Archived 76561197986567122 (smokedgouda001) and 76561198037908684 (STF2)

Victims: Too numerous to list. Potentially this affects everybody who trades

Scammer:

steamID: STF2
steamID32: STEAM_0:0:38821478
steamID64: http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198037908684
customURL: http://steamcommunity.com/id/madking5150
steamrepURL: http://steamrep.com/profiles/76561198037908684

steamID: smokedgouda001
steamID32: STEAM_0:0:13150697
steamID64: http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561197986567122
customURL:
steamrepURL: http://steamrep.com/profiles/76561197986567122

Description:

Summary

The TF2 Spreadsheet admin used his anonymous Forum accounts, PrellisV_2.0, Madking, and SmokedGouda to inflate prices of items that he was trading and to gain exposure for his own trades on the Steam Trading Forums.

He also used the same shill accounts to attack competing spreadsheets and pricing sites, and to promote his own spreadsheet, without revealing his obvious conflict of interest.

Additional: The TF2 Spreadsheet admin bought a Strange Botkiller Medi Gun for 8 keys at a time when they were trading for less than 10 keys, and he then gave this item a price of 10-16 Keys on his Spreadsheet. This unjustified new Spreadsheet price caused the market price to rise. He then sold the Medi Gun for a quick profit and adjusted the Spreadsheet price down.

Details

The accounts listed above, smokedgouda001 and STF2, are controlled by the administrator of the TF2 Spreadsheet at tf2spreadsheet.blogspot.com

The Spreadsheet admin also controls at least three Steam Forum accounts:

Madking (STF2) - http://forums.steamgames.com/forums/member.php?u=1069704
SmokedGouda - http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/member.php?u=933713
PrellisV_2.0 - http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/member.php?u=979535

You MUST be logged into a Steam Forum account, or you will probably just get an error message if you try to look at those pages.

If required, we can confirm that the first two forum accounts are linked to their respective Steam accounts:

1, They include the steam account ID64 in their profile, and the Steam trading forum requires this to be verified for forum access.
2, Item history at TF2Items shows the items being traded by the forum account were owned by the Steam account at the same time.

IMPORTANT: Dunken_Fool at Valve has "confirmed that the SPUF forum accounts mentioned are all owned by the same user and banned the accounts for being used to deceive other users."

http://www.reddit.com/r/tf2trade/comments/yk9ji/psa_i_believe_the_tf2_pricing_spreadsheet_at/c5we6p6

You can read a much more detailed description here at Reddit, which includes a response from somebody claiming to be the TF2 Spreadsheet admin.

http://www.reddit.com/r/tf2trade/comments/yk9ji/psa_i_believe_the_tf2_pricing_spreadsheet_at/


Screenshots:
http://imgur.com/a/1cb2a#0
(many thanks to r_dageek on Reddit for gathering these!)

This is a huge and complicated case, so undoubtedly there will be many questions. It's difficult to know which screenshots to supply, because there are potentially hundreds. Please let me know what additional information I can provide.

One additional point: One Steamrep admin has been on SmokedGouda's friend list for a long time. I'm certainly not attempting to imply any wrongdoing or involvement in this case, just that it's probably best that anybody on the accused scammer's friendlist is not involved in the investigation.

The Steamrep Admin has now admitted that he controls all the forum accounts mentioned: Madking, Smokedgouda, Prellis, - plus one more, Mothergoose, which also attacked critics of the Spreadsheet

(In the conversation linked below, the Reddit account 'PiousPorpoise' is the Spreadsheet Admin)

Link: http://www.reddit.com/r/tf2trade/comments/yk9ji/psa_i_believe_the_tf2_pricing_spreadsheet_at/c5wea91
Screenshot: http://i.imgur.com/X1IEw.png

Proof that PiousPorpoise at Reddit is the Spreadsheet Admin: http://www.reddit.com/r/tf2trade/comments/yk9ji/psa_i_believe_the_tf2_pricing_spreadsheet_at/c5wdbo4

Hey, Potato, slight correction to your post, since it is killing me to see it. I think you meant "Spreadsheet Admin" instead of "Steamrep Admin," otherwise, it looks like you are accusing the SteamRep admin that is on his list of doing all this.

Oops, yeah, that was silly of me. Of course I meant Spreadsheet Admin! Not sure if it's possible to edit that unfortunately.

Further update, the Spreadsheet Admin has now admitted that he lied originally and that he does in fact control both the SmokedGouda and Madking/STF2 Steam accounts

Link: http://www.reddit.com/r/tf2trade/co..._tf2_pricing_spreadsheet_at/c5werxk?context=3
Screenshot: http://i.imgur.com/aDTyk.png

Here's some much clearer evidence for that accusation that the TF Spreadsheet Admin (SmokedGouda001/Madking) uses fake bids to inflate prices of items that he is trading.

In this thread, at the Steam Trading Forum, SmokedGouda offered lots of TF2 items for sale

http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1863859 (don't forget you need to be logged into a Steam Forum account to see these threads)

You'll notice many posts from one of his alt accounts, Prellis_V2.0. In fact almost all the posts are from his alt accounts.

For example, in the following page of the same thread, Prellis is making (fake) cash offers on the items that SmokedGouda is selling.

As the Spreadsheet Admin has now finally admitted, and Drunken_Fool at Valve has confirmed, both these forum accounts are controlled by him.

http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1863859&page=3

Screenshot: http://i.imgur.com/g3SDd.png

The red-colored usernames indicate that they are banned, by the way.

Thank you!

It's been spread around that the TF2 Spreadsheet is just pure corruption. I have disallowed any use of spreadsheet in any of my trading because its inaccurate and farce.

There has been rumors that the admin also hoarded a lot of buds at a low price. The next day he changed a couple of numbers and boom increased profit.

Hi, I'm the admin of the spreadsheet. What Potato has accused me of is bumping my thread on Steam User forums, promoting my site with alt accounts. Yes, I bumped my own threads and promoted my website particularly when first launched. However, his account of the trade for one botkiller medi gun is not accurate. There was no set market price at the time I purchased one. He is claiming there was an established price lower than what was evident in order to smear me. There was no set price then, as there is none now as these items are fluctuating in value widely. I purchased one for 8 keys, the only one available at this price in what appeared to me to be a great deal or a 'quicksale' while noticing that the asking range for this item was averaging 10 to 14 keys (and up to a buds). We completed compiling our opinion on price ranges for the new botkiller items and I posted the average range of 10 to 14 keys. I put the item up for sale on outpost for 10 keys, noticing the lack of interest lowered the asking price there to 9 keys briefly and then returned it to 10 keys. The following day, same general time of day was updating the spreadsheet again and all botkiller items had come down in asking prices noticably. Lowered price to 9-10 keys on spreadsheet. Was contacted through outpost and sold item for 10 keys. After clearly following my activity and my trades and for up to a year this is his 'evidence' to smear me as a scammer. I posted a link to his reddit thread attacking me on my own site in an effort to clear the air.

Haven't traded buds in months. The price of buds on our site is direct trading data, perhaps the most accurate item we price along with keys.

tf2spreadsheet.blogspot.com

redditors had/has their own competing site so being labeled a scammer there is not surprising.

Hah, attacking? Smear? Are you serious right now? He never attacked you, or smeared you. He simply pointed out what was there, and took action against it. What he is accusing you of is not simply bumping your threads, and promoting your site with alt accounts (which, by itself, is not bad), but also making fake offers for your items, using the spreadsheet as a tool to make a quick profit (whether it be a 2 key or 20 bud profit, does not matter. It is still an abuse of power, and price manipulation if it is true), and attacking competing sites.

You have failed to supply all of these conclusions to the people on your blog as well (you only informed them he was saying you used alts to promote your site, and that you bumped your threads with these alts), which leads me to believe that either you missed his original point, or you are intentionally feeding people on your blog half truths in order to breed conflict amongst those who have read the thread, and those who have not.

Another particular thing I noticed was that you, on the thread, originally lied about owning those alts or not. Potato has already pointed that out, but you seem to be ignoring the fact that you were lying at first as well.

Finally, there is the issue of the privacy you apparently need to determine prices. Why keep all your alts in the shadows? Sure, as you said before, people may know it is you, and try to fake trades in front of you, but the only place a person would know that you are present would be in server, in which case you can easily use a throwaway alt to monitor prices instead, if privacy really mattered. It seems to me that, for some reason, you really want to keep us uninformed about your methodology, and alternate accounts. While it is true that methodology can be stolen by a competing site (I can understand the need for some privacy with that, especially on the methods by which you compile your raw data), alt accounts really have no reason to be hidden, and that makes alarms go off in my mind. If you have access to a document that highly influences prices on the tf2 market, and alt accounts we do not know of, it insinuates that you have been doing some very interesting trades on those accounts. and that worries me greatly.

^ He is the only one who knows his intentions and affiliations. To me it appears to be a smear because he is clearly trying to insinuate that I manipulated prices to enrich myself. I give away all my items from profits. My 'interesting' trading profits that come typically from scrapbanking (shady I know /s) or selling things at a scrap or two higher than I paid. Here I saw a good deal, too good to pass up and I bought an item to make a quick trade before I had listed a price. Bad judgement, yes. Manipulation and scamming? No.

Any offers I posted on SPUF were efforts to bump the trade not scam, typically something that I didn't ask for in the original post. The effort was to bump the thread.

Yes I tried to keep the separation between my trading account and the admin account by not telling the truth. The anonymity as I went into in detail has to do with keeping trades I witness on servers honest. It also allowed me to enjoy trading, which I do while giving away items through the other account. Anonymity also helped sort out phony trades. While not an epidemic, there was widespread purposely inflated trading of BMOC's a few months back in order to influence me to raise the price. This could only be done on outpost and the like as I was anonymous, at the time.

Methodology is clearly posted on my site. I've answered this question many times. Actual trades are most important. I linked directly to the reddit thread from my site. Anyone can read my responses there as well as on my post.

^ Nothing is manipulated and neither your conjecture nor the accuser's lengthy list of blog posts and my trading a new item - is proof otherwise.

Of course he is the only one who knows why he does what he does. However, the same can be said for you as well. Also, judging by your definition of the word "smear" (or the context you use it in), wouldn't all scammer reports be considered smears? If so, I have no problems with smears.

Speaking about what you did, I don't think the fact that you bought an item before you put a price up was bad. I think the fact that you bought an item for 8 keys, then put it up on the spreadsheet that the minimum was 10 KEYS was bad. Obviously, this is not so. All the trades he listed showed the price range to be deserving to be below 10 keys. If you had put up 8 keys on the spread before you sold it, it would have been a good deal. But, instead, knowing you bought it for 8 keys, you put the minimum at 10.

I can understand the need to bump the thread, but if you wanted your alts to bump for you (and bypass steam rules, btw), you should have just said something like "hey, have a free bump friend " rather than offering on your own trade. The only reason you would offer on your own trade would be to both gain interest by other users, and scare away people who post below the price you wanted to get. That is a type of manipulation as well, though a more subtle type than changing a document around.

Again, I will point out this. It doesn't matter if anyone knows your identity. The only place where it would matter would be in server (people on trading sites cannot see if you are in the thread or not). If it really mattered in server to maintain a bit of anonymity, you could have taken five minutes out of your day, and made a f2p alt to view the server in spectator mode. Not really hard at all. Also, I know about the BMOC deal. I saw the evidence on SPUF. That was fraud of an unprecedented level, and, in all honesty, nobody knowing who the spreadsheet owner was would have not protected you from the backlash. The fake trades were still there. Some of them were really convincing, as well.

I did see your methodology posted in the spreadsheet. I just wasn't sure. You see, on the reddit thread, you posted that you use the steam API to get prices. Later on, you stated you get prices in game. Finally, you stated that you get many prices from your friends. Who exactly are these credible "friends" of yours, and how do we know we can trust them? How exactly do you use the Steam API to get info on prices? These are all questions that needed to be answered before you spreadsheet can be found credible. Yet you never answered them, and sought to keep everything private. Privacy doesn't encourage fair prices; it discourages it. Without the community constantly checking to see if the price is right, if manipulation is going on, corruption will begin to fester. As you know, absolute power corrupts absolutely. Want an example of this? US Politics. They keep things secret from the community, they have extreme power and look where it got the US to....

I can't verify what trades he was looking at or quoting. Again, the trades we witnessed on several forums as well as trade servers all were averaging in the 10 to 14 keys range, a call I stand by at the time. It was bound to go down due to the unlimited nature of the item but a price on the sheet is a snapshot in time. The user I bought the item from had his price of 8 keys up, we paid his price - a cheap one in my opinion. When we sold it the next day it was at the low end of the range we came up with. The accuser's opinion on the price is his. Showing closed trades with prices proves nothing - he's basing his attack on his opinion vs. mine. I personally have been estimating prices of items for over 2 years now and have a few people who visit my site who would agree. That was my estimate and I bought something that looked inexpensive to me.

Yeah bumping the threads with other accounts was just a shortcut. Probably better ways to do it.

On trade servers it would have mattered and that's where we spend a lot of time. There's been other instances of fake trading as well but that's neither here nor there. We choose to be anonymous for these reasons - that may not be what you would choose.

We use all of the above. Actual trades are paramount, both through Steam as well as on trade servers. I'm not going to reveal how exactly the steam data is collected: that is proprietary - but we use data that is publicly available. My contributors are about 5 people, all who I've dealt with and respect as good traders. They have similar experience as I do in the thousands of hours. How do you trust them? You look at the prices that I post every day and see our work and think we're accurate (or not and don't use our site).

Wait, wait a minute. If this is all true, then wouldn't Valve do something about this? Since almost 60% traders rely on the spreadsheet, doesn't this mean he's controlling the majority TF2 Economy?

In my opinion, Valve shouldn't do anything about this. It's the people who follow the spreadsheet, as a guide to pricing. Well you can say control the price of economy, but it's not really his fault.
Other than that.. who owns the price? GABEN GABEN GABEN!!

As a web dev I should know that this is completely untrue. There is no API that could possibly help with pricing other than the third party ones supplied by backpack.tf and the former warehouse API. The only reason you're disclosing information is because your blog is a money farm from ad revenue, meanwhile you are lying to the faces of everyone on your site about how you spend money on a free Google hosted blog to gain their trust.

If you somehow are spending money on maintaining your blog, I'd like to know how. If you even did pay for hosting your ad revenue would quite clearly negate the server costs. I would know as Adsense pays very dearly, especially when everybody from TF2 is flocking to your site as for a while it was an easily knowable source. Enlighten me, because just like every other argument you are countering the answer is half-truthful and easily misinterpreted.

So, two things:

1. The full method you are using to gather prices from the Steam API
2. How you spend money on a free blog that is hosted by Google and has a total of 6 ads on the page