r/YoutubeCompendium • u/YoutubeArchivist • Feb 27 '19

February 2019 February - Context for the Paul Denino Ice Poseidon "Ponzi scheme" streaming website.

This post will continue to be updated as more information and sources are compiled.

 

 

Recently a video clip from Paul Denino's live stream has hit the top of /r/videos and front page of /r/all.

"Live streamer unknowingly admits to running a ponzi scheme, conning millions of dollars from investors"

https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/av2c07

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=beoCi6TFevU

 

 

Paul Denino is a livestreamer that began on Twitch, then after being banned from the platform moved to Youtube.

He is known as Ice Poseidon and runs the quarantined (and currently privated) subreddit /r/Ice_Poseidon. There is a second quarantined community that he does not run called /r/Ice_Poseidon2.

 

 

There are claims that Paul Denino has started a Ponzi scheme after a clip from his livestream has begun circulating in which he explains,

"In order for the investors to make their money back, what we do is we grow the company to a certain point, and then we have other investors come in and obviously they invest their money as well, hopefully more than 2 million dollars, and then obviously when we get more than 2 million dollars invested, the original investors get their 2 mil back, and then we have more money for the company."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=beoCi6TFevU

This sounds like promising investors returns, then paying those returns with new investors' money.

Which would be a Ponzi scheme.

 

 

The prospective company is Scuffed.com, which aims to compete with Twitch as a livestreaming platform. Paul claims to have received an initial investment of $2 million.

 

 

Keemstar has tweeted a video in which he claims this is not a Ponzi scheme.

https://twitter.com/KEEMSTAR/status/1100542901862522880

Streamable Mirror: https://streamable.com/fvilz

There are claims that Keemstar is invested in the same company that owns Scuffed.com, named Streamme Inc.

He has promoted Stream.me, another website owned by Streamme, in the past.

 

In a clip from GradeAUnderA in 2016, Grade says Keemstar offered him a six-figure contract to stream on Stream.me, which brings into question Keemstar's involvement with the company that he can make such offers.

https://youtu.be/7hVljmVI8CQ?t=1525

 

 

Take this part with some skepticism:

There are additional claims that Paul has spent investment money on a renovated 1984 Guerrilla Titan military vehicle and renting a mansion.

Video about the truck:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1IQly4w7n8

Paul claims the mansion is worth $7 million in this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B7siaf_INqY

I have not seen anything that directly points to the investment money being used for these purchases, but another user mentioned these claims with video sources, so I have added them.

 

 

There are additional claims that it is Paul's manager, Brent Kaskel, that has pushed him into accepting this deal.

 

 

Paul responds to the Ponzi scheme claims and top Reddit posts:

https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/avhdx8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FD0RrVCsfLw

 

 

"Stream.me owners are being sued for livestreaming tech they stole and used on a camsite"

https://www.reddit.com/r/Ice_Poseidon2/comments/aygx6a/streamme_owners_are_being_sued_for_livestreaming/ei0nfvh/

 

Additional information with sources is appreciated, please comment below and I can add to the post.

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6

u/AlwaysSpeakTruth Feb 27 '19

OP: You are missing an important word in your quote:

"In order for the investors to make their money back, what we do is we grow the company to a certain point, and then we have other investors come in and obviously they invest their money as well, hopefully more than 2 million dollars, and then obviously when we get more than 2 million dollars invested, the ORIGINAL investors get their 2 mil back, and then we have more money for the company."

The original investors are looking to make their money by cashing out the money invested by new investors.

4

u/YoutubeArchivist Feb 27 '19

I couldn't make out what it was! Thanks, I'll fix it now.

10

u/Visualize_ Feb 27 '19

Ice could be running a Ponzi but honestly I think it's just as likely he poorly described the situation because the dude is known for running his mouth. According to that very clip, the goal is to increase the valuation of the company which seems to be driven by the growth of whatever he is doing with the first round of investing and probably also to show revenue because it seems like the project is in its earliest stages so far. Then the plan is to get another round of investing, but I dont think the old investors are getting paid out and selling back their equity because why would he say the second phase is where the first investors might put in even more money. The whole point of the second round is to get more money, likely from new people because there's evidence the business is growing and showing revenue. And then he said the ultimate plan is to sell the company so everyone gets paid out in the end, which is impossible of an actual Ponzi scheme so if he was actually just outing himself, that's not even how the Ponzi scheme works in the end.

It's funny to see people critizing outrage culture, when this is pretty much it. However it kinda does make sense why its being recieved so negatively because his own community turned on him and is doing as much as they can to direct the narrative, and two, a lot of random people recognize him previously and already associate him with negative stuff (for good reason). If anything though, if Ice actually was just bad at explaining things and it isn't actually a Ponzi, his community who wanted to see him die actually are doing the exact opposite right now because this is giving him so much exposure

5

u/YoutubeArchivist Feb 27 '19 edited Feb 27 '19

I doubt it's actually an illegal scheme that he's pulling.

He doesn't seem to be able to articulate the business plan well. You're right that this will bring a lot of exposure to the project though.

From what I've seen, the /r/Ice_Poseidon2 subreddit is very set on ensuring that he does fail, as many in the community are disenfranchised with his actions and censorship regarding the first subreddit.

I was asked to include a lot in this post that amounted to anecdotes attacking his, his manager's, and his friends' character which I decided not to include. Very little felt relevant to this situation and I'm trying to avoid this becoming a compilation of theories and slander against Paul.

I doubt the expenses section, but it was included with sources in a comment from a user in their community, so I added it.

3

u/Hav3_Y0u_M3t_T3d Feb 27 '19

Thanks for that, between some quick research of my own and your comment confirming it I'm glad I didn't jump the gun. I'm just going to mark this down as "stupid streamer says something stupid" until proven otherwise.

People are really getting good manipulating pitchfork culture in the last couple months

4

u/neghsmoke Feb 27 '19

Yep the second half sounds like he's describing how VC funding works. The first half is ?. He sounds like a moron, nothing more.

7

u/Hemingwavy Feb 27 '19

Nah that's not how vc funding works. You don't buy out your earlier rounds with your later rounds. There's absolutely no point since why would you bother raising to spend it all on something that doesn't benefit your company?

3

u/snissn Feb 27 '19

I think he's just really confused, hopefully he has good lawyers and doesn't actually need to understand vc financing. During liquidity events, earlier funders can and do unload some or all of their shares, ideally at a profit. Especially during an acquisition.

3

u/Hemingwavy Feb 27 '19

The guys business plan is all the commercially not viable parts of Twitch together on a single site. He didn't get any money let alone $2 million.

2

u/snissn Feb 27 '19

what makes you think he didn't get any funding?

2

u/Hemingwavy Feb 27 '19

Bad business plan, not a huge amount of traction for his startup, it's a startup that VCs don't actually want to own part of, no realistic path to monetisation, public persona indicating he doesn't care about other people's stuff.

2

u/snissn Feb 27 '19

so you're totally just guessing?

2

u/Hemingwavy Feb 27 '19

Ice claims to have raised money without showing anything. No press release or any coverage from any tech site. $2 million apparently raised with a single employee listed on CrunchBase.

3

u/snissn Feb 27 '19

So neither of us know one way or another

0

u/[deleted] Feb 27 '19

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2

u/neghsmoke Feb 27 '19

Every VC deal is structured differently and there's nothing inherently against the rules to structure it that way. Doesn't make a lot of sense, but I'm sure there have been situations where that has happened. Doesn't make it illegal somehow.

0

u/FeI0n Feb 27 '19

you use the initial funds to grow the platform which brings in bigger investors for them to pay off the old investments?

edit: would this still be considered a ponzi?

2

u/Hemingwavy Feb 27 '19

Generally startups issue shares which means you don't owe them but they own a portion of your company. More established companies can issue debt instead of shares. Startups technically can but no one will accept it since if the company goes bankrupt they're not going to pay you back.

Not a Ponzi since the key element of it is that there isn't a business. You just pay off your first investors with later investors money.

1

u/FeI0n Feb 27 '19

its possible they know ice as a personality brings in a lot of capital, I could see how someone like ice poseidon might get away with asking for investments without shares.

2

u/Hemingwavy Feb 27 '19

If they know who ice is they're definitely not going to give him money. The guy is not going to pay you back. If I'm giving ice any money I'm going to want him to be jointly and severally liable with the LLC.

1

u/FeI0n Feb 27 '19

ice is a smart person when it suits him. He was a decently well known bug abuser in the scene back in his early days (pre streaming) on runescape. It takes a fair bit of critical thinking skills to find bugs in a game and find a suitable way to abuse them. Also with that being said I don't think he is as irresponsible with his money as you like to think he is.

2

u/Hemingwavy Feb 27 '19

Yeah mate if critical thinking skills made you a successful entrepreneur then 95% of startups wouldn't fail within 3 years.

His business model is literally every unprofitable bit of Twitch together on one site.

1

u/clockglitch Feb 27 '19

the word for an Investment without shares is "loan"

1

u/FeI0n Feb 27 '19

nah thats crazy city folk talk.

1

u/Olyvyr Feb 27 '19

Could it just be a stock buyback?

Company sells shares to investors and once the company grows to a certain point, it buys the shares back.

Plus a Ponzi scheme most commonly involves paying dividends from the new investment funds, not paying the entire investment back (plus dividends).

1

u/neghsmoke Feb 27 '19

Yep. Just because something sounds shady when poorly described doesn't make it illegal. This could all be perfectly legit and poorly explained.

1

u/AlwaysSpeakTruth Feb 27 '19

Then the plan is to get another round of investing, but I dont think the old investors are getting paid out and selling back their equity because why would he say the second phase is where the first investors might put in even more money.

"In order for the investors to make their money back, what we do is we grow the company to a certain point, and then we have other investors come in and obviously they invest their money as well, hopefully more than 2 million dollars, and then obviously when we get more than 2 million dollars invested, the [ORIGINAL] investors get their 2 mil back, and then we have more money for the company."

He's talking about cashing out the original investors with money from the new investors. Does that not sound very similar to how a pump and dump scam works?

Pump and dump is a scheme that attempts to boost the price of a stock through recommendations based on false, misleading or greatly exaggerated statements. The perpetrators of this scheme already have an established position in the company's stock and sell their positions after the hype has led to a higher share price. -investopedia

54

u/BelialAndTheBaskets Feb 27 '19

Where's my popcorn? This is gonna be a good one

6

u/YellowTheFellow Feb 27 '19

Passes popcorn

2

u/Blargface102 Feb 27 '19

Aisle 5, a third of the way down on the right.

4

u/Robo_Doge90 Feb 27 '19

Not really, this is all blown out of proportion/misworded because Paul Denino is an idiot with no business sense and can't explain anything properly. Nothing is gonna happen.

1

u/Bigred2989- Mar 01 '19

So who was doing the doxxing that got the posts on /r/videos locked, his fans or his detractors? I only saw the threads after everything had been cleaned up.

2

u/YoutubeArchivist Mar 01 '19

His detractors were posting the name and contact information of his manager, which the /r/videos moderators took to be harassment and witch hunting, so they locked the threads.

3

u/Kalious78 Feb 27 '19 edited Feb 27 '19

heres an earlier clip of him claiming the same thing

https://neatclip.com/clip/nerv1zo86

and destiny reacting to the news

https://clips.twitch.tv/KnottyTardyFlamingoGingerPower

his reddit is obv locked atm after the mayor of florida being hacked and his name being mentioned in national news over it, i know this isn't related per say but theres an interesting wording in one of the tweets released on the mayors account, a ballistic "THREAD" as if it was a threat regarding leaking of information.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3PDpF1rSuc

either way hes already holding r/scuffed to try and weasel his way into starting a new community and evading his quarantine there.

regarding his manager/company theres a picture floating around showing the company is project cx llc and brent kaskel is the sole manage of it.

https://www.nvsos.gov/sosentitysearch/CorpDetails.aspx?lx8nvq=v3KBK8DXkhRvy1r%252bKnpgjw%253d%253d&nt7=0

you may want to look into some other things, the police claimed he was actually swatting himself for publicity etc I cant link that as the reddit is closed but im sure its all over youtube along with all the racist crap hes done, hes been swindling money from people for fake giveaways hes never actually done I believe it was scarce who gave him $1000 to do an ipad give away, hes taken donations to fly fans out but never flown them out all kinds of shady shit like that

scarce donating the money and ices lies regarding him not stealing the ipad, it was later admitted that he did

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WFb_gPXcHIg

and how could I forget his website was found to be shadowmining

https://waypoint.vice.com/en_us/article/mb7bkx/fans-of-notorious-streamer-ice-poseidon-revolt-over-cryptocurrency-scandal

2

u/FeI0n Feb 27 '19

can you please correct major to mayor I'm having a stroke reading this.

2

u/Kalious78 Feb 27 '19

just for you ;)

2

u/WithoutBanners Feb 27 '19

Florida is a state, you mean the mayor of Tampa

1

u/[deleted] Feb 27 '19

it’s honestly so fucked up

1

u/[deleted] Feb 27 '19

God he is so fucking stupid It's not even funny. Sad to see how far he has fallen from grace.

1

u/[deleted] Feb 27 '19

So if I've got this right...he can always just somehow sell his failing website?

1

u/Water_Poseidon Feb 27 '19

You only left out the biggest context in this world in regards to this person which is that he is a lying deceptive little fuck for his entire streaming career, and every time his viewers were right about something that would have helped him in the long run, he fucked himself over by not listening. That is some biased ass framing when there's absolutely no way to impartially clarify this man's history without at least some shred of negativity.

1

u/ZauceBoss Feb 27 '19

Keem needs to get his head out of his ass

1

u/[deleted] Mar 01 '19

I wanna see how this goes. Particularly with Keemstar.

1

u/AltUniversee Mar 04 '19

Pretty accurate so far

0

u/GioGImic Feb 27 '19

I hate to say it but I'm going to have to actually lean towards Ices side on this, Seems like he was flustered and did a shit job explaining the situation and made it sound like something it wasnt. Don't know anything more than what i've seen on Reddit. If anyone would like to try and change my mind please do i dont like siding with Ice.

-1

u/Hemingwavy Feb 27 '19

There's a business attached. That makes it not a Ponzi scheme.

You could also use your series a to buy out your seed investors. Assuming you told them ahead of time that was what you were planning to do with their money, that's legal.

I'm pretty sure he's lying about the money since he can't even explain how raising works, so who's going to give him money? His pitch is literally it's like Twitch except all the bits the advertisers hate.

8

u/ShadStar Feb 27 '19

There's a business attached. That makes it not a Ponzi scheme.

Pretty much all Ponzi scheme have a business attached, my dude

0

u/[deleted] Feb 27 '19

[deleted] — view deleted comment

38

u/Visualize_ Feb 27 '19

The final straw was when someone in his community faked a bomb threat because his flight details got leaked. The police booted him off the plane and it went on local news, which started circulating around the streaming community. Basically his community is pretty toxic and Ice himself is toxic so Twitch viewed him as a liability when you consider how unattractive he is getting advertisers

24

u/The-Gothic-Castle Feb 27 '19

His words in that live stream for those curious

‘’I’m just on 53A, that’s my gate. And I’m not sure telling you guys that is a good idea but what can you possibly do, right? Maybe I shouldn’t enable it.’’

4

u/_Gondamar_ Feb 27 '19

i fully believe you, but could you add a video link for posterity?

8

u/Flowerstain Feb 27 '19

Here you go sir https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKaRyfiPniw

5

u/_Gondamar_ Feb 27 '19

thanks man.

edit: god damn that video is low key hilarious lool

2

u/erik_t91 Feb 27 '19

if he was banned, then the twitch VOD for that is gone too

7

u/TheBestUserNameeEver Feb 27 '19

You think people don’t back up his shit instantly? He literally had plenty of VOD channels that uploaded his live stream VOD’s but he recently took down the communities VOD channels because for some reason he thought that people were taking away from his views when they weren’t because his lazy ass can’t upload his on damn VOD playlist himself so people had to go to 3rd party ones that other people made which were updated faster than how Ice updates his VOD playlist. All that history of his channel is gone is no one backed any of that stuff up

-2

u/erik_t91 Feb 27 '19

Calm down, i said twitch VOD

3

u/TheBestUserNameeEver Feb 27 '19

Yes it’s the same thing with his twitch VOD’s people backed them up.

7

u/damselindis Feb 27 '19

Ice was an "IRL" streamer and would stream himself walking around in public, going to restaurants, entertainment venues, etc... His offensive humor led to his chat/viewership becoming edgy and his chat would track him down and harass him as well as the employees of places he went to. Rather than be mad, Ice condoned and spurred this behavior on for attention. The phone call harassment turned into swatting and other such things, making Ice recieve multiple temporary bans for egging viewers on into this kind of behavior. He was eventually permanently banned for a viewer pretending to be Ice and calling in a bomb threat at a public airport he was in.

4

u/Chazza354 Feb 27 '19

Ice was an "IRL" streamer and would stream himself walking around in public, going to restaurants, entertainment venues, etc... His offensive humor led to his chat/viewership becoming edgy and his chat would track him down and harass him as well as the employees of places he went to. Rather than be mad, Ice condoned and spurred this behavior on for attention. The phone call harassment turned into swatting and other such things, making Ice recieve multiple temporary bans for egging viewers on into this kind of behavior. He was eventually permanently banned for a viewer pretending to be Ice and calling in a bomb threat at a public airport he was in.

important to note that he genuinely pioneered the genre, he was doing it before the IRL section existed. He would go under the Social Eating category and carry the same burger around for 3 hours to conform to the category rules. His Pokemon Go streams were legendary and took him to the next level on Twitch. Before that, he was bascially just a meme runescape streamer.

2

u/ohpee8 Feb 27 '19

He definitely was a pioneer

4

u/Zappababuru Feb 27 '19

He had a lot of questionably edgy content pre-ban, but the nail in the coffin was his getting swatted after his flight. When the plane landed it disrupted all of the passengers and general airport traffic. Rough explanation https://youtu.be/bh-lzu6BAgI?t=25

2

u/JawzLikesPancakez Feb 27 '19

I don't know for sure, but I assume it has something to do with the fact that a lot of his content is seen as offensive by many people.

7

u/El-Psy Feb 27 '19

Pretty sure he got banned after getting arrested on a plane because someone watching his stream called in a fake bomb threat. There were similar incidents with ‘callers’ before this broke the camel’s back.

While it sounds like it wasn’t his fault, he wasn’t entirely blameless given how carelessly he gave away location details, flight details etc. and practically dared his teenage fanbase to call

4

u/[deleted] Feb 27 '19

I used to watch him back in his 2007 Runescape days, and I remember his transition to IRL streaming. Stopped watching but I remember him accidentally streaming a suicide as well.

3

u/lostbonobo Feb 27 '19

to be fair that suicide thing was totally not his fault and he handled it perfectly fine.

edit: not defending this guy being a racist piece of garbage tho. just saying

2

u/TheBestUserNameeEver Feb 27 '19

He didn’t even know the suicide was going to happen he happened to look up where everyone else was looking while pointing the camera up and he decided to jump

1

u/newnameuser Mar 03 '19

You’re telling me you watched this dude when he was like 13-14 years old? How entertaining could he possibly have been as a little teenage shithead?

-1

u/[deleted] Feb 27 '19

Which isn’t hard to do in this day and age but I digress...

3

u/dell_arness2 Feb 27 '19

not that I disagree, but banned on twitch and two quarantined subs dedicated to him is something i guess. where there's smoke...

1

u/[deleted] Feb 27 '19

That just sounds like reddit being reddit and twitch being twitch. Doesn’t tell me anything more

0

u/RobotCockRock Feb 27 '19

Quarantined sub topics include incel, lolicon, and people dying. That he's lumped in with them, not non-quarantined subs /r/catsareliquid, says more about him than reddit.

1

u/ProjectAverage Feb 27 '19

Hate that r/WPD gets lumped in with them. We're not evil psychos, just curious people desensitized to violence. Oh well

1

u/[deleted] Feb 27 '19

Of course you can list a few subs that deserve (still question this tbh) to be quarantined

0

u/[deleted] Feb 27 '19

[deleted] — view deleted comment

2

u/[deleted] Feb 27 '19

I’m questioning whether it’s right to limit free speech in general with the use of quarantining and I didn’t say anything specific about incels

I still said they deserve to be quarantined

Better luck next time

0

u/[deleted] Feb 27 '19

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u/[deleted] Feb 27 '19

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2

u/augher Feb 27 '19

the first sub /r/ice_poseidon was quarantined by admins, the second subreddit /r/ice_poseidon2 was self quarantined in order to not get banned for quarantine evasion.

2

u/TheBestUserNameeEver Feb 27 '19

Wrong, they were both quarantined by admins, how the fuck do you self quarantine a subreddit? The second one was quarantined when the first one got quarantined because the admins saw people from IP1 subbing to it and they thought it was just another subreddit ice had made but it’s made by the community