Be careful! RPF Scammer revealed!

[PauliticsPolitics]

I just want to point out if I was caught scamming people for money, I would say I was a 16 year old kid who didn't mean to do it either to get out of fraud charges.

Good point, that's true. Who knows?
Regardless, I should go to sleep for a while: I've had enough sleuthing for the night!
Hopefully it is all cleanly resolved.

 

[Aldanga]

I just want to point out if I was caught scamming people for money, I would say I was a 16 year old kid who didn't mean to do it either to get out of fraud charges.

I've dealt with a lot of social engineers. This is par for the course and should not be believed.

Edit: and now he sends me a PM as well. Seriously, he is just playing everybody. 3-4 days will turn into a week, followed by excuses, then 2 weeks and more excuses, etc. Don't buy his BS. Nip this in the bud now.

 

[jkob]

I have to assume this is against the law. I don't care if this kid is 16 and gives all the money back, it needs to be reported regardless.

 

[orenbus]

Don't depend on him to return the money, Paypal has mechanisms in place for this very thing. Contact paypal directly to get your money back, chances are it hasn't even been processed completely yet and Paypal is holding onto the funds until a certain amount of time passes. Once that time passes it will be harder to get the money then, (if this person is a scammer) than it would be if people contacted Paypal now.

 

[cstarace]

I've dealt with a lot of social engineers. This is par for the course and should not be believed.

Edit: and now he sends me a PM as well. Seriously, he is just playing everybody. 3-4 days will turn into a week, followed by excuses, then 2 weeks and more excuses, etc. Don't buy his BS. Nip this in the bud now.

I received a PM too. His story is completely incoherent. I agree, don't waste time, contact Paypal and get our money back before too much time passes.

 

[squarepusher]

I have to assume this is against the law. I don't care if this kid is 16 and gives all the money back, it needs to be reported regardless.

what are you going to report exactly? That this kid said he was donating to drive people to support RPF, but instead his intention was to get a Billboard/newspaper ad for RP?

Donating to random chipin on the internet is not exactly protected by strict laws, since its voluntary. If you want your money back, goto paypal immediately, thats what its their for. I have legitimate customers for my business who file complaints on paypal when they shouldn't, but it screws me over till I settle the claim.


TL;DR get your money back, Caveat emptor

In the future, get better verification for giving out money, or just give to the campaign.

 

[tsetsefly]

lol, and I said, send him some money

 

[mmadness]

Even worse .

My main point was that the consensus around here is that the Superbrochure is a waste of money -- but at least we know it's legitimate.

You so sure about that?

RevPac (heard of them?) has also disavowed Ron Paul Products, creators of the "Super" Brochures, because they screwed up the Super Voter Bomb project:

We'll never do business with Erik Petroni and Curt Schultz of Ron Paul Paul Products, and if you should choose to do business with them in the future that is up to you.

Details in this thread: http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?333306-No-Worries-Super-Voter-Bomb-Mailing-in-Process

These are very strong statements from an official SuperPAC. To my knowledge they have not said anything else about any other "grassroots" project.

Plus here's a (pretty rude and defensive) response from Curt of Ron Paul Products in another thread when questioned nicely about the effectiveness of the brochures:

You are on the project, so you are living in a bubble of positive reinforcement. Many of the people calling you about how great the brochure is are probably young activist types that are already sort of on our side, correct? People that were turned off by the brochure wouldn't be calling you.

Curt says: WRONG. They are 60 plus (mostly women) who do not use the internet or computer.

http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showth...uth-Carolina&p=3975372&viewfull=1#post3975372

60+ women calling to say the brochures are great? Really, then why didn't they end up supporting Dr. Paul?

According to this thread, of the Iowa vote breakdown, Ron didn't do very well with 60+ voters, scoring only 15% with 50-64 voters, and only 11% with 65+ voters.

Source: http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?346018-Iowa-vote-breakdown-Age-and-income

So even looking past what RevPac said about Ron Paul Products, Curt's rude response, which is making it really hard for any objective person to trust/do business with Ron Paul Products, the stats prove the brochures are NOT WORKING (or someone is not telling the truth). The biggest stat so far: $150,000 of our money spent in SC for "Super" Brochures, Result: 0 delegates, 4th place finish. Thank god they weren't direct-mailed to NH where we finished a strong 2nd.

 

[devil21]

Im genuinely surprised that more people don't try these sorts of scams here but considering how fast they get outed I guess even scammers usually know when to find greener pastures.

Good work by all!! pm me for a +rep if you helped smash that bastard. I dont care how old he may be.

 

[parocks]

Even worse .

My main point was that the consensus around here is that the Superbrochure is a waste of money -- but at least we know it's legitimate. How some of our members could be so anti-superbrochure and refuse to give money to that cause, but then open their wallets for some random guy with a ChipIn account is beyond me.

I'll argue this for arguments sake, not really to do another anti superbrochure rant.

2 different projects.

1) Superbrochure. We know that they are sending superbrochures.
But the campaign says they hurt Ron Paul. So, yes we know they're doing something, but it's harmful.

2) Billboard. We don't know if they're actually going to be putting up billboards.
But we haven't heard that the Billboard is harmful. So, we don't

You can go back to the thread about the billboard, and you can read what people were saying about this billboard project. No one thought it was a scam, and the argument was whether a billboard in Florida was a good idea.

 

[parocks]

Im genuinely surprised that more people don't try these sorts of scams here but considering how fast they get outed I guess even scammers usually know when to find greener pastures.

Good work by all!! pm me for a +rep if you helped smash that bastard. I dont care how old he may be.

Did the billboard not go up? This person was caught because he personally was going to take hundreds of people to the polls at the same time, an impossibility, revealing that he didn't even know the procedures.

 

[devil21]

btw, neverseen is not a scammer. just naive. I'm in his tampa bay meetup group. I think he just got excited that someone was trying to do something like this in FL.

No offense to you personally but I don't usually trust the word of new posters with a young girl name and cute picture either. That's usually also a dead giveaway of a scammer or sock puppet too. Just sayin.

 

[devil21]

Did the billboard not go up? This person was caught because he personally was going to take hundreds of people to the polls at the same time, an impossibility, revealing that he didn't even know the procedures.

I don't know about the billboard.

I was reading the stuff about the fake Maine chipin. Im surprised we don't get more scammers here.

 

[affa]

No offense to you personally but I don't usually trust the word of new posters with a young girl name and cute picture either. That's usually also a dead giveaway of a scammer or sock puppet too. Just sayin.

given the fact that the pic is of a girl holding a bloody knife, my guess is that profile pic is from a movie. not that your point isn't valid anyway.

 

[SpicyTurkey]

Damn it. I hate when people do that, because it ends hurting those who are legitimate. I'm beyond pissed.

 

[devil21]

Jeez now Im getting PMs from someone apologizing. "Iamsorry2012"

 

[RonPaulFanInGA]

Everyone is getting private messages from the cozener, except me.

 

[neverseen]

Damn, I just caught wind of this from a facebook message that people were mentioning me. I'm on my way to work shortly, so I can't sit here and go through it all right this sec. I'll take a more through look at it as soon as I get home. You guys can search my started threads here and I'm sure you can come to the conclusion that I'm legit in my support. One of the posts even has my full name and email. Another has me mentioned in an article from the pasco straw poll I helped organize (not to mention the USF debate support I helped with).

I'm going to look back on the facebook wall, etc and see if I can get any more details or see if the posts were deleted, etc. The fellow I vouched for was a poster on one of the local ron paul groups. I didn't go further than looking at his facebook page and reading through his posts before I vouched. I understand that makes me look bad now. This is the first time I've encountered a scam online like this in a lifetime of being on forums. Naive and duped to say the least.

Like i said, i'll take a further look at this after work this evening to see if I can provide any more info about this person. I glanced through some pages of this and i see you guys vetted him pretty hard already so i'm not sure if i'll have anything new.

 

[IterTemporis]

Yea, he sent me the same thing, from a fresh account.
It looks like he wants to come clean.

Personally, it sounds fake to me. If he needed more money for the billboards, then why not just ask for more on the very thread that was created to raise funds for it? That part makes no sense: "I need more money for the billboards, so I will make a brand new account on RPF, a brand new FaceBook (use a random picture off of Google for a profile picture), and a brand new thread asking for money for a completely different reason, in a completely different state. As opposed to bumping my last thread, where I actually had someone vouch for me." The only part of him that sounds 16 is his grammar and punctuation..

 

[COpatriot]

Yeah the "I'm 16" story complete with awful grammar and a frowny face reeks of BS.