Lol. People like these most probably have no idea how the internet works.
Artesian Builds appears to be toast. Or, in keeping with the theme of Artesian being a type of aquifer, the company was drowned by the actions of one person, the CEO.
Watch the Gamers Nexus rundown of what happened Monday and Tuesday. He was going to give Noah Katz the same kind of opportunity as he gave Newegg to talk about what happened and Noah proved to Steve it would have been a waste of time. I’ll give you the bullet points, but watch the video. It’s good.
- The State of California suspended AB’s business license. Not sure if this is a result of the giveaway fiasco or something else.
- AB’s bank accounts were frozen.
- The password to AB’s Twitter account was changed, so employees can’t access it.
- Noah, “as advised by legal”, directed employees to stop doing refunds.
- Noah continues to talk with Steve about meeting for the interview. Offers to get them lunch, make sushi or something similar.
- The email between Steve and Noah was shared on AB’s internal Slack and employees start reaching out to Steve separately.
- March 8: Noah announces on AB’s Slack a full freeze on all business financial activities. They will undergo a financial analysis by an outside counsel. All employment for all employees is suspended. Hopes to resume at end of March.
The 40-50 employees in AB’s two offices are now out of a job.
They had two offices: west coast (San Francisco) and one on the east coast, semi-autonomous of each other. Noah ran the west coast location and primarily focuses on advertising (and schmoozing – my assessment).
East coast was run by the COO and mostly built the computers that were ordered. COO gets into a disagreement with Noah and quits in November. No replacement was hired. Noah kind of acts as CEO and COO.
Noah keeps trying to get the interview with Steve going, being real friendly like, then suddenly switches to everything’s now confidential after Steve had made it clear this would be on public record. This needed to be an impartial and fair meeting so that it would be entirely up to Noah as to what happens to Artesian Builds, good or bad. Steve’s no longer interested in meeting with Noah, even if there was a company left to talk about.
In the middle of the video, Steve recommends that anyone with an order at AB, cancel it immediately by contacting their credit card company for a charge back. That’s the only way they might be able to get their money back.
Some good news. Steve is in contact with a few of the former employees that were at the east coast office. He’s going to put them in touch with various companies to see if they might have a job those people could fit.
It’s often said that one person can make a difference and a positive impact. It’s equally true that the impact can be massively negative and wipe out all positive work that was done before.
AB website is offline. LinkedIn profile is missing.
I just had a weird encounter. I don’t know if it was a scam or a miscommunication. I have a queen sized mattress/boxspring in the driveway that I’m getting rid of. I called my local waste company because we have two free large pickups per year and made an appointment for the 14th.
I just had two guys with a large truck show up and try to charge me $80 to haul them away.
I’d bet they were counting on you not knowing the ins and out of your local waste management.
They’d pick it up, charge you $$$, then dump it on some back street in the industrial zone.
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Well, looks like they were scammers. My regular waste pickup team picked them up today.
Don’t you love it when the moderators of two forums work together to give scammers a good banhammering?
Don’t want to divulge too much detail, but basically what happened is that a scammer posted a scam on one forum, then suckered some people into it, then run the same scam on another forum, and suckered people into it as well.
Until somebody who frequent both forums got Clued Up and informed the moderators…
Sadly, I think this is going to start to be the norm going forward.
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As of June 21, “appears to be” is “is”. They’re officially bankrupt. All of their assets are going up for auction, but in single lots: one for the west coast office, one for the east coast office and one for their intangibles (company name, mailing lists, etc.), which KristoferYee is evaluating as being about worthless. No buying individual items.
Whilst perusing my junk mail, I found this WTF gem :
Seems as if somebody’s using this to poison Bayesian filters.
And I’m not gonna clickee that linkee in the middle of that word salad.
Edit : there is a message of some sorts in there, but I cannot be arsed to find it.
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Ook, where is your sense of adventure?? 
A quick session with a text editor returns the “secret message”:
“Dear Customer, The package sent to you has been delivered to Post Office and should be delivered withing 48h. Please confirm the payment (1.99 ZAR) on the link below within a maximum of 14 days before it expires: Follow my package hxxps://dlvr[dot]it/SQpykD This email is provided for informational purposes only and does not guarantee delivery of the shipment. Unable to reply to this email. Your e-mail address will only be used for the announcement of the parcel of the above shipment and will not be saved for advertising purposes. If you no longer wish to receive the package announcement, please click here: PostOffice Notification Service”
Putting the link into URLScan.io gets you the following result: “The link has been removed”
I was just plain lazy But thanks for deciphering the message.
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PSA time. Scam going around that your insurance has denied payment on some services so there’s a new balance on your account. Message can arrive via text, email or both.
The difference is they seem to be getting pretty good at including info that’s pretty close to being accurate, such as naming a location you may actually have been to recently, but it might be named slightly different. Example, calling it “ST. LOUIS HOSPITAL” but not specifying the exact name of the hospital. (I picked that at random. There’s at least 5 in a five mile radius in St. Louis.)
No clickee linkee. For texts, do a search on the phone number it came from and add “scam” to the end of it. Phone number and the company listed in the message may be legit, but you’ll also see the scam reports this way.
Check your billing status through your normal account for whatever place you get medical services at. Ditto for your insurance. Remember, most will send you something on paper through the mail unless you’ve gone completely paperless. Even then, no clickee linkee.
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Here’s a lovely one from NAR :
Correction to my last message. It was a legitimate bill. It just fit the pattern of a scam.
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New info about Artesian Builds. You can watch “How One Livestream Destroyed a Company” to see the history. Towards the end, it covers the financial problems AB was facing even before Noah Katz made it worse. “There’s the re-roll” added gasoline to the fire that was smoldering behind the scenes.
Gamers Nexus posted their investigation two weeks ago, “Inside the Collapse of Artesian Builds: From $20,000,000 to Bankrupt”. They were able to get permission from the landlord to go inside the closed AB west coast office and film in there. The warehouse space had been remodeled so AB could move in, which was not long prior to the March flameout.
They dug into the bankruptcy documents and found that Katz’s parents were investors in the company. Just about the time finances started tanking, he made a payment to them that jumped from $12,418.88 to $250,000.00. On the one hand, a creditor is getting paid. On the other, the creditor is a family member and the amount is excessively high.
This was during the period when the company was having difficulty getting parts, just like everybody else. But one of the key points is Katz never stopped trying to chase after new money instead of using money he currently had to fulfill orders. AB couldn’t meet current obligations and Katz kept looking for new people to give him money.
It doesn’t feel like it would have been a temporary measure for him. “If we can just get a little more money, we can get caught up.” It was more like, “Gotta get that new money and we’ll worry about what we owe later.” It almost feels like it became a Ponzi scheme, but the incoming money wasn’t even used to keep the scheme going.
I just re-checked the video and it was a bit of both, with Katz favoring the latter. Money from new orders was shifted to trying to fulfill existing orders because the money from them had already been shifted before. But new order money was also shifted to promotions, using stock on hand for their high profile builds. It’s mentality of “See this shiny? Don’t you want to give us money?”
Oh, and Noah Katz has changed his name. And he’s accused of tax evasion during the time he chose to buy a $150K BMW i8 instead.
Some good news is six of the former east coast AB employees started a new company: PhynixPC. They’re only offering pre-configured computers at this time and may offer customized PCs later on. But they’re keeping the watch it being built in a livestream motif and emphasizing that they’re ensuring the quality of the build.
As a reminder, some of the west coast Artesian computers had to be shipped to the east coast office for them to fix it before sending it back and then sent to the customer. That was likely done instead of shipping directly from east coast to the customer to hide production problems in the company.
I hope they do well. They look like they have a good attitude for their company, as shown in their announcement video, and I’ll refer you to the article on PC Gamer about how Phynix is reaching former AB customers and they learned how not to run a company.
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I, for one, hope they will be more diligent and ensure shifty scheiße does not happen again.
May they enjoy the fruits of their labors and have good successes!
I don’t really understand this scam, and I don’t care to get too involved in it to bother.
I know it’s a scam because I see too many red flags to believe it will end positively for me. When I tell them that I won’t participate in the transaction and call them a scammer, I never hear back from them again. No protestation, no nothing.
The messages are always sent in the middle of the night, so I’m pretty sure they’re not local.
The last couple of weeks I’ve been getting responses very similar to the one below on everything that I have for sale on social media platforms.
THEY:
Hello, Is the item on the ad still available? Is it in good condition? What is the firm price?
ME:
The ad states that the listed price is firm. It’s in GREAT condition and has beautiful, new brocade upholstery. All of this information is in the ad.
THEY:
Okay I will make your payment via Happy-Post delivery in an envelope as soon as you receive the money, I will send Happy-Post to your home for the recovery of the good the delivery has but expenses if you agree
It is very simple to understand Happy-Post will send a very reliable carrier from their group of letter carriers, to pay you in person so that the payment will be face to face once you have the money in hand you give him the good thank you well happy-Post is a company and the service will come to your home once at your home the service will give you your money in cash and the service will take the item
Well this is in cash the service will come to your home to give you your cash once you have the money you give them the item
ME:
Read the whole ad again, scammer.
The ad includes the following text:
NOTE: Due to the number of scam calls, I have to make the following clear.
CASH ONLY.
NO SHIPPING OR THIRD PARTY PICKUPS.
I just don’t understand what the scam is. I’d love to sell this stuff, but I really have zero confidence in this method. I don’t know what these ‘expenses’ are. Maybe I’ll ask next time.
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If it’s a scam farm, maybe I should give a higher ‘firm price’ to see if they are even looking at the item. All of those questions could be asked of almost anything for sale online.
Happy-Post is based in France, so at the very least, you’re dealing with fourth party shipping companies Happy-Post contracts with for deliveries in each country.
As to what the scam is, it might be in the “but has expenses”. Beyond the cost of arranging a second visit by a Happy-Post representative, those expenses could include other things they tack on: excessive shipping and/or handling costs, costs/bribes to get it through customs, etc. I’ve seen it with the toner scams where you get charged $150 for S&H when UPS only charges $5.
Another possibility is money laundering or some/all of the money is counterfeit. If the latter, they count on you depositing it quickly into your bank, telling them you got it, and about the time you hand off the package to the Happy-Post rep for the return trip, you might get contacted by your bank about the fake notes.
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