All good things eventually come to an end... or in the case of scammers: once caught it's twice as hard to stay gone. For the group that's been spearheading hoaxes across multiple forms of popular media – the individuals who have recently been scamming Rockstar fans with GTA V hoaxes – they have been hit hard with a certain kind of defeat.
Going by the name “Swenzy” (for now) they have admitted some form of limitation to their powers of persuasion, writing on their (temporary) official website...
“Swenzy will only be a place to buy likes and followers. Yes, That means that we are no longer offering YouTube views for security purposes. We will only offer Facebook Twitter & Instagram services. Thank you and we hope you understand! - (Swenzy Admin)”
We reached out to the group to identify exactly what caused the shutdown of their YouTube services and received the following response...
"...here at Swenzy.com we offer legit services worldwide and how we offer these services are guarded as top secret by our staff due to sensitivity. We feel that it was the right decision to cancel our YouTube services due to recent high tensions."
Just last week we ran an article about Swenzy being a spin-off of SocialVevo, which in turn is a spinoff of SocialEvo, which in turn is associated with a parent group that has ties to each of the subsidiaries, all of which are tied to some sort of social media hoax involving viral content. In addition to this, all groups are attached to the same phantom organization out of Panama that links back to a service group known as Adixy.com.
The main purpose of the group is to sell social media prominence. If you need followers on Twitter? Just ask for the amount you want and they'll deliver it. You need thousands of YouTube subscribers? Easy, they sell that as well. How about Instagram followers? Facebook likes? They offer it all... well, they used to.
The idea is that users who buy their fake hype can help sell their own social media presence and prominence for whatever reasons (i.e., selling books, using it to promote self-help videos or guides, an attempt to usurp page-ranks through fake followers, etc.)
This same company was attached to the recent Bring Back Brian hoax for Family Guy, and just before that they had established a baseline for hoaxing a lot of gamers into believing the GTA City of Paradise hoax, while just before that they were responsible for the GTA V PC release date countdown site.
It all points back to the same group, scamming social media movements into... getting involved?
The reality is that no one has quite figured out why this scam exists or what it's end-game is, other than to bring attention to itself at some point like a poor man's digital serial killer looking for a little fame and attention.
The Daily Dot also wrote about the group earlier in December, along with the Australian news outlet, News.com. Both spotlighted the social movement toward nowhere and how people have been duped by this company for the sole purpose of being duped.
Given that this Adixy.com group seems to have no boundaries on what sort of media they attach themselves to in order to make the content go viral, there's really no reason to believe that they stopped with a few television shows and video games. It almost makes you wonder just how many different pseudo affiliates they have to boost prestige for these products and events.
We reached out to Take-Two Interactive but haven't received a response yet regarding Adixy's use of Grand Theft Auto and Rockstar assets to promote their fake campaign while selling social media services in the process.
