Scamming Raffle Groups

Hi, I'm Gamma032. I'm a leader of a group known as TFTRG and a respected figure among the raffle group administration community. My group, I believe, will be the first group to hit 5 figures in members (as of today, we're 80 members away).

Today I'd like to express my concerns about the ripple effect groups like mine and other major raffling groups have had. I've been working hard on TFTRG for over a year now and I don't plan on stopping. Over this time period, I've seen numerous groups copy ours and try to become like us. It never really works, and that's where the problem is. Most of these small groups stay under a thousand members and run under fifty raffles. Nevertheless, the owners of these groups often "sell admin" in one form or another.

This is what scares me the most. All these groups are lead by inexperienced, uneducated and most often than not - greedy owners. This makes these groups tremendously unmoderated and unsophisticated. Through extensive research, I've found many of these groups have raffles going on for months on end and even ones with no winners drawn. Surely some of these groups have been flooded with scammers?

The application process at TFTRG has been seen as many interested members as tough. This is really just to keep the scammers out, however I still have to check their raffles to make sure they went through. I've caught a good ten scammers in my group since we began.

Now look back to the small groups. They're selling admin positions for usually just a few refined and have owners that are oblivious to what could be going on. It scares me to death that these inattentive owners are allowing scamming to happen in their groups. Can anything be done?

You can try to spread the word about serious background checks before you get admin. Other than that, it's really up to the contestants to enter at their own risk :/

I seen different users who got scammed by raffles, sometimes putting trust in raffle group admins.
Some raffle admins ask for item payments and then run for it.

The only thing I can suggest is to educate people on these groups. These kind of groups pop up all the time and are probably never going away. If people know about them, they'll (hopefully) stay clear and join safe ones.

Of course I'm speaking about groups that scam people, not "legitimate" ones. As for those, people will piggyback on the success of others in order to benefit from it, happens with any popular site/server.

Keep up the good work ousting scammers out of your group.

Hey,
I respect your group and such. I am a Raffling group owner, admin and co-founder. I know you might frown upon me or new raffle groups. I agree in many of your statements for example greedy raffle group owners & etc. I have come upon ridiculous raffle groups who let strangers be admin if they pay 1 ref. Me and my partner have developed this raffle group not by copying any other raffle group but coming up with new ideas and growing our own community. We take little profit and already have given away 1 tour of duty ticket, 2 keys, sharp dresser within the past 1 months or so. We truly believe that we are doing good instead of taking a lot of profit. Many have asked to become moderators but we declined since many groups tell the people who want to be moderators this "you can donate 1 key and be moderator." No, we don't do this, its is purely run by 2 people. Although there is 1 more admin he just provides us with our group website and randomiser. We have never scammed nor ever attempted to increase price or slots for our own good. The group owner as far as i know has never sold anything for above bp.tf price. We are both honest and well educated. We currently have almost 700 members, we reached this goal within 1 1/2 month.
Please check it out steamcommunity.com/groups/cratf2
I would greatly appreciated if you would like to comment on it or any suggestions or others although it was tough to run a raffle group we managed it perfectly so far and hoping to do so for a very long time. Also when the demand was extremely high for some raffles we had to add some slots even though we didn't want to. We make clean original sprays too for example:
Please check the group out i'm proud to say we have never scammed and never will.