be remembered as it's not happened and isn't likely to happen. The mittani pays people to be in his group, you pay people to be in yours, there's no real difference between what you do and what any other group does, except you have less control over your groups inner working and have to pay them from your own effort, while mittani pays people with other people's effort.

Gevlon said...

@Nielas: no, but it's because their method wasn't interesting. They just brute-forced it with extreme amount of tries.

Similarly no one will remember my name. But they will remember and emulate the method as it'll become "common sense".

@Robert: actually there is a difference. MoA existed and killed CFC before I started my project. I don't pay them to be on the anti-Goon side, they already were. I just help them to achieve their goals that happen to be mine too.

The Mittani on the other hand have to pay or motivate everyone, every day.

Anonymous said...

"@Anonymous: "my story will be remembered". Not me. The story of the self-made man with no "friends" beating the "group of friends"."

Not really. If you had beat them (obviously your not going to)you wouldn't have beat them yourself as you hire "friends" to do the job for you. You are claiming to be anti-social while you rely on your paid friends to do the actual work. You even made a donation board for your MoA friends and you keep claiming that you have no friends and you even mock others for being social. Do tell what the difference is? Can you fully achieve beating the Goons by being completely anti-social?

Robert said...

"Similarly no one will remember my name. But they will remember and emulate the method as it'll become "common sense"."
It won't because it's not. It's not at all common sense to pick a method which requires an extreme amount of personal farming and achieve nothing strategic. All you're showing is if you are too lazy to fight yourself and don't mind hours of mind numbingly boring activity every day, you can pay someone else to kill ratters. It's clear that as a way for making change it's useless.

"MoA existed and killed CFC before I started my project. I don't pay them to be on the anti-Goon side, they already were. I just help them to achieve their goals that happen to be mine too."
You goal is to pad MoAs killboard? That's their goal, not the removal of goons. If they wanted to remove goons they would hit strategic objectives.

"The Mittani on the other hand have to pay or motivate everyone, every day"
Nope. The Mittani doesn't need to fun anyone. He's set up a system where people fund each other. Ratters rat and people do alliance chores, all that isk goes up the line then gets redistributed. The group is able to make more than the individuals, so everyone wins, especailly the mittani. Now THAT is common sense.

Anonymous said...

"The story of the self-made man with no "friends" beating the "group of friends"."

Nowhere in history has this worked. Every single success in history has been because of social interaction. Sure, one person may have the idea, or the money..but eventually he needs other people to see his vision become a reality.

Your politics are different to goons, but your methods are remarkably similar - allow your troops to fly for free, free them from the grind and let them have the "fun" that they want to have. Morale (a social concept) improves, they play together more, the log in more and they fight for your goal. Chapter 1 verse 1 from Goon handbook...

maxim said...

@Sasha Nyemcov
First, I am exceedingly wary of anyone sporting that particular name/surname combination. Not only 90s in Russia were traumatic, but the way your namesake recently died is a portent of very bad things to come indeed. So forgive me if i'm not exactly friendly with you.

Second, please avoid such self-assured broad-stroke interpretations of the Bible. Better people than you tried to interpret the full meaning of the text in question and failed miserably. On specific issue - resting on 7th day is not a license for uselessness. Resting is not uselessness to begin with.

Finally, i am not sure how you can have fun without dreams. Like Gevlon said, what makes work fun is dream of victory. "Director" and "Super" are both dreams too. So condemning the man to uselessness just for having dreams is mostly incompatible with the idea of fusion of work and fun.

There is just one exception. The only known category of fun in game design that doesn't involve dreaming of some sort of outcome is "abnegation", which is desire to not think at all and just immerse oneself in doing something automatic. The fun of junkies.
So when people are saying that work should be fun but shouldn't involve dreams, they are basically saying we should all be work junkies. Now, i know some people that think this is a good state to be in. However, the image in my mind is mostly marching hammers from Pink Floyd's "the wall" (as well as various experiences of seeing work junkies ruin their own lives and lives of everyone around them).

Unknown said...

@ Maxim 15 June, 2015 10:28
this is exactly my point. If you do not play a game, but a game plays you, or in other words, if the activities you are involved in, are not fun, but a chore, better do RL stuff either for real money or for any ohter RL benefits.

Gevlon's and MoA's approach will never ever lead to goons crumbling as ratter ganking has no strategic consequences whatsoever...
Gevlon refuses to realise that, but that might be just for the entertainment of his blog readers.

Anonymous said...

Hello Maxim,

I had no intention of causing you distress. In fact, I was trying to show that the points you made were not off-topic; that they were good and relevant points. I'm sorry if that wasn't clear.

I was also in Russia in the 90s, Moscow, and working in the wonderful Forensic Institute there. Yes Maxim, they were troubled times. Clearly you recall them with distaste. My experience was simply different, perhaps more complex, mixed. That too colours my perception, as your experience does yours. That's being human, I guess!

Many years earlier, in my 20s, I was destined for the Baptist priesthood, and thus did indeed have a close encounter with theology; it didn't last. Fast-forward to my 30s; I returned to my studies, but this time Mediaeval Islamic Theology gripped me, and expanded to include the early ideas (philosophy) of the various Christian movements in France, and Monastic Architecture. You may have misunderstood; I was saying not that resting on the 7th day was the correct interpretation of the original text, but that others seem to have taken it as such.

We all daydream. My impression - simply put - was that the comprehensively-scammed Elias took his eye off the ball, so to speak. By the time he became aware that he was being scammed he forced himself to believe he'd gone too far to extricate himself. He was of course wrong. The daydream became a nightmare. There's a reason that dreams are firmly rooted in our fantasy-world. They usually do not take account of the influence of others, of reality. In order to make them come true, you have to do deal with others, with reality. Sometimes it skews your satisfaction.

Having said that, fantasy and work can of course work together to produce enjoyment; indeed they must do so. I agree with you that someone who simply works for the sake of work is - troubled.