The recent Ponzi scam (link) that was recently purpotrated on the Entropian citizens leaves me to wonder exactly how widespread this was. Here is my “consierpciy” theory.
The main public guy who is doing the scam, collecting the money and paying out individuals.
This person then uses friends to “invest” in his scam like everyone else except in larger amounts of money, thousands of peds.
This person then pays out everyone in the first inital group with the friends large ped “investments,” except these large investers.
They then wait for the word to spread and more investers to come, they then contiune to get investers and pay out others. Hopefully many of the inital investers will decide to reinvest, or not withdrawl their peds yet, send them through another “cycle”
When there is a sufficent amount of money in the fund, the inital friends get their payout at amazeing profit. 400-500% or so. These friends then keep their major profit and reinvest a few thousand more peds.
At this point the whole system colapses. Enough public attention has been brought to it MindArk takes notice and bans the inital scammers account.
They then start investigateing and traceing the money. Hopefully there was so many transactions and so much money being moved arround and split up and sent to so many accounts that mindark will be unable to find out where the majority of it went. A huge chunk of it went to these inital major funders, friends of the scammer.
MindArk just declares it a scam, and locks the account freezeing all the money, but not trying to punish any of the “investers” who made major profits from the scam. So these people who could of made thousands or even tens of thousands of peds will go unpunished and be able to keep their illgot gains.
This is a very real possiblity with this scam.
I received this PM on EP:
A month ago this wasn’t very public, according to the scammer’s own site it didn’t go “public” until feb 10th or so. This would mean MudKicker was in contact with the scammer before the scammer even decided to start taking investers. This makes my conspercy theory even more possible. Although I have no proof of MudKicker’s involvement or anyone elses. it does raise very intresting questions.
Q: What would be a realitively safe way to make several thousand peds for a few of your friends and not expose them to much risk?
A: A new avatar that started a scam like a Ponzi scam, and your friends became the inital investers and received windfall profits from the scam.
The inital friends would be aware that it was a scam, and that they’d be paid back with scammed money, but since they’ll be acting like the other people who got scammed, and individually they wouldn’t be getting a major % of the scammed money, but collectively they could get a big bulk of it. And have almost no risk of being identified as part of the scam, since so many people would of made profits from it.
I think this is far more serious then one scammer… I think it is possible some of the investers where part of the scam. And I think mindark should do a very deep investigation of this scam. Everyone who participated, knownly or not, received profit from a scam. This is a serious thing.
interesting, as I said in the other thread, the only proper action for MA is to lock all of the accounts until they unravel the cashflow. It is very wrong that these people, whether they knew it or not, profited off of fellow players. I do not think most meant any harm, to the contrary, I beleive they did not know they were screwing their fellow Entropians. However, ignorance is NOT bliss in this situation and everything should be made right…at whatever cost…
I can’t belive Mudkicked would send you a PM like that.
sigh Also I was so disgusted with the idiots arguing against you and going in circles that I am glad Dino locked the post on EP. Everytime you brought up a great point they would ignore it and repeat their last post. God I can’t stand idiots sometimes. :mad:
I was ready to send you a PM apologising for those morons and their ignorance. :rolleyes:
Your theory seems very likely! Once again a great post, but that’s what’s to be expected of raeky - a crazy post that for some reason makes perfect sense (and is a long read!). :silly2: :laugh:
I’m very suprised by the stubborness of some people after this event though, It was shocking to see how many people are so blind to how something works(the ponzi scheme) even after reading about it! In one ear and out the other.. oh well. :dunce:
Edit: Oh and what I think should be done is what many others have been saying.. every account should be locked until the cash goes back to the correct avatars. Leaving it how it is(with only one locked account) just makes it a halfway succesfull scam.. and if this theory proves true - a fully succesfull one.
Oy!
Ok- this IS a definite possibility. However, there is no Proof of this. Let’s wait and see what MA decides.
If any1 partook in this scheme knowlingly then of course they should be punished appropriately…
This certainly seem like a theory that could have been the case this time.
I had a hard time beliving he was able to do that wide scam all by himself after all. If it WAS a scam that is. If he’s not locked for investigations. I dunno.
But good theory tho, and nice explained. Even dumb, originally blonde, norwegian girls understand it :thumbup:
The cashflow runs only so long there investors who invest & willing to wait for theyr payout.
It works like a pyramid. The upper one gets the profit & thext wil go on the first place in que until the payout is invested.
The last investors look for the next investor to get a grade up into the direction for the top of the pyramid for his payout.
Like it normal is. The lowest take the highest risk. I from my point would never put a cent into a thing like this until iam not shure its legal on PE.
In RL it is a legal method to earn fast money. But it is also a kind of Bingo Game. So i have the following to sugest.
If you like Lotto, Or bingo & you not care about to loose a few PEDs, feel free to try & not be anger if the system brakes before you got your payout.
I wonder why the initiator not informs about it, it would legalize the thing.
All who take part of this are free willing to do this, so it is not a scam like a regular one. Everyone has to make his own desicion if he like to take part of a Money Game like this.
The cashflow runs only so long there investors who invest & willing to wait for theyr payout.
It works like a pyramid. The upper one gets the profit & thext wil go on the first place in que until the payout is invested.
The last investors look for the next investor to get a grade up into the direction for the top of the pyramid for his payout.
Like it normal is. The lowest take the highest risk. I from my point would never put a cent into a thing like this until iam not shure its legal on PE.
In RL it is a legal method to earn fast money. But it is also a kind of Bingo Game. So i have the following to sugest.
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at it’s worst this is only morally reprehensible :wise:
