How I got scammed through "Ebrahim Saadawi"

[Michael Coffee]

8 minutes ago, Ed_David said:

I think this thread turned into a Dostoyevsky novel or some Greek tragedy.

Nope, I only function as a bumbling detective.

Hey, thanks Ed for being the first one to post a video reply!  Well done everyone really I think, for not letting this get to far out of control, and the nice gallows humor! 

[squig]

6 minutes ago, Nikkor said:

 I am an anal camera fondler pixel peeper, but I won't lead you anywhere just to inflate my ego, when I say something it's because I honestly think so after having looked into it.

What's the dynamic range like on your anal camera?

[Nikkor]

6 minutes ago, squig said:

What's the dynamic range like on your anal camera?

wanna do some tests?

[squig]

1 minute ago, Nikkor said:

wanna do some tests?

Na thx, I made enough shit films in school.

[Katrikura]

It is sad to discover that a community was deceived, however, the amount of fraud, fortunately was not very big and no one was hurt.
I think this gives us several lessons, how to care for our identity on the web, as we make purchases, as verfificar someone's identity.

Communities are made up of real people interacting through internet in this case. This fact Ebrahim, has denuded our human nature, because of the passion of the comments and personal issues that have spilled here, in the wake of the scam made.

I think it's time to regain sanity and devote ourselves to share the passion that drives us, which is the cinematography and toys. Take this as a lesson of life and different Ebrahim Let's forget that existed in this forum.
Remains as a task for managers, increase security measures and or Technical Inspection, in my opinion, prohibit online transactions without someone wants to sell it under their responsibility, so keep the character of community that wants to share their knowledge and doubts.

regards

 

Katrikura

[Ed_David]

I want to apologize- I would have probably been scammed too - even though it was Western Union and a sweet, sweet deal for that rangefinder. It was from a guy ES who had insanely high standing on this board and even wrote a review of it.

I am sorry for calling those who got scammed "getting what they deserved" - if you want to flog me, please go ahead.

Anyway, I'll say it again and again.

Always buy everything online with a credit card.  Never use cash.  Credit cards are your best friends against scams.  They have millions and millions of dollars to protect you.

[andy lee]

A crime was committed here and all the people ripped off need refunding until that is done we should not be so quick to forgive, ES has to make good on his word to pay everyone back. , as they still may not get their money back there is no guarantee of that . Andrew Reid can be the final say on ES and his fate on this site.

[Grimor]

What about ES senior?

Does he ever really exist?

And what about the stolen footage?

Was all the reel faked?

Was ES a real betatester of a rangefinder unit for free?

Was slrmagic scammed too?

Many clues, like in "fight club" movie.

[Ed_David]

17 minutes ago, Grimor said:

What about ES senior?

He seems like he exists, but doesn't post here ever. Nor no confirmation he works in film.

Does he ever really exist?

And what about the stolen footage?

ES took down the link - claimed it was just a test and he had other people's footage in there as "placeholders"

Was all the reel faked?

PROBABLY, 

Was ES a real betatester of a rangefinder unit for free?

ACCORDING TO THE SLRMAgic MANUFACTURER per someone's email (sorry I forgot your name) - he was never a betatester - they have no knowledge of his name.

Was slrmagic scammed too?

PROBABLY NOT, he just paid for it.  but yea, maybe he got it for free or something or stole it

 

17 minutes ago, Grimor said:

Many clues, like in "fight club" movie.

We should make a FAQ for those just coming into this tragedy.

My analysis - ES is a compulsive liar.  Untreated.

He lives in a fantasy world, like pretty much everyone else who is a director or works in film.

He created a fake persona to gain respect maybe?

He lied about having a Saad media company (also according to his brothers spelling, it's Sa'ad.

He lied about being rich.

He lied about being a radiologist.

He lied about having a 1dc.  He lied about having it stolen.  He created a fake police report.  He lied about being hacked.  He lied about someone in his "media company" breaking into his closet and stealing his grand pop's camera.

It's possible all these things are true.

But if you read through the thread, that seems highly unlikely.

He's a very smart kid and has quite an imagination.  Not the best at lying though and simulating how someone would try to go through his lies - so he's not a good professional liars.

 

People who are really good at lying - it's a beautiful thing to watch. Most of these people become excellent lawyers or politicians.  

Also, some people say he's a sociopath, which I don't believe.  But if he was, he would make for an excellent CEO.  A large percentage of them are sociopaths, including Steve Jobs.

[Snowfun]

Forgive the change of pace but I think it is unfortunate that Zach's behaviour resulted in a ban. Yes, of course, he  - or, at least, his contributions - were more than occasionally bizarre but I always got the impression that he was trying his best to learn. He was obviously keen albeit that enthusiasm often manifested itself in unusual ways and it would be reasonable to assume that his ideas were not always well grounded. But he clearly got a lot out of this space and well, better he was talking to us than a myriad of less educational activities. As someone mentioned previously on this thread - filmakers are insane (a ghastly generalisation and clearly untrue but it makes a point). Personally I never felt remotely irritated by his participation (easily ignored if nothing else) - significantly less offensive than the subject of this thread.

But, of course, perhaps I am Zach!

[JamesDrum]

7 hours ago, Michael Coffee said:

Mr "James Drum", I think you should share what you have here right now.. I think you are made up. Prove me wrong!!

 

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zBfjnHyVtUA&feature=youtu.be

[Ed_David]

36 minutes ago, Snowfun said:

Forgive the change of pace but I think it is unfortunate that Zach's behaviour resulted in a ban. Yes, of course, he  - or, at least, his contributions - were more than occasionally bizarre but I always got the impression that he was trying his best to learn. He was obviously keen albeit that enthusiasm often manifested itself in unusual ways and it would be reasonable to assume that his ideas were not always well grounded. But he clearly got a lot out of this space and well, better he was talking to us than a myriad of less educational activities. As someone mentioned previously on this thread - filmakers are insane (a ghastly generalisation and clearly untrue but it makes a point). Personally I never felt remotely irritated by his participation (easily ignored if nothing else) - significantly less offensive than the subject of this thread.

But, of course, perhaps I am Zach!

ZACK IS BACK!!!!!!

 

Also cool to see how a global community came together to deal with this intense issue.  Literally from every part of the world!

[Michael Coffee]

Doh - glad to see you are real James! Thanks for going easy on me! I still think there are some "phoney baloney" accounts going around.. thanks for the video!

 

[JamesDrum]

5 hours ago, Ebrahim Saadawi said:

Hello Andrew. Glad you're here. 

1- I am in contact with the buyers privately. I will send the Rangefinder now to Tomas and Tim to split it either way and they agreed to let it go. 

2- I will refund all of those scammed including the other 4 buyers (1 for the RF and 3 for a Nikkor 28-70mm). And including the second half of of Tim and Tomas' money.
 

Just curious if I am getting overlooked. I have sent you emails, and responses through the messenger here, and you have not responded to any of them. 

2 minutes ago, Michael Coffee said:

Doh - glad to see you are real James! Thanks for going easy on me! I still think there are some "phoney baloney" accounts going around.. thanks for the video!

 

Of course! Maybe one day I'll sit down and send you a pretty video. 

[JamesDrum]

3 hours ago, Ebrahim Saadawi said:

This is Ebrahim Ebrahim Saadawi junior. The 19 year-old one. 

I'll do the right thing and end this investigation and reputation travesty.

I lied. I scammed these three people out of the lens payment money. around 600$ 300$ each as you can see in their posts. 

I was desperate. I actually needed the cash to pay for my sister's pregnancy operation and hospital fees and just found no other way to do it other than let her face death at home. 

I lied. And I am sorry to all of those involved. I am a kid and I do stupid things. 

But let's end this please as it's giving me severe depression and now understand how teenagers could take their lives about cyber bullying but now I totally understand. It's unexplainably hurtful to be in a spot of shame and mockery. 

I love this place and spend some of my funnest time here and I made a lot of friends, learnt and contributed to thousands of people with love and passion. 

Now I lost all of it for a stupid childish mistake. 

I think confessing is the right thing to do. 

I will make this right. I will send the lens to Tomas and Tim for now. The two agreed to have it and sell it and split the cash and let it be. 

And I really, really, promise I will refund the rest through every penny I make. In small amounts of in large. As much as I can. I like to think you know me enough to trust me,

I am deeply sorry. 

I am sorry to everyone. If I have one request, just for the sake of our long friendship and my contributions here with Andrew over three years, is that I really really want this thread to get deleted as I just can't take this anymore. it's destroying me. 

This is the whole simple truth for everyone who's been searching for it in these 250 posts. You now have it. So please, I urge you to stop. 

This is my confession, so that I can finally be able to sleep at night with a clear conscious. 

I can't type any more in this state of tears and tremors and will fall asleep now knowing that I did and will do the right thing no matter what the consequences might be.

But I sincerely hope that I wake up in the morning and find this topic non existent. And let me deal with those involved privately in PM. Please. I beg you, Andrew. 

I will make this right and return anything I've taken to those who were hurt. I am sorry.


*This has nothing to do with my grandfather Ebrahim Saadawi Sr and any guilt is completely upon me. 

 

Whelp.... I just got to this... sucks for me because he isn't sending shit to me or talking to me. 

 

[tweak]

 

[veraguth]

2 hours ago, Ebrahim Saadawi said:

This is Ebrahim Ebrahim Saadawi junior. The 19 year-old one. 

I'll do the right thing and end this investigation and reputation travesty.

I lied. I scammed these three people out of the lens payment money. around 600$ 300$ each as you can see in their posts. 

I was desperate. I actually needed the cash to pay for my sister's pregnancy operation and hospital fees and just found no other way to do it other than let her face death at home. 

I lied. And I am sorry to all of those involved. I am a kid and I do stupid things. 

But let's end this please as it's giving me severe depression and now understand how teenagers could take their lives about cyber bullying but now I totally understand. It's unexplainably hurtful to be in a spot of shame and mockery. 

I love this place and spend some of my funnest time here and I made a lot of friends, learnt and contributed to thousands of people with love and passion. 

Now I lost all of it for a stupid childish mistake. 

I think confessing is the right thing to do. 

I will make this right. I will send the lens to Tomas and Tim for now. The two agreed to have it and sell it and split the cash and let it be. 

And I really, really, promise I will refund the rest through every penny I make. In small amounts of in large. As much as I can. I like to think you know me enough to trust me,

I am deeply sorry. 

I am sorry to everyone. If I have one request, just for the sake of our long friendship and my contributions here with Andrew over three years, is that I really really want this thread to get deleted as I just can't take this anymore. it's destroying me. 

This is the whole simple truth for everyone who's been searching for it in these 250 posts. You now have it. So please, I urge you to stop. 

This is my confession, so that I can finally be able to sleep at night with a clear conscious. 

I can't type any more in this state of tears and tremors and will fall asleep now knowing that I did and will do the right thing no matter what the consequences might be.

But I sincerely hope that I wake up in the morning and find this topic non existent. And let me deal with those involved privately in PM. Please. I beg you, Andrew. 

I will make this right and return anything I've taken to those who were hurt. I am sorry.


*This has nothing to do with my grandfather Ebrahim Saadawi Sr and any guilt is completely upon me. 

 

I am glad you are going to refund the people involved in the scam. I hope you keep your word. And my advice is that after you pay these people, you go and get a good therapist. You can use your intelligence in a less self-destructive way and you should try the most not to hurt other people in this way. I believe the money was not the worst part of it, but that message sent to the buyers on facebook, which was very sad. That was the reason I initially believed your account was hacked. 

But I am even more glad for seeing the reaction of members from the forum after his statement, a demonstration of emphatic openness, which is ever more necessary nowadays.

[HelsinkiZim]

And so again I go full circle. But not malicious, just retrospective.

I had a simple idea, so many people talk about the contributions made by this individual and the stark contrast that is to the recent admission by a teenager.

I just wanted to satisfy my own mind about these contributions so I did a quick search for duplicate content on the web. The first thing I learnt about digital marketing was that duplicate content is very bad. It is bad because it is unnatural to the search engines and this will be penalised in the serps, and thus, your website will not rank well.

So I looked at old comments made by the user and, going back as far as 2015, many of the 'enlightening' post are in fact duplicated on multiple blogs and forums. Every opinion seems to be copied and pasted onto about 3 - 5 websites. Once the original post is made, it is repeated on other sites over the next few days.

It is not a bot, but it is an individual who is not acting naturally,  but unnaturally.

Oh well, I guess we will never know for sure, but you have to be careful because this could be the tip of an iceberg of a community of forum users that build up reps to scam as a full time job. For Christs sake there are bitcoin mining factories in China, why the hell would it be less difficult to have a forum posting factory that snipes off people with a Red or lens here and there and then dumps the account. Isn't it weird that opinions given were almost like a school lecture, I mean, that is stuff you can easily write up from specs and watching reviews.

Am I alone in thinking, if this is not the case, then the future is not looking good for forum scams? Dont we need to have a talk about this?

[IronFilm]

4 hours ago, Ed_David said:

yhere's ES's serial number:  02301100059.  

here's the serial number of a canon 1dc stolen in france:  23011000227.    

it's not right.  other camera serials, all are the same except for the last 4 digits.  that's how they identify product line and the sequence of when the camera was made for quality checking.

Also, no matches on any stolen camera site for your serial.

I'm going to assume he gave a serial number for a different canon camera he owns.  If someone wants to check.

It is possible, but until I see a receipt of purchase, I still call BS on this.

I'm willing to be very generous and say either ES accidentally put a zero at the start or Jim accidentally forgot a zero at the start of his. 

3 hours ago, tweak said:

420 replies...
 

Hope you took a MJ break.

[IronFilm]

1 hour ago, Grimor said:

What about ES senior?

Does he ever really exist?

And what about the stolen footage?

Was all the reel faked?

Was ES a real betatester of a rangefinder unit for free?

Was slrmagic scammed too?

Many clues, like in "fight club" movie.

Still so so soooo many unanswered questions!!

Did ES Senior ever really direct any films?
How many others have been scammed and not reported it yet?