A few months ago, I posted about @sandrino’s - 6th day comment voting circle jerk. After exposing this practice, it appeared that @sandrino decided to power down the main account which had about 70k sp.
https://steemit.com/abuse/@v4vapid/sandrino-s-6th-day-sock-puppet-circle-jerk
Since, we know that serial scammer @sandrino had previously moved from one scam posting and self-voting 10 plagiarized WSL surf videos a day to 6th day upvoting comments of several alt accounts, we could safely assume that we probably hadn’t seen the end of this scammer’s bullshit.
And truth be told... it wasn’t the end.
@sandrino simply created a new set of accounts, which we’ll call the “Animal Farm” circle jerk, to continue draining the rewards pool.
The Animal Farm
It appears that @sandrino is now an animal lover.
There are now 2 primary voting accounts.
@aguia – The Eagle // @urso – The Bear
The Eagle and Bear vote exclusively on 2 comment only accounts
@cavalo – The Horse // @montanha – The Mountain
For more details you can browse these accounts here:
https://steemworld.org/@aguia
https://steemworld.org/@urso
The @sandrino account has been powering down for about 3 months.
Both @aguia and @urso were created in April 2018.
My post exposing this circle jerk was made in March or April 2018.
Before powering down @sandrino had approximately 70k sp.
Today:
@aguia = 40k sp
@urso = 38k sp
Circle Jerk Power Down
While powering down @sandrino stayed quite active continuing to create fresh alts in order to comment farm.
Here’s a list of @sandrino’s main comment farming crew:
@tigree (created April 2018)
@passarosbrasil (created April 2018)
@bravobravo (created March 2018)
Some good work by @abusereports shut down @bravobravo's comment spam.
There are more accounts associated with this activity, such as @falcaoo, but for the purposes of this post we'll stick to the main instances of abuse.
Wallet Transfers to Binance
All of the following accounts make transfers of STEEM to the same Binance account with the exception of @aguia and @urso that are put in place to upvote the comments while attempting to avoid detection.
@sandrino – decrypto8 - 101319957
@tigree – decrypto8 - 101319957
@bravobravo - decrypto8 – 101319957
@passarosbrasil - decrypto8 – 101319957
@cavalo - decrypto8 – 101319957
@montanha - decrypto8 – 101319957
Comment Farming Examples
Comments made by @tigree and @bravobravo (aka @sandrino) and self-upvoted make no attempt whatsoever to make realistic comments and opt instead for the generic -
“Upvoted”
This identical strategy is continued by @cavalo and @montanha
Here are a few examples for your viewing pleasure -
Attempts to Hide Abusive Activity
Before I made this post I wanted to be certain as to what was going on here. I observed that @aguia and @sandrino were upvoting the same @tigree (tiger) garbage comments and decided to see what would happen if I flagged a few of them.
Immediately, @aguia unvoted all of its votes to the Tiger in an effort to distance the account from the circle-jerk. Too late, it was already clear what was going on.
For good measure, additional regular users received upvotes out of the blue in an order to coverup the scam.
Leading up to the @tigree flags, @aguia's regular voting habit of voting exclusively to the puppet accounts can be observed.
What wasn't clear to me was that the Eagle had only half of @sandrino's sp, so i decided to hold-off on exposing this abuse until I could locate the other half. Finally, the Bear @urso awoke from it's hibernation and showed its hand.
Account Power Down to Account Power Up
You can trace @sandrino's power downs and transfers at regular intervals that correspond exactly with @urso's powering up and receipt of Steem transfers through binance accounts.
The most recent amount transferred to binance from @sandrino is 5,707 STEEM and the very same day @urso receives 5,707 STEEM and powers up.
I'm going to tag - @steemcleaners and @spaminator to point out this little operation as well as drop a link in the Steemcleaners Discord.
Summary
I spoke with several users in the Brazilian community that explained that the @sandrino account does not interact with the community at all. Members of the community have reached out and asked the account owner to participate more in their community and earn rewards by curating Brazilian content. A brief attempt was made to engage in the community through curation but it was very short lived. This is quite evident in the voting history of all these accounts.
Game Recognize Game
After the circle jerk was exposed 3 months ago, the account owner reached out to another infamous account on the platform in hopes of gaining support.
Sums things up rather nicely, don't you think?
Well done, great work!
Amazing how persistent he is! By doing nothing than upvoting himself his steem power already got higher than mine now ...
I should add that he claimed to support is family members by his earnings. In that case I wonder why he never powered down to use his Steems for that purpose ...
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Hi @jaki01, yes you have seen this progression for as long as I have. It's really quite sad that every single vote made by these accounts is to enrich themselves.
Good point yes, he's supporting all of his travel agent family members that work together and post all at the same time everyday...I guess at break time?
By the way, congrats on ranking 2nd in the World Cup contest! Amazing ;)
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Haha, thanks, but now that Portugal against Uruguay game was crucial (because really hard to predict), and I got it completely wrong!!! :)
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Nice work there @v4vapid! Thank you for how much you care about this place!!!
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Keep up the good work @v4vapid.
Exposing this stuff is crucial. It is interesting that he jumped into the company of the number 1 target on STEEM for rigging the system to take excessive rewards. I guess we are the company we keep.
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Thanks for the nice comment, I don't really take any pleasure in this kind of stuff but when I see blatant abuse going unchecked i feel it needs to have some light shed on it.
It is telling about the character of these accounts when we see who they attempt to cozy up to ;)
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You got such an impressive analysis. For the Animalfarm it interesting to to see how things are do in the right . Great post @v4vapid
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When it comes to money, it's understandable that corruption follows.
But we are the early adopters of steemit and we need to do our best to keep it fair and give everybody a chance.
Kudos to you
You're doing the work which most of us should
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Big and small, short and tall, there is not end to the people willing to game for all it is worth.
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It's literally whack-a-mole, it never ends.
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As the bear rode the horse across the mountainside, the eagle swooped down and knocked the bear from the horse, making it roll down the bottom of the mountain, to find itself at the front gates of an animal farm.
I wonder what comes next, in this fairy tale....
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Looking at the comment rewards is disheartening. The payout is more than my earnings on a certain post. Perhaps my (sometime) nice self would say hey, his or her stake so the person can choose to do as he/she wishes. Perhaps if some effort was given to write more than a one-word comment and the abuse was not occurring multiple times a day. I don’t think I have a shred of niceness in me seeing this blatant abuse of the system.
Why the heck do we spend time writing again? 😔
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Well that's just it, isn't it? A few self upvotes on your own comments once in a while i think most people would just shrug their shoulders and move on. But this is systematic abuse and that shouldn't be tolerated by the community.
Thanks for stopping by :)
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I realize everyone on here has different priorities. Some are curators, some are on a quest to vanquish the trolls, and others like myself, are trying to find our footing but am happy to cheer from the sidelines with our pitchforks. I appreciate you taking the time to research and expose this abuse. It is sad that the person could simply account hop and start anew.
Thank you kindly for the support. :)
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Great work here @v4vapid reward system abuse is the last thing we need at this or any other moment! It's also a bitter pill to swallow for all those hardworking content providers/curators whom even whilst the price is down are continuing to work hard and add value to the site. It would be good if there was some kind of algorithm that could flag and connect suspect voting patterns .. until then I thank you for all the hardwork and dedication you show towards the site.
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Thanks @perceptualflaws, you make a great point about how hardworking people on this platform get discouraged when they see this kind of thing going on everyday. An algorithm could be helpful in identifying the spider's web, unfortunately I have zero expertise in that department,lol.
Hope you're doing well my friend, it's been a while since we chatted last, I need to get back to the discord group ;)
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Hey @v4vapid I'm good thank you .. hope you've been well? After tomorrow I'm going to be offline for a few days as I wont have any internet, but I'll be back on discord asap and it would be great to have a good catch-up and put the world to rights. As always thank you for all the support you give me and thank you for trying to make a difference .. stay awesome my friend. :)
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Great work man. Comment farming and self-voting using own stake aren't quite the same as some people tend to make themselves believe.
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Why bother collecting followers when you can create alts and upvote meaningless BC entries 😑
I hope the tagged can help limit this guy's bad behaviour - this BS gets me down!
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I guess the flag wars must have caused a lot of people to act more covertly.
Nah, these are bad actors to begin with.
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I think https://steemit.com/steem/@abh12345/the-haejin-effect came into play - folks got angry and greedy.
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Yes, I remember that post. At the time, I was thinking how I could just build my account on the side without ever spending a cent in it.
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It's as if some people don't know how a public blockchain works smh
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Great job v4v, it's been really tough. We've uncovered some big SP accounts as well but can't do anything about it since we don't have that much SP to tackle them. I guess my other half already got on to it, he just posted a long list...
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It's funny how he turn to @haejin for help...scammers recognize each other 😝
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I was thinking the same thing lol
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Thanks for exposing this fraud. It ruins the platforms potential when this crap goes on. Thankfully the block chain shows you the trails if you know how to find them and if you have the time to look. Hopefully we can weed this behavior out.
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This is a great anti-spam post. We want you @v4vapid at @steemflagrewards I think we would all get along nicely. Objectivity, service, and incentivisation to the Steem community’s abuse fighters is our priority.
Please don’t make @iamstan beg. 😁 okay maybe just little.
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Exposed! Excellent work @v4vapid. On a lighter note, those socks are from Korea, I swear. Guys, if you've ever been here, then you know that this is the sock capital of the world. :D
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Thank you @v4vapid for your hard work and research to expose these jerks who have made different accounts to rape reward pool. Steem was not made for abusing rather it is beautiful platform where original content creators are appreciated. These practices must be stopped and people like you can effectively highlight these issues.
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