A lot of people often question the motive behind scams, they say since a person can be smart enough to create an intelligent scam, why not put all that brain into creating a positive brilliant innovation that can be authentic and original?
But generally, this isn't true,
scam pays better than hard work and I'll explain why this is so
I believe that irrespective of the fact that a scamming mind is capable of replicating genuine work, they'll still choose scam because of how less stressful it seems and because of their greed as well. It's more difficult to build than to destroy. When a person scams and makes money, they're destroying something to make that money. It means that the money they made off that scam is directly infringing on another person, entity, or organization, so they're destroying.
However, building is difficult, so many people do not think they have the fortitude to build, so they'll rather choose the easier way, even if it'll also require the same ingenuity as when they're building. The difference is laziness and greed.
Here, let me tell you a sophisticated identity theft scam that happened here recently
Wait for it
I was making some investigation on-chain, and I saw an account impersonating an Instagram model. This account was using the picture of this model to create picture contents on hive, centering their contents around this model. The model was living a lavish life, spending money, expensive cars, and living big, it was quite the difference for the account impersonating this model.
Here, The Scam Behavior Didn't Match The Style
This account was always selling all hive from their post reward even scraps as low as one hive. Someone who travels oversea and buys expensive things, wouldn't be so desperate as to sell as low as one hive.
For a person who depicts a rich lifestyle in their pictures, it's difficult for me to wrap my head around how they'll be scraping to sell one hive on a daily. Plus the funny thing is that it seemed the scam was even bigger than I thought, about four other accounts were orchestrating this scam with this identity theft account, and two were running the same scam, but the fourth account acted as a sort of bank, it collected the hive proceeds from this accounts and runs the money through deepcrypto8.
It gets even interesting
However the fourth account creates genuine content, I feel that the reason why this is so is that if the three other accounts were caught, he could claim deniability, saying he was only helping them with their transactions, this was smart too, I mean, sheer brilliance, a backup plan in case the other accounts were nabbed.
This plan worked well as the other accounts were caught and the fourth account claimed deniability The sophistication of the scam was how I knew the account was run by a man but this isn't all, there's also another unique reason why I felt the four accounts were orchestrated by one guy I'm not saying a woman cannot pull off a such scam, but the intent.
Apparently, the feminine appeal sells a lot.
In advertising, a beautiful woman is already content that creates engagement. I feel that this impersonator believed that creating content around the face of a beautiful woman would endear them to more rewards. It was a classic scam mindset; throw in the face of a woman and have all the drooling men send in their money. But of course, hive doesn't work that way, although, I'll admit the appeal might sell for some time, they'll be discovered when the charade runs for some time.
Complacency To Details Is The Key
A Scammer Can't Get It 100%
When I saw the introduction post of this supposed lady, she claimed to be a Ghanaian living in the US, but the pictures she uploaded weren't of either Ghana or US, the environment felt familiar to me and I shrugged it off, apparently when hivewatchers came for the account for identity theft, my suspicious was reaffirmed again. The model this account was impersonating was a Nigerian, which ethnic background is Yoruba, but the impersonator claims to be from Ghana.
Another thing was that the impersonator couldn't even replicate the name of the model on Instagram. But because no one noticed this, this impersonator continued farming rewards and became complacent over time, they made multiple mistakes, such as using the picture of entirely different people to depict them especially if the original model they steal their pictures hasn't posted any picture.
This person became comfortable with stealing other people's pictures on Instagram entirely and if you look at this profile you'll discover this person has used about three different identities/pictures to depict them. However, when this account was caught and branded, the first thing they did was to initiate a power-down instantly even if the account was told to prove they owned the Instagram account they were stealing from.
So if they owned it, why run? Why not prove it? I mean it's crazy. I've always told people to stay away from scammy tendencies. If one is too lazy to build, they'll easily embrace scams because of the need to make money.
Generally, this doesn't pay.
It's why I often tell people to look at the grander scheme, identity theft and plagiarism is already a huge crime in real life, I often wonder why people think they'll go scot-free because it's the internet. I get that Twitter, Instagram and Facebook might allow these things, and since they do, some people might push the narrative that they can do the same here too. This post is me asking you to be a good player here, do what's right, do your best, contribute your quota for the Blockchain and let's grow together.
Interested in some more of my works?
How To Be "THE" Content Creator You Always Desire
The Consequences Of Being Overly Assumptive About Money
A 1.6 Million Naira Use-case For iPhone 14
Free Money: What Will You Do With $216k Worth Of Crypto In Your Wallet? (2)
The 4 Ways Of Developing A Relevant Niche As A Content Creator
Tech & Gadget Sophistication; Picture & Aesthetics
