How many times do you have to scam people before they stop calling you an entrepreneur?
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So, During my internet lifetime I have dabbled in a number of things, played (badly) many competitive online games (from counter strike to hearthstone to dota and a whole bunch in between) and similar. During my travels I have somehow managed to be caught on the fringe of what is now at least 3 shit storms involving one person. Ryan Kennedy.
First, let me give you the related article:
British serial entrepreneur missing as $1.4m bitcoin is apparently stolen
Moolah has gone bust amid questions about its ownership and business practices. By Alex Hern
Now, what this article refers to as "failed business ventures" would probably be better characterised as "highly successful scams". But it doesn't cover everything.
Back in the day, at a time when league of legends had about 20 champions and a $30 price tag, (that time happened), it's main competitor was Heroes of Newerth, which to my knowledge is a tiny community at this point due to DotA 2 being released and being exactly the same game but better. Anyway, I played HoN at the time, and was there when they were trying to get the competitive scene off the ground with shoutcasting networks like HoNcast (no idea if that still exists, I cant check and it was hit by controversy which was potentially sinister competitive undermining). In the wake of that controversy a "better" casting network was created to usurp HoNcast with a significantly better content delivery network and much better content, apparently. This network was started by Ryan Kennedy (the one in the article linked previously), and was literally a static page with VoDs served through a free flash player. Somehow he got people to invest, and then the website pretty much vanished.
At the time I learned about all this because people were saying he wasn't trustworthy and pointing to a string of "failed" "anime conventions" he had been involved with, which people were firmly pointing at as being scams. There was a whole HoNcast versus this site dynamic going on (I can't remember what it's name was) for a while.
This all happened about 5 years ago. Scroll back to 12-18 months ago, and we have shitstorm number 2, specifically, magic cards. Magic cards can be worth big money, some are worth hundreds, some are worth thousands, some very few are worth $27,000. So, people have some cards that they don't want anymore, or that they are willing to sacrifice for other cards they want more, and as such trade them. If you want expensive old cards, you can't really find them down your local shop at the weekend, anyone there who has them will likely only have enough for themselves, and you have to look further afield for trading partners, enter Facebook groups, allowing people to post adverts of what they have and what they want, which can then be easily searched and married up and people can get what they want for what they want. Then, suddenly, a wild Ryan Kennedy appears, and arranges trades with a lot of people for a lot of cards. Then, in a way that might be familiar, a wild Ryan Kennedy escapes, before you even had the chance to throw a pokeball, or get your magic cards.
At that point I thought he was done, and any subsequent scamming would be so hard to get away with that he would be out of the game, but no. Apparently he changed his name so he could pull the big one, and by the big one I mean convince people to give him their pretend internet money which still somehow has value, and then make off with it, to the tune of $1,500,000. Wow. That sure blows out everything that came before it out of the water.
I wonder if he will resurface in 5 years and make up a tech conference and try and scam this community, at which point I will start seriously questioning whether I have a split personality, and if so, where I hid all that sweet sweet scam cash, because this personality could certainly use some hookers and blow.
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interestingly, on the counterstrike front, I couldn't go this year due to other commitments, but last year I attended Play.Expo in Manchester, and spent more time than I should have tearing up the PUG counterstrike that ran for the duration of the event. I thoroughly enjoyed literally destroying everyone but 1 or 2 other people who sat down over the course of the weekend, and it made me think I wasn't necessarily as bad as I first thought. But the skill level of people presented with a free game is significantly different than that of people who pay to play and play regularly, and I still get destroyed on the internet.
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This guy is an amateur compared with our latest Spanish shame: Francisco Nicolás Gómez-Iglesias
TL:DR: The guy (a 20 years college student) was able to fool every Spanish security institution, specially, our very own CIA (CNI), different police bodies and travel in official vehicles with a full security escort.
One of his feats was being present in the royal crowning which happened a few months ago. He got pictures with almost every major political personality and was only caught when he tried to blackmail some money from some corrupt entrepreneur.
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How many times do you have to scam people before they stop calling you an entrepreneur?
Hmmmm, ask Donald Trump. He is the one that has come closest to hitting that particular limit, yet they still call him an "Entrepreneur".
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One of his feats was being present in the royal crowning which happened a few months ago. He got pictures with almost every major political personality
Unrelated to the original topic, but that reminded me of this guy (and then I found this hilarious gif):
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So.......death penalty? All agreed?
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This guy is an amateur compared with our latest Spanish shame: Francisco Nicolás Gómez-Iglesias
Bah. We had a guy whose name should have been a dead giveaway who fleeced a lot of people, many (most?) of whom should have known better:
That's almost as funny as a politician named Weiner famous for tweeting pictures of his junk.
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(and then I found this hilarious gif):
QFT and because it's funny. That was based on the fake translator guy, right?
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Yeah. Some random crazy guy pretended to be a sign language interpreter, and nobody figured it out until someone noticed that he was signing nonsense.
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Yeah.
I can't load it from work, but I think this is the SNL skit parody of it.
