Originally Posted by
Lil Ol' Radical Me
Fair question and it deserves an honest answer - although I can only speak for my own motives - others have their own reasons, but as far as I am aware, they are generally driven by a motivation to educate and help people or to nail the crooks.
Once upon a time I joined an autosurf thinking it was an advertising company. I fell hook line and sinker for all the BS and became a happy cheerleader and supporter of a founder who I trusted and believed to be a super honest businessman. Like a good little believer, I left the money accumulating on a web page. The program exploded, went off line, flew high above the radar and started up rallies that seemed like revival meetings. Had reservations about that last development but thought, oh well that's America for you, it's the way they seem to do things there. Needless to say I DID NOT DO THE MATH!
When the Secret Service raided the aforesaid autosurf and documentation was published, I discovered that there existed a sordid subculture of internet business which was no more than illegal money games that was set up by a small but growing group of unscrupulous people, promoted by unscrupulous people to prey on the unsuspecting and uninformed. Coming from the world of legitimate business, UNTIL THAT POINT I DIDNT EVEN KNOW IT EXISTED! This subculture is what Finix calls "the Industry", but is basically fraud moved over to the internet where it is even easier than to defraud face to face. Taking advantage of the fact that the great majority of people who use the internet use it for legitimate purposes and that it is still a relatively new culture for many, these people cook up relatively complex schemes and present them to people who live in a world where fraud and theft do not touch their lives, outside the news on TV, and are not on the look out for internet tricks and dishonesty any more than they are offline (where they at least know the rules)
Folowing that period, I came into contact with people, elderly people, disabled people and many others who had fallen for the sweet talk of their "upline", who were often desperate to find a way to make a living using the internet who had been "sold" the scheme as a way of making a safe investment and had put in money they could not afford to lose BECAUSE of the assurances of these promoters. Many of them had lost their savings, they were at risk of losing their homes, retirement funds and college funds were depleted and marriages and family relationships had broken down when the scheme had blown up in their faces. Through this I realised that the people who ran and promoted these knew exactly what they were doing and made large sums and those who they needed to keep their money games going actually suffered.
Having learnt a lot, it seemed time to "pay it forward" and pass on the knowledge to help others fall into the same trap and wake up and smell the roses.
With time, and more information it was then easy to see that the enablers - the forums, the payment processors etc - also formed a part in maintaining this subculture alive and that there were wider implications. The money coming in and out of these schemes could come from anywhere, it could be money laundering from criminal activity or even terrorism and in some cases (that of Virtual Money is a case in point) have been proved to be involved. It is a billion dollar crime wave when all it totalled up.
The name of the scam in this case was a large one, ASD, but it could have been Zeek, P2P, Banners Broker, PS or any of the other HYIPs that were running around the web. The harm done is the same and it is done knowingly and without piety bv those who found and support the HYIP subculture.
Hope that answers your question.
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