There have been some concerns in recent weeks over the issue of sock puppets and suspicious accounts that have been able to funnel thousands of SBD from the rewards pool.

In a recent post from @bacchist, he laid out a clear link from a whale account – @kushed – that had two other accounts linked to it. One of these accounts – @lakers – had created two additional accounts that have found their way onto the daily trending pages over the past several weeks, instantly achieving large payouts from their very first posts (reminiscent of the account, @msgivings). It was admitted by @kushed in Rocket Chat that he indeed created the two accounts in question. He had claimed that these accounts were created for two anonymous bloggers from The Huffington Post that he had brought to Steemit in order to increase both post quantity and quality.

These two accounts are @honeyscribe and @lifeisawesome.

According to @bacchist’s post, the claim for at least one of those accounts – @lifeisawesome – appeared to be dubious, as the poster admitted in a comment that he had never written “on a worldwide platform like [Steemit.]” As @bacchist correctly pointed out, The Huffington Post has a wider reach and is more well-known than Steemit, and any blogger would certainly know this.

We’ll come back to that at a later time. For now, we can examine some interesting points about the other account: @honeyscribe.

The first days of @honeyscribe

After this account was created by @lakers and before it engaged in any posting of its own, it coincidentally upvoted a post by @lifeisawesome. We may be able to draw conclusions about this, but there’s nothing inherently wrong with upvoting another account, regardless of how coincidental it is. So we’ll skip the coincidences and get right into harder evidence.

Let’s start with the votes for @honeyscribe’s very first blog post.

This list of votes seems perfectly normal at first glance. However, we see that name again – @lakers. That’s not necessarily anything unusual, as @lakers (who is also the whale, @kushed) is the person who created this account and claims that he knows this blogger and actually brought them to the platform. But what are the other names of the first voters on this post? If you noticed, the first upvote came from the account @america. It’s a great thing, isn’t it? Getting early support, especially from America? We should all be so lucky, right?

So, let’s take a look at this account.

Well, that’s strange. Of all the curating that could be done on Steemit, this account has only curated @honeyscribe and @lifeisawesome. Not only that, but this account was the very first upvote on the very first post from @honeyscribe. So, we have ourselves another strange coincidence – but what of it? Well, that was only the first vote. Let’s look at the second account, @angelika.

Another strange coincidence? The second account to vote for @honeyscribe was also an account that has only ever curated @honeyscribe and @lifeisawesome. Now this might pique one’s interest. What are the other accounts on this list? Let’s look at the next one, @davo.

Something here just doesn’t seem right, does it? The first three accounts voting for this new author have only ever curated this author and another account directly linked to/associated with it. Going down the list, @guinness, @japan, @kiso, @lakers, and @wd40 all show identical or similar curation – only for the same two accounts. That’s eight in total, all upvoting the same two accounts. We know @lakers belongs to @kushed and we know that he created the two accounts being upvoted. All of these eight accounts were mined in April and May, just as this account was:

If you recall from @bacchist’s post, @salus is linked directly to @kushed through a wallet transfer.

You can see all of these accounts repeat their upvote on the second post from @honeyscribe – this time immediately followed by @sarkis and @kushed himself. (The @sarkis account is just like the others already mentioned.)

So, we have ten accounts, plus @kushed – all mined in April and May, and all voting for the same two accounts. One of these ten accounts has direct transfers to @kushed and one of them was admitted by @kushed as being one of his that created the @honeyscribe and @lifeisawesome accounts. Given this information, it is clear that all of these accounts are very likely owned by @kushed. We know that @honeyscribe is one of his creations, so let’s explore some peculiar activity with this account and another that behaves almost exactly like it.

Are @honeyscribe and @perspective the same person?

This is a great question – and I believe we have definitive proof that the posts are indeed originating from the same source.

When @perspective burst onto the Steemit scene, the very first account that they followed was @lifeisawesome – and then honeyscribe not long after. What are the odds that a new, suspicious account would begin following other previously identified suspicious accounts?

OK – so maybe that’s not very compelling evidence. But what if I told you that the very first person to upvote @perspective’s very first post was @honeyscribe? Would that be more convincing?

Who was the first person to comment on the post? Again – it was @honeyscribe.

On the third post by @perspective, we have both @lifeisawesome and @honeyscribe upvoting within the first four curators.

Now I’m certainly no expert on trend analysis, but I’d say that a pattern is certainly developing between these accounts. Nevertheless, let’s move on from curating and commenting for now. Let’s look at some really hard evidence.

A picture is worth a thousand words.

Beginning on September 11, 2016, both the @honeyscribe and @perspective accounts were posting once every day. On that date, the posts from each user contained images hosted by imgsafe.org. Also on that date, both accounts posted an image of a piece of paper with the Steemit logo – as what seems to be an attempt to “prove” that there was indeed a real woman posting on these accounts. These are the two images:

Just a coincidence? Perhaps – but there’s much more to it. On September 11th, 12th, and 13th, the images from each of these posts were all hosted by imgsafe.org.

Then – strangely – both accounts changed image hosting on September 14th. Well, there’s nothing wrong with that, right? People change hosting accounts. It’s not a big deal, is it? Well, this could just be another coincidence – except for the fact that both of these accounts switched to the exact same hosting site, and a rather obscure one at that: anonmgur.com.

For three days in a row, both @honeyscribe and @perspective hosted their images on anonmgur.com, before again switching back to imgsafe.org on the very same day – September 17th.

If that isn’t an obvious indication that the same person is controlling both accounts, then perhaps we can find something else that’s peculiar amongst them. Say, perhaps – a formatting issue?

Alright – so one coincidental formatting issue that occurs on the same day doesn’t prove anything. But what if there were two, by the same two accounts…in consecutive days?

So, we have two accounts with questionable origins posting similar images on the same day, changing image hosting accounts on the same days to the same hosting sites – twice, and also having the exact same formatting issues in two consecutive days. We also have a link between a third account (@lifeisawesome) that interacts with both users – an account that was created by the same person (@lakers/@kushed) who admittedly created one of the other accounts in question here (@honeyscribe).

If you’re not yet convinced that these two accounts are being controlled by the same person, then I’d say that you’re really not paying attention. Still, there are other similarities and coincidences between these accounts. Observe how these two accounts attribute their images, for example:

Or the choice of images used (which also happens to be popular among many of these socks in general). One of these sets of images is from today.

Is Steemit being defrauded?

Reading through recent posts by @honeyscribe and @perspective, it is clear to me that they are being written by the same person. The layouts are very much the same and their writing style and topics of their posts are very similar as well. A lot of the posts are about relationships, fear, and hiding from their past or from certain parts of society. Even the categories selected are pretty much the same – relationships, psychology, and life.

Given all of the information and links between these accounts, it’s undeniable that @honeyscribe and @perspective are the same person. But the question remains: Is there anything wrong with that?

One answer would be: Not necessarily. However, the problem isn’t that they’re posting under different accounts. The problem is that they are fabricating interest in these accounts by pretending to be different people.

Either this person has some serious schizophrenic issues, or they are deliberately attempting to deceive readers. What could the purpose for the deception be? Possibly to trick readers into believing their lie so that they can manufacture interest in their posts – either to hide the fact that there is generally no interest in these posts while they are being upvoted by whales, or as an attempt to bring legitimacy to the @perspective account that is still relatively new. It could be the same thing that occurred with the @msgivings account when @honeyscribe was still fairly new to the scene.

Now, some people will call all of this a “witch hunt.” But can we really deny what is actually happening and claim that the evidence presented here isn’t real? As we can see, there is a pattern developing between multiple accounts – all with questionable origins and all of these suspicious accounts are being upvoted by the same whales. We already know of one that is deeply involved in the creation and curation of these accounts. In future postings, we will explore additional sock puppet accounts, additional peculiar behavior of and interactions between the accounts and the whales supporting them, and the same whale collusion involved in upvoting their posts.

To give you an idea of how bad this is – in the past month, just the identified accounts have already pulled over $75,000 SBD in payouts from the rewards pool. This rabbit hole runs very deep and these issues need to be corrected if we want a healthy Steemit platform. Without trust – especially in the “investors” – it’ll be extremely hard to succeed.

I fully expect this post to be flagged, despite the fact that there isn't anything wrong with the facts presented in it. I understand that my reputation is on the line - however, my purpose is to help clean up the image and credibility of Steemit. If I'm to be flagged into oblivion for that, then I'll take that hit. I hope others will support this and not support those responsible for the continual deceit.

Please Re-Steem this post.

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