Scammed by PurplePandaLabs for $900 - GG gaslighting

[Iron_Yuppie]

Okay so a lot to reply to.


The main one people keep banging on about is the wrong colour QR code - look at the top right of the screen at the addons for Firefox, i'm using Dark Reader and as you will see below in the video, it changes the colour from white to black.

Install the addon yourself and have a look.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/darkreader/

https://gfycat.com/splendidhelpfulbanteng

Change quality of the video to HD to see it clearly. Note that I did create a second PPL account today to show this as I didn't want to fill my original (and only other) PPL account with fake orders.


Lots to reply to here..

I have only made two accounts in total on PPL website - the first being the one I placed the order on and the second being the one I created just now to show the dark reader addon.

I have only ever asked about my order on the one protonmail account or wickr, please show what 'proof' you have otherwise. Of course if you make up some fake email accounts or edit screenshots you'll just claim innocence. Exact same argument you have against me.

1. Dark reader addon

2. I've no idea how PPLs BTC system works, I just know that I was sent to a different URL to pay (as shown in the first screenshot) than the one supplied in the email.

Have you investigated this link at all or are you too convinced I am a scammer?

Protonmail email order links to:
https://www.purplepandalabs.com/shop/payment?code=210729020421630

Website forwarded me to:
https://www.purplepandalabs.com/shop/payment?code=041026682648504

3. What accounts were created at the same time? Give us some information/screenshots/proof?

4. Of course it's a fresh account - i've never registered on this forum before and had no reason to until placing an order. The entire plan was to order a bunch of stuff and have it tested and providing the evidence for others to help decide which source to use.

The security of the site will always be a priority for you? Aren't you just a rep? Why do you priorities the security of the site? What access do you have exactly?

I'd love to know how deep your fingers are in the pie. If you have access to any sensitive information then you are gonna be suspect number one imo. Reps are a dime a dozen and you are what, the third one or more for PPL?

Maybe @purplepandalabs can shed some light on this and look into that link.



Dark reader addon.



I've no idea about BTC so can't answer that. All I can say is if the order was intercepted then that can explain how a segwit address was used if it is currently is not possible with PPLs billing system.



I did not create that email address - i'd imagine someone would have made it years ago considering PPL has been around for what, 5+ years? I know that PPL owner himself used to use purplepandalabs@proton with an S on the end so it would make sense that someone would have registered the scam one years ago to phish people with.



I'm all for roasting a scammer and love reading shit like this however being the apparent scammer in this case is pretty wanky.

The reason why I went with PPL is because they were one of the best rated (non-USA) sources that I could find and I took a bit of a gamble doing such a large order as the first one.

To get into this mess is a bit shitty but there's always a risk with stuff like this.

If PPL is actually legit then they need to look into why the fuck I was forwarded to the different PPL URL and who is behind it.

Is it someone that works for PPL? Is it PPL in general? Is it someone that's gained access somehow? Fuck if I know, i'm just giving the information I have at hand.

Either way i'm considering the money lost at this point and will use a different source in future. Obviously not going to mention what source as then people will claim i'm just here to badmouth and shill for another one.

If anyone here trusts PPL and is going to place orders with them here's some advice, order that shit via email and do not use the website because clearly that can be intercepted. If PPL won't let you order that way, well that says something about the source.

It would have been a lot shorter of a reply if you just said “my unemployment insurance ran out” and left it at that.

I will add this edit, to be fair: weird things have happened before. It’s entirely possible that you look like you’re trying to scam PPL while being entirely the victim. It’s not inconceivable and it wouldn’t be the first time someone got snagged by a scammer and ended up looking like the bad guy.

But your approach was not well thought out at all. Your first instinct was that PPL, one of the bigger raw providers in the game, scammed you out of $900. The guy who has at least one Lambo set up a separate email account to take your $900? That doesn’t even cover an oil change. It strains credulity to believe that that’s what happened. In these cases nobody sides with the source, but none of us want to support a potential scammer either. The balance of probabilities says that someone hooked your order and you didn’t notice the improper email address and sent payment to someone who isn’t PPL. Now Ollie thinks that payment went to YOU. He may be wrong. But he’s immediately on the defense because you accused his employer of stealing from you. You turned a potential ally into an enemy and in exchange you got nothing of value. If you’re genuinely innocent then your next step is to apologize to Ollie and ask for his help in figuring out what happened. Because it’s in his interest to find a scammer too. Remember, someone who isn’t his boss just got paid $900 and he’d like that business in his pocket and not in the pocket of a scammer.

If Panda scammed you then he’s done here. I very much doubt someone would give up their very lucrative business for no reason. I doubt that you’d think that if you were on the outside seeing something like this happen. But if that’s what happened then the truth will come out. But that’s a pretty low probability outcome.

 

[MindlessWork]

following as I’m bored with nothing else to do

Lol I am bored too...slow at work today. I dealt with ransomware attacks as well as a recent cyberattack on my hospital's network as I'm the senior administrator. It's crazy I tell ya but this case the OP's stories are so entertaining enough to follow haha.

 

[Cashton]

Fair shout for Malwarebytes, just done a scan and it's all clean.

FWIW i've used BTC a few times these past few weeks and not have any issues.

If someone were to gain access to my computer in any way i'd imagine the first thing they'd be raiding is my PayPal account.

As for an explanation for the BTC addy - it could be any number of things - if PPL are a legit source then they've been compromised in some way, whether it's an employee or third party. Maybe someone is skimming from the top, maybe someone has found a zero day and is making use of it but not enough for PPL to turn off the website.

For your Dark Reader, i'd recommend placing a fake order and record the screen while toggling Dark Reader on/off. If PPL are behind it then they'll likely change something to discredit my proof and continue the scamming.

And the plot thickens, I think that @OllieJacobs neefs to read and reply now, I was convinced that you were full of shit from after ollies reply and the things pointed out, but you seem to have covered those bases, I think this should be investigated, and this is meso, so as long as you have some basis to your argument and some proof like you’ve showed, we don’t take the word of sources just because they’ve been good by us, so don’t be worried about members attacking you, so long as you have proof.

 

[MindlessWork]

Also my apologies for jumping the gun, @Gdawg. Hopefully something will come of this and whether you truly are right or wrong.

 

[Gdawg]

It would have been a lot shorter of a reply if you just said “my unemployment insurance ran out” and left it at that.

I will add this edit, to be fair: weird things have happened before. It’s entirely possible that you look like you’re trying to scam PPL while being entirely the victim. It’s not inconceivable and it wouldn’t be the first time someone got snagged by a scammer and ended up looking like the bad guy.

But your approach was not well thought out at all. Your first instinct was that PPL, one of the bigger raw providers in the game, scammed you out of $900. The guy who has at least one Lambo set up a separate email account to take your $900? That doesn’t even cover an oil change. It strains credulity to believe that that’s what happened. In these cases nobody sides with the source, but none of us want to support a potential scammer either. The balance of probabilities says that someone hooked your order and you didn’t notice the improper email address and sent payment to someone who isn’t PPL. Now Ollie thinks that payment went to YOU. He may be wrong. But he’s immediately on the defense because you accused his employer of stealing from you. You turned a potential ally into an enemy and in exchange you got nothing of value. If you’re genuinely innocent then your next step is to apologize to Ollie and ask for his help in figuring out what happened. Because it’s in his interest to find a scammer too. Remember, someone who isn’t his boss just got paid $900 and he’d like that business in his pocket and not in the pocket of a scammer.

If Panda scammed you then he’s done here. I very much doubt someone would give up their very lucrative business for no reason. I doubt that you’d think that if you were on the outside seeing something like this happen. But if that’s what happened then the truth will come out. But that’s a pretty low probability outcome.

The fun thing about being gaslighted is it screws up your thought process, it's why it's so effective.

It was only when I made the post here that I realised that the payment URLs were different.

So before that the only facts I knew were that I was scammed and not who is behind it, which we still don't know.

It's a real possibility that PPL might commit to me being labelled as a scammer instead of admitting someone has access to his billing system and is scamming people - but who knows - maybe a bunch of people will come out of the woodwork in the coming weeks when orders have not arrived.

-----

If you try and put yourself in my shoes it goes a bit like this:

Find source, order from source, pay - receive dodgy email - report it to source, they ask a few questions and then call me a scammer and ignore my emails while slagging me off in the forums - even going so far as to say i've been creating dozens of accounts.

Maybe someone else has been trying to pull a scam for free gear, or maybe they invented that lie to try and discredit my post - who knows. From my point of view raws are dirt cheap (when comparing to finished gear) so i'm more than happy to pay the 'cheap' price and stock up.

-----

@OllieJacobs I seen your post in PPLs source thread having a dig at me but i'll keep all discussions here - Don't blame me for your lack of customer service to other customers.

The balance of probabilities says that someone hooked your order and you didn’t notice the improper email address and sent payment to someone who isn’t PPL.

But I never sent anything to any email address [before paying]. My order was entirely on the website and once you click the pay button it will redirect you to the page with the BTC address on it (which is all under the PPL url as the screenshot shows).

I received an email from the 'scam' protonmail minutes after my BTC payment was sent.

There's not a chance in hell i'm gonna apologise to those guys even if they too are innocent. I already asked their help sorting this out but instead they decided to call me a scammer and gaslight the heck out of me.

Hopefully we'll get some answers but to be fair i'm not counting on it. From a business perspective it can be suicide admitting that your systems have been compromised especially in this line of work.

Either way michaeljacksonpopcorn.gif

 

[bigpoppachump2]

This is exact thing happened a couple years back with Darius when he was one of pharmacom's main sellers. He made the guy who got scammed whole and it made Darius a whole shit ton of money in return by showing the board he was a stand up guy even though he didn't have to reimburse the guy cause it wasn't Darius fault.

 

[Iron_Yuppie]

There's not a chance in hell i'm gonna apologise to those guys even if they too are innocent.

Then your situation will never be resolved. You’re both an innocent victim and a failed scammer. You’re Schrödinger’s Meso Member.

Swallow your pride, say you’re sorry you jumped the gun. @OllieJacobs you too. If neither of you did anything wrong then that means there’s a bigger problem that Panda’s going to have to deal with. Someone is in the system and they shouldn’t be. This wouldn’t be his first visit to that particular vacation spot so it’s not like it’s hard to believe it happened. A lot of us got the extortion email, so let’s not pretend like this isn’t at least plausible.

 

[FR0Z3N_B0MB3RRR]

The fun thing about being gaslighted is it screws up your thought process, it's why it's so effective.

It was only when I made the post here that I realised that the payment URLs were different.

So before that the only facts I knew were that I was scammed and not who is behind it, which we still don't know.

It's a real possibility that PPL might commit to me being labelled as a scammer instead of admitting someone has access to his billing system and is scamming people - but who knows - maybe a bunch of people will come out of the woodwork in the coming weeks when orders have not arrived.

-----

If you try and put yourself in my shoes it goes a bit like this:

Find source, order from source, pay - receive dodgy email - report it to source, they ask a few questions and then call me a scammer and ignore my emails while slagging me off in the forums - even going so far as to say i've been creating dozens of accounts.

Maybe someone else has been trying to pull a scam for free gear, or maybe they invented that lie to try and discredit my post - who knows. From my point of view raws are dirt cheap (when comparing to finished gear) so i'm more than happy to pay the 'cheap' price and stock up.

-----

@OllieJacobs I seen your post in PPLs source thread having a dig at me but i'll keep all discussions here - Don't blame me for your lack of customer service to other customers.



But I never sent anything to any email address [before paying]. My order was entirely on the website and once you click the pay button it will redirect you to the page with the BTC address on it (which is all under the PPL url as the screenshot shows).

I received an email from the 'scam' protonmail minutes after my BTC payment was sent.

There's not a chance in hell i'm gonna apologise to those guys even if they too are innocent. I already asked their help sorting this out but instead they decided to call me a scammer and gaslight the heck out of me.

Hopefully we'll get some answers but to be fair i'm not counting on it. From a business perspective it can be suicide admitting that your systems have been compromised especially in this line of work.

Either way michaeljacksonpopcorn.gif

 

[MindlessWork]

Then your situation will never be resolved. You’re both an innocent victim and a failed scammer. You’re Schrödinger’s Meso Member.

Swallow your pride, say you’re sorry you jumped the gun. @OllieJacobs you too. If neither of you did anything wrong then that means there’s a bigger problem that Panda’s going to have to deal with. Someone is in the system and they shouldn’t be. This wouldn’t be his first visit to that particular vacation spot so it’s not like it’s hard to believe it happened. A lot of us got the extortion email, so let’s not pretend like this isn’t at least plausible.

Well said.

To me just take the hit and move on, OP.

 

[Cashton]

The fun thing about being gaslighted is it screws up your thought process, it's why it's so effective.

It was only when I made the post here that I realised that the payment URLs were different.

So before that the only facts I knew were that I was scammed and not who is behind it, which we still don't know.

It's a real possibility that PPL might commit to me being labelled as a scammer instead of admitting someone has access to his billing system and is scamming people - but who knows - maybe a bunch of people will come out of the woodwork in the coming weeks when orders have not arrived.

-----

If you try and put yourself in my shoes it goes a bit like this:

Find source, order from source, pay - receive dodgy email - report it to source, they ask a few questions and then call me a scammer and ignore my emails while slagging me off in the forums - even going so far as to say i've been creating dozens of accounts.

Maybe someone else has been trying to pull a scam for free gear, or maybe they invented that lie to try and discredit my post - who knows. From my point of view raws are dirt cheap (when comparing to finished gear) so i'm more than happy to pay the 'cheap' price and stock up.

-----

@OllieJacobs I seen your post in PPLs source thread having a dig at me but i'll keep all discussions here - Don't blame me for your lack of customer service to other customers.



But I never sent anything to any email address [before paying]. My order was entirely on the website and once you click the pay button it will redirect you to the page with the BTC address on it (which is all under the PPL url as the screenshot shows).

I received an email from the 'scam' protonmail minutes after my BTC payment was sent.

There's not a chance in hell i'm gonna apologise to those guys even if they too are innocent. I already asked their help sorting this out but instead they decided to call me a scammer and gaslight the heck out of me.

Hopefully we'll get some answers but to be fair i'm not counting on it. From a business perspective it can be suicide admitting that your systems have been compromised especially in this line of work.

Either way michaeljacksonpopcorn.gif

For the record, ppl has always done me well, I’ve only done two orders though, raws each time, one through Ollie, and one though the site, and the most recent was during this sale, on the last day actually, and so far I’ve gotten all the emails I should have and things are going accordingly, also if you want to bring it to the source thread, go right ahead, it actually might get it dealt with better.

 

[Heavy Iron]

Lol it's definitely not the owner of panda intentionally doing it. The dude makes fuckin bank and chose to live in china over the states in order to do so.

This is interesting

 

[BeefNewton]

Ollie Ollie Ollie get your adverbs, here.

 

[OllieJacobs]

Im here:

1)I love how you have been trying to point this at me, I don’t have access to any of the websites backend (people who have contacted me already know this because i always ask them to wait until Melody gives access to me), but Panda trusts me and he showed me why you were full of shit, if you want to start a war, here you are.

2)You pointed out that you don’t know nothing about BTC... but you were smart enough to tell Melody that the address had received money from different addresses, super smart for not knowing anything about crypto.

3)The total amount of the money that went into that wallet was around 5K USD, do you really think that if a hacker had access to the website (as you guys have seen in the past, our past info leak was pretty famous) would have only stolen 5K? In the middle of a fucking sale where some guys were spending more than 10K? Really? This just fits better to a guy who has some money lying around and enough time to create some accounts, place some orders and don’t fullfill those.

4)Our website uses a second legal website to automatically generate the BTC addresses, this can’t be altered and this is shown in the backend, if someone like @Millard wants to take a look at how the back end of this guy and his alt accounts looks like, same with the BTC addy given... let be it, there is no better prove that showing the admin of Meso how this looks like from the inside, this is why i said that having the website hacked is an impossible situation and im offering the opportunity to have the Meso owner to look himself at it, there is no better prove than that.

5)So apparently a new guy creates an account with a problem right? We have had the biggest sale we ever had since i have been a rep, why I don’t see a single REAL member on Meso posting about a problem similar as yours when we had a ton of sales that came from here? Nothing suspicious at all.

TLDR:

Im offering the owner of the website to take a look at the backend of this guys orders to show him how the order was generated, the way the BTC addy was generated and how this is not a hacking issue.

 

[Cashton]

Im here:

1)I love how you have been trying to point this at me, I don’t have access to any of the websites backend (people who have contacted me already know this because i always ask them to wait until Melody gives access to me), but Panda trusts me and he showed me why you were full of shit, if you want to start a war, here you are.

2)You pointed out that you don’t know nothing about BTC... but you were smart enough to tell Melody that the address had received money from different addresses, super smart for not knowing anything about crypto.

3)The total amount of the money that went into that wallet was around 5K USD, do you really think that if a hacker had access to the website (as you guys have seen in the past, our past info leak was pretty famous) would have only stolen 5K? In the middle of a fucking sale where some guys were spending more than 10K? Really? This just fits better to a guy who has some money lying around and enough time to create some accounts, place some orders and don’t fullfill those.

4)Our website uses a second legal website to automatically generate the BTC addresses, this can’t be altered and this is shown in the backend, if someone like @Millard wants to take a look at how the back end of this guy and his alt accounts looks like, same with the BTC addy given... let be it, there is no better prove that showing the admin of Meso how this looks like from the inside, this is why i said that having the website hacked is an impossible situation and im offering the opportunity to have the Meso owner to look himself at it, there is no better prove than that.

5)So apparently a new guy creates an account with a problem right? We have had the biggest sale we ever had since i have been a rep, why I don’t see a single REAL member on Meso posting about a problem similar as yours when we had a ton of sales that came from here? Nothing suspicious at all.

TLDR:

Im offering the owner of the website to take a look at the backend of this guys orders to show him how the order was generated, the way the BTC addy was generated and how this is not a hacking issue.

In all fairness, in order to check incoming and outgoing transactions all you have to do is click the Bitcoin address or type it into a search bar.. it also doesn’t quite seem like he’s pointing at you, but unsure of what the problem is or who to blame.

 

[TrenTrenTren]

Im here:

1)I love how you have been trying to point this at me, I don’t have access to any of the websites backend (people who have contacted me already know this because i always ask them to wait until Melody gives access to me), but Panda trusts me and he showed me why you were full of shit, if you want to start a war, here you are.

2)You pointed out that you don’t know nothing about BTC... but you were smart enough to tell Melody that the address had received money from different addresses, super smart for not knowing anything about crypto.

3)The total amount of the money that went into that wallet was around 5K USD, do you really think that if a hacker had access to the website (as you guys have seen in the past, our past info leak was pretty famous) would have only stolen 5K? In the middle of a fucking sale where some guys were spending more than 10K? Really? This just fits better to a guy who has some money lying around and enough time to create some accounts, place some orders and don’t fullfill those.

4)Our website uses a second legal website to automatically generate the BTC addresses, this can’t be altered and this is shown in the backend, if someone like @Millard wants to take a look at how the back end of this guy and his alt accounts looks like, same with the BTC addy given... let be it, there is no better prove that showing the admin of Meso how this looks like from the inside, this is why i said that having the website hacked is an impossible situation and im offering the opportunity to have the Meso owner to look himself at it, there is no better prove than that.

5)So apparently a new guy creates an account with a problem right? We have had the biggest sale we ever had since i have been a rep, why I don’t see a single REAL member on Meso posting about a problem similar as yours when we had a ton of sales that came from here? Nothing suspicious at all.

TLDR:

Im offering the owner of the website to take a look at the backend of this guys orders to show him how the order was generated, the way the BTC addy was generated and how this is not a hacking issue.

Hmm. Ok. I'd like to see how that turns out.

 

[OllieJacobs]

Then your situation will never be resolved. You’re both an innocent victim and a failed scammer. You’re Schrödinger’s Meso Member.

Swallow your pride, say you’re sorry you jumped the gun. @OllieJacobs you too. If neither of you did anything wrong then that means there’s a bigger problem that Panda’s going to have to deal with. Someone is in the system and they shouldn’t be. This wouldn’t be his first visit to that particular vacation spot so it’s not like it’s hard to believe it happened. A lot of us got the extortion email, so let’s not pretend like this isn’t at least plausible.

I only jumped at this guy because i was proven that he’s lying, i was proven about it by Panda, by his website security guy and also i had a second opinion from my IT friend that handles all my security stuff because even tho i trust Panda a lot i don’t know his IT guy and i wanted to be sure about it.

 

[OllieJacobs]

In all fairness, in order to check incoming and outgoing transactions all you have to do is click the Bitcoin address or type it into a search bar.. it also doesn’t quite seem like he’s pointing at you, but unsure of what the problem is or who to blame.

Well i mean...

The security of the site will always be a priority for you? Aren't you just a rep? Why do you priorities the security of the site? What access do you have exactly?

I'd love to know how deep your fingers are in the pie. If you have access to any sensitive information then you are gonna be suspect number one imo. Reps are a dime a dozen and you are what, the third one or more for PPL?

 

[Cashton]

Im here:

1)I love how you have been trying to point this at me, I don’t have access to any of the websites backend (people who have contacted me already know this because i always ask them to wait until Melody gives access to me), but Panda trusts me and he showed me why you were full of shit, if you want to start a war, here you are.

2)You pointed out that you don’t know nothing about BTC... but you were smart enough to tell Melody that the address had received money from different addresses, super smart for not knowing anything about crypto.

3)The total amount of the money that went into that wallet was around 5K USD, do you really think that if a hacker had access to the website (as you guys have seen in the past, our past info leak was pretty famous) would have only stolen 5K? In the middle of a fucking sale where some guys were spending more than 10K? Really? This just fits better to a guy who has some money lying around and enough time to create some accounts, place some orders and don’t fullfill those.

4)Our website uses a second legal website to automatically generate the BTC addresses, this can’t be altered and this is shown in the backend, if someone like @Millard wants to take a look at how the back end of this guy and his alt accounts looks like, same with the BTC addy given... let be it, there is no better prove that showing the admin of Meso how this looks like from the inside, this is why i said that having the website hacked is an impossible situation and im offering the opportunity to have the Meso owner to look himself at it, there is no better prove than that.

5)So apparently a new guy creates an account with a problem right? We have had the biggest sale we ever had since i have been a rep, why I don’t see a single REAL member on Meso posting about a problem similar as yours when we had a ton of sales that came from here? Nothing suspicious at all.

TLDR:

Im offering the owner of the website to take a look at the backend of this guys orders to show him how the order was generated, the way the BTC addy was generated and how this is not a hacking issue.

Ollie my brother, it doesn’t matter what it fits or what “makes sense” it’s what you can prove, and this guys explainatuons and screenshots, though a long shot, do add up to a degree, and I’m sure that we all appreciate how you want to let @Millard take a look at the backend, but I’m not sure he actually involves himself in this stuff, but I could be wrong on that part.

Like I said, every dealing I’ve had with you and PPL has been good, but this whole situation is crazy, it doesn’t seem convincing from the beginning, especially with youre first rebuttal but he made some fair and valid points in his, even down to the Firefox extension.

 

[OllieJacobs]

Hmm. Ok. I'd like to see how that turns out.

It’s as simple as this: a ton of people made orders during the sale, only ONE guy posted about this problem and this guy is a fresh new account, if a hacker had access to the website he could have literally made hundreds of thousands in a few days... and yet it was only 5K, that seems super logical.

 

[dennia]

Not the first shit show made by Panda and definitely not the last.
I start to like this series more than Breaking Bad