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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lol people are so stupid in EVE, im sorry but if they believed this was a legit endevour they deserved to have their money stolen. If anyone says anything about giving them isk, and they will return, wether is some dude saying hes "quiting" eve, or a corp of people wanting people to invest, its usually a scam, and you my friend are a tard for believing it
Oh look. Its this story again..
I am quitting the game!
Send me whatever amount of money you wish and I will double it back!
Tralolol
Think how much money they could make by selling their INVESTOR LIST. Bet that would pull in a nice chunk of cash.
If an offer is too good to be true, it usually is. 5% interests every month. That's 60% interest in the lapse of a year. You got to be borderline retarded to think that shit is legit. I hope you all quit the game, for your own sake. Imbeciles like you should step away from the computer and work on your intellectual level. Good riddance!
[...] they once had. More recently, EVE has seen its biggest investment scam yet with an estimated 1 trillion ISK embezzled from investors and had a real world value of over $50,000. All of these are classic stories [...]
Anyone who got scammed in the game has (hopefully) learned a valuable real-life lesson:
Investing, doing business with Investors, banks or brokers, will leave them richer and you poorer.
This is a cheaper lesson than learning to distrust "investment advisors" in real life.
Capitalism is a Ponzi scheme when "investing" is allowed.
Going to a casino actually gives you better odds than buying stocks or shares. And the best investments are land, houses and hotels.
Cheap lesson for those who learned something.
Aramis Rosicrux
While the life lessons you posited are true in most cases…Your comments on the stock market are bull. Telling people they have better chances with their money at a casino is mathematically and economically incorrect.
That suggests that technical and fundamental analysis, most of which is learnt at university, is a falsehood and that whole bachelors and masters degrees are quasi-legitimate methods of research that wield worse odds than any game in a casino. Further, you sound like your'e under the impression that trading is a matter of chance? If you thought that when you entered the market this may be why you're disillusioned with trading.
Myself and millions of stock-watchers would contest that statement. Try not to sound so factual when you're dishing out life advice.
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:
awesome!.