Scammers targeting the Shiba Inu Community? Ponzi schemes?
This article is not intended to spread FUD. It is better to read everything before jumping into conclusions. Opinions are my own. The evidence included is for you to decide.
In December 2008, Bernie Madoff was arrested for defrauding investors out of billions of dollars running a massive Ponzi scheme. Many investors knew he was a fraud but was never investigated. He was able to fool even the smartest and most sophisticated people.
I’ve been gathering information about potential scammers within the Shiba Inu Community. Many in the community don’t believe it should be talked about because “it may do more harm than help the community”. I disagree, and I believe we need to stay alert because scammers do exist. We need to remove or ignore these bad actors. It doesn’t matter if they are doing it in a smaller scale than Madoff, they are still scammers and use similar strategies. It is indeed a Ponzi scheme that targets Shib holders looking for burns.
Recently, the Shiba Inu defense breed exposed some of these scams. I reached out to a few users on Twitter and Reddit, some of the users I talked to were blocked for even bringing up the topic. After reading some of their comments, it was more evident they were telling the truth. They were blocked for warning users about these scammers.
Tokens that burn Shiba?
Many of these tokens make false statements and exaggerated claims in order to get people to invest in them. Scam tokens are getting more creative. The owners of tokens like these are only looking to multiply their investment by 1000x. One of their tricks is to utilize separate wallets so that it appears as though others are buying in. A token called Scarecrow seems to be doing just that. They’ll spend their own money on these tokens as a way to advertise themselves. The idea is to spam the internet, some look for shillers to overhype their token with their fans.
Fake it till you make it.
One token, ShibaBurn, uses the Shiba Inu burn tracker’s name in order to appeal to Shiba holders, in an attempt to confuse them. The ShibaBurn owner sent almost 10% of tokens to a Shib contract just so to say “Shiba Inu” is their biggest holder. Dumb if you ask me, because the team have absolutely no control of the Shib token or the contract. These guys understand that many people won’t see the connection, it’s only being used to market the token. This gives people the impression that Shib team are involved.
Unlike ShibaBurn, Shib is completely decentralized. According to ShibaBurn, they are the biggest burn mechanism of Shiba Inu, a lie designed to entice the Shib community towards them. The owner made it clear he did not hold Shib, and he even criticized the Shiba Inu devs, but he still wants Shib holders to invest in his token while spamming the community with multiple accounts.
The Shiba Inu defense breed already called it out as a scam, and here’s why I agree with them.
They recently told their followers that they are “audited”, “doxxed”, “renounced ownership”, and “no team tokens”. So everything looks good on paper, right? Let’s take a closer look at this since their website contains many false statements. They claim that their tokens are more secure even though Shiba Inu leads on the Certik website in terms of security.
Doxxing DOES NOT make them legit. That is why EverRise makes it clear in the fine print that they do not endorse these projects. Just because you use their tools do not make a project legit or secure. Many scam tokens will push this heavily to make holders believe that they can be trusted.
Doxxed?
Bernie Madoff was also “doxxed”. The ShibaBurn “developer” came out of nowhere and created two tokens looking to cash in. No one knows who he really is.
Renounced ownership?
His bio says that he is still the “Owner.”
No team tokens?
Does this comes after they secured many loaded wallets, including a marketing wallet where they make 3% of every transaction? The only one winning here is the owner. When others start dumping, he will still profit from it.
“RECORD HOLDERS OF THE BIGGEST COMMUNITY BURN IN ONE TRANSACTION OF 1 BILLION $SHIB”
The above message is something they keep spreading, also posted on their website. Have they done any research to claim this?
The Shiba Inu burn tracker page debunked this on March 25th, stating that someone in the community made a burn of 2.5 billion in July 2021. ShibaBurn and their influencers still spread the lie in order to market themselves.
Sorry Duncan, but that’s two lies in one tweet. Not record breaking, and it wasn’t a combined effort of “SHIBARMY.”
The above image shows another lie that is being spread by ShibaBurn, also shared by the user Duncan Gray who is their “Ambassador”. A token named ‘Ryoshi Vision’ which have thousands of holders was doing it months ago. Strangely, a token with the same name of “ShibaBurn” was created months ago that had the same plan and ironically this ShibaBurn calls it a scam simply because they want to be the original one.
Influencer backed?
They’ve been trying to get as many influencers to join them but many don’t want to participate, instead turns them down. The user @army_shiba, who they had as an influencer was removed from the page. So where did he go? Why are they not talking about it? What made him leave?
The other two “influencers” were paid with ShibaBurn tokens to talk positive about this token. They want you to trust the project and the owner but are constantly misleading their followers, and are also helping spread their lies. They don’t know who the owner is, but they want you to trust him.
Mathew Perry made an entire video hyping his followers about Shiba Inu being their largest holder. He told users that it was a genius idea to give Shib these tokens and that he would love to see what Shib can do with it. Can someone tell Perry that sending to the contract does nothing? Shib can’t do anything with it because Shib is fully decentralized and team does not control the contract. Most of his videos are very misleading. This kind of marketing is scary. Would you trust a project that relies on hype and lies?
Kai’s previous token, Shib Fen Inu, was extremely bad, since huge dumps occurred for an entire month before “the transition.” Many called it out, but the token was a flop and stayed under the radar. The only one winning was the owner. It was clear that he was dumping on holders.
Putting their scheme aside. Is it worth risking? Absolutely not! You can lose all your money. No serious investor will see these tokens as a good investment. If the reason to invest in it is because they told you it burns 5% of Shiba, then you’re not really helping much with burns. The only thing you’re doing is making the owner wealthier. If you believe it can get full support from Shiba community, then good luck with that. 99.8% of the community won’t budge.
Final thoughts on this token.
Their mission is not to help Shiba holders but themselves. The token is based on lies. They overhype the token by telling people that investing in them is the only solution to bringing SHIB to 1 cent.
Like a Ponzi scheme, the plan is to burn SHIB to attract Shib holders. They don’t care about burning Shib or the community, they don’t care about SHIB’s price. They only care about the gains they will be making using their multiple wallets besides the marketing wallet.
Once Shibarium launches, it will burn Shib tokens. No need to fall into these scams.
Other scammers that target the community?
Let’s talk about Steven Cooper from Bigger Entertainment. Cooper who is known in the Shiba Inu community for burning tokens took to Twitter to announce that he sold all of his Shib tokens and calls it quits. Many in the community are calling him a scammer. Is there any merit to these claims? Let’s find out.
Many users had doubts about Cooper, even Shytoshi Kusuma himself. This is because many of his activities were suspicious. He was never transparent and encouraged holders to donate to him or fund his projects.
Before April 1st, he told his followers “i need to remind myself that I’m here for the community,” something he repeated a lot. In a interview he said he purchased SHIB in May, Cooper was active on Twitter but never mentioned the community or “ShibArmy,” not until he saw the opportunity to monetize from it in October 2021. His account is from 2010 and had over 20k followers before he started burning.
The tweet above was after Cooper tried convincing people that he wasn’t “fudding” rather than making opinions. Another user said “Fud can be disguised as opinion.” This comes after Cooper told his followers that “Partnershibs” made no sense and that he was not pleased with what the devs were saying. Notice the language Cooper uses. “We built our followers in the midst of nothing but lies being spread about our company”. Of course this is what Cooper wants everyone to believe, but it’s far from the truth. He was begging the community for followers and for Youtube subscribers not too long ago.
One user on Reddit says that Cooper was a known scam-artist in Missouri and that she was banned on many subreddits for warning users about Steven. The user stopped posting about him since many users did not believe her. Having read her posts, I thought they made a lot of sense, but what she said next is something I believe the Shiba community needs to know.
A person reached out to her and sent a shocking message.
I’m posting this here because the person wants it to be shared to the community.
Listen to me very carefully! I suggest that you copy this and share it. This is a scam artist! Many years ago he started as a Christian music artist, by the name lyrycyst, and began to promote himself by going to youth events, churches, Christian music festivals. I really liked his music/message and began interaction with him and promoting his music. I few local church friends put together a one day music festival bringing in several bands. I offered and paid for his hotel room because I really believed in him. After the festival he came over to our house and spent several hours playing video games with our son. When I took him back to his hotel room he was explaining his Christian vision and asked me to invest in him. I did. He wrote me a contractual, investment letter stating that he would pay me back a lot more that I invested. Time went by and I began to see him change his style of music and message. After that I messaged him several times about our contract & he gave me excuses. Eventually I just stopped contacting him. I encourage you to look for yourself. Look him up on all of the music platforms and YouTube. Look under Steven Cooper and Lyrycyst.
This is the 1st time that I have ever spoke about this publicly. He took my money and broke my family’s heart.
God Bless!
Don’t trust anyone online. Scammers want to take advantage of you. Some hide their faces behind a computer and some don’t because they believe they are too good at what they do. They believe that nobody will ever suspect them. They will try their best to win your heart, and make you many promises. They will look for the most vulnerable people, and will pretend to be your friend. The truth may not be what you want it to be.
How can you spot a scammer?
They will try to persuade you, appear professional and tell you the most positive things. They know exactly what you want to hear.
Being extremely positive is just one of their traits. Because they want you to trust them, but sometimes they make mistakes and reveal their true intentions. This is because they get desperate and make unsuitable recommendations.
They’ll try to convince you that investing your time in them is a good thing. How many times did they ask you to send money their way?
Scammers will play the martyr, especially if they are not getting the funds they hoped for? Did you have to ask yourself, “is this real”?
A user said this about Cooper, “He went in silence for a week, started talking about other things not related to Shib, making it seem like he quit and is not going to continue, I knew he was up to something”. Scammers usually get desperate and come back for more. It was an act.
Did Cooper actually burn over a billion tokens? He hasn’t been completely honest about it, and prefers that people believe it was done by him, because of his playlists since it gives the impression that he’s doing a lot for the community and that his project is working. Most of that amount was actually done by the community. He told them that if people burn tokens with him instead, that users would avoid paying high gas fees. Managing people’s money without a license is illegal in the United States and Cooper was aware about it but continued doing it. Cooper was not being transparent about it either, nobody had a way to see how much money was actually sent to him.
As you can see, many people didn’t fall for it this time. He told people that he already lost $20k in the app. So why was he asking for users to fund it?
What he says next had me convinced that he’s a compulsive liar. Cooper “spent almost $20k on an app development”? This of course didn’t seem believable at all, to anyone. He first said it was $15k, then weeks later he said it was already being worked on and that he put a down payment, then he said it would be ready for summer, then he changed it and said it was $20k, then he showed a logo to give impression that it was being worked on. Lastly, he wanted holders to fund it.
A member of the defense team knew right away it was a scam. A few people called it out months ago.
Some of the messages with promises he made are now gone but links can be found via Google.
Cooper wants people to believe that he didn’t scam anyone, but people are already calling him out for doing just that. Cooper had holders fund “the ultimate crypto music game” by purchasing his $6 postcards, and promising to burn thousands in SHIB. He was being silent about the game and started to look for other ways to make money instead. All his tweets mentioning this have been deleted by him.
