There was this mans who thought he could convince me that Bitcoin is an unsafe investment because it is too "scam sensitive and not safe" or whatever. Not that Bitcoin itself was a scam, but that along the way there were numerous dangers that lurked and could potentially lead to you losing all your Bitcoin to scammers.
He knew some of the very basics, but already failed on the second step on basics like segwit or multi-sig wallets, public or private keys etc. Right there is a major sign of prejudice if I ever seen any. How are you going to have a strong opinion on something and barely understand what that something is?
Anyway I tried explaining how just as your computer is only as smart as you, your Bitcoin is as safe as you yourself allow it to be. It did shift his attitude a bit, but he tried to close the argument with "Still, I think things like real estate or other tangible goods are a safer investment option." This led me to tell him the real first hand witnessed event of what I refer to as the "store robbery" story. Now by that phrase you might think some store or shop got robbed of its cash and some valuable items by armed robbers but no, this dirtbag robbed someone of his entire store with all the goods inside and did it completely unarmed and with a smile. How'd that happen? Well, on that note:
It was the mid 90s and someone I knew, let's call him Mr Safer, owned this store for a few short years and with the money he turned over monthly could cover his expenses and basically just be his own boss. It wasn't a gold mine or anything like that, some months he couldn't even save a single cent. It was just enough to keep him going and along the way the store property slightly but surely increased in value.
He thought of selling and changing his business and was wondering how much he could get for the shop. I'm not sure on the specifics and am just roughly estimating here but he spend in total around 30K on the shop and wanted to get 60K for it now. Some made ridiculous offers like 40K or even 35K, but this one person made a rather decent offer; 50K.
After a bit of negotiating they settled for 55K and it seemed he was genuinely interested and serious about the deal. All seemed well but before they moved to signing the documents and payment method he said he didn't have the full amount right away. "I have to sell some other assets and move some funds around and can get you the full amount in two to three months tops."
"Hmmm a bit annoying" Mr Safer thought to himself, "why not just say that from the beginning"? And it is here I learned an important lesson: Always be wary of someone who doesn't immediately show you their hand after you showed yours. What I mean by that is if you were fully honest about your investment, how much it cost you and how much the value is today and the other side doesn't even tell you basic stuff like how they can't afford it right away, they're probably stringing you along for some unpleasant reason.
So what also happened is he actually showed Mr Safer proof he indeed owned these other assets like a small parking garage worth 10K at the time and some other stuff like jewelry and how it might take some time before a buyer came along that offered a good price. I genuinely believe it was this sentence here that convinced poor Mr Safer to think it was all legit and no need to worry. The scammer probably had Mr Safer thinking "Hey, I know what that's like. If I sold my store to the first buyer that came along I would miss out on a lot of money too." I remember how at one point after Mr Safer refused to listen to others to tread carefully, he said he could just reclaim the store back through the courts if the guy fails to pay the rest because it was not like he could take the store and run away with it right? This gave Mr Safer a false sense of security. You know, the kind of security people feel with real estate and not Bitcoin.😁
They went to their lawyers and drew up some papers. He paid 10% in advance and would pay the remaining 90% in installments over the next 3 months. And that 10% money, roughly around 6K was the only money Mr Safer ever saw for selling that store. Take a moment to think how the scammer could get away with it and reply it in the comments. I'm interested to see if anyone can figure it out.🤔
"Alright, this ahole is not paying up. Time to take it to the courts like I planned for back up" Mr Safer thought after two and a half months. But it was here he found out that the buyer was broke. He didn't have a single penny to his name and to make matters worse, he also didn't have the store to his name anymore either.😵💫
So what this scamming scumbag actually had was debt. I am to this day 100% convinced this was fake debt to people who were actually in on the scam like his friends/relatives who owned businesses because why go through all this trouble to scam someone else, but not just scam them right? Why did these creditors not take him to court like Mr Safer did? It just doesn't make any sense in any real world scenario other than it being a con game pulled off by an entire group. So basically what he did after he got ownership of the store is sell it for like 40K and immediately pay off his debts. He also quickly sold all his other properties btw for less than the value and paid every last cent he owned to his creditors. All this was so traceable it was laughable. We could see he indeed sold all his property in a hurry to avoid the 2/3 month deadline before Mr Safer would move in on him, immediately move the newly acquired money around to his "creditors" aka fellow conmen, and file for bankruptcy.
Mr Safer went to court with all his proof and eventhough the judge eventually of course ruled in his favor and ordered the guy to pay up, he didn't get a single cent because whatever low income the scammer got from his unemployment/social services after that had to be used for his own basic expenses like food, health care etc. The scammer actually had dual nationality and was initially from Turkey. After he filed for bankruptcy and the entire court process was finished he just took off back to Turkey and was never heard from again. Went back to living a life in poverty in good old Turkey where he would not even get his European government social care money? What an odd thing to do no? Nah, those other scammers who were involved probably funneled a huge portion of the stolen money back to him to some Turkish bank where he could use it again and live like a millionaire.
As for Mr Safer, he never owned a business again and lost faith in both the justice system and humanity. But you know, all this has me thinking: You know all those judges and lawyers who see all these cases and get to learn how you can get away with literal theft? It's just a matter of time before one of them has bad intentions and we will have a real world supervillain: Superconman. A scamming force so knowledgeable of all the tricks and how to get away from even the law, that no one can stop him.💸
