Board 8 > Jakyl, remember that Page 2 chick who wrote about gambling (Sarah Phillips)

(+) Yeah! (+)

That I was majorly crushing on...

Well, I'm guessing you can already guess where this is going!

http://deadspin.com/5906658/is-an-espn-columnist-scamming-people-on-the-internet

http://deadspin.com/5906849/sarah-phillips-admits-she-concealed-her-identity-made-poor-choices-with-who-to-trust-update

I didn't read the whole thing because it's really convoluted and I don't honestly care THAT much, but well, I guess this is what happens when ESPN acknowledges the existence of gambling!

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Yeah, I read all that last night.

F***ing CRAZY story.

I'm STILL not sure what the bottom line truth to this all is.

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Thank you, Eddie Guerrero.
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I read this before I went to bed last night

One of the more convoluted internet things I've read lately

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HAIL THOMAS

At the end of the day, I'm just glad the NBA Memes kid got his page back.

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Thank you, Eddie Guerrero.
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More on the entire insanely intricate scam:

http://nilsenreport.ca/2012/05/01/former-espn-columnist-sarah-phillips-exposed/

http://www.awfulannouncing.com/2012-articles/may/the-sarah-phillips-mystery-goes-way-beyond-espn-and-into-the-farthest-reaches-of-the-twitterverse.html

http://www.awfulannouncing.com/2012-articles/april/sarah-phillips-and-nilesh-prasad-connection-traces-back-to-sheldon-high-school.html



"Yes, a fake Willy Wonka account is the key cog in a story about a fired ESPN columnist. Welcome to 2012."

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Thank you, Eddie Guerrero.
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So... is she real? Or is she not.

That's a whole lot of reading to do for something I don't really care about, I'm just curious about the tldr version

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http://28.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lcb35gGx0t1qailr4o1_500.gif
http://www.megavideo.com/?v=57N0YAEJ

There is a real girl involved here, yes, but to what extent is not entirely clear (is she just the face of the scam? is she behind the scam? where does she end and the other guy begin in all these correspondences with other IP creators? Is the third guy even real?)

It's a REALLY fascinating read if the concept of a scam getting so big that ESPN even bought into it sight unseen interests you.

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Thank you, Eddie Guerrero.
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oh it's interesting

but you want me to read like an entire essay about it when you can just say "girl said she is a writer. guy is actually the writer but using her because she is a pretty face. proceed with getting paid tons of money for this".

>_>

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http://www.megavideo.com/?v=57N0YAEJ

We don't even know if that's true though.

Beyond that, the way the whole operation was basically fueled by their status at ESPN to rape and pillage other on-the-rise content creators is just so crazily evil in execution!

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Thank you, Eddie Guerrero.
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Man this is insane.

I still can't get past the stuff where her Dad's addresses are being used for things. Does that mean he knows about this? Or is she/they just praying that noone actually sends anything there?

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(Maniac64 at work)
All the proteins, vitamins, and carbs of your grandma's best turkey dinner, plus 15% alcohol.

Well, if she's really a 22 year old college student, it's entirely possible that her dad's address IS her address, at least for part of the year.

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http://dudewheresmyfreedom.com/

So, I now join Deadspin in having spent entirely too much time thinking about this.

Here's my working theory so far, based largely on this unnamed source from a more recent deadspin post.

One source who knows both of them said the two "are intertwined."

Nilesh had a very methodical way of doing research to make a bet. Always talking about how he knew high end sports betters and would get advice. Sarah just bet on things Nilesh told her to bet on. He knew everything and did all of the "research." They are both very inteligent . Sarah is the sarcastic one and Nilesh is the very direct and analytical one. She may be writing some but Nilesh was always the leader.

They were always together even worked together at one time.

My guess is that Sarah Phillips is a real person, a 22 year old who grew up in Eugene and is currently attending OSU in Corvallis. I'm comfortable saying with absolute certainty that whoever controls her Twitter account is currently living in Oregon, because there was just WAY too much specific stuff about OSU and U of O throughout the football and basketball season. Sarah seems to have been a poster on the covers.com forums, and at some point was asked to write a column there. I never visited that site or read that column, so I can't say entirely.

If the source can be trusted that Nilesh was the more analytical/statistical mind and that Sarah was more of the sarcastic pop-culture style of writer, it would at least make sense that the ESPN column was probably co-written by both of them, with Nilesn providing the meat in the form of all the obscure statistics (her early columns were almost entirely reliant on things like "The Jets have won 14 of their last 18 games on grass following a loss") and Sarah probably spinned those up into an entertaining to read piece with a few Jersey Shore references thrown in for good measure and to sell that she was really a young woman (because that's what young women care about, right?

So, at some point this 22 year old college student who just a few months ago was just a message board poster is now finding herself a no-**** ESPN columnist. That's a completely ridiculous thing to happen and she was probably overwhelmed and reached out to her friend with superior knowledge to help her out. All of that makes perfect sense to me.

Now, as far as the scamming goes, that's where it gets tricky. It's possible that she was just young, immature, and stupid, and tried to completely take advantage of an amazing situation for a very short-term small gain (remember, this is a 22-year old college student we're talking about here). It's possible that her and Nilesh are some sort of ridiculous Internet hucksters who do this sort of thing all the time. Her defense (slightly less plausible) will probably be that Nilesh did all of the nefarious stuff on his own, having been given her passwords to all of her various accounts because he was a "trusted friend."

I think it's almost guaranteed that she'll be giving an interview to Deadspin sooner or later, once she has time to try and cover all of her tracks and put together a plausible narrative. Crazy shenanigans aside, "she" still has fans, 60k+ twitter followers, and name recognition (even if some of that is going to be negative). I don't think she just walks away from all of this and tries to live the rest of her life as some normal Psychology undergrad.

Should be interesting to see how it plays out.

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SmartMuffin - Because anything less would be uncivilized - http://img.imgcake.com/smartmuffin/barkleyjpgde.jpg
http://dudewheresmyfreedom.com/

The Kings twitter feed continues to deliver!

https://twitter.com/#!/LAKings/status/197816241996570624

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SmartMuffin - Because anything less would be uncivilized - http://img.imgcake.com/smartmuffin/barkleyjpgde.jpg
http://dudewheresmyfreedom.com/

Why did I read all of that.

I'm interested now.

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Sack Up Or Shut Up™

It's like, I know it's such a stupid thing to care about. But right now I think I care about this story more than any other in the world.

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SmartMuffin - Because anything less would be uncivilized - http://img.imgcake.com/smartmuffin/barkleyjpgde.jpg
http://dudewheresmyfreedom.com/

I still wonder what their endgame was for accumulating all of those scammed Twitter accounts and webpages under the "Sports Comedy Network."

Did they legitimately intend to build such a thing and then sell it to ESPN for millions later (and along the way steal content the way they did instead of cutting legitimate deals with content creators), or was it really just a front for small-time scamming just to rake in the minor amounts of dough that other people were already raking?

--
Thank you, Eddie Guerrero.
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From: SmartMuffin | #012
60k+ twitter followers

About that...

http://www.wagerminds.com/blog/sarah-phillips/sarah-phillips-deadspin-exposes-the-fraud-5803/

I love Deadspin's new banner for the story too:


--
Thank you, Eddie Guerrero.
http://www.wwe.com/f/styles/photo_large/public/photo/image/2012/04/33_Moscow_04112012jg_02128.jpg

Here's my biggest confusion.

If it really was Sarah Phillips doing the posting and stuff at covers then why use a picture of a classmate on her first article? She's already an attractive girl, so why not just use your own pics as she did later?

That's the thing that makes me most suspicious about her really being involved. At least at the beginning.

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(Maniac64 at work)
All the proteins, vitamins, and carbs of your grandma's best turkey dinner, plus 15% alcohol.

This story is remarkable and I'm not even halfway done yet.

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Ace Detective in Sir Chris' Police
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From: muddersmilk | #018
If it really was Sarah Phillips doing the posting and stuff at covers then why use a picture of a classmate on her first article? She's already an attractive girl, so why not just use your own pics as she did later?

Given that we KNOW there is a real girl named Sarah Phillips involved in this, that Nilesh would (at the very least) have had access to pictures of the whole time, I honestly believe the "I wanted to cover my identity so that prospective future employers wouldn't link me to illegal gambling websites" story.

Because even if you presume that it was all Nilesh doing the writing in the beginning, it's not like he would have had to use fake pics of Sarah, since it's been documented that their friendship dates back long before this.

Then the enterprise got big enough that she probably thought that it wouldn't be an issue anymore, since ESPN is a lot more legit than Covers, and went with real pics/videos.

--
Thank you, Eddie Guerrero.
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From: Jakyl25 | #016
I still wonder what their endgame was for accumulating all of those scammed Twitter accounts and webpages under the "Sports Comedy Network."

Did they legitimately intend to build such a thing and then sell it to ESPN for millions later (and along the way steal content the way they did instead of cutting legitimate deals with content creators), or was it really just a front for small-time scamming just to rake in the minor amounts of dough that other people were already raking?

I can't stress enough that she's a 22 year old college student. Don't most people that age with that little experience occasionally have random "GREAT IDEAS" like that? I'm guessing there actually was an intent to build such a network, but it turned out to be harder than they expected, and so it just stopped with the small-time scamming. It'd be interesting to know just how much money she was making from ESPN. I have to imagine it was more than any of the small-time scamming, which makes you ask why someone would risk so much for so little, which leads credibility to the idea that the scamming was all Nilesh. He also has potential motive, given that in this scenario, she is getting all the hype, credit, fame, and probably most if not all of the money from something that was probably largely HIS work.

From: muddersmilk | #018
Here's my biggest confusion.

If it really was Sarah Phillips doing the posting and stuff at covers then why use a picture of a classmate on her first article? She's already an attractive girl, so why not just use your own pics as she did later?

That's the thing that makes me most suspicious about her really being involved. At least at the beginning.

http://deadspin.com/5907349/meet-nilesh-prasad-sarah-phillipss-scamming-partner-and-supposed-puppetmaster-%5Bupdate%5D?tag=sarah-phillips

Looking at those pictures, I'd say she's attractive, but not THAT attractive. When she first started with covers, she probably had NO idea that it would lead to anything like this, so I can see making a snap decision to randomly include a picture of someone more attractive knowing that she's pandering to a lonely male audience. I always found it kind of interesting that she showed so FEW pictures of herself on twitter, and the ones she did post were always kind of obscured.

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She should write a book. I'd throw down $30 for "The Sarah Phillips Story" no questions asked!

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SmartMuffin - Because anything less would be uncivilized - http://img.imgcake.com/smartmuffin/barkleyjpgde.jpg
http://dudewheresmyfreedom.com/

Can't let this purge just yet!

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http://dudewheresmyfreedom.com/