Scammers and Greed: The Minnow Self-Circle Jerk - PALnet MOD Report 8/5/2017
Let's talk the good stuff first
- I am extremely thrilled with launching my witness since my last report. I currently sit at position 94 on the Witness List, which brings in about 1 block every 36 hours.
- MSP Waves Radio Launched this week - I have two shows in production. Special thanks to @sircork for his relentless work to get this launched.
- @benjojo is pulling his delegation, while not good for MSP, without his generosity to begin with, this group would not exist. I thank him for his kindness in helping many minnows get their footing on this platform.
- @msp-shanehug continues to grow and is sitting just shy of 3000SP, Thank you to everyone that has delegated to me.
The Meat Of This Report
Ever since @fraenk exposed the first known MSP scammer, I, along with the other MSP MODS and a couple of helpful members have been uncovering a TON of abuse on the bots.
So instead of banning and forgetting, I will be exposing the accounts here and any new ones in each report. These people, while not getting a ton of money, are taking advantage of the people that delegate to MSP and are draining the reward pool and it's time for some public shaming. EDIT to address @lexiconical 's concern in comments, We are continuing to ban these accounts. I worded it in such a way that suggests that we were not. I apologize for that confusion.
I fully expect to get some flags for these, but that's a risk I'm willing to take.
@on247 - Was caught creating multiple accounts to upvote his spam. Was asked to stop, promised he would, then continued to make more accounts. https://steemit.com/@on247/transfers to see the long list of codes from @minnowsupport and @banjo. They attempted a second account@nier but that was shut down pretty quickly.
https://steemit.com/@momoxia/transfers Take a look at the accounts here. We discovered this by the abuse found linked to @arthestically. Who was just active enough to avoid suspicion. But it turns out they're just another scammer.
@fproductions - Another large account scammer. Several discord usernames were linked to this account. This guy had the nerve to act like all of the accounts with similar naming schemes were not him, although they all vote on the same account.
@sighanchi - Just a stupid amount of accounts linked to this one. Again, many discord accounts linked to the MSP bots to upvote his spam filled posts.
@inkedandsexy - @kinglui - @samanthabarolli. Another self-circle jerk. Many more accounts linked to them when you check the https://steemit.com/@samanthabarolli/transfers wallet.
@x0l - Really bad at the scamming game
@mufasa-martian - Multiple discord accounts to abuse the bots
@fairgirl - 14 known discord accounts tied to this one. Jeesh
@invictuss - 5 or 6 discord accounts tied to this
@kyhar - Multiple Discord accounts
@astaetram - Multiple Discord accounts
@adwiar - Multiple Discord accounts
@sicontractor - Multiple Discord accounts
@treachya - Multiple Discord accounts
@afeliseth - Multiple Discord accounts
@ibearith - Multiple Discord accounts
@seveide - Multiple Discord accounts
@antara - Multiple Discord accounts
@praju-starlet - Multiple Discord accounts
All of these plus a few more we are double checking against accidental multiple sign-ups which do happen from time to time.
So what are we doing to help prevent Abuse?
- We are adding new MODS to help control the 4300 + accounts under PALnet.
- I am working with @sherlockholmes with information on spammers, scammers, and cheats. If I see something odd, I'll feed it to him and let him do his thing. Please show your support to him. He's doing great work exposing "artists" taking credit for work they have not done.
- We have started reaching out to @steemcleaners and we share information we find.
My Witness
I mentioned it at the start of this report, but I will mention it again in a completely unabashed beg for your vote. There are 16 (at last count) dead witnesses ahead of me on the list. We are the ones that make sure that your transactions are verified correctly. Your vote for me will put the dead witnesses where they belong, which is out of the top 100 list.
How to vote?
- Use the witness page https://steemit.com/~witnesses
- scroll until you see this box and enter
swelker101.png)
- click vote and accept my virtual hug!
Join Us Here ! https://discord.gg/E2fYkeb
Woah!Woah!Woah! this is new to me.....First of all Congrats @swelker101 for carrying on with a successful campaign.It's just a beginning I hope by the end of this month you're closer to 50. :) Second yeah proper action should be taken against such scammers as with the increase in number of people in PAL family we need to provide fair enough opportunity for all to grow. :)
Thanks, @shrey 50 would be nice. There's a lot still to find, I'm sure
Wow x0l was a scammer I never knew
Small time, but multiple accounts.
Thanks for the work you do on for us!
Kubby!!!
Shane :)
Creativity is not always a good thing... I had no idea about the magnitude of such activities. I think you are doing a great job here and I just have to say I'm sorry that it's needed. I put my vote on you as witness. Thanks!
Thank you!.. Some of these were pretty creative, some not. Fortunately we're starting to get a handle of way to find them easier.
Hi,
I have a pretty list of abusers of MSP draining the BOTS, I can sent you DM in the discord. So do I?
Absolutely you can..
So, why don't you guys just start banning and forgetting a lot of these people? Some of it is such blatant abuse, aren't you hurting the community by not banning them?
Make them have to repeatedly recreate accounts and re-enroll by banning them. This will make their scheme unprofitable in terms of time.
Thanks for pointing that out, after a re-read, I can see the confusion. I added an edit to make it clear that we are continuing to ban these accounts.
Ah, thanks, good news! My righteous schadenfreude has been appeased. =)
(Note the above is satirical and not intended as a healthy mental state.)
Oh, I may have mis-written that. We are banning and I'm also announcing.
You've got my witness vote
Hey! thank you!
I wish people become creative and make some effort. It would be a shame if such people receive even a penny out of MSP or even Steemit.
I agree. But where there's money to be made, there will be people trying to take advantage of it.
That's true. But it's great to see them being taken down.
And I am glad to follow you, Shane.
I won't support any of you guys as you created this abuse by coming up with these scammy ideas to sell votes in the first place. You're making it so that the only way to earn anything on this site as a minnow author is to pay you guys. Fuck that protection racket shit.
If you guys had the best interests of this site at heart you'd be flagging people like trevonjb who posts cloud mining affiliate links knowing full well that anyone who signs up will get ripped off and bookingteam.com who posts copypasta ads disguised as posts.
I see you have signed up for MSP with the 0.002 steem one time cost to use the bots I'm talking about. So I'm confused on what pay you're talking about. MSP is free to use at all times. The bots are a one time 4 cent cost. The lion's share of the delegations go to the two bots are are at your use with that 4 cents.
This is covering MSP only, if we see scams on steemit, we report to steemcleaners as needed.
And you can also see that I've never used it after signing up a couple of months ago and I never will use it. It sounded like a good idea at first but after thinking about it, I started to realise how flawed the idea was and the shit it would lead to. I didn't want any part of that.
LOL, do I get a refund with interest?
Now look where we are today and you're posting about how the service has been abused - of course it has and this abuse will continue. Not only that though but it's given rise to a shit load of other paid upvoting services that's cementing steemit as a "pay to win" platform.
If you guys want to help all us minnows, rather than just the paid members of your club then start arguing for changes that reverse the domination of this site by a handful of users.
And that's what the witnesses do, but at the end of the day, all of the arguing in the world may not change the dev's minds on how to go.
And you call it paid membership, which it's not. To use the Discord channel and network and make connections is free. Several people have come in, made friends, and are being successful without using the bots or transferring any steem whatsoever. It seems to me that you signed up, made a decision without really checking out what was going on, and have decided that it's not a help.
The real rise of all of this multi-account abuse is HF19, which encourages this type of behavior.
If you want your 0.002 steem back, I'll be happy to send it to you, but there will be no interest.
I always only think of the good. I am shocked at the level....lost for words
It's amazing how much time people spend trying to take advantage of something
This post received a 5% vote by @nettybot courtesy of @swelker101 from the Minnow Support Project ( @minnowsupport ). Join us in Discord.
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