Cosmoray Holdings Was a Ponzi Scheme
I've been following the Market Discussion forum for about as long as I've been playing Eve. The idea that the economy in Eve was complicated enough to support a secondary market was something that set it apart from most other MMOs and absolutely fascinated me.
What have I learned from three years of reading the market forums? Of the folks offering investments in public, there's two types: Individuals who are going to steal your money, and individuals who are going to steal your money, but don't know it yet.
If you'd asked me to list the top five most prominent and "trustworthy" market gurus in the Market Discussion forums, Cosmoray would have made the list.
But it turns out it was all a Ponzi scheme, where interest and dividends are paid out of new donations instead of profits from the activity being invested in.
There's a delicious forum thread. Cosmo put out a hastily-written account of the entire process in a gDocs document.
There are some amusing accounts of scams that can only really work when you've got an excellent ongoing reputation:
In the fall of 2009, I began to run insurance on new player’s bond launches. If a player was having trouble raising capital I would insure all investor’s funds in case of default/scam.
Some of these schemes were actually run by me. I made a bond (poorly written) which I would insure, and people would invest. After 1 month when the CEO (my alt) disappeared I would back all investors out of my pocket. This would further improve the rep “Cosmo’s word is his bond”. I lost zero cash on these as all the money I had raised would be returned.
If you're looking for capers to pull when you have an internet connection but infrequent access to Eve (at work?), I recommend having a look at the Market Discusion Forums. The cycle tends to go something like this:
10 Investors put their trust in someone who they don't think would ever scam.
20 Scam.
30 Investors swear that from now on things will be different and they will reserve their trust for people they can physically strangle.
40 Time passes.
50 GOTO 10
7 comments
Glad I'm not the only Ninja that loves the Market forums.
Now, please invest in my most recent IPO on the TEARS forums...and log in and have discussion with us there, I miss you :(
MD is a great source of never ending drama. Much like everything else in EVE, even if people get burned and learn their lesson, there's always plenty of new fish to shoot.
Argh, flashbacks to Basic withthose line numbers!!! Seriously, you've hit the nail on the head. I have watched MD for a long time and people just don't understand that the fundamental requirement for a secondary market is TRUST. What does EvE not have...wait for it...Trust. Ah well, as Kel points out their are plenty of new folks who join every day.
YOU USED A GOTO STATEMENT! BLASPHEMY
It's more like this:
#include
int main(void)
{
while(1)
{
printf("Investors put trust in someone who think won't scam");
printf("Investors get scammed");
printf("We swear we will only reserve trust for someone we can physically strangle")
printf("time passes");
}
}
Compsci nerd aside, this is hilarious and makes me love EVE.
Is this what MLYT is ending as?
No more kills and tears?
Disapointing to put it mildly....
This was kinda meh. From how long it took to how little he took to how he tried and failed to cash in on his rep before blowing it to how he begged people to audit him to his latest attention whore thread. Sad little guy, reminds me of when you guys post 'tears' logs in here that are devoid of tears. He made 3 times as much doing insurance fraud for a few months as he did from this scam in 4 years.
I read the wall of text and was like zzzzz. LE's latest scam (which was also extremely dull) was more carefully planned and more interesting.
Can we get more post about killing nubs..... been fucking ages