Sandrino aka SanDraino aka ScamDrino
Background of a Scammer
Six Months ago, I came across the account because I like to watch surf videos to chill out.
I began to notice that this account was trending daily under the surf/surfing tags.
regularly uploaded WSL (World Surf League) videos from Youtube, I thought the content was great but I quickly became suspicious that these videos did not belong to
, the quality of the video production was totally professional.
It became more apparent that some sort of abuse was happening as posted 10+ Youtube videos every single day.
Who was supporting this?
Well that would be self-voting these copy and pasta to the top, 10 times a day, everyday.
Last year posting 10 times a day
Most of the time the embedded WSL Youtube video made up the entire post, however, when there was text it was also copy and pasted directly from the descriptions provided on the WSL YouTube channel.
After asking for opinions from members of the Steemit community, who all agreed this was straight up plaguiarism, I started flagging posts.
At first, protested the flagging and I said I’d be happy to remove my flags if he could prove (through social media) that he was in fact affiliated with WSL. A tweet or a FB post declaring that WSL had joined Steemit.
responded with generic links to the official WSL Facebook page and did the same with the WSL YouTube channel which of course anyone could supply.
Thus, I continued to flag this plagiarism regularly.
Eventually, stopped posting WSL surf videos and moved on to posting Brazilian and Portuguese only content.
It appeared that ’s scamming had ended.
Fast forward to present day .
At it Again
In the last few weeks, I decided to check up on my old friend .
There was nothing new on the account wall, so I wondered if he’d powered down and had a look at his transaction history.
Low and behold has been very active upvoting and curating –
A 6th day 11th hour comment farm circle-jerk with multiple accounts
is the main account with 70,000+ SP
This account is responsible for the upvoting of multiple asinine comments to, at present, about $8-$12 per / comment in potential rewards daily.
All rewards from comments are funneled back into the
account by the secondary Sock-Puppet accounts
Sock-Puppet Accounts
: reputation 61, total all time posts 4 (3 in the last 72hrs)
: reputation 65, total all time posts 4 (3 in the last 72hrs)
: reputation 61, total all time posts 4 (3 in the last 72hrs)
Right away, these accounts are suspect as they have made a total of 1 post before last week.
- This is a red flag for comment farming, since the accounts miraculously have 60+ reps.
- They must be making some pretty amazing comments, right
-Clearly these accounts exist for a single purpose. Shit Comments.
Once I discovered these accounts, I had a look at the amazing amount of shit comments produced by these accounts every single day upvoted to $8-10$ each by .
Expanding Circle Jerk
Unfortunately, as I began to flag these accounts and later reported this scam to Steem Abuse in Steem.chat - MORE sock-puppet accounts have been added or joined in the activities.
(with an s)
A taste of the quality comments
loves so much
Coming Full Circle(Jerk)
It seems as though Scamdrino hasn’t given up on Copy and Pasting WSL YouTube videos.
Rewards Are Funneled Back to Main Account
Most of the time rewards are transfered back to
the main account responsible for upvoting this nonsense.
Flags
My flags of these posts have returned hundreds of steem and SBd back to the rewards pool, but as the situation escalates and the number of Sock-Puppet accounts grows, I believe that it’ll become increasingly difficult to contain all on my own.
I’m making this post as I believe the community should be aware of this scam.
I haven’t commented directly to
as I feel this is blatantly obvious abuse and from past experience I believe I will not receive any honest answers.
I’ll be leaving an update at Steem abuse in Steemchat to let them know about the newest sock-puppet accounts and in the meantime I'm going to continue flagging this shit.
If you want to join me, I 'd appreciate your support to help bring this abuse to an end.
Cheers, V
Edit: Image credits
njfamily.com
giphy.com 1
giphy.com 2
giphy.com 3