Welcome back to another episode of The Priest and The Contest-Monkey which many of you have found engaging and challenging. Whilst the majority of you have looked on with excitement, as I did whilst writing Episode 3 in particular, I'm sure that I won't be the only one feeling sadness by the time this episode is over.
If you haven't followed the story so far, I recommend reading Episode 1, Episode 2, Episode 3 and Episode 4 as I will be sharing the details behind the clues. It's a double-bill tonight so make sure you've had a drink and been to the toilet - I don't want you missing anything.
And of course, I will be naming The Priest, The Middleman, The Contest-Monkey and also introducing you to a new character, succumbing to steemcurator's wish of including "The Donkey".
The Beginning
The story began 11 days ago when @adeljose shared his Consolidated Booming votes up to the 14th May.
Since before I joined the platform, booming has been abused by those privileged to nominate which posts get supported. If I had the time to review every single report, I can say with some certainty that I'd find another case.
On this occasion, I quickly came across @wasa2020 (The Contest-Monkey). A new user, still using the "newcomer" hashtag and as I mentioned in Episode 1, accumulated a combined 66 steemcurator and booming votes for just 60 posts. But it wasn't the votes that caught my attention, it was the withdrawals.
Josepha might get a few mentions throughout this episode but we're not here for him today so let's look at huobi-pro.
huobi is commonly used by scammers to hide transactions to their real wallet. There is absolutely no other reason for people to use it (if you disagree, please let me know why in the comments). Whilst an initial glance at the wallet gives little away, the final destination of the transactions can be established. For example, the transaction on the 18th May 2023 can be tracked to...
roqqulovesteem account ID y4mgNuigXXeOG37aSWeg
So let's look at this account...
And we can quickly match up the transactions on 11th May, 13th May and 18th May. Each at a cost of 0.01 STEEM. (I've not bothered to trace the other huobi-pro transactions yet.)
This wallet's certainly interesting and I briefly followed the Poloniex money to a user who has already powered down and left, whom I briefly named "Polly"...
The names in that wallet correlate with y4mgNuigXXeOG37aSWeg so I've not spent any time looking into this any further yet.
Sticking with wasa2020, I thought I'd see who introduced him...
The Middle-Man
When finding something suspicious, it's always good to know who introduced them to the platform. In wasa2020's case, his introducer (and mentor) was The Middle-Man, @dave-hanny. Much like Polly, dave-hanny is leaving the platform, currently mid-powerdown and theirs looks like an honest wallet (which I've paid no attention to yet). Which introduces another strange thing about wasa's transfers... why trust somebody else to withdraw your money than the person who introduced you?
Then I looked at who introduced (and mentored) dave-hanny and we're back to the owner of the wallet that wasa2020 has been transferring to. You all know him as The Priest, username @simonnwigwe.
Simon Nwigwe and wasa2020 Activity
Before my wonderful revelation in Episode 4, I discussed the timing of Simon and wasa's activity which could have been considered "circumstantial" evidence. Now that we know who they are, it's time to share some detail... ok, quite a lot of detail but you'll see why...
20th May
I referenced a lot of "set as read" and that's what "Custom JSON" refers to in each reference.
This is a good day due to the early start. Simon, then wasa and then back to Simon again - all at the silly hour that I referred to.
Then the 6:40 customary "set as read". An hour later, wasa posts a contest entry (Create Post and Comment), effort well spent and then back to Simon again.
I won't explain this line by line, it's clear how perfectly synchronised this day was so let's move on...
21st May
Some more perfect synchronisation at another silly time, 4:11am-4:13am on this occasion. That's 2 days in a row we've seen this so we're pretty much out of "coincidence" territory.
Once again you'll see the beauty in the timings. wasa's contest entry today was briefly interrupted by a vote and "set as read". Slightly unusual (presumably a quick check on the phone) since the contest entry took another 40 minutes to write - a similar amount of time to the day before.
The rest of the day's activities dovetail perfectly again.
22nd May
5:28am and 5:30am "Set as Read" today. Coincidence is now out of the window and once again, the timings work perfectly.
23rd May
It's a surprise to only see wasa at 1am but at 5am, normal service is resumed and I don't need to explain how well they dovetail again.
24th May
At this point, we're in full "The Priest and The Contest-Monkey" flow so activity from wasa reduces.
25th May
And then wasa disappears, along with many other of the accounts I'm tracking.
The Images
I briefly discussed in Episode 1 how I think this scam works and when wasa2020 does post something personal, there are images of him. And the way the images in these accounts are used is interesting...
Initially, an image is sent over WhatsApp, like the main image in this post. Getting images sent is a bit of a chore, so they get used multiple times. In the case of wasa, the image was reused here. In some cases, the images have been used in so many posts, it's a miracle that the "user" hasn't been asked if they've got any new photos.
I think I'm done with wasa2020 now.
Simon Nwigwe AKA The Priest
So this takes us up to the end of Episode 3, plus a little bit more. And as you might remember from Episode 3, there was a hint of plausible deniability left. So Episode 4, focussed on the plagiarism and I'll repeat much of what I discovered.
When I cracked the "plagiarism formula" that Simon was using, I identified that his post about Crypto Trading With SuperTrend Indicator (Part 1) had been copied from a Crypto Academy post from last year. The wording was adjusted to pass the plagiarism tests and new screenshots were created.
It's common practise to claim it's coincidence. Much like josepha did when he plagiarised a contest off Hive. So I wrote a comment to predict what Part 2 would contain. Some of you might have found it subtly hidden in my comments...
Timestamped and unedited, this was the result:
| Prediction | Actual |
|---|---|
| Using the SuperTrend indicator to predict whether the trend will be bullish or bearish | Prediction of bullish or bearish trend using SuperTend indicator |
| How the Supertrend indicator is also used to understand sell/buy signals | Identifying buy/sell signal using SuperTend indicator |
| How can we determine breakout points using Supertrend and Donchian Channel indicators? | TBC |
| The effectiveness of combining two SuperTrend indicators (fast and slow) in crypto trading | TBC |
| Is there a need to pair another indicator to make this indicator work better as a filter and help get rid of false signals? | TBC |
| The advantages and disadvantages of the SuperTrend indicator? | TBC |
Now we've not seen part 3 yet, presumably Simon decided it was probably best not to publish it.
I've done well to predict the headings within a post from somebody I don't know haven't I?
As though this wasn't enough evidence, Simon's 2 articles about The Aroon Indicator (Part 1 and Part 2) were plagiarised from another Crypto Academy entry.
This is the one where Simon claimed:
Note: All screenshot are taken by me from the tradingview website were i perform my analysis from.
Which I also highlighted in Episode 4.
| Original | Liar |
|---|---|
 |  |
 |  |
 |  |
 |  |
The Donkey
This leads me to another account that I'm slightly surprised hasn't been killed off with the others but presumably because it hasn't made a withdrawal yet, it's considered to be safe. @vickyson. She's a fairly irrelevant sidenote given what I've shared above but I spent time looking at it so I'm going to spend some time sharing it.
I hinted at vickyson in Episode 2, where I said:
My favourite of the profiles though is one which entered a contest saying that their wedding day was one of the most memorable in their life and I quote "...that moment is special to me because each time I took a look at the album..." Strange that they used a stock wedding photo and when quizzed on why commented "Yes ma, i should have [used my own photos], but lost my previous phone."... 🤔
A somewhat bizarre thing to say, considering she'd already shared a wedding photo on Steemit.
I decided to highlight her properly today though, because she decided to update her Profile and Cover pictures.
The cover image is particularly interesting - it's the one that gets cropped in the header so we don't need to worry about doing a decent job uploading it. Who's going to see it after all?
Well, me of course.
So it's a screenshot of a Facebook profile - evident from the thumbs up and hearts in the corner. And due to the fact that it's not the image taken from Facebook but a screenshot taken by somebody looking at her profile, it's safe to assume that the Steemit account owner isn't the one updating the profile.
And that's not all. 10 days ago, vickyson introduced herself as Victoria Vincent. When she joined, her name was Victoria iliya. And on Facebook, her name is Vicky Jay, as per the new Cover picture. Steemit can be overwhelming for a newcomer. So much so, that this user's forgotten her own name.
I love an introduction post don't I, so who do you think introduced her? Can you guess?
It's her "sister-in-law's friend"... a person we know as Simon Nwigwe.
So what? Simon introduced another fraud.
Vicky likes to cook and on 17th May, she taught us how to cook egusi soup.
Now I'm no expert on the feet of African women, but they look like men's feet to me.
And then the final meal looked like this, served on a very stylish orange plate.
A plate which Simon is familiar with from "a roadside shop just directly opposite my house".
Maybe Vicky runs the roadside shop. Simon does say she's his neighbour, briefly referenced in this Diary Game where he photographed that delicious looking fish. A fish that "Vicky" cooked 4 days later.
I suppose the relationship between Vicky [surname TBC] and Simon Nwigwe doesn't really matter anyway given everything else I've shared today.
So that concludes The Priest, The Contest-Monkey and the less prominent Middle-man and Donkey.
As you can see, it took a lot of effort to reach this stage with any level of confidence so I haven't planned where Episode 7 will take us yet, if there is an episode 7. I also don't intend to get into any arguments or debates about the evidence I've presented - I welcome any alternative interpretations of this within the comments.
