EVE Search - Avoiding SCAMS, lessons learned

All Channels

Market Discussions

Avoiding SCAMS, lessons learned

» Click here to find additional results for this topic using Google

Monitor this thread via RSS [?]

Pages: [1] 2 3 4 :: one page
Author	Thread Statistics \| Show CCP posts - 0 post(s)
cosmoray Cosmoray Construction	Posted - 2009.01.21 14:05:00 - [1] Unfortunately like many of you I have lost money in one of the recent SCAMS. I invested 500M into Xabier bonds, so it looks like I am 400M ISK down on that. I am more annoyed with my self as it was my first investment that ended in SCAM since 2007. Unfortunately Xabier rise was too quick. Within 4 months from unknown he had too much money. So what did I learn, and how does this effect my investments? My personal investing rules: 1. Investments in new players asking for over 10B end in SCAM 50% of the time (3 of 6 in last year). Simple I don't invest in large IPO's for unknowns 2. Never vote for Bond expansions. All bonds should be closed before a new bond is launched. NO Bond expansions. 3. No IPO expansions within 6 months unless I have a history with the CEO 4. Never, Ever, Ever do business with a character that has been involved with character selling 5. The only audits I will accept are Kazuo, Shar or a member of EBank staff. You want my money get audited by one of the above 6. Only lockdown I will accept is from very respected players.
Rain Goddess	Posted - 2009.01.21 14:25:00 - [2] Edited by: Rain Goddess on 21/01/2009 14:25:54 I lost 12.7 billion (initial investment)....11.2 billion minus dividend payments! I think i'm done with market discussion and as soon as my cash dries up...perhaps the game. I learned nothing! As always, the human condition (that which is devised to hurt each other)sours the soul!
LaVista Vista	Posted - 2009.01.21 14:55:00 - [3] By your rules, you would have called me a scam. Just use common sense. I think people learned that when Wylker ran away with a considerable sum of ISK.
Kazuo Ishiguro House of Marbles Zzz	Posted - 2009.01.21 14:59:00 - [4] I'm surprised that you haven't taken to auditing people yourself, cosmo. I think #4 is a bit harsh, especially in the case of people who have a large number of alts. There's certainly going to be increased scrutiny of expansions from now on, and I wouldn't be surprised if that meant multiple audits of the same people. --- Can't afford that BPO? Look here. 20:1 mineral compression The EVE f@h team
CornerStoner	Posted - 2009.01.21 15:17:00 - [5] CRTF: -200mil Xabier: -200mil Who cares about the dividends? It's a 400mil loss as far as I'm concerned. While not a crushing blow to my bottom line the collusion involved with these two scams will be a fatal blow to any investents by me in public IPOs/Bonds. I lost faith in MD a few months ago anyways. Dbank unwittingly being a victim of Xabier will also damage the potential of it's own operations and, to a lesser extent, other loan based operations. With the current percentage of scams mounting it seems foolish and naive to consider any IPO/Bond that doesn't meet some pretty extreme standards. (Read: keep your ISK in your wallet if you want to see it again) Only a few (5) public and private invesments I have would ever see more ISK from me.
Brock Nelson Caldari Flux Technologies Inc	Posted - 2009.01.21 15:24:00 - [6] Originally by: cosmoray 5. The only audits I will accept are Kazuo, Shar or a member of EBank staff. You want my money get audited by one of the above You've invested in StardustCEO's bond that was audited by me and I'm not in the list? sniff
cosmoray Cosmoray Construction	Posted - 2009.01.21 15:28:00 - [7] Originally by: Brock Nelson Originally by: cosmoray 5. The only audits I will accept are Kazuo, Shar or a member of EBank staff. You want my money get audited by one of the above You've invested in StardustCEO's bond that was audited by me and I'm not in the list? sniff these are my new standards as of now
Kazzac Elentria	Posted - 2009.01.21 15:35:00 - [8] I think the lesson we can all learn is that be wary of quick expansions. Last month after the payout for Xabier, I had it in my gut to sell of what I had because it just felt to quick with everything he was getting access to. Despite a personal wealth in the hundreds of billions, verified by giving the then current CEO of my current corporation, it took 6 months before I even had hanger access for example. And another 3 after that before I had my own wallet division. Now after the length of time I have access to the entire kitty, but the point here is I think we lost our patience somewhere. I think many of us have gotten expansion crazy, and tend to automatically assume that hey, he's paid a few divs so far, thats gotta be on the up and up.
Shar Tegral	Posted - 2009.01.21 15:51:00 - [9] I have to say, currently with my level of confidence, I would not accept audits by anyone on Cosmo's list. (Yes including you Brock, hell including myself) I would say a good standard is dual audit. A fine example would be an audit by Kazuo and myself. Two different styles, no business connections between us, and little chance of collusion due to slight personality conflicts between us. Right now, imho, identity is becoming far too malleable a concept. So much so I find I have little trust for many here at MD. Of course the truth is I have a large dose of distrust for all you bastards but that should come as no surprise.
Ambo State Protectorate	Posted - 2009.01.21 15:55:00 - [10] Reithe taught us the problem with rapid expansions about a year ago. People said then that from now on there would be increased scrutiny of expansions and IPOs in general. It's just the same stuff going around again. The market will recover and this won't be the last scam in MD.
Kazzac Elentria	Posted - 2009.01.21 15:59:00 - [11] Originally by: Shar Tegral I have to say, currently with my level of confidence, I would not accept audits by anyone on Cosmo's list. (Yes including you Brock, hell including myself) I would say a good standard is dual audit. A fine example would be an audit by Kazuo and myself. Two different styles, no business connections between us, and little chance of collusion due to slight personality conflicts between us. I think I would like to propose that this become the stock and staple from now on. So much so that Im thinking about writing up an actual business proposal for it. An auditing group that performs the audits, and then contracts out to a third party a final verification. All requiring payment in some form or another.
nether void Caldari Shrapnel Industries	Posted - 2009.01.21 16:09:00 - [12] Originally by: Kazzac Elentria Originally by: Shar Tegral I have to say, currently with my level of confidence, I would not accept audits by anyone on Cosmo's list. (Yes including you Brock, hell including myself) I would say a good standard is dual audit. A fine example would be an audit by Kazuo and myself. Two different styles, no business connections between us, and little chance of collusion due to slight personality conflicts between us. I think I would like to propose that this become the stock and staple from now on. So much so that Im thinking about writing up an actual business proposal for it. An auditing group that performs the audits, and then contracts out to a third party a final verification. All requiring payment in some form or another. The problem really is no amount of auditing can prevent someone from transforming from legit to scam, because there's no repercussions. Rep is shot? Buy a new character. It will help some though, but we still come back to the old tried and true 'if it smells fishy, it's probably fish'. True successful investors are built from that instinctual feeling when something smells like a scam. --------------------
Ricdic Caldari	Posted - 2009.01.21 16:38:00 - [13] People need to stop believing an audit will guarantee an operation. It won't. In most cases a scam can be avoided when securities are locked down with trusted parties. Kazuo currently has a couple of operations running under him with locked down stocks and they don't have a single problem. When audits are done they need specific provisions that ALL data will be provided to the public in the event of a scam. Name of main, API keys, everything. People also need to stop investing willy nilly into every investment that shows up. Someone should have to build up trust and prove themselves to the investor not have funds thrown onto them. As has been mentioned above, rapid expansion should also come with large warning bells. I have been in the public sector here for years, almost 4 now. I have been running my own IPO's, Bonds, Bank etc for about 3.5 years of that. Even now after all this time I handle maybe 300-350b of EBANK funds (ie what I could run off with). That's only double what Xabier left with after a few months in the public sector. We see it time and time again with one man operations failing. Almost every operation that exceeds 50b with one man at the helm has failed. There are few exceptions, maybe only one, Block. We need to get back to the times of bpo's being locked down as securities or collateral being provided. EBANK follow this procedure for our loans, and whilst collateral often only reaches 80% our loss rate is something like 15b out of close to 1 trillion isk in loans. A mere 1.5%. Not everyone can provide full collateral but ask yourself this. Why would you give money to someone that is 5x or 50x their own net worth? If they couldn't earn it on their own you are placing a huge risk doing so. This may sounds hypocritical as my personal wealth is maybe 10-20b at most but my personal wealth is only so low as I use about 95% of my time in Eve working for these public operations rather than my own cash acquisition. Anyway things need to tighten up considerably. As I have said countless times an audit should be one step in a process when considering investment not the determining factor. I generally laugh when I see a new IPO with everyone saying "reserve pending audit". These people aren't using Eve-search to check character history, checking with previous CEO's for character references or doing anything to secure their investment. They sit back and wait for someone else to do the work and then complain when they lose all their cash. As long as people keep throwing money at these scammers the scammers will keep coming. IPO scamming is probably the absolute best form of isk generation in Eve when considering time vs yield. I look at EVERY new ipo as a scam. I use a guilty until proven innocent approach. It's not fair for the honest people but it's a necessary evil. I invest in others based on long term results and their financial exposure, their level of activeness both in game and out. Let's use LadyOfWrath as an example. The LoW bonds don't come very often. However when they do I always jump on them. LadyOfWrath has proven performance specifically based on his sell orders forum post, hundreds of happy customers and multiple pages of advertising spanning a good year. This shows a working business. This business relies on good working practices and fast response times to customers demands. In the LoW example it would likely be more damaging for him to scam than to stay legitimate due to his large number of business and customer base. Finally, posting. I never invest in someone who doesn't post on these forums. It shows their only interest is gathering my money. Someone who doesn't care about the secondary market but still floats a bond is far more likely to also not care about scamming. This post wasn't directed at anyone in particular, more meant to be a general reason I see why people are watching their cash go up in smoke.
Ricdic Caldari	Posted - 2009.01.21 16:40:00 - [14] Originally by: Rain Goddess I lost 12.7 billion (initial investment)....11.2 billion minus dividend payments! Had those billions been in EBANK the interest wouldn't have been as good but the principle would still remain. Putting such a large amount of funds into someone with a very short track history in MD was unfortunately a very silly move. Hopefully you can take from what I have posted above and use it to make smarter decisions in the future.
Damien Jax Industrial Research College Ltd	Posted - 2009.01.21 16:42:00 - [15] I'm in favor of multiple auditors and have stated on the ebank forums that these auditors need to communicate with one another. Alas, no amount of auditing can prevent idiots from jumping into an investment. There's too much idle isk around MD right now which is why we've lost our patience. Basically, if you aren't the first to reserve, then you'll miss out (like I did with Brock's offerings). So people throw around isk without doing due diligence. I suppose this is the investor's fault, but it hurts the community as a whole everytime someone scams.
Ricdic Caldari	Posted - 2009.01.21 16:46:00 - [16] Pick your investments. Who cares if you miss one good one. It's a LOT easier to lose money on an investment than it is to earn it.
Ricdic Caldari	Posted - 2009.01.21 16:50:00 - [17] This is completely unrelated to Eve but the same points can be reverse engineered to consider when making investments. http://www.webuildpages.com/blog/uncategorized/gain-trust-and-influence-people/ Be aware a scammer and social engineer (ie Riethe) can also use this against you so it shouldn't be an absolute guide.
Nikumo Nikado	Posted - 2009.01.21 17:17:00 - [18] Originally by: cosmoray Unfortunately like many of you I have lost money in one of the recent SCAMS. I invested 500M into Xabier bonds, so it looks like I am 400M ISK down on that. I am more annoyed with my self as it was my first investment that ended in SCAM since 2007. Unfortunately Xabier rise was too quick. Within 4 months from unknown he had too much money. So what did I learn, and how does this effect my investments? My personal investing rules: I couldn't help smiling when I read the following - for each of these, there is a counter, a scammer can work around each of your "safeguards" and make away with your money - not to mention how easy it will be for someone who passes your tests to still scam you and others. Further it is stupid to believe that you are now safer from scams having put these down here. Would a wise investor disclose their personal investment strategy to scammers at the forum as outlined below? Answer that honestly and let me know where cosmoray stands on a scale of 1-10 in smart investing! Originally by: cosmoray 1. Investments in new players asking for over 10B end in SCAM 50% of the time (3 of 6 in last year). Simple I don't invest in large IPO's for unknowns. This was not a "large" investment in an "unknown". The person just happened to be vetted by someone you trusted, who turned out to be scamming you. To REALLY prevent this, you should stop investing in anyone at all, since the next person whose word you trust could be setting you up for a scam too. Trust no-one, invest in no one else. Just like you cannot make your 10B into 20B yourself, you will run out of people to invest in if you only invest in people you have already invested in - zero investing growth. Originally by: cosmoray 2. Never vote for Bond expansions. All bonds should be closed before a new bond is launched. NO Bond expansions. 3. No IPO expansions within 6 months unless I have a history with the CEO Here comes the "my first bond was for 5B, this next one is for 20B scam." Investors will lose the same 15B as if they had invested in the 5B bond and its 10B expansion. Also, on an individual basis, you will lose more anyways - you invest in the first bond, and it returns what was promised. So the next time around, you "trust" the bond issuer and invest more than you would have invested in an expansion (since you really really trust this issuer). Same old trust issue, and random limit - why 6 months, why not 12 months, or 24 months? Can't scammers pick 9 months and get by your mental filter and still scam you? Originally by: cosmoray 4. Never, Ever, Ever do business with a character that has been involved with character selling You are wise enough to not state why! What if the IPO or bond is for a character reseller? That is a profitable business, I gather. So an IPO that would buy GTCs with ISK, train "niche" chars using the GTCs and sell the chars for a profit - that sounds like a business plan to me. Also, how would you ever know how many alts a person has on his/her other accounts - its not like we roll with just one account. Originally by: cosmoray 5. The only audits I will accept are Kazuo, Shar or a member of EBank staff. You want my money get audited by one of the above 6. Only lockdown I will accept is from very respected players. 5 - Nice choice. Kazuo is none the wiser and lost money in this same recent scam. Dbank is less-than-perfect, but Ebank, surely, is 100% above board. Xabier was in Dbank's halls, but there are no Xabiers in Ebank, for sure. 6 - Ah, if only you could define respected, or have a metric for who you respect. I, for one, respect your investing acumen far less than I did before. You are just as clueless as anyone else, and what's worse, you actually make out like you have a clue and instill false confidence in other invest
Ricdic Caldari	Posted - 2009.01.21 17:23:00 - [19] Originally by: Nikumo Nikado but Ebank, surely, is 100% above board. Yeh we are pretty awesome I agree thanks.
MailDeadDrop Globaltech Industries	Posted - 2009.01.21 17:37:00 - [20] Originally by: Kazzac Elentria I think I would like to propose that this [team audits] become the stock and staple from now on. So much so that I'm thinking about writing up an actual business proposal for it. An auditing group that performs the audits, and then contracts out to a third party a final verification. All requiring payment in some form or another. Kazzac, when writing this up may I suggest that you elaborate on what "audit" means, e.g.: This audit is a "point-in-time" review of: wallet journal & transaction entries (both individual and corporate) forum postings on Eve-online or other websites skills assets (both individual and corporate) software The review will be of the issuer and involved alts. The intent of this review is to expose evidence of: the issuer's trading competence (if the issuer's trading is applicable to the offering) the issuer's manufacturing competence (if the issuer's manufacturing is applicable to the offering) the issuer's programming competence (if the issuer's programming is applicable to the offering) a working relationship or conspiracy with other characters of interest (including touts) intent to defraud due diligence on behalf of issuer statements materially different than what the issuer states in the offering character purchases, sales, trades, or other exchanges (such activity may indicate that the character is under the control of a different player) In addition to audit, should you also include "business plan evaluation"? By that, i mean more of a subjective review of how likely the issue's goals will be met, how effective the issuer's contingency plans are, and any aspects of the business plan which may be inadequately addressed in the plan. While I strongly consider such feedback very useful, I, personally, don't feel that they fit neatly under the "audit" rubric. MDD Jump Clones: 8M and NO corp switching
Astarte Nosferatu Abrivianius Manufacturing Corporation	Posted - 2009.01.21 17:43:00 - [21] 'Trusted' means just that, you trust someone not to walk away with your isk. Nothing prevents auditors, trusted MD regulars, even people like Chribba or yes, you Ricdic, to scam. As long as we have to trust people instead of game mechanics, we are bound to get burned. If you want to play scam-free, don't give other people your isk, period. Only reason I haven't started an IPO or bond of whatever yet, I because I know once I would get 100bil+, I would be very tempted to keep it and give you all a "Thanks for all the fish!" quote. Social engineering and manipulation isn't all that hard, you just have to have the time and energy to live up to people's expectations for a couple of months. I'm surprised this hasn't happened more often as everyone with a bit of a brain could pull it off. Yes, I'm selling some of my shares
Mr Horizontal Gallente KIA Corp KIA Alliance	Posted - 2009.01.21 17:48:00 - [22] Originally by: Ricdic Originally by: Nikumo Nikado but Ebank, surely, is 100% above board. Yeh we are pretty awesome I agree thanks. lol shaddap ric! We are extremely lucky with the quality and talent in EBANK's team, but equally, we aren't 100% perfect, but we do try to be as good as is pragmatically possible. Also, just to set the record straight, Block does have a board too.
cosmoray Cosmoray Construction	Posted - 2009.01.21 17:57:00 - [23] Originally by: Nikumo Nikado STUFF To answer your point. 1. Xabier is not inculded in the metric for unknowns scamming after getting 10B +. I actually credited Xabier with some history and wasn't a total unknown when he completed his big project. It is Evn7298 who is the latest in the unknown over 10B. The other 2 were last year. 2. Character reselling. You can never tell who is really talking when a character has been sold. The above two points kept me away from Evn7298. Yes I screwed up with Xabier. He did a good job making a small name for himself, and earnt the big bucks. The rules I posted were thing that would cause me to immediately rule out an investment. Most of my decision is based upon: 1. The CEO's answers to my questions 2. maturity of OP 3. Background checks, either Eve-search or checking the corp employment history and talking to ex-corp mates along with some other stuff 4. has a history in MD Yep Xabier beat most of my checks, should not have invested in the fast expansion, that was my mistake. Still currently only 1 scam in over my last 20 investments. Don't want to make it a habit.
MailDeadDrop Globaltech Industries	Posted - 2009.01.21 18:02:00 - [24] Originally by: Astarte Nosferatu 'Trusted' means just that, you trust someone not to walk away with your isk. Actually, I think that your definition is a common oversimplification. 'Trusted' has degrees -- some very few people you trust to a great degree, the vast majority of people you trust substantially less. So the question often stated is "do you trust this person?" when in fact the real question is (or should be) "do you trust this person to this degree?" Chribba is often cited as the gold standard of trust in Eve (deservedly so IMHO). But if faced with the possibility of owning all of the rare ships in Eve, would he cave? I can't say no. Still, I think no less of him for his human frailties. MDD
Ricdic Caldari	Posted - 2009.01.21 18:05:00 - [25] Originally by: Astarte Nosferatu Nothing prevents ... or yes, you Ricdic, to scam. I will nevar scam, trust me.
Kazzac Elentria	Posted - 2009.01.21 18:07:00 - [26] Originally by: MailDeadDrop Originally by: Kazzac Elentria I think I would like to propose that this [team audits] become the stock and staple from now on. So much so that I'm thinking about writing up an actual business proposal for it. An auditing group that performs the audits, and then contracts out to a third party a final verification. All requiring payment in some form or another. Kazzac, when writing this up may I suggest that you elaborate on what "audit" means, e.g.: This audit is a "point-in-time" review of: wallet journal & transaction entries (both individual and corporate) forum postings on Eve-online or other websites skills assets (both individual and corporate) software The review will be of the issuer and involved alts. The intent of this review is to expose evidence of: the issuer's trading competence (if the issuer's trading is applicable to the offering) the issuer's manufacturing competence (if the issuer's manufacturing is applicable to the offering) the issuer's programming competence (if the issuer's programming is applicable to the offering) a working relationship or conspiracy with other characters of interest (including touts) intent to defraud due diligence on behalf of issuer statements materially different than what the issuer states in the offering character purchases, sales, trades, or other exchanges (such activity may indicate that the character is under the control of a different player) In addition to audit, should you also include "business plan evaluation"? By that, i mean more of a subjective review of how likely the issue's goals will be met, how effective the issuer's contingency plans are, and any aspects of the business plan which may be inadequately addressed in the plan. While I strongly consider such feedback very useful, I, personally, don't feel that they fit neatly under the "audit" rubric. MDD Thats more or less what I was thinking. Information verification is only one aspect of analyzing an offering, actual plan inspection is the other. I think moving towards a model of only paid audits accepted would be a good thing as well. The fee could be negotiated since it would obviously depend on the work being done, but it would need to be paid to everyone involved in the process.
Kazzac Elentria	Posted - 2009.01.21 18:09:00 - [27] And I forgot to add, that audits wouldn't save us from this style of scam. This was straight social engineering at its finest. As Ricdic mentioned, moving more towards any productions offerings being locked down by multiple parties, avoiding rapid expansions without full payout of original offering, etc... would have helped mitigate the loss here.
MilowFV Echo Heavy Industries	Posted - 2009.01.21 18:10:00 - [28] Cosmoray rules aren't to stop her/him from getting scam they are just to limit the risk of it happening. Short of not investing there is no way to stop all scams from happening in Eve. I get as annoyed as the next person when I get scam, but I look at it like getting suicide ganked or losing a ship and move on. I got hook by Xaiber rep and invest 100 million ISK in whats his name expansion. I felt screwed though when I saw the 12 Billion or what ever it was he want for a mothership BPC he had, but it was a bit late by then. I personally think Cosmoray rule of thumb for investing will help, but I also feel that a year from now someone will put in the time and effort to make another hugh IPO scam, as the longer the MD forum goes with out getting scammed the more risk people seem to be willing to take.
YouGotRipped Ewigkeit	Posted - 2009.01.21 18:11:00 - [29] Edited by: YouGotRipped on 21/01/2009 18:15:33 Originally by: Ambo Reithe taught us the problem with rapid expansions about a year ago. People said then that from now on there would be increased scrutiny of expansions and IPOs in general. It's just the same stuff going around again. The market will recover and this won't be the last scam in MD. Rite... so how much did you lose this time? It is at least laughable that despite the community's best efforts, someone has managed to scam again, and bigtime.
Ambo State Protectorate	Posted - 2009.01.21 18:15:00 - [30] Originally by: YouGotRipped Edited by: YouGotRipped on 21/01/2009 18:12:48 Originally by: Ambo Reithe taught us the problem with rapid expansions about a year ago. People said then that from now on there would be increased scrutiny of expansions and IPOs in general. It's just the same stuff going around again. The market will recover and this won't be the last scam in MD. Rite... so how much did you lose this time? It is at least laughable that despite the community's best efforts, someone has managed to scam again, and bigtime. lol, nothing on this one. I pick my investments far too carefully these days. Tbh I did regard Xabier as trustworthy, though I never properly looked into his history.

Pages: [1] 2 3 4 :: one page
First page \| Previous page \| Next page \| Last page

COPYRIGHT NOTICE
EVE Online, the EVE logo, EVE and all associated logos and designs are the intellectual property of CCP hf. All artwork, screenshots, characters, vehicles, storylines, world facts or other recognizable features of the intellectual property relating to these trademarks are likewise the intellectual property of CCP hf. EVE Online and the EVE logo are the registered trademarks of CCP hf. All rights are reserved worldwide. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. CCP hf. has granted permission to EVE-Search.com to use EVE Online and all associated logos and designs for promotional and information purposes on its website but does not endorse, and is not in any way affiliated with, EVE-Search.com. CCP is in no way responsible for the content on or functioning of this website, nor can it be liable for any damage arising from the use of this website.