Blockchain Sherlock Eats Copy Pasta for Breakfast!
How I accidentally found and eventually exposed a cheater abusing the 
image source: movies.stackexchange.com - Does sherlock have an eating disorder?
This will be the story of how I stumbled over, and then unmasked, a kid who tried to game the system for quick profit.
But before we go there, let's talk a bit about copy-pasta on steemit and my personal motivation to spend a few hours investigating this situation.
Everybody's Here for the Money
Let's face it, everybody's here, at least in part, because of a monetary incentive.
But that's not a bad thing!
I believe the way monetary-value in steem is created is revolutionary. It changes a whole bunch of paradigms in the bigger picture and it is definitely one of the first really usable applications of a blockchain based economy - an economy of content and community interaction that creates it's own cryptocurrency as it grows.
This is something precious! And we, the community, must do our best to protect this growing Utopia.
There are many things that need to be addressed, and a lot of kinks that need to be ironed out, but this can grow into something wonderful and liberating for many many more of us.
But there are some who just come by to make a quick buck by any means possible. They will try to extract the value that has been created, they come to take but not to partake!
Posting copy-pasted articles or images without giving sources, it's called plagiarising, is just one of the ways unoriginal people will try to get rich here. When you see something like that happening, I believe it is a social duty to be vocal about it!
You can contact 
But what's coming next is about more than just plagiarised content.
Not Just Copy Pasta
I stumbled over a network of accounts posting copy pasta and circle-jerking each other.
image source: quickmeme
It really all started by accident. It's not like I am hanging over steemit trying to catch cheaters all day.
I was initially just trying this new "Votes Graph" tool provided by 
I use 
So, curious me, clicked on 
I looked at their profiles and they just looked too similar, both pasting tons of very comparable copy-pasted memes and ecards. It started smelling really fishy and a look under their "recent replies" showed that they were getting their minnowsupport votes cast from countless different discord usernames to avoid the 1vote-every-12hrs constraint.
It was obvious someone was abusing
Looking into their wallets' transfers led me straight towards two "proper" accounts 
In total I have mapped 20 steemit accounts and 87 discord accounts (so far) involved in this dodgy activity.
The paid rewards on these accounts in the last 7 days alone are 141.684 SP & 157.257 SBD - that does not include pending rewards nor rewards prior to this, and the operation had been running for about 3 weeks already!
Time to Set Things Right
And here's how things turned out.
image source: taringa.net
Quite early after my initial discovery I tried to contact 
A bit of an awkward detour, but something good comes from everything! There might be a nice surprise in one of the upcoming Googly Prizes. ;)
In the meantime I had also tried to contact
So, after the initial confusion I finally contacted
He did just issue that "public" apology, disappointingly though, it's posted under one of his obvious sockpuppet accounts, 
It contains a heart warming story of how he did this in order to pay for his grandpa's hospital bills. Hmm... I just don't know... it's hard to believe for me. Maybe the fact that the only sockpuppet account that has remained inactive is called 
That is why I am sharing my side of the story now!
edit: fellow steemian 
edits:
-
- I have just posted my final thoughts on the situation and a list off all his accounts involved in this scheme [here]
What do You think about Copy Pasta?
How would You have handled the situation?
Do you believe ' confession?
follow 
... it's free!
steem-on and prosper
