Moar scams

Moar is the trademark of Duncan Oldhams recent scams away from LFC. Seeing his koptalk website losing hundreds of members a year, he knows he need another foot to stand on, and he has known this since the big exodus in 2006, about when this blog started. The revenue from koptalk is falling by the month so Dunk is trying to establish a new revenue stream from a totaly different group of people who know nothing about his football scam site. And this is where his Moar network comes in to play.

Having played around with videos and podcasts for a while on koptalk, Dunk entered the vlogging scene primo 2007, about the time when he was planning to move to Spain. He joined a few sites, but ended up on LiveVideo trying to build up a base of “friends” that he would later try to get over to a paid site of his own. He portraited himself as a successful businessman with a love for Mercedeses, hence his username “MrMercedesMan”.

After a while, having groomed quite a few people into his lies about himself and his lavish lifestyle, he slowly but surely started to talk negative about LiveVideo. His purpose was to unsettle his “friends” so that they would be ready to jump ship when he set up his own vlogging website. In April 2008 he registered the moarvideo.con domain, and he created a “temporary” vlogging site on the Ning platform, calling it a “project website” which was just going to be used a few months while the REAL moarvideo site was being built. His first deadline was put up in this blog post:

9th May 2008

Actual build of website commences Monday 12th May 2008. The Project Manager has set a deadline of 5 months for the initial build. From that point the site should go live for testing purposes. Invitations will be offered to select people to test the various features and general functionality. Once the site goes live to the public, the design team will continue to work on a monthly basis improving the site and adding more… more…new features, in other words this is an ongoing project so everyone won’t just down tools at the 5 month stage.

We are financing this project with the aim of only recouping the build and ongoing running costs. There are no investors or shareholders. The mission is to break even. There will be 2 memberships made available. A free membership and a paid for VIP membership. Free memberships will be supported by advertising on the member’s channel pages etc. Free members will have a limit on the file size of videos uploaded. Paying VIP members (supporters) will be able to opt out of the advertising and will have additional perks such as larger file sizes, access to a private discussion forum etc. Revenue from the VIP memberships will be used to pay for the hosting, 24/7 admin and moderation plus other site related expenses.

Admin/Moderators will be onsite 24/7 and will be contactable by instant message i.e. Skype, Windows Live Messenger, Yahoo Messenger etc. There will also be direct telephone support available with contact numbers in America, Australia, Ireland, the UK and others.

All new accounts created – both free and VIP – will require admin approval to help prevent abuse. There may be limitations on what a newly created free account can do in terms of posting messages/comments, until he/she has verified that they have a genuine account. Abusive accounts will be terminated immediately when discovered. Basically if someone is attacking a member, a member can inform us and within a few minutes we will be able to terminate the offending account(s). All videos submitted to the website will require approval by admin (an actual human).

Further updates will be added to this blog when available. Please check back on a regular basis and make your friends aware of this project. We need your support to help get this project off the ground.

Of course, 5 months later there was no site in sight. He was asking for donations though, and claiming he spent $1500 a month on the development. His “project site” didn’t take off like he wanted it to, and of the more than 1000 “friends” he had on LiveVideo only a few hundred had bothered to make the move to the new Ning site. Most of the accounts there wasn’t even active, so there wasn’t much activity going on. Dunk had tried to create more activity by promising free VIP accounts to those who were regular contributors to the site. Like in this post:

How to claim a FREE VIP Membership to MoarVideo.coN

Posted by MoarVideo.coN on 6 September 2008 at 11:10am in MoarVideo.coN

Upload original video content on a regular basis to this project website and you will receive a FREE VIP membership to moarvideo.con when launched!

Original video content means work that you have created and not ripped from other sites.

Embedding video files from other sites does not count UNLESS you need to record using a livecam feature as that feature is not available on this project website but it will be on moarvideo.con when launched. If embedding videos because you need to record using a livecam feature, make sure you make it clear that the video you recorded is for moarvideo e.g. “Hai MoarVideo!”

When moarvideo is launched there will be 2 account options. A free account supported by advertising and certain limitations (e.g. 100mb per upload) and a VIP (paid for) membership which opts you out of advertising on your channel, you can upload bigger files, have crews, access to VIP only forums and much moar!

We expect that the VIP membership will be around $50-a-year and that will exist to generate revenue for the high hosting costs.

The sole purpose of moarvideo will be to cover the expenses/costs in providing it. There are no targets or aims and no intentions to make any form of profit.

The free membership will cover the needs of just about everyone but those who take the optional VIP membership will be supporting moarvideo. Those people will be rewarded with 24/7 instant online support. Their videos will also receive priority approval and moar.

We will hand out free VIP memberships to people that support this project website by uploading original video content base on the conditions above.

This is our way of saying thankyou for supporting us. The moar you help us now by participating and spreading the word, the moar chance we have of succeeding.

Or this:

We Need Your Help!
Posted by MrMercedesMan on 27 September 2008 at 11:59am in MoarVideo.con

If you want MV to succeed we really need you to help promote it. If you have a blog or if you vlog elsewhere please include a link to http://www.moanvideo.tv – we need to maintain interest until we launch. I’m noting the regular faces who are helping by contributing content and ideas etc. There will be future benefits to those who have remained loyal to this project.

The best way to support this site is by uploading as much original video content as possible. It keeps us all interested and it makes sure we have fresh content for casual visitors.

Isn’t there something wrong with the site when the owner has to beg his members to contribute, or when he has to promise them “future benefits”? It’s a sign of failure. If the site had been as popular and vibrant as Dunk wants his members to believe, then all this wouldn’t be necessary.

A couple of months later the first delay was official:

17 Nov 2008: The MoarVideo.com project manager estimates that it will be approximately February 2009 before we complete the design of the MV website. Work will then begin on the database structure. MV will not be ready to use in February.

All of a sudden there won’t even be a site for testing. It will just be the design that will be ready, and the work on the database structure won’t even have begun. That’s 9 months after they started on a site that was supposed to be up in 5 months.

By now some of his most trusted friends from the Inner Circle on LiveVideo had smelled the rat and buggered off. Some of them had even set up a site to show how easily it could be done. It probably took them a day or two. But Dunk was after all creating the most fantastic site the world had seen, well, at least if you believed his own praise for what he was supposed to be making.

As expected there weren’t any site or design or anything else ready by February 2009. The launch was delayed several times, and in August this was posted on his blog:

MoarVideo Heading For New Year’s Launch
11th August 2009 – By Dunk
MoarVideo.com should be live to the public either in January or February 2010.

‘Live’ is not to be confused with ‘launched’ as the website will be in BETA format which basically means it will be live and available for use but that bugs and other minor changes will have to be taken care of as and when discovered.

A limited number of invitations will be made available to admins and friends to test MoarVideo.com before she is opened up to everyone.

Once the site goes live and subsequently launches, the development of MoarVideo will not stop. We will continue fixing things and developing the site throughout 2010 and beyond.

After 15 month of development, the site that should be up in 5 months was still 5 or 6 months away from launching. Even the most supporting moarvideo members must have been wondering what had happened during these 15 month, and what he had got for the $1500 a month that Dunk claimed to be spending. Or did they? Some of these people seem to swallow any shit that comes out of Dunk’s gob, without hesitating for a second.

3 months later, in November 2009, Dunk uploaded a video where he said that the development of the site was put on hold until the new year because of the global credit crunch. He would review it on January 1st and decide what to do then. Then he continued to say that even if he decided to go on with it, it would take another ten months to build the site. The site that was supposed to be up in 5 months will, after 18 months of work, and with three months left before it was to go live, need another 10 months work? But he also says he will move to moanvideo.com on a Youtube clone in November, allegedly because he likes to do what he wants with his content and reply to video the way he likes. What he doesn’t say is that he wants more control than he will have on Ning. He’s known to log IP’s and keeping track of his members so he can shut down any critics that may appear, and block IP’s of those who dare criticize him. He also doesn’t mention that he needs to get away from Ning to introduce the paid VIP membership.

A month later Dunk was ready to launch his out-of-the-box site. It was based on a script called ClipShare, and the cost would have been $317 if he bought the special bundle with life time upgrades. He also launched the VIP membership. For $39.99 a year you would get these features extra:

WHY GO VIP?

MoarVideo is funded purely from limited advertising and the occasional donation. By becoming a VIP member you will be helping us with our attempts to provide a safer, fun and friendly vlogging community with dedicated support. Every cent/penny received will go towards our webhosting i.e. servers, storage, back-up and bandwidth. Our aim is to break even but if we ever exceed our running costs we will invest further into the MoarVideo website.

VIP MEMBER FEATURES

* Unlimited uploads & unlimited storage space (within reason) unlike our free accounts

* Priority online support via our ticketing system or your preferred messenger e.g. Skype, MSN etc

* 24/7 direct line to admin for reporting any abuse or harassment from other members

* Priority approval on your uploaded content when content approval is turned on by the admins

* Guaranteed exposure within featured videos sections and front page of MoarVideo.com

* Promotion of your channel on every video on MoarVideo.com from time to time upon request

* Access to a private forum where you can interact with other VIP members (coming later this month)

* Can embed videos from other video sharing websites such as YouTube (coming later this month)

* Upload audio files to your MoarVideo.com account- not available to free account holders (coming soon)

* anyname @ moarvideovip.com email address to give to your friends

* Access to all all future perks and additional benefits that we introduce

* Satisfaction that you were a founding VIP member and participation in a very special family

Having read through that a few times, my thoughts were that you get nothing for that money. Nothing that you wouldn’t have on the old Ning site anyway. He even says: “MoarVideo holds the right to remove any VIP feature at any time without notice.” So basically all VIP features can be removed the day after you have paid for a year, and you won’t be entitled to a refund according to his “Terms of Service”.

A few days after the move, Dunk claimed to have 40 paid VIP memberships, and a few days ago he claimed to have 87. Most of his active members though would have been entitled to free VIP memberships because of the rewards Dunk promised to those who contributed on the “project site”. Take away those, plus Dunk’s 10+ accounts, and you will be left with a few dozens sock accounts that hasn’t even been logged into since the day they were created. Who will belive that these accounts are paid VIP memberships? Not me, and I guess there wont be many other either. And it looks like even more of Dunks followers have begun questioning the whole project. Have a look at Nomoar, and you’ll see that even kyhell, who used to be Dunk’s biggest supporter, is now asking questions about moarvideo. I have a feeling that setting up this out-of-the-box site and the paid VIP membership will turn out to be the biggest mistake Dunk has made during his vlogging scam project.