Case 6: busting @annart's Ukrainian fake artist ring
Accusation:
While digging up information about @elena2017's case I was in close contact and had tremendous support from the real Ekaterina
She had the initial hunch and was essential to pulling the account @annart into the spotlight!
The Findings:
@annart is an account operated by the real person portraied under that blog.
What isn't portrayed, though, is the fact that she is also impersonating a few other artists!
First there are @katrinart and @elena2017, who had been identified as fakes in case 4 and case 5. You can read all the details over there.
Next we have two more fake artists:
- @nellyhandmade - impersonating nellyhandmade on vk.com
- @juliyahandwork - impersonating Yulia Kurikhina on vk.com
But what kind of proof do we have to say @annart is behind this?
@annart isn't new to this game. She received initial funding from an account that has been unmasked 11 months ago: @nataliadobrick, who, coincidentally, also transfers funds to that same bittrex wallet until today!
Not convinced yet? While all other artists have confirmed to me that they are unaware of their steemit presence, Anna's vk profile completely refuses communication, and so does @annart over here.
Need more? Check the activity times of the accounts, you will find a strange synchronicity in claiming rewards. If you check the voting behavior between these accounts, the connection is just as obvious! The tools by @steemreports will help you do this easily.
Also, Anna has been the one commissioning the paintings of @sjennon and @stellabelle from the real Elena for (hold your breath) $15 each!! We have proof in form of screenshots of her conversation with the real Elena. Unfortunately Elena has requested these to not be released! You'll have to trust me on this one. I am willing to show them to a trusted member of the community if necessary.
We do not know who was commissioned to do the portrait of @tj4real that has also been published under @elena2017, but it is revealing that Elena never took a selfie with this one, but did so with the other two.
There are more steemit accounts who are possibly connected to @annart, these accounts belong to her husband and a married couple they are friends with. I will not state their accounts here directly, as we cannot proof they do in fact have knowledge about this, however likely that is!
There are potentially many more artist profiles on steemit that are running like this, just see the case of @iconzbranding that I started my work with here.
So please, be extra vigilant when you see profiles like these. Use some scrutiny and execute a reverse image search on google, it's often as easy as that!
Please also be aware that the same scam is being executed, not only on steemit.com, but also on the russian fork called golos. If you know someone over there, they should probably check this out!
yours,
Sherlock
Have you witnessed similar things yourself?
Don't just ignore it and move on... let me know!
Good on you, well met and good job, came here from Stella's blog.
I'm not sure how things are going in golos, but you will have a field day here, there are probably fakes left and right. Probably thousands of accounts are bots, so supposedly there could be hundreds of fake accounts.
Yeah, I try to be open about my methods. Only if the community as a whole, curation services like @curie, and especially whales start being a bit more vigilante, will we be able to rid ourselves from those scammers!
So, it is wise now to flag @annart?
Hell yea!!! I'm fumming right now!!! It's enough proof for me. The blockchain don't lie!! From now on if you don't have an intro post with the steem logo and date time stamp you suspect in my book. Keep up the good work @stellabelle
I wouldn't put all my faith in somebody holding a piece of paper in front of a camera. It has been faked before. There are two instances I'm aware of. One time it was a photoshop job by an account of a fake girl posting naked pics. And the other situation (it happened before my arrival on Steemit but I read about it) was a guy paying a pretty girl on the net in exchange for a picture of her with a Steem logo & date so that he could pretend to be her.
Yea I'll just have to be more careful of who I follow and support.
Me too. I had followed and upvoted some of the profiles revolving around Case 6.
in my humble opinion: absolutely!
yeah, i just also checked the bittrex account for all these, and indeed they are the same! Thanks for doing this. They will not be lasting long now. I am about to get @cheetah involved too.
Thanks for the impersonation warning
Excellent work once again!
Phenomenal work @sherlockholmes! When I know I spend a great deal of time and energy on my posts, AND I'm out there on the streets promoting steemit, its annoying to discover that the reward pool for people who are keenly trying their best to publish great content (not just artists but everyone) is being drained by dirty little scams like this. Thanks for the great work.
How do I report stuff to you for you to have a look at? I think I've found something iffy but I'd prefer to DM you. busy.org dosen't seems to like your account.
you can contact me on steemit.chat - @sherlockholmes
I've sent you a DM (Hopefully) :-D
Good work @sherlockholmes
Well done you . Which of course means well done to us the collective .
WOW! Good detective work!!! It's important to get the REAL artists paid and recognized! Shame on the impostors!!
I also got approached by the Facebook account of the real Elena asking me for help but unfortunately couldn't help as much as I wanted. I will keep a close eye on this.
What I did notice was the way this person writes and posts. The type of posts (less text, not longer than 500 words or so) and a lot of random )) midsentence. Also the lack of English grammar stands out.
I noticed that all the accounts have delegates SP. Would be cool to see where this is coming from - we could probably figure out the root of this. I also noticed that all accounts seem to resteem eachother. This means that we could also probably figure out more accounts operated by this person.
@uacobra also seems to transfer to the same Bittrex account you mentioned above.
I would love to see the chats between Elena and the scammer though..
You can ask the real Elena on Facebook, she has them!
I have not received them from her directly but through a middleman, she herself did say this:
I am honoring this.
I found more accounts sending funds to the same Bittrex accounts:
@TatyanaSV
@unlovedgirl
I also came across another account which has already been flagged down: @uneducated @svetlanaart
yes, and there's a bunch more.
take a look at this: https://steemit.com/art/@katrinart/hello-steemit-have-a-great-weekend#@predator/re-annart-re-stellabelle-re-katrinart-hello-steemit-have-a-great-weekend-20170804t124949648z
Oh wow. This person is pretty hardcore at scamming.
I just checked that link and got. "This post was hidden due to low ratings."
yes, because it has already been downvoted, there's a button that let's you reveal the content, though!
We can't do much though. All we can do is flag the account and posts down - but the account will keep on existing on the platform. :l
yes, unfortunately so, as the account @nataliadobrick shows very well.
no, once @cheetah has them on it's blacklist, they will be doomed.
Yes ofcourse, but literally blocking it isn't possible is all I am saying :)
Once an account reputation is destroyed, then the account basically ceases to exist. There have been people who are reformed, so it is possible......Steemit uses reputation and community involvement to bring social change. Banning is done by centralized corps. We use the community to bring about punishment
Steemit, I am told, does have centralized means of actually blocking accounts. I am told by a party (who I will not name, as I have no confidence in them whatsoever, due to their acts) that Steemit has blocked them from an account.
I have no more information than this, but I do believe that websites aren't able to be rendered immune from such controls. It is simply the nature of code that, on a site served from servers under the control of Stinc, the users of that site can be censored.
This is the only instance I have heard of it being done. I also cannot certify that it happened, clearly, as I do not have access to the server logs.
However, I can see no impediment to it being done, particularly in cases which create a threat to Steemit itself.
Generally, I believe that Stinc does not do this, and you are correct that the community itself is self-correcting. That does not make it impossible that censoring is both possible, and has been undertaken, at least once., by Stinc.
So then it's a matter of their word and lack of proof for this...
It cannot.
There's no incentive to giving the world proof of censorship. Hard Coding, ip blocking, wouldn't stop someone determined from bypassing hard coded front-end censor and demonstrating it if it was true, or anyone from documenting Ip blocking, or hard coded changes in the open source code. Demonstrating it in this case would be immensely incentivized, just imagine having proof of censorship on steemit, and there is no reason to think otherwise.
There's no incentive and people that are determined will expose censorship, people that get censored won't take it lightly if it happens where and when it's promised otherwise.
This is why when someone cries "CENSORSHIP" or outright lies and says they've been censored, it's important to dispel that nonsense and cut the root of that, what's the proof, can you demonstrate it?
It's easy to rag on the development or large accounts, and not saying you're doing that, just remarking on what most "censorship, censorship everywhere" is or amounts to, but I'm grateful that this isn't run by admins, OF ANY KIND, even those that are admins at the INC, or in the github or the chat, hardly are admins on the chain where everyone has the same rights and is free.
She could have been honest and present the work of this artist. You can't go around trying to impersonate people. From what it looks like she paid more than what her post generated.
Yeah I know - that's why I find it so weird that she did another post about it.
Thats what I always think... But it isnt fair either to the many folk on here who struggle with English as a second language but remain honest.
You can browse through the blockchain history to find who delegated on https://steemd.com/@username. However when you register on steemit, you're delegated 27SP to help you get started.
Ah, I can't seem to find the delegation so far but the account of Elena has been around for quite some time, so the new user delegation shouldn't apply to her.
I am contacting the real Elena now in Facebook. We will get this resolved.