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Monday, January 18, 2021

New Kickstarter Scam - Cloning a Current Indiegogo Project (but the tells are damn telling)

This isn't a scam I had seen before, and I'm kinda surprised by that. I actually stumbled across this with a suggested YouTube video while watching YouTube. I guess Google knows me well at this point ;)

Here's the video in question:


Here's the long story short. Vinnie Tartamella is an independent comic book creator that has 5 prior projects under his belt at Indiegogo. His latest, Shadow of the Kraken is currently funding on Indiegogo. The project launched at least 15 days ago, so around January 3rd, 2021, judging from the oldest comment on the page. Note, Vinnie's location comes up as Weston, United States.

On January 9th, 2021, Shadow of the Kraken launches on Kickstarter. Now, the Kickstarter account is named "Vinnie", but the account owner is Sergey Erentsenov.
Where is Sergey from? Almaty, Kazakhstan.


Something is rotten in Kazakhastan I think.

Now, is there ANY likelihood of the Kickstarter clone of Shadow of the Kraken funding, thus defrauding the 5 backers (of which I am one, in for a buck). None whatsoever, as Kickstarter is an "all or nothing" funding platform. What is sad, and telling, is that the creator of the above video reached out to Kickstarter, and they saw nothing wrong.


I'll be sharing this post with Kickstarter. I expect a similar automated response.

Now, just as an FYI, the Kickstarter page copies the Indiegogo page word for word, except for the Risks and Challenges section, as Indiegogo doesn't have such. It appears Fake Vinnie used our very own long time Kickstarter Scammer Whitless Whitman to write it:



Kickstarter scams in 2021: a new year, a new scam, and an indifferent Kickstarter, as usual.

Update - 1/20/2021 - The project is suspended on Kickstarter

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4 comments:

  1. Kickstarter use the same American law that encourages sites like reddit, pinterest, scribd etc to post stolen material all the time. That is why none of these sites could exist based in the EU, UK, Japan or such where Intellectual property is legally protected.
    Change the law, make the hosting companies legally responsible for what is posted on their platform and the issue goes away overnight. But given the moral standard of US politicians and media execs we all know that will never happen.

    ReplyDelete
  2. This has to be the laziest KS scam I've ever seen. Even Whitless uses an ounce or two more effort to hide the sleaze. I marvel at this, and those emails you get from "your bank" with multiple misspellings in the subject and body.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Well. That looks...fishy.
    (Sorry. I'll see myself out.)

    ReplyDelete
  4. Project suspended about 7pm eastern time. A small victory, but a victory.

    ReplyDelete

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