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Cryptoqueen: A woman scammed the world, then vanished

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Cryptoqueen: A woman scammed the world, then vanished

#81

Post by helpPeople »

tlogan wrote: post #58

My experience with OneCoin is that people who were involved in it were shady and trying get less shady people on the board. That was back in 2016 / 2017. At least in Eastern Europe, it was going like this (translation): The "master scammer" created a platform for "wannabe scammers" to scam others. But the master is the master. Typical ponzi scheme: everybody knew but they were hoping the get bigger sucker.

My question, are there innocent stupid people?

Or did every investor want a get rich quick sheme?

Re: Cryptoqueen: A woman scammed the world, then vanished

#82

Post by iamaelephant »

growt wrote: post #9

Why, with all that money, didn't they simply buy a Blockchain? It's not hard, fork bitcoin, build something on Ethereum. Or did it simply not matter for the pyramid scheme? If in the end they had a crappy Blockchain and the investors would have gotten their coins, would they've been guilty of anything?

They didn't need a blockchain for the purposes of their scam. You just said it yourself: "with all that money". They were achieving their goals just fine without one.

Re: Cryptoqueen: A woman scammed the world, then vanished

#83

Post by netsharc »

Avalaxy wrote: post #43
trpc wrote: post #34

Thanks to these con artists and careless big investors like SoftBank, once the recession comes, blockchain, AI, etc... will go into another long winter

I don't think it's fair to put blockchain and AI on the same pile.

There's just too much money swimming around nowadays looking for good ROI (thanks to government austerity and quantitative easing..), so even stupid things like recipe subscriptions or illegal taxis are being valued at billions of dollars.

Arguably the world's economy is a Ponzi scheme anyway, but the people in control of it will do anything to keep the smoke-and-mirrors-show running.

Re: Cryptoqueen: A woman scammed the world, then vanished

#84

Post by Klinky »

jacquesm wrote: post #60
thu2111 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't actually know she's dead. "Disappeared" can mean a lot of different things, depending a lot on how hard people looked and the assumptions they made.

With the number of enemies made, the fact that she stands out and the fact that she knows a lot about the higher ups the chances of her walking around free are rather low, and the chances of her sleeping with the fishes probably better than even. How she ever thought she would walk away from this all scot-free is a mystery to me.

This just seems like speculation based on watching mafia movies. The article speculates she's alive. The Ignatov family seems involved in various frauds, so I wouldn't view her as an innocent woman who got in too deep. She knew what she as doing and has family connections.

Also I am not sure what "she stands out" even means. Is this a way of saying she's not white? That's not really a problem. In a ton of EMEA countries she'd blend right in.

Re: Cryptoqueen: A woman scammed the world, then vanished

#85

Post by wool_gather »

sukilot wrote: post #63
jcora wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What kind of people? Just gullible or something more specific?

stupid + immoral. You need both to get scammed.

Not being stupid is no defense against being conned. On the contrary, a truly stupid mark isn't going to understand the scheme; an intelligent person will immediately see the way they stand to benefit. It's the willingness to cheat that gets you in trouble.

Check out The Big Con by David Maurer

Re: Cryptoqueen: A woman scammed the world, then vanished

#86

Post by Gigablah »

bitcurious wrote: post #65

>Even the most obscure entry or innocuous comment on a forum is usually saved somewhere, and with enough digging can be found. You've heard of Google, but there are several other search engines that specialise in this. That's a very interesting throwaway line; anyone know what those products are?

The Wayback Machine would fit the bill.

Re: Cryptoqueen: A woman scammed the world, then vanished

#87

Post by jacquesm »

Klinky wrote: post #84
jacquesm wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With the number of enemies made, the fact that she stands out and the fact that she knows a lot about the higher ups the chances of her walking around free are rather low, and the chances of her sleeping with the fishes probably better than even. How she ever thought she would walk away from this all scot-free is a mystery to me.

This just seems like speculation based on watching mafia movies. The article speculates she's alive. The Ignatov family seems involved in various frauds, so I wouldn't view her as an innocent woman who got in too deep. She knew what she as doing and has family connections. Also I am not sure what "she stands out" even means. Is this a way of saying she's not white? That's not really a problem. In a ton of EMEA countr…

> This just seems like speculation based on watching mafia movies.

People get killed for far less.

> The article speculates she's alive.

And I'm speculating she isn't.

> The Ignatov family seems involved in various frauds, so I wouldn't view her as an innocent woman who got in too deep. She knew what she as doing and has family connections.

I never said she did not know what she was doing.

> Also I am not sure what "she stands out" even means.

It means that there are tons of photographs of her and she may blend in in some places but even there a little bit of reward money will almost certainly turn her up unless she goes full Osama bin Laden and we all know how that ended. True, he had more powerful enemies but she also has less powerful friends than whole nations willing to help hiding her.

Hence my speculation she's no longer around.

Re: Cryptoqueen: A woman scammed the world, then vanished

#88

Post by carapace »

jcora wrote: post #50
Kovah wrote: post #17

I can remember OneCoin back in the day. And I also remember that when visiting their website, my first though was "this must be a gigantic scam!" It was kinda obvious. Unbelievable that people fell for this. But like with all pyramid schemes or similar scams, they target a very specific sort of people.

What kind of people? Just gullible or something more specific?

I gather it's greed. I recall some ex-conman saying that greed is the thing that makes most cons work, that even smart people will deceive themselves under its influence.

Re: Cryptoqueen: A woman scammed the world, then vanished

#89

Post by MiroF »

wool_gather wrote: post #85
sukilot wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

stupid + immoral. You need both to get scammed.

Not being stupid is no defense against being conned. On the contrary, a truly stupid mark isn't going to understand the scheme; an intelligent person will immediately see the way they stand to benefit. It's the willingness to cheat that gets you in trouble. Check out The Big Con by David Maurer

You need to be not stupid stupid, but reading these articles it is pretty clear that the marks are not "smart" if they're investing in something they don't understand.

Re: Cryptoqueen: A woman scammed the world, then vanished

#90

Post by asveikau »

xwdv wrote: post #7
bitL wrote: post #3

My bet is she was a front for some Eastern EU or EEU mafia group and now rests in a concrete-filled barrel at the bottom of Black Sea, with all the money taking multiple round trips through off-shore banks, never to be found by their MLM "investors" again.

Was my thought as well. It’s a shame they killed her off, she seemed like a nice woman despite it all. Who knows if that kind of life was even worth it. Seems like by the time you find out, you’re already in too deep and have to keep going.

I am all for forgiveness of people and all that. But she doesn't sound very nice from the article.
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