Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Lifnlsdlsdnf/Archive

Report date May 14 2009, 22:31 (UTC)

 * Suspected sockpuppets


 * Evidence submitted by Dynaflow

This pertains to the discussion at Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents (permalink). The user in question shows a pattern of creating accounts, editing financial-sector articles for a short period of time, and then moving on to a new account to repeat the pattern. This, of course, would not normally merit a checkuser; however, the discovery that some of these accounts have inserted plagiarized material into the encyclopedia (e.g., this vs. this) and have been engaged in subtle POV-shifting and corporate promotion (e.g., adding mentions of Rockwick Capital and Cohen and Stein and promoting certain bond schemes) points to a need to get a complete picture of this user's fragmented and widely-dispersed edit history to thoroughly audit it. Since the listed accounts are just the ones we found looking through the histories of articles edited by already-found socks, this could likely be just the tip of the iceberg (most concerning is the plagiarism from copyrighted sources). There is also concern that the user is promoting some sort of dicey scam, er, financial vehicle. Also, because the accounts are abandoned after use, there is no reliable way to communicate with this user to tell him or her to modify his or her behavior. I believe the use of checkuer is justified in this case by the need to see 1) if there are additional socks which have inserted copyrighted material into articles, 2) if there is a sockmaster account with which we actually can communicate, and 3) if there is a stable, underlying IP or small IP range that can be blocked if necessary to put a stop to the abuse. --Dynaflow   babble  22:31, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

Definitely a scam. Use this search to search Wikipedia for "Rockwick Capital":
 * Evidence submitted by


 * 1) Standby l/c -- A Standby L/C is a financial product invented by Kai Lassen of Rockwick Capital in 1965, by which a client can obtain a letter of credit …
 * 2) Mt760 -- An MT760 is a SWIFT message type code for evidencing a bank guarantee (BG) usually issued by Rockwick Capital and funded by Al-Waleed. …
 * 3) Al-Waleed bin Talal -- a fortune through selling Medium Term Notes, Bank Guarantees, and Standby Letters of Credit, through his law firm/broker, Rockwick Capital. …
 * 4) Ng Teng Fong -- Singapore's early billionaires, Eliya Thamby, and by trading Medium Term Notes, and by funding Standby Letters of Credit for Rockwick Capital. …
 * 5) Andrew Forrest -- He made his fortune funding Standby Letters of Credit for Rockwick Capital.''
 * 6) Demand guarantee -- The largest issuer of SBLC's is Rockwick Capital. ...
 * 7) Medium Term Note -- are sold and purchased through MTN law firms/brokers, the largest being Rockwick Capital, Cohen & Stein and Goldman Sachs. …
 * 8) Letter of credit -- Only a small number of broker/lawyers provide these instruments, such as Rockwick Capital or Cohen & Stein.

The three individuals mentioned are all notable billionaires with no documented connection to "Rockwick Capital". Those articles have been fixed, per WP:BLP, with references to "Rockwick Capital", etc. removed. Other articles have been edited or marked for deletion. I may not have found all the relevant articles. This all seems to be part of a scheme to use Wikipedia to make a scam look legitimate. --John Nagle (talk) 02:00, 15 May 2009 (UTC)


 * Comments by accused parties    See Defending yourself against claims.

Added User:Lin;lknoi, User:Intfinanceabc, User:Yuyfffh, User:Lifnlsdlsdnf, User:Kierulff666, User:Jimpattyu Delicious carbuncle (talk) 23:58, 14 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Comments by other users

Requested by --Dynaflow   babble  22:31, 14 May 2009 (UTC)
 * CheckUser requests


 * - While I have blocked all the above named accounts, I can almost be sure there is more to this story than meets the eye. I suspect that there are more socks, and think that a IP block is in order. Also, some thought these may be Primetime socks, though I have not had a chance to look into that yet. Tiptoety  talk 05:05, 15 May 2009 (UTC)


 * Clerk, patrolling admin and checkuser comments

This is not Primetime. I have blocked a few more socks, but I am starting to think there might be more than one person behind these. There are at least four ISPs in what looks like multiple states. As such, an IP block isn't really possible right now. Dominic·t 05:33, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

All accounts tagged and blocked. Icestorm815 •  Talk  06:14, 15 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Conclusions

Report date May 16 2009, 19:38 (UTC)

 * Suspected sockpuppets


 * Evidence submitted by User:Zigger


 * Blueblue1878: single-purpose account, unsourced takeover rumours
 * 155.135.55.229: unsourced "DXB/IBM" assertions, some on BLPs May edits


 * Comments by accused parties    See Defending yourself against claims.


 * Comments by other users


 * Clerk, patrolling admin and checkuser comments
 * The editing patterns along with the content added to the articles in question does not really match up with those done by banned . Also, a CheckUser was ran on the 15th (Blueblue1878 was registered on the 13th) and the account did not get picked up during that check. As such, I am fairly confident these accounts are unrelated. Tiptoety  talk 19:45, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

Please see my comments above. Tiptoety talk 19:45, 18 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Conclusions
 * Sounds good. Archiving the case.  —  Jake   Wartenberg  23:14, 18 May 2009 (UTC)