#181 Did we find out who scammed us out of a digger?

Six years ago we bought this abandoned piece of land in Portugal to try and find another way of living. And so far we have been building up our base camp, renovating old ruins and clearing the land of invasive species so native trees can grow. And in this video we're going to continue just that. But we also might have found the person behind the digger's camp. Welcome to a new project camp update. So it's summer here in Portugal. That means one thing for our landscaping team and that is fire season. They have a restriction on power tools but more importantly Portugal is very prone to forest fires as you might know. So before the season starts our landscaping team wanted to create a nice fire break between the base camp and the middle land. So they did the first part of this patch in the beginning of the season and now they want to continue on the second part. The patch itself consists nothing special in terms of trees. It's mostly mimosa, cutting some brambles, freeing some native species. Nothing our landscaping team can't handle. But there are also a couple of structures in this patch which we need to take into account. So let's go up in the sky and show you what we got there. As you can see here the patch would create a fire break together with the first patch the landscaping cleared at the start of the season. We can divide it in three sub areas. The first one has the basin, the second one the sewage area and the third one has a brick ruin. So let's go back down to the ground to see what Jacob finds there. The basin is what we want to repair. We tried it before but we didn't really succeed and it didn't fill up even during the big rains in winter. So we cleared it in previous seasons but things grow especially fast when you have a lot of water available. So we want to clear inside and outside of the basin and around the basin so the workspace team can take over and take a look if they can maybe fix it. We have to be careful with the wall of the basin because it is kind of instable and sometimes big pieces break out and we don't want anyone to get hurt. We have a couple of leaning mimosas that lean onto native trees and onto the basin so we have to get creative when we cut them. And in the middle of all of that there's our well and our watershed so we want to protect it at all costs. But enough for now let's get started. Okay first day of cutting. We try to cut all of it. We're going to see if we succeed. We're going to start with this little group so we have a space where we can put the tops. Okay so now we're getting closer to our watershed and it's really really important that we don't mess this up because it's not only our drinking water but also in case of a fire this is our water source. Yeah so we have to be extra careful. We're going to try something fun. This is how the Portuguese people do it. They have these things and then you can try to pull the tree in a direction like this while the other person is cutting it. Yeah this is what we just want to support this tree up there to not fall in this direction and like make it fall in this direction. So Jacob here you go. Let's see if it works. Let's see if it works. Okay same thing here. It wants to go on the roof but we don't want it to go on the roof so perfect. As you can see the thin dry mimosas can be cut down by hand and the guys seem to have fun with it. So this one is sort of leaning towards our watershed. Nice. Pull it through until the carabiner starts to go in the air but don't pull it further. Yeah. You can go a meter further. That's it. And now pull it tight. Nice. Nice. Now you you and you go pull. We're not pulling in like this movement. We give a constant pull okay. Okay. Because if we give the tree the movement it can break in the other direction. Okay. Nice one. Boom. Good job Chloe. That was too easy. Our neighbor Antonio kindly offered to take the trunks away for a stove in the winter. Since we're getting more and more comfortable with a chainsaw we decided to get a little bit more creative with the cuts. This one is definitely more on the dangerous side so please make sure to don't try that without a professional. The tree is also leaning in direction and there's nothing surrounding it that we could potentially hit. It seems like we're stepping out of this safety first zone. No but we're learning maybe some cuts that could come in handy at some point. Yeah. Yeah. And then you just set down the chainsaw and cut through it. Okay. Not really safe doing it like that but there are there are instances where this cut can come in very handy. For example if it's kind of stuck up there then it might go below it and then it will fall. Okay. Be aware that the tree is then standing and not in control. Well the execution was not the best. Definitely not a 3.5 out of 5 yet. This one this is our test example because we have a couple of very leaning ones so we want to try to build like a pulley system with two rolls. No, two pulleys. It's not rolls in English, right? So I'm gonna attach this rope to the rope which we use to pull over the trees all the time and then hopefully we're gonna be able to pull with way more force and we're gonna try it out here and then we do it there where it's way more heavy. When we pull on this rope then we basically have a two-to-one advantage. Yeah and once this setup works we can just put in our throw line, our pulling line connected to the other trees and pull them all in this direction. Tension. A lot of tension now. You want help pulling? Let's go. This one is really leaning in the opposite direction so it's going to take quite some pulling to get it into the right direction when it falls down. The landscaping team kept working through the afternoon and almost finished before the end of the day. Okay, we're done. Good job. Wow, almost done. There's still four left. We're on overtime now so I guess we do that tomorrow. Yeah, four left. I mean I thought we make it all but no, really good job guys. Disappointed. So tomorrow four trees and a little bit of cleanup and then this patch is done. Yes, big progress. To start the day our neighbor Antonio came back to pick up more of yesterday's remosa wood. One thing we notice with neighbors is how they work. They work slowly but with the wisdom of many decades of experience. Not a wasted move to preserve energy. Also quite handy if you're a bit older. This will fall onto the road onto the intersection and these three are all leaning towards the oak so we're going to guide them exactly in between them so everything stays safe. It's an eight meter gap. You're skilled. Skilled laborer. Easy work. Yeah, we're going to be able to do it. I agree. All right, so that's it for one third of the patch. Nice job landscaping team. For now, let's continue to the granite room behind me because from what I've heard Dave did quite some research on the digger scam. So let's see what he found. So it's time to talk a bit more about our digger scam update. So for those that are not aware a few years ago we bought the digger and then we got scammed and ever since we've been trying to find the scammer. It's been quite a long ongoing process. Kind of fun and interesting as well to see how it works. But what we got recently was that we managed to hack into their email account which was pretty cool and then we had more contacts of people they've been in touch with and we found many more victims. So overall over a hundred thousand euro they scammed other people. And in this update we have some new information. It turns out to be quite big and complex and we might actually have a face to put on the scammer. Maybe. Let me show you. So we got scammed by this company called RDS Plant and right after we got scammed the website got offline. But we noticed another website was popping up in the same online platform where we were searching for our digger with the similar approach of you can buy diggers imported from the UK. Very similar. So yeah this was another scam that popped up there newly. So yeah they just continued scamming. And after we released our last video we got the community finding a few other suspicious other accounts popping up. And we've been investigating and finding more about them. So for the overview let's start with RDS Plant. The one that scammed us. So this one had a connection to JJ Plant Sales because they used similar text and technical setup. And this one was connected to CMC Plant where we found the other listings online from Bosnia, South Africa and Google reviews of people actually getting scammed. So for sure it's online now but they for sure have been scamming people. Then this JJ Plant Sales which is still running online now is also connected to Iron Tech in the Netherlands. And this one is connected to Heavy Lift Europe because they all share the same text. So all of these companies have very similar setups. Technically they have to use Zoho email, they copy paste a lot of text from each other. Quite sloppy because they leave traces here and there. And they also always pretend to be someone that they're not. So the first three ones are really impersonating another company or person. So RDS Plant is Keap, JJ Plant is Brian and CMC Plant is Nigel which are real people running an actual company. And this scammer just pretends to be them. So it's probably quite damaging for them as well. And the last two Dutch ones they do it slightly different because they're not connected to an actual Dutch organization. But they just copy paste exactly another organization in the Netherlands. So for instance here you can see the about page of the original one in the Netherlands which is a legit company. And they just copy paste their about page, their address and so they just pretend to be them under a different name. Okay so this operation seems much larger than we originally thought. First we thought it was just us being scammed. Then we realized it's more people scammed by the same company. And then we realized it's actually many more companies. So there are probably many more victims out there. But so we figured okay now we have all these websites, companies, a lot of have contact information. Maybe we go and call a few just to see what comes back. Bad start. So now we have the newer ones we found from the Netherlands actually. So maybe time to call. I can try to put on my Dutch accent. Well that's exciting. Starting chat on the Whatsapp. We even have a track with the logo on it. Wow it's real. Okay okay that's a better start. We could send a message. We want that. Let me see if they reply. They're still active I guess. So we have this. Now we need to wait. Okay yeah so unfortunately no one picked up the phone. But remember this other company we talked about in the beginning of this video. The Advanced LTD. The one that even made us realize there might be other companies out there scamming. We didn't include this in the summary because it's a slightly different route. But it might actually be the route to find the person behind the scam. So let me show you what we have there. So they have just this website with a lot of diggers selling stuff. But in their description they say buy used excavators and construction machinery at the lowest prices on towbags.co.uk. So there's probably some text that was there and they didn't take it out. And this towbags.co.uk has the same address as the one from the Advanced International. And even on Yelp the reviews they sort of mix it up which they post themselves. So it's quite messy but it's pretty clear that it's linked to this other company called Towbags. Which is also dissolved and doesn't work anymore. But you can still find traces online. But yeah so it's very likely that they are connected to this other group we just talked about. But we don't really have any clear proof. They also use like Zoho email for instance. But it's not a clear proof like the other ones where it's directly copy-paste. But this one, the Towbags, is interesting because it's of all of these ones the first that got sought up. So it's probably the one they potentially started with. And this is registered on an actual name. So it's not impersonating another one like all the other scams. But it's really connected to a real person called Kateryna Doroshenko from Ukraine. So it could just be a person having a company. But it's a bit suspicious because this person has 385 companies registered under her name. That's more than the richest person in Ukraine. And this person also has some articles online that they are being told that they are a scammer. Or that they are being charged to be a scammer. There's an article that her sister says she is a scammer by a journalist. So there's a lot of indications that this person or this name is a scammer. And for sure this one is linked to Towbags. Which is for sure linked to Advanced International. The only thing we don't have super 100% clear is if that's also linked to this other group. So now we have these two groups. They are for sure both scamming people. And with one potentially a trace to an actual person that set it all up. So what's next? We have a lot more information. We put everything online in a document that you can find. Also with timelines so you can see when was which one set up. And we have a more in detail report that can be used for the police or people with serious investigation. But that's a bit more sensitive information. So the public one is more for everyone to use. So I would say have a look. And you can find it on rdsplan.co.uk. This website that we stole from the original scammer. So yeah I think this is a moment where the community can really help out to find more. So yeah this takes quite some time to dig into this. But it's also kind of fun and interesting to understand how scammers work. And in the end the goal is to try to find the scammer. But also make sure you don't do this and not more people get scammed. So if you can find some more information or what would be really valuable if we find more victims. So together we have more information and we can see if it all matches up. More evidence. But we'll just continue to dig and let's see where this leads. I have no idea. But that was the update for now. Thanks for watching. All right that's it for this update. Special update video. So yeah special announcement regarding these weekly videos that we share with you guys here on YouTube. Because something is going to change. And for two reasons. Let me explain. The first one is it was really cool to make these weekly update videos. Because when we arrived here on the land seven years ago there wasn't much there. So every week you saw a lot of progression. It was like one week you had water. The next week you had solar. Then you had electricity. So very clear simple steps each week. By now the project got way different. Many more people involved. Many more projects at the same time going on. Some super difficult. Some very easy. But trying to put that together into an interesting coherent weekly video is is just quite complex to do. And besides that also the work is sometimes we just have a bunch of people working to clear a mimosa patch. The first time you see it it's fun. But after that you guys notice it's not that fun anymore to see these mimosas being chopped. But realistically it's the work we have to do. So yeah overall the whole system and complexity and dynamic in camp changed. That makes it a bit complex to make these weekly videos. And second reason for a change is that actually if we really wanted to we could provide you a nice weekly update video on YouTube. Puzzle it all together. All the complex projects and things we're doing. To make sure you have a fun video to watch. But it's not really our mission to make weekly update videos. We want to figure out how to live sustainable. And we happen to document it along the way. But we've been noticing that more and more time and effort goes into these weekly update videos. Because it takes quite some time to onboard new people. How to film. And then you have video editors that need to put it all together. And this every week. It just consumes a lot of time that system. So what that means for you guys. This is actually the announcement. Is that we're not going to post weekly videos anymore. But we're going to post them bi-weekly. So every other week you can see a video. Which means we can filter out a bit of the boring stuff more. And it also means we just have to spend less time in filming editing. And can focus that time more on our future work and our mission ahead. Either way we do continue to post an update to our patrons. So every week you do find an update. But it's just not a video. But some pictures and text. Which is way easier for us to make. But then you can still stay up to date with what we're doing. I hope this is gonna work out for you and us. That we have enough time to do our long-term mission. And you feel like you can still continue following our journey. Not sure how it's gonna go. Let's see. But yeah. That's it. Special announcement. Thank you guys for watching us all the way from the beginning until where we are now. Still a long way to go. But thank you for joining us. All right ciao!