SWAPD fights back against scammers to help victims recover their social properties. Here are our stories!

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We wanted to share this short story with you. This page was listed on our website a few days ago, and it quickly found a potential buyer (@sdeal24). I was a tad suspicious of the seller as I thought I audited that property two months ago on ViralAccounts, but refused the deal as we couldn’t reach a deal price-wise. The person I’ve spoken with was from the US, and not Pakistan, like the topic starter. But, I wasn’t 100% sure, so we all proceeded with the ticket as usual.

Once the ticket started, @sdeal24 (the buyer), found some concerning comments on the page suggesting that the page was hacked around two weeks ago. After a short but thorough investigation, we concluded that it was in fact hacked. The seller claims he bought the page from “a trusted friend” and we have “nothing to worry about.” However, when we presented him with proof, that’s when we caught him on a few lies.

1st. That trusted friend wasn’t really his friend.
2nd. He lied about being the original owner, he wasn’t.
3rd. He lied about the purchase price of the page, then presented some weak proof of payment, where the amount didn’t even add up to the one he previously suggested.

He had a weak excuse for every question we threw at him and kept changing his story to fit his narrative of being innocent. Finally, he admitted that the page might have been hacked, but he didn’t do it and there should be no reason why he should get banned. Well, he did get banned, and (hopefully) won’t’ be coming back.

Pakistan is the country that gives us the most problems

This isn’t a personal vendetta against the Pakistani people. BUT! Nine out of ten attempted scams on SWAPD come from Pakistan (not even making this number up, virtually every scam attempt is from Pakistan). We were so sick of it initially that in our first months of operation, we entirely banned the country from accessing our services. However, we did end up receiving some good users from there, so we quit doing that. It saddens me to see so many scam attempts from that part of the world. It’s usually from the same group of people who hack accounts and try to unload them here, as they know SWAPD buyers have the wallets to pay premium prices for premium properties. Another big plus for them is they don’t care about revealing their identities and/or verifying themselves, so they easily get in. I mean they’re from Pakistan, who is going to go through legal trouble through that country in order to track someone down? I am seriously complantating shutting down the doors to that country again.

Personally, I understand their situation. We all do what we have to do to survive. Pakistan may not be in the best shape economy wise, so people resort to unlawful things to provide a living for themselves. Poland (the country I live in) years ago was also on the red list of countries with high scam attempts, that’s why when browsing online shops I kept seeing “We don’t ship to China/Poland/Russia etc.” everywhere, due to high credit card fraud. I believe Pakistan is on par with that, along with the ever so popular countries like Nigeria/Somalia/etc. Don’t get me wrong, we’ve seen scams from every part of the world, but they were one/two-time instances. Pakistan, however, takes the cake in this niche.

From now on we will rob the hackers, so be warned.

We will no longer just ban people suspected of hacking. If we prove beyond reasonable doubt that the property your peddling is stolen, we will do everything we can to recover that page for the victim. Claiming “but I purchased it from someone” won’t do any good, so if you’re selling something, do your best to find out its origins. I know it’s difficult to do so, but obvious checks like Googling/checking comments/checking messages usually reveals obvious hacks. We will only go after obvious things we can fully prove and won’t operate on iffs or maybes.

We will give the page back to the owner

We’ve messaged the owner and we’re awaiting a response. We’re hoping he will believe us that we took it over for him, as people usually are very touchy after situations like these. For example, two years ago I’ve recovered a stolen IG account. I found the victim, approached him with my story, and got met with a “■■■■ off scammer” response and an instant block. I wasn’t able to hand over the account as the user didn’t believe me. Let’s hope this isn’t the case. We will update this blog post once the owner receives his property back.

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Update: Page was handed over to the original owner. :slight_smile: We will post his side of the story soon.

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Hiiii. I’m from Pakistan and I hate scams because I have been a victim myself. I had some serious mental health issues and was quick to trust everyone and could not learn from my experience until I joined SWAPD.

I lost such a big sum to scammers that I can’t even share here because people will still make fun of me and will off course blaming the victim is still not out of fashion.

And 70% of those Scammers are from Europe and USA and UK. Why so? Because I always was quick to make them friend and hence was a soft target.

I was a victim of last two scams from Belgium and Georgia during last 30 days (yes I still have a lot to learn).

I personally feel that putting country on Radar is not good at all. We are a population of 220 Million but even if you take example of those who are using internet, 8 out of 10 are clean people.

The best and trusted Groups on Facebook are administered by Pakistani. Although some black sheep are always there.

They are best Freelancers in the world.

Considering every individual as separate case should be the norm and rule rather than painting all from a particular Nation, Colour, Creed, Race with the same brush.

And banning a certain country will be a Shock to your business ethics, standards and strategy.

Thanks

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It’s natural you take this the wrong way, as you’re from Pakistan. You’re one of our best users, thus proving myself wrong that I shouldn’t put everyone in the same bag. But, like I’ve said, I am not trying to bash the whole country although it does look like I am. I am just stating pure facts on my end, and that is that 90% of scams that happen (or should I say attempts) happen from users from Pakistan. There is no getting around that, no matter how scorned you feel about the issue.

So logically tell me, what is the best solution for all?

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Also, it’s you who brought color/religion/race into this. I never mentioned this. I am painting with the same brush due to facts, and not personal agenda against a particular nation.

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SWAPD is famous or I’d like to say notorious to evaluate every case separately, so keep on with the good work and treat every case as really really individual.

You as a business and a human being can’t afford to do injustice to a single person on stating some macro issue. Each and every case should be based on micro level.

And you may start a Monthly Security Deposit from all those users who are from a certain country (Pakistan in current case) and that will be in Saving Bank of SWAPD and they can withdraw after every 6 months if they go well during that period.

Thanks

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I just mentioned it that these affiliations are useless in evaluating integrity of some users.

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Thanks for the suggestions, we will consider them. However, we already tried the deposit method. No one pays, they just try to get around using alternate phone numbers or VPNs, which are easily detectable.

Your micro-evaluation suggestion works now, but as the site grows, this will become a problem. If SWAPD ever becomes successful to the point where we have constant flow of high traffic (doubt it, but one can hope), then the quality of our service will suffer, no doubt. Managing even a few transactions is a pain now. At times even handling 10-15 tickets at the same time can be difficult, can’t imagine if that increased 10 times. Hire more people could work, but finding good help is tough (or should I say dedicated people).

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You nailed it. Player Up has fallen into a bottomless pit due to lack of dedicated Team. They are taking from 5-30 days to finish a single ticket.

I’ll suggest one thing if you think that may work. Consider non-employee Middlemen/Trade Guardians just like EpicNPC. But those Middlemen don’t offer any Evaluation/Audit of Property. Or you can assign smaller properties with $300 below tag to be handled by non-employee Middlemen. But it’s just a suggestion that you can discuss with your team if it’s applicable.

And Depositing a Security will be accepted by 5 of 10 users especially those who are really into it. You may start with depositing $30 per month.

And do consider 2% of total Ticket amount should go to Victim Fund (1% from seller and 1% from buyer) and you can reduce your Commission to 9% initially. So, 11% will be deducted from total ticket amount.

Thanks

Thanks

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You nailed it. Player Up has fallen into a bottomless pit due to lack of dedicated Team. They are taking from 5-30 days to finish a single ticket.

Wow. Sounds like Escrow.com response times :smiley: This also gives me motivation to finish the new project I’ve been painstakingly trying to get off the ground.

I’ll suggest one thing if you think that may work. Consider non-employee Middlemen/Trade Guardians just like EpicNPC.

This will be considered.

And do consider 2% of total Ticket amount should go to Victim Fund (1% from seller and 1% from buyer) and you can reduce your Commission to 9% initially. So, 11% will be deducted from total ticket amount.

This will also be considered.

Right now SWAPD isn’t breaking records traffic wise. We have good and bad days, but overall the growth has been very, very slow. Mainly because:

  1. It’s tough to advertise a website like this via normal channels.
  2. Lack of time (other websites/projects/personal life get in the way)

But, once (if) the stats improve, all those suggestions are on the table. Thank you!

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I actually just got one property purchased here hacked today. Feel like a total newb as I havent been phished in like forever. Anyone got a good contact at FB?
I submitted both copyright and hack report. They’re asking for a notarized letter lol. I’ll have to send that and see if it works out.

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Wow that sucks. Just shows that phishing is still alive and well. I don’t personally have any contacts, so I can’t help you out.

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The technique they used is as follows:
Messaged the page from a sketchy account with name ‘Bella Jennifer’ in Spanish (language of the page).
They then said they worked for an ad agency that could monetize our audience. They referred to “advertisemint.com” as the company they represent.

I figured being added on Business Manager wouldn’t give anyone admin rights so I just went ahead to see what this is all about.

All she needed was to add invite me to Business Manager and add my page as a page I admin.
She says she’s going to send me some content, but a while later, I refresh and I’m not admin any longer.

I didn’t realize you could steal a page so easily like this. :rage:

I feel like a ■■■■■■■ newb lol
Maybe we should put bounties on their heads? :smiley:

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@jon1 @SWAPD there is another technique the same like this but they come to say they worked with instant articles and they will send me instant article link invitation :smiley: fuc*ers newbie

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Yeah that’s a big no no. Sorry for your loss man.

there is another technique the same like this but they come to say they worked with instant articles and they will send me instant article link invitation :smiley: fuc*ers newbie

Yeah that’s a popular one lately. Perhaps our staff needs to start educating our members on what to avoid, so they don’t fall victim to these rather basic attempts of takeovers.

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9 out of 10 makes sense tbh, because most of the page owners are Pakistani people and almost all of the people who sells pages are Pakistani people, which means that’s its obvious and would happen if it was any other country that was the main sellers of fanpages.

So don’t take it personal guys.

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haha, great idea to punish the scammers

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I had a youtube page, that I bought from another website a while ago before I knew about swapd, and I think that that youtube page had been hacked, because the guy who was selling it, was selling it at way under priced, (136k subscribers for only $650) and he offered me 2 youtube channels, and about a month after buying it from him, I saw the other youtube channel that he had for sale had apparently been reclaimed by the owner saying that it had been hacked. and about 5 months after I didn’t really know who the original owner was and had no way of contacting him, as he had been inactive on every sm platform for years, the channel did get banned, I know not whether it was from the original owner who had told YouTube it had been hacked, or because it was sold and somehow YouTube found out. Be careful with scvammers out there.

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Update: FB asked for me to answer a bunch of questions, write a notarized letter and upload my ID.
I ended up doing all that within the same day.

Less than 9 hours later, next morning I receive FB reply stating I was once again admin of the page!

Didn’t expect it to be so fast since all the comments here have been scary AF. Looks like there is hope to recovering pages.

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Whoa! That is awesome news! We would appreciate (if you find some time) to write a new blog post about how you’ve done it (in detail). It would help others in the future. :smiley:

Congrats, once again!

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