What country is he from? I get the feeling English isn't his first language. I'm not going to deny there can be artful deception involved in scams and frauds, but he's hardly a master here. He's as basic as they come and prays on the greedy who don't use their brain because they think they're getting a great deal. People come here because they think they can get x amount off a giftcard and he's all too happy to take advantage of that. All I'll give him is that he has persistence, but it's like taking candy from a baby after that. The only effort he likely puts in is any convincing they may take over telegram or whatsapp or whatever to seal the deal. I'm not sure how much he makes in bitcoin but I think the majority of people who find his threads here will be using a different payment medium. Can't imagine there being many bitcoiners being that niave or first timers going out of their way to buy bitcoin just for this deal.
And isn't the whole "evil bankers" thing a bit of a cliche? That just seems like a whole load of bs that he uses to try justify his actions to himself. If he was truly smart he could put his wits to some legitimate business. Take the money he's made illegitimately and at least go legit with it. Scams will probably catch up to him eventually if he thinks he's going to make a lifelong career out of it.
I can only speculate where he lives, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he lived in a country where corruption is rampant.
I see some similarities between his story and that of a police officer who threatens to arrest a rich tourist if they don’t give him a bribe.
This guy is the worst kind of person around here. He is a professional scammer who takes advantage of weaknesses in marketplace safeguards that go months/years unaddressed.
There are a decent amount of “on-ramps” in which people can quickly buy bitcoin nearly instantly, often with their credit cards and often with a decent premium. I wouldn’t be especially surprised if he got his customers to use one of these services— even with a large premium, the customers would still be getting a good deal....except for the part about getting scammed.
I think the best solution to someone like him is to act quickly to address weaknesses in scam warning systems. There were many people who noticed that this guy was scamming and were attempting to warn others about him.
One good solution might be to force guests to view EMs sticky thread once per x time before the first time they visit a marketplace thread.