✍️ The Priest and The Contest-Monkey - Episodes 5 & 6: Determining Breakout Points
Welcome back to another episode of The Priest and The Contest-Monkey which many of you have found engaging and challenging. Whilst the majority of you have looked on with excitement, as I did whilst writing Episode 3 in particular, I'm sure that I won't be the only one feeling sadness by the time this episode is over.
If you haven't followed the story so far, I recommend reading Episode 1, Episode 2, Episode 3 and Episode 4 as I will be sharing the details behind the clues. It's a double-bill tonight so make sure you've had a drink and been to the toilet - I don't want you missing anything.
And of course, I will be naming The Priest, The Middleman, The Contest-Monkey and also introducing you to a new character, succumbing to steemcurator's wish of including "The Donkey".
The Beginning
The story began 11 days ago when @adeljose shared his Consolidated Booming votes up to the 14th May.
Since before I joined the platform, booming has been abused by those privileged to nominate which posts get supported. If I had the time to review every single report, I can say with some certainty that I'd find another case.
On this occasion, I quickly came across @wasa2020 (The Contest-Monkey). A new user, still using the "newcomer" hashtag and as I mentioned in Episode 1, accumulated a combined 66 steemcurator and booming votes for just 60 posts. But it wasn't the votes that caught my attention, it was the withdrawals.
Josepha might get a few mentions throughout this episode but we're not here for him today so let's look at huobi-pro.
huobi is commonly used by scammers to hide transactions to their real wallet. There is absolutely no other reason for people to use it (if you disagree, please let me know why in the comments). Whilst an initial glance at the wallet gives little away, the final destination of the transactions can be established. For example, the transaction on the 18th May 2023 can be tracked to...
roqqulovesteem account ID y4mgNuigXXeOG37aSWeg
So let's look at this account...
And we can quickly match up the transactions on 11th May, 13th May and 18th May. Each at a cost of 0.01 STEEM. (I've not bothered to trace the other huobi-pro transactions yet.)
This wallet's certainly interesting and I briefly followed the Poloniex money to a user who has already powered down and left, whom I briefly named "Polly"...
The names in that wallet correlate with y4mgNuigXXeOG37aSWeg so I've not spent any time looking into this any further yet.
Sticking with wasa2020, I thought I'd see who introduced him...
The Middle-Man
When finding something suspicious, it's always good to know who introduced them to the platform. In wasa2020's case, his introducer (and mentor) was The Middle-Man, @dave-hanny. Much like Polly, dave-hanny is leaving the platform, currently mid-powerdown and theirs looks like an honest wallet (which I've paid no attention to yet). Which introduces another strange thing about wasa's transfers... why trust somebody else to withdraw your money than the person who introduced you?
Then I looked at who introduced (and mentored) dave-hanny and we're back to the owner of the wallet that wasa2020 has been transferring to. You all know him as The Priest, username @simonnwigwe.
Simon Nwigwe and wasa2020 Activity
Before my wonderful revelation in Episode 4, I discussed the timing of Simon and wasa's activity which could have been considered "circumstantial" evidence. Now that we know who they are, it's time to share some detail... ok, quite a lot of detail but you'll see why...
20th May
I referenced a lot of "set as read" and that's what "Custom JSON" refers to in each reference.
This is a good day due to the early start. Simon, then wasa and then back to Simon again - all at the silly hour that I referred to.
Then the 6:40 customary "set as read". An hour later, wasa posts a contest entry (Create Post and Comment), effort well spent and then back to Simon again.
I won't explain this line by line, it's clear how perfectly synchronised this day was so let's move on...
21st May
Some more perfect synchronisation at another silly time, 4:11am-4:13am on this occasion. That's 2 days in a row we've seen this so we're pretty much out of "coincidence" territory.
Once again you'll see the beauty in the timings. wasa's contest entry today was briefly interrupted by a vote and "set as read". Slightly unusual (presumably a quick check on the phone) since the contest entry took another 40 minutes to write - a similar amount of time to the day before.
The rest of the day's activities dovetail perfectly again.
22nd May
5:28am and 5:30am "Set as Read" today. Coincidence is now out of the window and once again, the timings work perfectly.
23rd May
It's a surprise to only see wasa at 1am but at 5am, normal service is resumed and I don't need to explain how well they dovetail again.
24th May
At this point, we're in full "The Priest and The Contest-Monkey" flow so activity from wasa reduces.
25th May
And then wasa disappears, along with many other of the accounts I'm tracking.
The Images
I briefly discussed in Episode 1 how I think this scam works and when wasa2020 does post something personal, there are images of him. And the way the images in these accounts are used is interesting...
Initially, an image is sent over WhatsApp, like the main image in this post. Getting images sent is a bit of a chore, so they get used multiple times. In the case of wasa, the image was reused here. In some cases, the images have been used in so many posts, it's a miracle that the "user" hasn't been asked if they've got any new photos.
I think I'm done with wasa2020 now.
Simon Nwigwe AKA The Priest
So this takes us up to the end of Episode 3, plus a little bit more. And as you might remember from Episode 3, there was a hint of plausible deniability left. So Episode 4, focussed on the plagiarism and I'll repeat much of what I discovered.
When I cracked the "plagiarism formula" that Simon was using, I identified that his post about Crypto Trading With SuperTrend Indicator (Part 1) had been copied from a Crypto Academy post from last year. The wording was adjusted to pass the plagiarism tests and new screenshots were created.
It's common practise to claim it's coincidence. Much like josepha did when he plagiarised a contest off Hive. So I wrote a comment to predict what Part 2 would contain. Some of you might have found it subtly hidden in my comments...
Timestamped and unedited, this was the result:
| Prediction | Actual |
|---|---|
| Using the SuperTrend indicator to predict whether the trend will be bullish or bearish | Prediction of bullish or bearish trend using SuperTend indicator |
| How the Supertrend indicator is also used to understand sell/buy signals | Identifying buy/sell signal using SuperTend indicator |
| How can we determine breakout points using Supertrend and Donchian Channel indicators? | TBC |
| The effectiveness of combining two SuperTrend indicators (fast and slow) in crypto trading | TBC |
| Is there a need to pair another indicator to make this indicator work better as a filter and help get rid of false signals? | TBC |
| The advantages and disadvantages of the SuperTrend indicator? | TBC |
Now we've not seen part 3 yet, presumably Simon decided it was probably best not to publish it.
I've done well to predict the headings within a post from somebody I don't know haven't I?
As though this wasn't enough evidence, Simon's 2 articles about The Aroon Indicator (Part 1 and Part 2) were plagiarised from another Crypto Academy entry.
This is the one where Simon claimed:
Note: All screenshot are taken by me from the tradingview website were i perform my analysis from.
Which I also highlighted in Episode 4.
| Original | Liar |
|---|---|
 |  |
 |  |
 |  |
 |  |
The Donkey
This leads me to another account that I'm slightly surprised hasn't been killed off with the others but presumably because it hasn't made a withdrawal yet, it's considered to be safe. @vickyson. She's a fairly irrelevant sidenote given what I've shared above but I spent time looking at it so I'm going to spend some time sharing it.
I hinted at vickyson in Episode 2, where I said:
My favourite of the profiles though is one which entered a contest saying that their wedding day was one of the most memorable in their life and I quote "...that moment is special to me because each time I took a look at the album..." Strange that they used a stock wedding photo and when quizzed on why commented "Yes ma, i should have [used my own photos], but lost my previous phone."... 🤔
A somewhat bizarre thing to say, considering she'd already shared a wedding photo on Steemit.
I decided to highlight her properly today though, because she decided to update her Profile and Cover pictures.
The cover image is particularly interesting - it's the one that gets cropped in the header so we don't need to worry about doing a decent job uploading it. Who's going to see it after all?
Well, me of course.
So it's a screenshot of a Facebook profile - evident from the thumbs up and hearts in the corner. And due to the fact that it's not the image taken from Facebook but a screenshot taken by somebody looking at her profile, it's safe to assume that the Steemit account owner isn't the one updating the profile.
And that's not all. 10 days ago, vickyson introduced herself as Victoria Vincent. When she joined, her name was Victoria iliya. And on Facebook, her name is Vicky Jay, as per the new Cover picture. Steemit can be overwhelming for a newcomer. So much so, that this user's forgotten her own name.
I love an introduction post don't I, so who do you think introduced her? Can you guess?
It's her "sister-in-law's friend"... a person we know as Simon Nwigwe.
So what? Simon introduced another fraud.
Vicky likes to cook and on 17th May, she taught us how to cook egusi soup.
Now I'm no expert on the feet of African women, but they look like men's feet to me.
And then the final meal looked like this, served on a very stylish orange plate.
A plate which Simon is familiar with from "a roadside shop just directly opposite my house".
Maybe Vicky runs the roadside shop. Simon does say she's his neighbour, briefly referenced in this Diary Game where he photographed that delicious looking fish. A fish that "Vicky" cooked 4 days later.
I suppose the relationship between Vicky [surname TBC] and Simon Nwigwe doesn't really matter anyway given everything else I've shared today.
So that concludes The Priest, The Contest-Monkey and the less prominent Middle-man and Donkey.
As you can see, it took a lot of effort to reach this stage with any level of confidence so I haven't planned where Episode 7 will take us yet, if there is an episode 7. I also don't intend to get into any arguments or debates about the evidence I've presented - I welcome any alternative interpretations of this within the comments.
Será que las personas creen que nunca serán descubiertos ? Porque tener que terminar así y salir por la puerta trasera cuando es mejor actuar bien y siempre tener las puertas abiertas gracias a la lealtad y honestidad?.
Ahora mi pregunta es : que hay de los íntimos amigos del estafador ? Será que también sabían y lo apoyaban ocultando su macabra acción? O también están haciendo algo parecido y aún no han caído ?
Bueno creo que son solo preguntas en mi cabeza imaginando otra mini serie como la vista .
Gracias por lo que hace por steemit y ayudar a limpiarla de estafadores y abusadores . Mis respetos sra detective 😊
TEAM MILLIONAIRE
Your post has been successfully curated by @irawandedy at 5%.
Thank you for your committed efforts, we urge you to do more and keep posting high quality contests for a chance to earn valuable upvotes from our team of curators and why not be selected for an additional upvote in the weekly list of Top Contests.
The problem is that it's so hard to detect and becoming increasingly difficult as people learn how to avoid it. Like the use of real people who can be contacted. That's a stage better than the previous version which only paid people for holding a piece of paper to pass achievement 1. We knew this so added an additional level of complexity which it's now possible to circumvent.
I've highlighted the mistakes in this post that can be very easily rectified and then next time, they will succeed.
There are more people doing the same but their approach will change as a result of this. There are certainly others who are complicit but whilst they get paid, that's where their loyalty will stay.
I don't think I've got the energy to go through this... again. Especially in the knowledge that the next iteration has the potential to be perfect.
So, I have now also taken the time to retrace your notes in detail. Unfortunately, it became more than I would have liked.
It was clear that the priest would only admit the most obvious things. Nevertheless, I think it is important that you have taken the time to investigate this and to report on it here in such detail. Now everyone can form their own opinion and hopefully draw the right conclusions.
Thank you and yes, that’s why the plagiarism ended up being so important. Without it, it would have been all too easy to deny in its entirety.
Whilst I don’t think we’ll ever hear the whole truth, I’m closer to it than our protagonists will publicly admit.
Though it’s eight days ago: HAPPY BIRTHDAY… 😉
Happy Belated birthday Grandad
Excuse me?!?
LOL
i thought we were saying happy birthday to the gorilla
Sure… but he is younger than me… 🫣
LOL
Besides there was a misunderstanding on my side. It wasn’t Sherlock‘s birthday but Simon‘s… 😅
Greetings friend @the-gorilla
I am glad that my work to consolidate Boomig's information has been useful to guide your research, which I think is excellent. I think it is necessary to deepen more investigations in all communities to detect irregular cases and present them with the proper evidence in order to clean up as much as possible the system that today has been built to support users.
It is a shame that users take advantage of the trust to abuse the resources that are given to them for the benefit of the community.
Let's hope these actions stop someday.
Thank you for dedicating your time to this, which I know is a lot.
Unfortunately, the level of effort involved is monstrous and no matter how much evidence is presented, there is rarely admission of guilt - in this case, trying to belittle everything down to a screenshot. Like the bank robber who parked their car on double yellow lines admitting that they should have parked somewhere else.
As I've mentioned elsewhere, I fear that the opposite will happen as mistakes are learnt from. Trust is at an all time low.
Thank you 👍
Well, it matters to Vicky, so I'll play devil's advocate. I'm not (completely) sold that this is an alt account. The orange-border dish doesn't suggest much to me since they both acknowledge knowing each other, and we find a similar dish again halfway down with the fish that Vicky cooked - including (I think) in the dish rack; Common design in the area?
I see 3 feet in the cooking photo, and the sandals on 2 of them look like women's sandals to me (though I know nothing about fashion, especially Nigerian fashion, and I don't wear sandals). Also, Terra shrimp cubes are a Nigerian brand, so that photo seems potentially authentic.
The same wedding photo is also on Vicky Jay's fb profile; and I know plenty of people who use alternate forms of their name (such as maiden names or middle names or even just made-up names) on fb. So, it could be that public photos found their way from fb to here, or it could be that the same person posted the same photos in two places. I'm bad with faces, but to me the FB profile photo and the Intro post photo do look like the same person, as do some of the other photos in the Steem account.
As to Iliya vs. Vincent, I note that her husband's first name is listed as Vincent, and their child's last name is also listed as Vincent. Possibly a Nigerian custom where the wife adopts the husband's first name? Dunno, but it seems odd that someone would use a fake last name that matches someone else's first name in the same paragraph. Although... I am still puzzled as to why the last name would not have been "Vincent" in the intro post.
OTOH, FB Vicky: "Studied at Govt. Secondary School, Ƙofar Hausa, Keffi" (I don't even know what that means) whereas Steem Vicky: "I attend Nasarawa state college of Education in 2014/2016". I'm not sure how we reconcile those statements, considering that the FB photos appear under the Steem account?
That's way more time than I intended to spend, and it's all I have time for right now, but so far I'm keeping an open mind on that particular account.
Update: But then, there is this.
Update 2: If she is the owner of the FB account, it would be easy enough for her to clear up any doubts by posting a link to Steemit from FB. She could even delete it again after giving the SC or Abuse Watcher accounts the opportunity to observe it.
I’m on my mobile so won’t research any extra detail right now…
I agree with the dish and I’m in no doubt that somebody from Nigeria cooked that recipe. They know each other and on the day Simon bought the fish, he says that he cooked it with a neighbour. If I cooked a meal with another Steemit user, I can 100% guarantee that I’d tag them. The same photo of the fish appears at a later date from a different user. It’s strange but the advocate would think it irrelevant.
On subject of the sandals, we’d call them flip flops and I prefer flip flops to sandals so it would be difficult to determine gender (assuming that I’m male). I put very little value in this anecdote. I know there’s an image of Vickyson holding the fish dish, perhaps the original photo will show her footwear.
She does say in her intro:
Which correlates with the idea that she sells street food. For me though, all of the "characters" require a real world person to support it so I have little doubt that details like this are true, even if they get other details "wrong" sometimes.
Some of the suspicion surrounds the use of the publicly available Facebook photos. If you have the Facebook account, you have access to the photos so why not use them instead of a half arsed screenshot? I only found this Facebook account through being friends with one of our protagonists - I’d never have found it through names alone.
Like the wasa account, I have no doubt that there’s a real person who is aware that the account exists and helps to support it through the use of photos (and maybe even a video call) when requested (see my reply to Simon for more on this). Including Facebook accounts - Facebook being a key tool in recruitment. (I.e. the prospect of making a few dollars and all you have to do is provide photos when requested).
That’s why it works and is so convincing. Users in Pakistan have been doing it for some time in their local villages. It’s also why once these errors are corrected (which they will be), it will be impossible to know if any newcomers are real. Which is a sad point that we have been approaching for some time.
This is the reason everything took so long to investigate and subsequently explain and present. And why it’s presented as a whole, rather than just one component.
Hence, the sadness in writing all of this down. So much of the emphasis of rewards evolves around “proving that you’re real” and then entering contests.
Also commenting from my cell, so this will be brief. General topics that occur to me for later follow-up (if time allows):
I know how long I spent just on pieces of this, but I can only guess at how much longer you were digging into it, so thank you for doing that.
You are right about overvaluing posts. There is no point in chasing each specific case if the system allows overvaluing posts. STEEM has many clones. Most of them try to position themselves favorably against STEEM, noting that they do not have bid bots, only manual curators.
I think the best option would be to make manual curation more profitable than automatic and more profitable than content creation (for large share holders). The current algorithm had this goal, but in practice it doesn't work very well.
I've seen that attempts to make manual curation more profitable than delegating to bid bots have already been made. But it didn't work. This is a complex question that requires long and thorough brainstorming. A special discussion thread could be created for this. But all this has no meaning. Even if we managed to invent the perfect formula, these changes would not be implemented.
Despite everything, I believe that we need to involve all those who are willing and still reach a common opinion on what needs to be changed to implement the principle of fairer distribution of rewards. Then, having a ready-made decision, perhaps someday the appropriate circumstances will arise for the implementation of this decision.
Compare the time spent on manual curation vs automatic curation and the cost of human time, and the cost of possible Steem rewards -- then, the answer becomes obvious which way development WILL NOT GO.. imo.
By the end of it, I think I knew some of them better than they know themselves 🤣
Seriously though... you're almost certainly correct that the reward mechanism is at the heart of this...
Perhaps the solution would be as simple as never displaying voting power or who has voted on a post, thus reducing the incentive to chase the vote of a whale. Imagine that. Perhaps this is the seed of my next post.
Or it will lead to even more fraud, since nothing will be visible immediately, and in order to expose the fraudster, you will have to dig even more in dirty laundry.
Besides that -- we are on the blockchain, right? The info may be hidden within the Steemit front-end interface, but still be visible in the block inspector, like the steemworld. Right?
I think you are right.
Good point 😪
sounds quite curious! that idea never came even once to my mind.
I'm only partway through, but this article is relevant and interesting: SoK: The Ghost Trilemma (I found it from here). A couple excerpts that caught my attention so far:
And
So, what I'm imaging now is an API that monitors the chain and returns three scores for an account (see Table 1 in the document): Sentience, location, and uniqueness. Then:
Of course, there'd have to be a funding/business model. Bottom line, I think trying to keep up with the scammers with manual tools is a lost cause. Like so many things, progress depends on bringing together the right mix of funding, motivation, and skills.
I agree. Especially considering that there's no consequence even when a scammer gets caught.
I wonder why so many academic papers use English words and succeed in being impossible to read.
And long. There's no way that article needs to be 22 pages. Reminds me of Adam Smith including corn price tables in "The Wealth of Nations" because he was paid by the word.
I forget his name, but I saw a blogger on substack who published readable versions of his academic papers. IIRC His claim was that the reviewers demand the obfuscation, and that it's a form of elitism. I came across him writing about how his academic versions get ignored, but the readable versions were widely shared.
Just ran a few quick searches, but I didn't find him. Maybe later.
Same problem at Twitter. ;-)
Ha ha! I really, really hope this signals the end of Captcha. There’s nothing more painful than having to decide which squares count as the bicycle.
Sadly, I doubt it. That's Google conscripting free microlabor from billions of people in order to train their image classifier. My guess is that human verification has always been secondary.
Great job mate! Im glad you put in evidence this character who has been behavior a ilegal behavior in this platform. I want to see how will be the end of this story.
Este personaje ha venido haciendo las cosas muy mal y gracias a este post una vez mas reafirmé mi hipótesis con la crypto academia...
Espero que el personaje en cuestión se le quiten todo los privilegios dentro de la plataforma y que finalmente las recompensas sean más equitativas.
Uno a uno van a caer todas las personas que se aprovechan del poder qué se les da en steemit. Porque el no es el único caso, hay muchísimos más.
Éxito ✌️
Thank you and for now, this is the end of my story.
The Crypto Academy suffered the same fate as all good initiatives that are designed to attract and reward authors for their hard work. At least with the engagement challenge, the onus is more than just the post - it's just a shame that some people can't satisfy themselves with one entry.
This isn't the first time and it won't be the last. I must be in double figures now for rooting out people who abuse the privilege bestowed upon them by the Steemit Team.
Come on bro 😂😂😂😂 your sarcasm is something else😂
This is a very serious point and absolutely crucial to the case.
Do the feet look more like those in this picture:
a) Link to copyrighted image
or this picture:
b) Link to another copyrighted image
I will not bias your choice by telling you which of those feet belong to males or females until you have made your selection.
Haha, they look more like (a) obviously.
I think (a) too. We need an expert to confirm thoigh 😉
😂😂
Ansiosa de conocer el capítulo 7, haces un buen trabajo!! No te desanimes, atrapa mucho al lector tu manera de escribir
Thank you. It's utterly exhausting though and it often feels like no matter how much you can prove, there will always be some doubt and a plausible excuse. Which probably means there won't be an Episode 7 (but I'll still stop those pesky scammers!)
Siempre habrá una forma de detenerlos
Cuídate mucho gorila