This is not a concluded case with undeniable evidence.
The following observations are merely some facts I could find concerning current events.
The Situation:
Just recently a few artist's steemit accounts have been blacklisted and @cheetah banned. If you are not aware of the situation, I believe @inber's recent VLOG does a good job outlining the current drama.
@andrianna, one of the blacklisted accounts, has gone all the way in an effort to prove her authenticity and she presents her side of the story in her latest post. I have been approached by multiple people who were eager to hear what I could say about the situation, I have even been accused of being responsible for getting her blacklisted, which I want to reiterate, I am not!
So here is my summary of where we stand up to here:
@andrianna's account has most likely been blacklisted due to it's financial ties to known scammers in the past, most notably @yanik.
In response to the blacklisting @andrianna has verified her twitter and vk profiles and also claims, that she bought her account from a dodgy reseller on April, 16. She resorted to such a "black market" purchase due to the claimed impossibility of using the regular site-registration from within Russia at that time.
I have taken the time to do my due-diligence on the facts, and I have spoken with @andrianna directly, to discuss my observations with her.
My Observations:
First of all, @andrianna's account was not new to me.
The network of accounts with relation to @yanik is rather big, it branches off and connects with other clusters and these connections show up during my investigations all over the place. Luckily most of those clusters are inactive and have been discovered in the past, but quite a few accounts remain active.
@andrianna's account is such an active account. Now, I have looked at her profile before, and the authenticity of her as a real person and as the creator of her original artwork is beyond doubt.
I will say this right ahead: Alyona Bessonova, is real, and she is a talented artist!
So, all that remains questionable here, are some financial ties in the account history, hence I must assume that to be the reason for her being blacklisted.
Now, @andrianna, in her latest posts, has brought forth an explanation for these connections, albeit rather implicitly:
She had purchased her steemit account from a seller on vk.com, Artur Yuryevich and the steemit account came with an accompanying bittrex account. If that is indeed the case, these connections would be unrelated to her personally.
Her side of the story wasn't perfectly clear to me, but I was able to confirm the details with her directly (first on vk.com, later on steemit.chat).
The most important question first: When exactly did Alyona gain control over the @andrianna account?
I have not used this account before [April] 16
Because the person from whom I bought it, gave the password only on April 17
I am not going to look further into the aforementioned financial ties, which do continue beyond the named purchase date, but as Alyona says, she doesn't really understand these things, so we won't be able to clarify much about that with her. Let's look at her content instead.
I am sure something must have changed drastically after she finally got a hold of her steemit account, the account which she was so eager to acquire that she bought it for $50 from some shady guy on vk.com. (Even though it had at that time already been blacklisted and downvoted, a pretty bad deal.)
But, by all means, I fail to see a difference that would be worth mentioning! No, instead I do see some obvious similarities that are worth mentioning.
Her commenting, before and after the "purchase" of her account is eerily similar, below is a screenshot of her consecutive comments at two given time-frames:
But that alone doesn't prove much, lets look at her actual content. I present, a post from April, 13 (right), next to one from April, 17, the day when Alyona herself supposedly took control over her steemit account.
I'd say the fact that these two images are from the same source is undeniable, @andrianna however has failed to explain to me how this was possible, allthough she does affirm that none of these are her original work.
No of course that they are not mine!
You've seen my style of drawing and this child's picture
So, let's look a little further yet again, because after learning her account continued posting work other than her own after it had been purchased, it will surprise us even more that the account did share her original work before the purchase.
Here's a post by Alyona on vk, that was also posted to steemit, before she admittedly "owned" the account:
So, apart from those shady connections, hidden deep down in the blockchain, there's also some rather obvious facts that simply do not align well with the story @andrianna has presented to us. Unfortunately she also wasn't able to explain these inconsitencies to me directly.
@andrianna stands firm on not knowing what is wrong with her account or how this history can be explained. She also affirmed to me that the purchase date is correct, multiple times. The only explanation she gives: she did not change her password after the purchase.
So implicitly, that all must be the work of her account-seller, who also had precognitive abilities when he stole her original work and posted it on the account before selling it to her? Sorry, but I couldn't keep the sarcasm to myself here!
The Conclusion
Alyona Bessonova is a real person and the real creator of her artwork!
But the story surrounding her steemit account does not make sense.
Either she was really un-lucky and something is terribly strange and coincidental here.
Or her side of the story is incomplete and/or inaccurate.
I have contacted the mysterious seller on vk.com and I am open to more suggestion as to what might have really happened.
Maybe you find something I haven't?
I'll keep you updated should I learn more, but for now, that's all I can report.
yours,
Sherlock
P.S.: Also, in an unrelated case, I had a scammer who admitted to signing up multiple accounts with fake Russian cellphone numbers right in the middle of April, but it is hard for me to judge whether there really was a problem with registering from Russia at that time. So let's just take that as truth.