Many of you high sec dwellers may have heard of the small four member corporation “Phaser Inc.” It’s two main members, Eddie Lampert and Mordor Exuel, could, up until today, be seen routinely in Jita and other high sec market hubs touting their immensely profitable investment bank in local (“Deposit an investment at Phaser Inc and receive 5% interest on weekly basis. Check www.phaserinc.com for all the details and to register for an account!”). Those days, however, have ended.
Haters gonna hate
Today is the day many expected to come.
Today, the 12th of August 2011, is the day where it all comes together.
Phaser Inc. is done, over, finished.After a stunning period of eight months, we decided it’s enough.
No more new accounts.
No more mails.
No more payout days.
No more ISK.No more Phaser Inc.
–Most likely, this will cause a lot of questions.
The most important question will be answered right here, right now.
The ISK is gone; you will not see it ever again.
You’ve invested it, got a chance on some profit, but it turned out to be not the best choice you’ve ever made. That’s how investing works. At least, that’s how it went for the most of you.
Eight months ago, the publicly unknown Eddie and Mordor began to painstakingly establish a reputation for themselves. A reputation as saavy investors with an extremely sophisticated infrastructure to support them and their investment decisions. In reality, however, it was just the two of them taking in people’s money and giving back 5% every week. Day after day, week after week, and month after month the business snowballed. In short order, they had as many as 300 new investors each week. All throwing their isk at the pair for absolutely nothing in return except a guarantee. A guarantee that their money would be invested into some other worthwhile fund and would earn them a consistent 5% back every week.
For those of you that are uninformed, this is how a Ponzi Scheme works. The banker, or whoever is running the scheme, will come to you with a solid “investment” that they claim will pay out great dividends over time. But instead of giving this money to a company with the intention of helping that company do business, the person will pocket the money and pay you your 5% out of the money you gave them. After a while, people are so happy with their consistent return that they invest even more money not knowing that it’s not going anywhere except the scheme operator’s bank account. As word of mouth spreads on this great investment, the scheme runner will start taking in more and more money while only paying out a consistent 5% every week. As people reinvest their money, the business expands almost exponentially.
Money Talks
Just how much money are we talking about? According to Eddie and Mordor, they pulled in over 1,800,000,000,000 isk in 8 months. That is 1.8 trillion isk. In U.S. dollars, that’s around $67,500. But of course, they had to make annual payouts to their victims. The leaders of Phaser Inc. have calculated this at just a hair over 345 billion isk – or about 19% of their total revenue. Some investors also were smart and pulled out of the whole thing. Phaser reports the amount returned to investors as 452 billion isk or about 25% of the total that they brought in. The remaining 56% is what they kept.
Just a hair over 1 trillion isk. Or about 38,000 USD.
As to what Eddie Lampert and Mordor Exuel’s motivations are, I’ll leave them to explain that. They have agreed to write an editorial for Eve News 24 detailing their journey in Eve and the events leading up to and during their successful scam – a fraud that will undoubtedly go down in the history of New Eden as one of the greatest scams of all time.
Dou Ceino
Note
Some readers have pointed out that the article’s math might fall a bit short and the scammed equivalent in RL money stated should had been raised a bit:
Per my math, which of course could be faulty, the amount scammed equates to about $50,000. Specifically:
In real world terms, the money Phaser Inc. ended up making off of their scam translates as such:
(note that I’m calculating a PLEX at 350m, for simplicity’s sake)
Phaser Inc now has enough ISK to buy 2,953 PLEXes, with some left over. One GTC costs $39.99, so each PLEX is valued at $17.50
Phaser Inc’s income from this scam translates to a total of $51,677.50 WITH CHANGE (!)
Let me know if I fucked my math up.
Shin’alor
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