Scam Psychology: Antivax Alternative Facts redux

Antivaxers are well known for bogosities and inability to admit defeat. I've covered this previously but recently, some more bogus facts pushed by antivaxers simply chafed me wrong.

On 27-JAN-2019, in a bit of debate on flu vaccine, someone brought up the "Bill Gates is antivax" hoax. I quickly replied with a rebuttal citing.

Politifacts tracked down the source to a website called Yournewswire, who have NO citing at all. No name, no proof, nothing. Indeed, it is a fake news clickbait site.

Not that it matters to the claimant, who simply dismissed the rebuttal, so I called him out on it.

So he jumped over to Google and pasted the first link he found that supposedly proves it.

Which leads to this article:

At the bottom, the "source" is cited as Transcend Media Service, where a virtually identical article can be found, but the ORIGINAL source was revealed to be YourNewsWire... the very source debunked in the article I linked.

Indeed, YourNewsWire has a long history of publishing fake news clickbait later debunked by Snopes that now number in the dozens.

Sample headlines published by YourNewsWire includes:

"Katy Perry: 'Human Flesh is The Best Meat; Cannibalism Got A Bad Rap'"

"George Soros Orchestrates Devastating Plan to Kill 100000 Haitians"

and so on.

But none of this bull**** has any effect on the original poster.

Guess we have to consider him an antivax troll.

Example of a bogus cryptocurrency opportunity: Ethtrade.club

There are tons of websites purported to make you money based on the latest trends, and the current trend is cryptocurrency, such as Ethereum.

EthTrade claims to generate 20% ROI per month if you invest for 2 months, or 25% ROI per month if you invest for four months.

However, once you look down toward their executive team, their fiction quickly evaporates.

What's interesting is two out of four photos of the executive team are verified to be nothing of the sort.  Let's pay attention to the two in the middle.

As it turns out, the photo of "Michael Jentzsch" is actually a Fiverr member who goes by the name of Andreas_hof. Fiverr is a place for freelancers to advertise their services.

As for "Ichiro Hikita", that's even funnier. It's a stock photo.

I haven't found the real identities of the other two individuals on the "executive team", but I have little doubt they'll also be stolen photos and their bios are utter fabrications.

But then, this is the same way how Ryan Gosling's face ended up on some cryptoscam website.

ALWAYS be wary online.

Scam absurdities: "An honest Ponzi" is still illegal (duh)

Those of you who read articles in general may recall something about MMM... If not, here's a TL;DR version:

MMM, or Mavrodi's Money Machine, is a fraud company founded by Sergei Mavrodi, his brother Vyacheslav Mavrodi, and Olga Melnikova. With its start in 1989 Sergei tried to do legit business, but was chased down for tax evasion by 1992. By 1994, Sergei had gone into financial market and with the Russian economy in hyperinflation he was promising profit of 1000% percent a year with a full-on TV campaign as well as a "free metro ride day" where they paid for EVERYBODY's metro ride for a day in Moscow.

In 1993 and 1994 it was estimated that MMM was taking in 100 BILLION rubles PER DAY for its shares. Party finally ended in Mid 1994 when tax police closed MMM for tax evasion. However, Mavrodi was able to manipulate the victims into voting him into Russian Dumas (house of representatives) by claiming government closed MMM, not him, and if they do that he'll pass measures to pay them back. Elected official was also immune from arrest. Mavrodi's run came to and end when the Dumas chose to cancel his immunity in 1995, and MMM finally declared bankruptcy in 1997.

However, Mavrodi went on to start several more scams, including "Stock Generation" (closed 2002, Mavrodi arrested and convicted 2007), MMM2011, MMM-India, and MMM-Global.

The interesting parts about MMM2011 and the last few schemes is its.... "honesty", so to speak. MMM2011 was described as...

"This is a pyramid. It is a naked scheme, nothing more ... People interact with each other and give each other money. For no reason!"  (source)

Which brings us to the "honest Ponzi"...   Is it a Ponzi scheme if the owners admits to it?

Of course it is. Does a weasel stop being a weasel by admitting it is a weasel?

Yet that's what many scammers want you to believe... that as long as they paper over any irregularities with enough disclaimers... they can't be "liable".

Scam Hilarity: How Gemcoin Scammer "Interprets" the American Justice System (HINT: It's VERY hilarious)

In the interest of all Gemcoin sheeple or perp, Chinese or otherwise, this post will be bilingual.

爲了大家的利益，珍寶幣是真是賤，讀者在中國或外國，以下中英雙文對比．

Recently there were a post on Sina blog (PDF linked) that claimed "there was no FBI raid" at USFIA and "SEC was just doing routine inspection". I took a look. It's hilarious. This clearly written by someone with "motivated reasoning".

最近有在新浪博客的一篇文章 (PDF) 聲稱美國富豪USFIA “沒有被FBI調查”和“美國證券交易委員會只是做例行檢查”。我親自看一看。它真的好笑。這顯然是“有動機推理”的人寫的。

Due to size constraints, I'll just explain the important parts. I don't quote out of context.

由於尺寸的限制，我選重要部份解釋。我不斷章取義。

What he wrote will be in blue.

他寫的用藍色

First, the title:

第一，文章標題

＂受联合国70周年大会邀请AFG公司副总裁等8人参加了联合国成立70周年大会＂

UN 70th anniversary celebration invited AFG VP et al 8 people to attend

Anyone can take a photo in front of the UN building. There are even shops inside the UN building. These photos of Leonard S. Johnson and two unidentified individuals can only prove they were in New York recently.　It has no other value.

任何人都可以在聯合國大廈前拍照。聯合國大樓內甚至有商店。照片只可以證明Leonard S. Johnson 和兩個身份不明的人最近去過紐約。沒有其他價值．

（FBI的战士们英姿飒爽哦，这张图片被媒体刊登在报端网络，渲染AFG公司被查封。可是，去过美国AFG公司的人一眼就能看出，这显然不是美国AFG公司背景的照片，媒体用好莱坞拍电影常用的移花接木、蒙太奇手法进行创作，实在让我们见识了美国的言论自由）

Translated; FBI Warriors, so fierce, so cool! This photo was published by media, claiming AFG was closed. However, those that went to AFG can see that this is not at AFG. Media use Hollywood fast cut to create false impressions, such as freedom of press in America. 

This photo is of FBI agents assisting in the Boston Marathon bombing in May 2013, when they searched Norfolk St. in Cambridge area of Great Boston.  The actual title of the photo is fbi-norfolk-street-cambridge.jpg  I have seen no American media use this photo with the Gemcoin story. If there is, please point me at the article. Otherwise, I must conclude that the blogger was the one who falsely inserted a photo, exactly what he's accusing "American media" of doing.

這張照片是聯邦調查局探員協助2013年5月波士頓馬拉松爆炸案，他們在搜查諾福克(Norfolk) 街在大波士頓的劍橋(Cambridge)地區。照片的實際名稱是FBI-norfolk-street-cambridge.jpg 我沒有看到任何美國媒體使用這張照片在珍寶幣故事上。如果有請指點我文章在哪。不然我必須定論這位珍寶幣博客才是插入不相干照片捏做新聞用來反指責“美國媒體”捏做新聞。（惡人先告狀）

（这张图片被媒体刊登在报端网络，渲染AFG公司被查封，但这显然不是美国AFG公司背景的照片，媒体用好莱坞拍电影常用的移花接木、蒙太奇手法进行创作，实在让我们见识了美国的言论自由。无怪乎刘因全之流可以肆无忌惮的拼接各种图片在媒体攻击AFG公司。美国报纸竟然和大陆文革中的大字报十分相似可以随便造谣惑众）

Translation: This photo was published by the media claiming AFG was closed by law. This is clearly not AFG in the background. Media use Hollywood special effects creatively and we have witnessed American freedom of press. How dare "Michael Liu" and his ilk publish all sort of photos to attack AFG. American newspapers are much like the hated paper in the Culture Revolution to spread rumors and lies. 

Those of you who can use Google image search will quickly realize this is a photo of the deputies in Lee County Florida. Again, I have not seen this photo in relation with Gemcoin, and again, I have to conclude that this Gemcoin blogger is the one who inserted irrelevant photos to accuse "american Media" of making up news.

那些會用谷歌圖片搜索的會發現這是佛羅里達州李縣(Lee County) 警長部 (Sheriff's Department) 的照片。同樣，我沒有看過此照片與珍寶幣報導有關，再次我必須做結論，這位珍寶幣博客才是插入了不相干照片捏做新聞用來反指責“美國媒體”捏做新聞。（惡人先告狀）

Here comes the hilarious part!

現在才是滑稽的料到了！