How I got scammed through "Ebrahim Saadawi"

[Michael Coffee]

1 hour ago, HelsinkiZim said:

I just did the same thing.

I'll put out a conspiracy theory...

I think the guy exists, but I don't think it is the same guy posting - even the informative posts. For someone with a life and career like that, I cannot imagine they would take the hours needed to write the in-depth posts he writes. I would likely assume that is is a shared account of a company that had some sort of social media marketing campaign that involved forum posting etc, probably funded by some rich dude. Or there was no company and it was a large social media build up at a long term scam that got cut short because they couldn't think of a way to bank big. I am sure selling a red package was on the list.

I would doubt that if you searched long and hard you would ever find more that a social media footprint of this guy. I think it was an, almost, genius scam run by a few people who know about consumer gear from reading online.

 

Thats my theory anyways....

It does somehow reek of a more elaborate version of those obviously fake facebook accounts I get requests from sometimes.. 

 

 

[Liam]

yeah, can we not speculate anymore? Mayybe actual investigation (even then being cautious what you share and who you accuse), more responses from Ebrahim's account would be nice, but we're getting nowhere, and it's possible we'll regret saying some of these things.. was not bad to start this topic though of course. Don't want a million others to try to buy that item. I wish there was a thread sooner

Can't you report the stolen footage on vimeo?

Any more tips on how to avoid being scammed would be great. I'm pretty nervous about that now..

I have about a thousand dollars in the whole world, but I could contribute to helping repay the victims, cuz that's really shitty. And because Ebrahim, if hacked, is definitely NOT responsible to repay them. Even if he wasn't hacked, you're shouting at thin air now.

This thread is sad for many reasons

[Chrad]

Was he hacked by someone with a photo I.D. in his name?

[mercer]

There could be hundreds of Ebrahim Saadwahis in Egypt, so the name probably has little consequence here. From our end, the only real action would be for Andrew to go back and compare ip addresses. 

 

[tweak]

9 minutes ago, Liam said:

yeah, can we not speculate anymore?

Ebrahim, if hacked, is definitely NOT responsible to repay them. 

This thread is sad for many reasons

Yeah, but why? It's fun? 

True, he's as responsible to help fix the situation as anyone else here is. If it is actually his Grandson who has "scammed" these people though, in that scenario he should be 100% responsible to do something about it, as he's the one who shares an account and password with him! (Which is pretty stupid in itself). We still don't know enough to say anything for sure though.

Yes it is sad.

[Ed_David]

I agree we will regret this.

Also his name is now ruined. Cant go back in time.

Thats ok...its the  internet.

Use a different name.

 

Also if i was hacked and caused possibly 5 thousand dollars in lost money i would be freaking out.

[AaronChicago]

39 minutes ago, Nikkor said:

Honestly, I don't buy the story, but posting pictures (even when freely available on the internet) is out of tone, even disgusting in the case of an older person. One thing is giving our opinions and a different thing is starting a witch hunt. I mean, its 2000$, I wouldn't get too protestantic over it.

I do feel bad for posting the Instagram picture. I was trying to show that he's a real person but it's in poor taste. Mods, could you delete that post?

[Guest Ebrahim Saadawi]

Posting again to defend myself. 

You can't make out my address from this photo. But if you want it, It's Egypt, Dakahlya Mansoura Qesm 2, Al Derasat St. 4th building. Saadawi Building. This is my building and where my grandson and my other 3 grandsons (and their families - 13 grandchildren) live. Any known EOSHD member is 100% welcome to drop by and he will be treated with Egyptian hospitality. 

1- Tonight after this incident was discovered, I went down to my gear closet (It's a car garage in the building), and found that my 1DC, which everyone knows I love, is missing. I paid Triple the price of it's 8000$ cost to get into here and it's my A camera. Now officially stolen. Serial number 02301100059. This is a 23000 USD loss, believe it or not. 

2- The amount I'll have to refund is 3400 USD (maybe more). And I have to pay this for a theif, who stole my identity. hence yes I have no obligation. The correct and legal act to do is file a claim and investigate who made the scam and we extract the money out of him/her after the fact. That's the reason I say I have no obligation. I have no idea why this sentence has been interpreted in a bad way. 

3- @Ed I see you're doing some investigation on me, and saying ''this is a photo of someone else that you've seen before''. Well take attention to the two photos posted in the thread and you'll find it's the same person. Even shot on the same day with the same shirt. 

4- The idea that I've been here for 3 years posting to the point of reaching the most popular contributor, to make 3000$ is absurd, don't you think? 

5- I despise this situation where I am actually defending myself for a pity thief. But thank all of those who believe me based on their knowledge of me through all these years. It means a lot. 

6- Honor is something some men are born with. Not all. And any educated person knows from heart who's an honorable man and who's not. 

7- This thread is starting to get creepy with all the searching on my grandson and me. And it's dangerous. Because we don't know who the buyers are like and how they could react against him believing he made the scam. It's personally upsetting me.

8- No.7 practically insures no Saadawi made the scam - because as the scammer did actually admit in his Facebook message - No scammer would have a real online profile with his address, work, name, age, etc. It's simply impossible and only insures the scam was made to be against that profile owner. The scammer is saying I am Ebrahim Saadawi Jr. and I am scamming you. 

9- I already filed a class-action suit and an official police investigation on the matter against every single employee who has even remote reach to my equipment and computers. 

10- I will get that low-life thief even if he's a drop of water in the ocean that is Egypt.


This destroyed my summer holiday. And it's really saddening as people's trust is someone I value above anything else. And having lost that here, I could no longer participate, that's the untold reason behind not using this account again but also a small part is to stop any scams that might occur through my FB or EOSHD accounts. 


Thanks. 

[dahlfors]

14 minutes ago, mercer said:

There could be hundreds of Ebrahim Saadwahis in Egypt, so the name probably has little consequence here. From our end, the only real action would be for Andrew to go back and compare ip addresses. 

I do believe Ebrahim Saadawi, the radiologist exist. Here's a post, more than 2 years back where he tells about being a radiologist for 40 years:

I doubt a physician with a PhD in radiology needs to scam people online. Considering his reply in this very thread (and the 2 year old one), I find it likely to be true that he actually has that clinic he talked about. I would find it unlikely that he would have spent 2 years creating a fake identity as the radiologist/doctor on this forum - just to finally commit a scam.

If those are plausible I'd also find it plausible about what he wrote about the media company (I also have memories about him mentioning that company many months ago, maybe a year ago). Then it might very well be that there are several people in his media company that has access, just as the post in this thread stated.

If those above are plausible, then it's also likely to be correct what he wrote about the rangefinder being at the media company - and someone having access to it there. If there's a media company, IP addresses will most likely be unusable, as someone could have used the company's Internet.

So, hence I believe the best thing is to get in contact with Senior, and the very best method would be a video call to verify identity. No need for slandering in a forum thread, just try to reach the real source. IF that can be done - and data can be extracted from the accounts, there are better methods for tracing who committed the scam: like dumping the Facebook data dump that you can download - and dig through that one for evidence. But doing this, requires that the account owner still has access to the account.

I told these things earlier to the people who got scammed. Thought I wouldn't add to this thread, but doing it due to all of this speculation...

[Ed_David]

Sorry to hear.

Hope you catch your grandson!

[Kristoferman]

The real lesson here is never use western union for these kind of transactions.

And to be clear, I'm not going down this rabbit hole of searching for proof of the existence of Ebrahim or theorizing about specifics of the scam and his involvement. I was merely stating that the first reply by the account in this thread was...strange.. and that breaking off contact with the scammed community is something that damages his reputation further. 

[dahlfors]

16 minutes ago, Ebrahim Saadawi said:

Posting again to defend myself. 


Thanks. 

Ebrahim, I tried sending an email to you earlier. If you want help about finding out about account access on Facebook, contact me here and you can get my email address / skype or other suitable option. There will be interesting data to pick out from that data dump.

I'll be away on vacation the full upcoming next week, but before Sunday I can give you all the advice I can. (I'd recommend you to NOT give that data dump to me or anyone else - but to a very trusted programmer if you can find one near you in person. But I can give advice on the process).

[tweak]

This second post is just as weird...

It's pretty likely someone very close to you is the culprit (if it's really you typing Snr), as they have access to and knowledge about your gear, they also have your password (or worked it out), so surely there aren't that many possible suspects. I highly doubt many people would be able to put all those things together well and also know the finer details about an obscure piece of equipment such as the SLR RF and know it was actually worth something (it just looks like a cheap filter to any normal person). Also a common thief would just steal this product, not try and scam people online... Suspects are fairly limited I would say, unless you have an army of people working for you? Also this stuff has gone missing only recently, which should make it pretty easy to narrow down.

[tugela]

1 hour ago, dahlfors said:

Right.

Joining a site in December 2013, then put in the effort of writing more than 2000 posts in a forum for two and a half years, to do six scams worth of a few thousand USD? If you want to scam, I think you could have as well done that after the first 300 posts or so...

Six that we know of. There could be a lot more for all we know. I think the problem with this whole saga is that there is very little information and all of it comes from people with a personal stake in the matter who may or may not be fully forthcoming. We just don't know.

[Michael Coffee]

21 minutes ago, dahlfors said:

I do believe Ebrahim Saadawi, the radiologist exist. Here's a post, more than 2 years back where he tells about being a radiologist for 40 years:

I doubt a physician with a PhD in radiology needs to scam people online. Considering his reply in this very thread (and the 2 year old one), I find it likely to be true that he actually has that clinic he talked about. I would find it unlikely that he would have spent 2 years creating a fake identity as the radiologist/doctor on this forum - just to finally commit a scam.

If those are plausible I'd also find it plausible about what he wrote about the media company (I also have memories about him mentioning that company many months ago, maybe a year ago). Then it might very well be that there are several people in his media company that has access, just as the post in this thread stated.

If those above are plausible, then it's also likely to be correct what he wrote about the rangefinder being at the media company - and someone having access to it there. If there's a media company, IP addresses will most likely be unusable, as someone could have used the company's Internet.

So, hence I believe the best thing is to get in contact with Senior, and the very best method would be a video call to verify identity. No need for slandering in a forum thread, just try to reach the real source. IF that can be done - and data can be extracted from the accounts, there are better methods for tracing who committed the scam: like dumping the Facebook data dump that you can download - and dig through that one for evidence. But doing this, requires that the account owner still has access to the account.

I told these things earlier to the people who got scammed. Thought I wouldn't add to this thread, but doing it due to all of this speculation...

 

Hey, there is an idea, Mr Sawaadi, I will interview you on Skype, and we can clear this up. We are video experts after all, right?

 

 

[tweak]

3 minutes ago, Michael Coffee said:

 

Hey, there is an idea, Mr Sawaadi, I will interview you on Skype, and we can clear this up. We are video experts after all, right?

 

 

Exactly what needs to happen un-fortunetly. Someone credible must video call, it will clear at least one part of this case up for all involved.

[Michael Coffee]

I volunteer - I have so many questions:) 

 

 

 

Are you saying I'm not credible:) ?

 

https://www.skype.com/en/features/group-calls/

[tugela]

4 hours ago, veraguth said:

At least, in most democracies, the State cannot throw a new charge at you in the middle of a trial. That is one of the problems with these courts of public opinion in the internet. If you are concerned about this footage issue, please open a new topic. Thus, there we can have a sane discussion about this case and copyright ethics, proper credit in film, and so on. Mixing things up will not help.  

 

Umm....they can introduce evidence that puts your credibility in question, which that essentially was.

[Michael Coffee]

this could be good! A groundbreaking video.. can you hook a gx7 up to Skype? Condensor mic..

A short film, and proceeds to any victims..

Group Skype inteview!! 

Ok guys, just fired up my macbook and skype, how about some one call me and we can chat about this - a video podcast! I am getting some screen recorder software up and running, but until then if someone is up for it, and has screen recorder going on their skype system, lets do this!

 

[dahlfors]

16 minutes ago, Michael Coffee said:

Group Skype inteview!! 

 

Don't know about you. But if I'd be going through this, having a mob of people going wild with speculations... doing a skype call with such a mob wouldn't really be in my interest.

Notice how calm the thread starter (and victim of a scam) has been throughout this thread?

I think it would be great if Ebrahim Sr and Timotheus would have a calm one-on-one call by themselves to try to figure and possibly sort things out. No need to make this into a reality show. If everything said by Timotheus and Ebrahim Sr is true, they're probably both going through some shitty times.