Mocking the scammers

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Flipping it around slightly, let’s mock the scammed because of who they got scammed by.

Scam #1:

Donald Trump released a few sets of NFT trading cards so far. I think there were 45000 available spread across 10 pictures each time. The pictures used for the trading cards were taken from various websites like Amazon and a few other places, then altered to feature him as an astronaut, rock star, etc.

They sell out fast and he gets millions each time. He kept about 1000 of the more “rare” images to boost their value.

The first part of the scam is Trump is selling them. The second part is he’s using stolen images that have been altered. The third part of the scam is Trump is selling them.

The value of these had gone from the sale price of $99 to about $200 in February. Two weeks ago, the price plummeted to $1.04, losing 99% of their initial value.
 

Scam #2:

Now available: Trump Bucks.

Yes, now you can buy checks, coins, paper currency and collector cards with Trump’s image, name and/or signature on them. Donald Trump has created a new monetary system called “Trump Rebate Banking”. Support him now and help him get into the White House in 2024 and you will be rewarded later.

“Make Your Dreams Come TRUE, because this is your ONLY chance to get a hold of the TRB Black Collect Card. We know all of you have been waiting patiently for so long and now is the time when you will have everything that is promised! Live the American Dream, live the Life you were promised and get the things you always wanted without thinking twice!”

Our line of of Official TRB System Black Collect Cards allow you to conveniently and easily purchase multiple Trump Bucks at one time. Choose from a 1X card at $89.99, 3X at $209.99, 5X at $299.99 or 10X at $499.00. On sale now at 90% off, with free shipping and handling! It’s got Trump’s golden signature, just like how everything he touches turns to gold. (Pay no attention to the fact that the 1X card is only a 10% discount, the 3X card is 30%, 5X is 40% and 10X is 50%. And definitely don’t pay attention to the fact that the only thing being multiplied is getting you to shell out more by you assuming that it’s about the future value of the card.)

But if a 10X return on your investment isn’t enough, why not go for “$10,000 Diamond Trump Bucks” notes? They’re also just $99.99 each but will be worth a hundred times what you paid for it! Turn that hundred bucks into ten thousand! Use them at banks! Use them at Walmart, Costco, Home Depot, and more!

Or maybe if you don’t want to have the Black Collect Cards, you can just buy the Diamond Bucks themselves. Choose one for $99.99, three for $79.99 each, five for $69.99 each or ten for $49.99 each. (Also pay no attention to the fact that discount rate is listed as a flat 80% off for each one but is different based on how much you buy. But hey, 80% off instead of 90, amirite?)

If that isn’t a good enough deal, buy a “10X Diamond Trump Bucks” at $9.99 each (total of $99.99) and you’ll get two $25,000 Trump Diamond Checks for free. This deal is also 80% off. (Also also ignore the fact that this is a much better deal than buying a single Diamond Trump Buck because that one DTB will cost you ten times more and you get more than a dozen times less than this deal.) In fact, why not get the best deal possible by buying a “100X Diamond Trump Bucks” package with “10X $25,000 Trump Diamond Checks for free” for just $499.99? That’s another 80% savings! (Also also also just flat-out ignore that our “deals” are completely skewed to make it look like you’re stealing from us. Also also also also ignore that our own ads show how worthless this actually is. Please, seriously. Just give us your money and don’t think about how you’re being ripped off.)
 

Show Trump and the world your loyalty, just like the people who came back and bought more when they realized what a good deal this is. Even Trump himself endorses it. Why, just listen to this recording of him on the phone announcing it. If you can’t believe Donald Trump when that’s clearly his voice, what can you believe in?

If you act now, Trump will give you a free $1000 “Federal Trump Note” that looks just like the Federal Reserve Notes in use today. See? Here’s a picture of him holding one so it’s totally legit and not one of the ten-pack of novelty notes you can buy on Amazon for twelve bucks.

Don’t delay, do it today! MAGA!

This is the latest version of the scam that’s been around a few years. It uses the conspiracy theory that Trump will create a new monetary system that makes what you spend now worth more later. This version of the scam says it’s already in effect. The victims are taking the Trump Bucks to banks and retailers and are being told these aren’t legal. And yet, some of the victims refuse to believe it’s a scam.

Trump Bucks come from different companies with similar names: Patriots Dynasty, Patriots Future, USA Patriots. The Better Business Bureau identifies them as operating out of an industrial center in Aurora, CO, gives them an F rating and there’s 33 complaints about them on the BBB website. A couple of days after this story broke, the websites were shut down.

Where this scam did better in roping it its victims isn’t just that it played into the conspiracy theories many Trump supporters believe in, but they used AI to generate a recording of Trump announcing it. There were also AI-generated celebrity endorsements from Elon Musk and others. You can even watch a “review” of Trump Bucks, which includes the red flags the victims would have ignored if they had heard it (listed below).

The victims heard Trump’s voice and because they were already predisposed to believe anything that he says, they believed it. They believed this was created by him, it would help him get back into the White House and they would get a yuge reward for helping him.

Now they’re out thousands of dollars each because they thought they were buying legal tender that was magically worth more than what they paid for.

These companies (likely the same one under different names) will get away with it because there was just enough disclaimers and specific words used to make what was being sold technically not illegal. If you somehow did manage to resell it for more than what you paid, then it’s not a scam.

But in most of the cases, you have to hunt for those clues and the Trump faithful did not or would not let themselves find those because they wanted to believe it was true.

Here’s what I see were the red flags that should have at least caused people to question whether this was legitimate or not.

  1. The usual “you have to do this now” urgency so common with scams. “Grab this deal right now and don’t look back”.
  2. No explanation of why an item bought at price A would suddenly become a hundred times more valuable.
  3. No explanation of how Trump got a new currency implemented or will implement in the future, and no explanation of what’s going to be used to back the value of it (gold standard, crypto, NFTs, etc.)
  4. AI-generated content. Even though it used Trump’s voice to generate the announcement recording, it just didn’t sound quite right.
  5. The “review” of Trump Bucks, which was AI-generated and more of an ad than a review, slipped in the pieces that keep this scam from being illegal:
    “It is important to note that it cannot be used as a store of value. It is exclusively used as memorabilia and not as investment.”"
    “Trump bucks are not legal tender and are for entertainment purposes only.”
  6. The Review System account that released the video has 18 subscribers. (I just looked at it and it has a LOT of videos that are all about the same thing: Health products and Trump Bucks/Box/Golden Checks/Vouchers.)
  7. On the Patriots Future website (which I linked to before as the version saved by the Internet Archive) makes no mention that this is legal tender. It implies it is legal tender by calling it a “banknote” and an “investment”, plus using a picture with “Federal Reserve Note” on it. In contrast, “Commemorative Buck” is used.
  8. The bill uses embossing to adhere gold foil to it. This would not be durable in the long run.
  9. The aforementioned picture of Donald Trump holding what looks like a $1000 bill can be bought on Amazon. It adds “Federal Trump Note” in the main body of the design, replaces “Federal Reserve Note” in the top border with “President Donald J. Trump”, the serial number is “GOLD99999999”, the number 100 is part of the design instead of 1000 (and has odd spacing like 10 0 and 1 0 0) and instead of a security filament that becomes visible when you hold the note up to the light, it’s a dark band printed in ink on the surface of the paper.
  10. The picture of the “$10,000 Diamond Trump Buck” does have “Federal Reserve Note” on it, but it also has that weird spacing issue for the number 100. Current standard is the number worked into the image matches denomination of the note, so this is not in compliance.
  11. If this is a new currency Donald Trump created or will create, why are Trump Bucks a “special edition”, “limited edition” and a “Limited Special Offer”? Isn’t this a currency that will have ongoing use, or is it supposed to be a one-time deal? Seems like a lot of hassle to create a currency that will have a small window of time for it to be used.
  12. Why is this new Trump-created currency “sold exclusively here and can’t be bought anywhere else”? Why wouldn’t it be issued through the Federal Reserve System? Why a private company for a government-backed money? And if it can’t be bought anywhere else, why were there three companies selling it?

At the present, it appears that Trump wasn’t involved in this. “Appears” is the operative word.

Trump made a lot of his money by licensing his name and image. He is very protective of both. He goes after people who don’t license the use of them from him. It doesn’t matter that as a politician, he became a public figure and the rules on how his image can be used are different for him now. He threatened to sue the Republican Party because they were fundraising by using his name and image and they weren’t paying him for them.

So far, Trump hasn’t threatened to sue Patriots Dynasty, Patriots Future and USA Patriots for creating “Trump Bucks”, using his image and signature and creating a recording supposedly of him endorsing this. Jesse Dollemore pointed this out. The lack of a law suit or even just the threat of one leaves the door open for the possibility that he was involved in this. Precedent is there. He teamed up with a small company for his NFTs and got a payout for each of them. Maybe he teamed up with these three companies for another grift that’s left a lot of his supporters angry that they got scammed.

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Allow me to trot out this most excellent BOFH where Simon deals with the question of NFTs in a good way, and also demonstrates that NFTs are not a good investment.

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“Message from COSTCOW HOLESALE”

Uh, what?

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Oh boy. That’s the sort of thing that’s going to percolate in the background of my mind and sometime in the future, unleash itself on me whether I want it to or not. I just don’t know if it will be something really cool, witty or snarky, or just a dud.

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For when you need to buy a whole side of beef?

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No, for when you need to buy a HOLE side of beef.

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Thanks to the response from @Rizak, I was spared from having my brain spend CPU time on this issue.

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It’s what I do. Just be glad you don’t have to live with this brain.

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Brain too deep in the gutter?

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Look at this table and tell me what you think, honestly.

You can convert the values to $ if you want to, the basic principle will still be the same… put in 500$, get back 650$…

Those who put in 23600$ will get back 42480$ (which seems not sustainable at all…)

scammer

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I’m sensing something pyramid-shaped.

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This isn’t mocking the scammers since the company appears to be responsibly wrapping things up, offering refunds, etc. It’s the customers who trusted everything would go according to plan that you look at it and go, “What were you thinking?”

Miray Cruises has a company called Life at Sea Cruises (LASC) and starts promoting in March 2023 a three-year cruise of the world at rates comparable to regular living expenses: $30,000 a year per person. (Technically, $77,026 for two people per year with a “solo supplement price available upon request”. A balcony suite was $109,999 per person.) 130,000 miles, 375 ports, 135 countries and all 7 continents. Visit 13 of the Wonders of the World (the Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio, the Great Wall of China, the city of Petra, etc.). Lots of stuff to do on ship, lots to do off ship. Good on-board hospital and medical facilities, including dental.
 

They’re going to use one of the ships already in their fleet for it, the MV Gemini, which has 400 cabins for up to 1074 passengers. The cruise will launch November 1st after the ship is overhauled.

Then the entire team at LASC leaves Miray Cruises in May because the Gemini isn’t going to be up to the task. Management says the trip is still on and they’ll find a ship that will work, but they won’t be able to say what it will be because of confidentiality reasons surrounding the purchase. Translation: there’s nothing else in their fleet they can use and they’ll have to buy a ship from some other company. The cruise is 50% booked and less than 10 people have asked for refunds.

In early September, LASC changes the cruise after getting requests from potential customers. It’s still a three-year cruise for each person, but you can begin at any time from any of seven starting points. They’ll add new destinations instead of repeating them so passengers would have a reason to extend their cruise. “It’s become the cruise that never ends,” said Kendra Holmes, CEO of Miray Cruises.

(Cue the Gilligan’s Island theme song.)

At some point, the website is updated to say the vessel will be the MV Lara, with 627 cabins for up to 1266 passengers, and they’re expecting 80% occupancy. Just one problem: they don’t own that boat yet. They planned to by the end of September, giving them about a month to remodel the ship for the November 1 launch.

Though not named, the ship was theorized to be the AIDAaura, owned by AIDA Cruises, a part of Carnival Cruise Line, which was going retire it at the end of September. By coincidence, the specs of the MV Laura on the website just happen to match that of the AIDAaura.

October 6: The sale hasn’t gone through. To avoid delaying the launch, they’ll focus first on just the cabins that have been booked, then continue the remodeling while at sea, meaning passengers will have some construction noise to deal with.

October 20: Still no ship. Launch will be November 11 and was moved from Istanbul to Amsterdam. Once the sale goes through, it has to be in drydock for 18 days to start the renovations before it can sail to Amsterdam. LASC gives passengers the option of boarding at Freeport in the Bahamas on the 21st. Purchase should be completed in a week.

October 27: Still no ship. Passengers (“residents”) were told the new launch date is November 30, but a spokesperson says to a news outlet a new launch date and location hasn’t been confirmed yet. The company offers to help with hotel and transportation costs for residents that made their travel plans based on the original Nov. 1st departure date.

November 17: LASC announces they don’t have a ship and cancels the cruise. The day before, Celestyal Cruises announced they bought the AIDAaura. LASC will refund the money in monthly payments from mid-December though late February and will pay for accommodations through December 1st for the “residents” that were in Istanbul awaiting departure.

The announcement by Kendra Holmes and was sent to the “residents”. She resigned earlier in the week. Why was she picked to do it? We don’t know. Two days later, Vedat Ugurlu, the owner of Miray, confirmed the cancelation and said they didn’t have the money to pay for the ship. Investors put a down payment on it, but didn’t go further due to “unrest in the Middle East”. Just after the first announcement that the sale wasn’t completed is when Hamas attacked Israel, which then turned into a war.

But, Ugurlu says they’re working on buying a third boat so they can set sail on December 1st. They’re not going to go back to using the Gemini because “we have promised you a larger, newer vessel”.

Except, COO Ethem Bayramoglu said nope, the cruise is canceled, here’s the refund process, we’ll help you get the “pods” back with the belongings you shipped over here ahead of time. He then met with the passengers stranded in Istanbul.

As of today, the cruise and the rest of the details are still available on the Life at Sea website.

 
So, this grand adventure is over before it even started, people will get their money back, and some are getting help with costs to get home. Inconvenient, but everything should be good, right?

Well, not if they are among the people that sold their homes or rented them out because they were going to be on the cruise for three years. Now they have to find a place to live and replace items they sold.

Since hindsight is 20/20, here’s a couple of warning signs I can see in what happened. First, LASC started going silent in September and didn’t communicate what was going on.

Second, at the time everything was canceled, 111 cabins had been booked. In May, it was 50% (200 out of the 400 on the Gemini). Losing almost half of the bookings in a few months should have been a red flag to anyone with access to that info.

Third, the group that quit in May included Irina Strembitsky, the former director of sales and marketing. She said an engineer had deemed the Gemini unseaworthy and expressed doubt it would make it three years, even though it had a Passenger Ship Safety Certificate that was renewed two months later. (She said it was renewed in November 2022.)

Since Miray had no other boat to take over the spot for the cruise after the Gemini was out of the running, what was Miray going to do if the Gemini had broken down during the three year cruise and couldn’t be fixed in a short period of time? They had no backup for it. If they had, they wouldn’t have needed to purchase a ship for the cruise, provided Ugurlu hadn’t decided “we’re gonna need a bigger boat” at the time.

Fourth, when LASC announced they were looking to buy a ship, the amount of time between when they got their hands on it and when the cruise would start was very short. Refurbishing the cabins would have been a rush job even before they went with doing it in stages, with bulk of the work being done while at sea. They didn’t even talk about whether any of the entertainment areas, restaurants and so forth would need renovation.

 

Related to this, after Holmes quit, she went to work for HLC Cruises as their CEO. In the video she recorded announcing the cancellation of LASC’s cruise, she announced HLC was going to have a similar long-term cruise, so if 60 or 70 of LASC’s customers were to “transfer” to her company, HLC would be able to get together some kind of cruise in two weeks that would run for a few months and work on buying a ship for a long-term cruise that would start in 2024. If there weren’t enough takers, they’d go with a long-term cruise in October 2024. Three days later, the temporary cruise was out, replaced by a long-term cruise in March.

Other people that left LASC created Villa Vie Residences and will also have a long-term cruise of some kind, but no ship or launch date as of yet.

To wrap up, I’d like to say that anyone who is treating a long-term cruise like a really long vacation or part of their retirement should look at it more like an investment: You won’t get your money back at the end because it’s going to be spent on a daily basis for everything required for you to live on the ship for that long. But you can do research and investigate the viability, risks and what sort of backup and contingency plans the company has.

But don’t forget, if cruising on Earth is too boring, Elon Musk will be more than happy to ship you to Mars and Guillermo Söhnlein certainly could use some Guinea pigs customers willing to be part of colonizing Venus.

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Colonizing Venus? Surely they mean orbital stations. Because assuming you survived the landing you’d be crushed by the atmospheric pressure within seconds after exiting the capsule.

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The Russians experienced that with their probes getting crushed on Venus, they had to keep on improving the probes in order to survive the harsh conditions.

Quite an interesting planet, and no, I will not go visiting it.

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I would assume any colonization ideas don’t include actually leaving the habitat. Otherwise the constant rain will drive you crazy…

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So what would they actually do there without leaving the habitat? Assuming they can build a habitat that has redundant power generation (because one power outage of more than a few minutes and everyone would get cooked alive) and can survive 90 Earth atmospheres of pressure.

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I would prefer something that are quadruple redundant… Plus escape pods.

Just in case.

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For more info about the Venus colonization idea, head over to the Titanic tourist submarine thread. I missed the part where Guillermo Söhnlein wants to make a floating colony above the planet.

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Bespin II :smile:

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This one was fun. A buddy of mine had his accounts hacked and they tried the old help-a-brother-out ploy on me.

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