BeerDrinker [2140025] —
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An inside look at the VicoXan scam via an exclusive interview with Zachjuv.
Xanax is the great leveller in Torn City. Whether you're a new player or an old-timer, it's the one item you'll likely need more than any other. Unfortunately, at present, the entire Xanax market is controlled by one man alone: Zachjuv. And to put it bluntly, this man is a ripoff merchant.
"I don't consider it a scam. I'd say it is much more akin to buy mugging than scamming."
We'll hear more from Zachjuv himself later. But for now, let's explore what we already know about this man. Zachjuv is someone you've likely heard of in passing thanks to his notorious activities. Even Chedburn is aware of him and has commented to the TCT that while scamming isn't condoned, his VicoXan ruse is actually a relatively harmless way of inoculating new players against more devastating tricks. So how exactly does it work?
Basically, since April of this year, Zachjuv has been purchasing up huge quantities of Xanax whenever the price is lower than the price in his bazaar - currently $842,932 per pill, as you can see from the screenshot below.
Thanks to his buying habits, Zachjuv has created a vitrual monopoly on the Xanax market. He told this reporter that he has a usual stock of "about 3,000" Xanax in reserve. Many players and big factions buy from him in bulk, and this allows him to sell 2000-4000 Xanax in one single day. He also buys the same amount per day to maintain his reserve stocks.
If Zachjuv were trading legitimately, he believes he'd be making around $1,000 profit per pill from this system. That may not sound like the greatest of margins on a product worth $842,932, but Zachjuv has another lucrative income stream which more than makes up for it. You'll notice the image above also shows how Zachjuv prices Vicodin at the exact same price as Xanax, despite its value being almost a hundred times lower - presently $9,312. This price is no mistake.
Zachjuv's trick is to mirror his Xanax price (and often the total stock) with that of his Vicodin in the hope that players will accidentally buy Vicodin at Xanax prices. To achieve this, Zachjuv places the overpriced Vicodin in the first slot in his bazaar, with the little white pills looking visually similar if one were to glance at them for only a second. This ruse may sound easy to avoid, but many players new and old fall for it on a daily basis. And rumour has it that at one point earlier in the year, even the mighty Duke was duped by Zachjuv.
Zachjuv told me that at the beginning of his VicoXan mission, this "trick" - which he calls Zanax - allowed him to sell 300 Vicodin a day at Xanax prices, raking in over 250 million dollars in profit. However, now that many players have caught on, he only sells about 10-20% of that amount a day - still a quite sizeable amount.
Many players have run to the forums to talk/cry about their mistake when the Xanax they thought they'd bought does not appear in their inventory. There are at least 100 posts in the bugs and issues forum related to this one particular scam, and the prevalence of new victims even prompted Ronin to ask the community whether "People actually fall for the Vicodin scam?" Clearly, they do. But far from being a scam, as some might call it, others, such as Sweeney_Todd, refer to this trick as an "idiot tax".
Because of the community's negative opinion of Zachjuv's victims, many were reluctant to speak to me in public. One anonymous player admitted that the reason he'd fallen for the VicoXan scam was his urgency to get rid of $300 million of on-hand cash - job done in that respect. But when he realised he'd been conned, the player contacted Zachjuv to plea for leniency. Zachjuv ignored him completely.
"It is rude to ignore people. That's what wound me up. 300m is nothing in the grand scheme of things. If he replied to his victims and gave a little back, that would earn him respect. I bountied him for a while, hospitalized him when I saw him online. Is it a scam? No. Is it a mean trick? Yes. I can see it takes an effort to maintain prices at the right level and the right number of drugs in stock, but I've no respect for him."
"Of course, it's a scam. But luckily for him, scamming isn't illegal in torn. Unfortunately, there's nothing to be done about it but player education. When I first spoke to him, he said: 'I give the money back to newer players but your wife should have known'."
An interesting revelation for sure. Does Zachjuv have a heart after all? Fellow victim Funkydunk told me that after some persuasion, Zachjuv gave him the Xanax he was trying to buy in the first place. Perhaps he isn't a soulless monster looking to bring every other player down to wrack and ruin. Maybe, as Chedburn once suggested, Zachjuv is handing out tough love lessons. Maybe he's our guardian angel,.
To find out if this is true, I asked an ally of Zachjuv what he thought of his activities. Hcom3 is a fellow reporter at the Torn City Times. More pertinently, he is also a member of JFA 2.0, the sister faction of Zachjuv's faction, JFA. He wanted to give his opinion on Zachjuv for the sake of balance, and because I am so nice, I agreed.
"It really depends on what you define a scam as. I do not see it as a scam. It might be a d**k thing to do, but just because someone took your money doesn't mean that its a scam. You just didn't protect yourself right."
Hcom3's assertion is incorrect. A scam is not defined as such by its victims' failure to prepare. If that's the case, is a hurricane a scam if it wrecks your house just because you forgot to buy insurance? No, the truth is that a scam is a scam if one player works deliberately to trick another, regardless of whether they are prepared or not. Buymugging may be a "d**k thing to do" and free from the scamming label, but the same cannot be said of the VicoXan trick.
Still, there seems to be a scale of opinions on Zachjuv ranging from those who believe he is the devil through to others who feel the victims are to blame. Many of those who have been tricked are unified in their belief that Zachjuv is a terrible human being. However, older players who have never fallen victim seem to be quite cold and unsympathetic towards those who have lost out. I wonder if they would feel the same if someone else came along and scammed them one day?
At this point, I wanted to find a neutral voice who could give us some clarity in this debate. Of course, nobody in Torn is truly neutral, but I there are some who many would consider reasonable and devoid of obvious bias. I also felt we needed to speak to someone from within the same industry as Zachjuv. And so, who better to turn to than Torn's renowned, somewhat retired trader, Hopslam.
"I have respect for the time and effort he has put into trade and bazaar, mostly because of all the time I spent there as well. I see what he is accomplishing with the bazaar. But at the same time, he is profiting greatly off knowingly and purposefully setting up his bazaar in a way that players often make mistakes."
"I am not totally against that. He is just taking advantage of a situation, but I also see it as kind of a negative success. People see that and I think a majority would see that success in a negative manner."
It is interesting that while Hopslam admires and respects Zachjuv's legitimate trading efforts, he does not entirely begrudge him his VicoXan scam, even if it results in something of a hollow victory. With these comments, we are still no closer to figuring out whether Zachjuv's actions constitute a scam or stupidity on the part of others, nor whether he himself is truly immoral, or mostly okay with a hint of caramelised evil.
I suppose it's time to ask the man himself. First, I wanted to know how Zachjuv began this nefarious scheme, and how he expanded his VicoXan operations to become one of the top guys in the Xanax market.
"I had no idea it would work as well as it did when I started. Hedas did it first, and I was buying Xanax for him. However, he got busy and I, all of a sudden, had all these Xanax runners bringing me Xanax and nowhere to sell it. I was drowning in Xanax, so I started doing it myself."
"I've never had serious trouble with cash flow or managing any stock of items for the most part. Occasionally there's a random huge burst of supply at the same time I invested heavily into a stock or other items. I do have access to people who will loan me a few b without questions, so it doesn't affect me as much as it should.
When I asked Zachjuv how he controlled the market so well, he replied quite bluntly that he "pays the most". Furthermore, it seems that while in the early days he worked alone, Zachjuv did imply that he may have one or two employees today. Regardless of whether he does or not, it seems that many small traders now rely on Zachjuv to make money, since they are able to buy Xanax at one price and sell it on to him for profit. So if Zachjuv wasn't scamming people, many other legitimate traders may lose out, and the price of Xanax itself could rise as a result.
Does that revelation make what Zachjuv is doing morally righteous? Is he a bad person? Let's find out what he thinks.
"It certainly isn't the cleanest practice but I feel like it fits into the game we are playing. I have some base rules about giving it back to noobs and poor people if they ask nicely. I don't want to take more than 10% of someone's networth or from people under 100ish days."
"If it's a bigger player that asks for a refund, I generally politely decline until they threaten/attack/bounty or w/e and say something like 'sorry that's not how this works'. If they do threaten me, or attack/bounty, I tell them something that was started as kind of a joke thing that I said but it became kinda true. "You can laugh and the Vicodin can be the joke, or you can be mad and you can be the joke." Most are just blowing off steam and I let them, but when they get mad and/or start attacking then JFA gets to see it all."
The fact that Zachjuv has JFA backing him up makes this scam more frightening than it seemed before. A screenshot of one of the lone revenge attackers was shared with us here, with Zachjuv seemingly finding their efforts amusing rather than threatening. However, if someone goes too far, as Assassin96 did, Zachjuv's retribution can be brutal.
"I feel a little bad about the last guy because that guy quit. He did insult my grandma though and then went on to spend his entire ~400m networth bountying me and quit."
A rare moment of guilt; does this provide further evidence that Zachjuv has a heart? Perhaps, perhaps not. The old adage that there is honour among thieves seems to ring true, given that Zachjuv has a code dictating who he refunds and how he responds to them. That alone deserves some respect, even if it does pale into insignificance next to his history of skullduggery.
But when all is said and done, perhaps it is a fool's errand to attempt to categorise someone like Zachjuv. Many players believe that his actions are unforgivable and that Zachjuv is a criminal. Others respect him, or at the very least they begrudgingly acknowledge his accomplishments. Either way, it doesn't really matter. Zachjuv will continue to do whatever he feels he needs to make a little money.
Still, while the refunds may help him sleep at night, and he may believe he's doing some kind of service to the community, the fact is that Zachjuv will never be loved. He may be playing Torn how it is supposed to be played. He may be buying in completely to the criminal spirit of the city in which we live. But if Zachjuv were to quit tomorrow, would a tribute post appear in the forums? Or would his spot simply be taken by another wannabe scammer.
Who can say? This reporter is merely speculating wildly. I hold none of the opinions expressed in this article. I just love munching on premium 840k Vicodin.
"I don't consider it a scam. I'd say it is much more akin to buy mugging than scamming."
We'll hear more from Zachjuv himself later. But for now, let's explore what we already know about this man. Zachjuv is someone you've likely heard of in passing thanks to his notorious activities. Even Chedburn is aware of him and has commented to the TCT that while scamming isn't condoned, his VicoXan ruse is actually a relatively harmless way of inoculating new players against more devastating tricks. So how exactly does it work?
Basically, since April of this year, Zachjuv has been purchasing up huge quantities of Xanax whenever the price is lower than the price in his bazaar - currently $842,932 per pill, as you can see from the screenshot below.
Thanks to his buying habits, Zachjuv has created a vitrual monopoly on the Xanax market. He told this reporter that he has a usual stock of "about 3,000" Xanax in reserve. Many players and big factions buy from him in bulk, and this allows him to sell 2000-4000 Xanax in one single day. He also buys the same amount per day to maintain his reserve stocks.
If Zachjuv were trading legitimately, he believes he'd be making around $1,000 profit per pill from this system. That may not sound like the greatest of margins on a product worth $842,932, but Zachjuv has another lucrative income stream which more than makes up for it. You'll notice the image above also shows how Zachjuv prices Vicodin at the exact same price as Xanax, despite its value being almost a hundred times lower - presently $9,312. This price is no mistake.
Zachjuv's trick is to mirror his Xanax price (and often the total stock) with that of his Vicodin in the hope that players will accidentally buy Vicodin at Xanax prices. To achieve this, Zachjuv places the overpriced Vicodin in the first slot in his bazaar, with the little white pills looking visually similar if one were to glance at them for only a second. This ruse may sound easy to avoid, but many players new and old fall for it on a daily basis. And rumour has it that at one point earlier in the year, even the mighty Duke was duped by Zachjuv.
Zachjuv told me that at the beginning of his VicoXan mission, this "trick" - which he calls Zanax - allowed him to sell 300 Vicodin a day at Xanax prices, raking in over 250 million dollars in profit. However, now that many players have caught on, he only sells about 10-20% of that amount a day - still a quite sizeable amount.
Many players have run to the forums to talk/cry about their mistake when the Xanax they thought they'd bought does not appear in their inventory. There are at least 100 posts in the bugs and issues forum related to this one particular scam, and the prevalence of new victims even prompted Ronin to ask the community whether "People actually fall for the Vicodin scam?" Clearly, they do. But far from being a scam, as some might call it, others, such as Sweeney_Todd, refer to this trick as an "idiot tax".
Because of the community's negative opinion of Zachjuv's victims, many were reluctant to speak to me in public. One anonymous player admitted that the reason he'd fallen for the VicoXan scam was his urgency to get rid of $300 million of on-hand cash - job done in that respect. But when he realised he'd been conned, the player contacted Zachjuv to plea for leniency. Zachjuv ignored him completely.
"It is rude to ignore people. That's what wound me up. 300m is nothing in the grand scheme of things. If he replied to his victims and gave a little back, that would earn him respect. I bountied him for a while, hospitalized him when I saw him online. Is it a scam? No. Is it a mean trick? Yes. I can see it takes an effort to maintain prices at the right level and the right number of drugs in stock, but I've no respect for him."
KingTorofNorway, who was happy for us to reveal his identity, disagrees with our anonymous victim by claiming Zachjuv's actions do indeed constitute a scam, but one which requires players to be dumb to fall for it. He thought that our exposure of Zachjuv's work was a good thing, since it may help boost awareness and further reduce the victim count.
Another player who was happy to speak to me in public was st0ner, but this is most likely due to the fact that his fiance who was tricked, not him. How mean. st0ner would not describe Zachjuv as being like Hitler, but he does feel his actions demonstrate he feels no honor towards his fellow players - unless, it seems, they are newbies.
Another player who was happy to speak to me in public was st0ner, but this is most likely due to the fact that his fiance who was tricked, not him. How mean. st0ner would not describe Zachjuv as being like Hitler, but he does feel his actions demonstrate he feels no honor towards his fellow players - unless, it seems, they are newbies.
An interesting revelation for sure. Does Zachjuv have a heart after all? Fellow victim Funkydunk told me that after some persuasion, Zachjuv gave him the Xanax he was trying to buy in the first place. Perhaps he isn't a soulless monster looking to bring every other player down to wrack and ruin. Maybe, as Chedburn once suggested, Zachjuv is handing out tough love lessons. Maybe he's our guardian angel,.
To find out if this is true, I asked an ally of Zachjuv what he thought of his activities. Hcom3 is a fellow reporter at the Torn City Times. More pertinently, he is also a member of JFA 2.0, the sister faction of Zachjuv's faction, JFA. He wanted to give his opinion on Zachjuv for the sake of balance, and because I am so nice, I agreed.
"It really depends on what you define a scam as. I do not see it as a scam. It might be a d**k thing to do, but just because someone took your money doesn't mean that its a scam. You just didn't protect yourself right."
Hcom3's assertion is incorrect. A scam is not defined as such by its victims' failure to prepare. If that's the case, is a hurricane a scam if it wrecks your house just because you forgot to buy insurance? No, the truth is that a scam is a scam if one player works deliberately to trick another, regardless of whether they are prepared or not. Buymugging may be a "d**k thing to do" and free from the scamming label, but the same cannot be said of the VicoXan trick.
Still, there seems to be a scale of opinions on Zachjuv ranging from those who believe he is the devil through to others who feel the victims are to blame. Many of those who have been tricked are unified in their belief that Zachjuv is a terrible human being. However, older players who have never fallen victim seem to be quite cold and unsympathetic towards those who have lost out. I wonder if they would feel the same if someone else came along and scammed them one day?
At this point, I wanted to find a neutral voice who could give us some clarity in this debate. Of course, nobody in Torn is truly neutral, but I there are some who many would consider reasonable and devoid of obvious bias. I also felt we needed to speak to someone from within the same industry as Zachjuv. And so, who better to turn to than Torn's renowned, somewhat retired trader, Hopslam.
"I have respect for the time and effort he has put into trade and bazaar, mostly because of all the time I spent there as well. I see what he is accomplishing with the bazaar. But at the same time, he is profiting greatly off knowingly and purposefully setting up his bazaar in a way that players often make mistakes."
"I am not totally against that. He is just taking advantage of a situation, but I also see it as kind of a negative success. People see that and I think a majority would see that success in a negative manner."
It is interesting that while Hopslam admires and respects Zachjuv's legitimate trading efforts, he does not entirely begrudge him his VicoXan scam, even if it results in something of a hollow victory. With these comments, we are still no closer to figuring out whether Zachjuv's actions constitute a scam or stupidity on the part of others, nor whether he himself is truly immoral, or mostly okay with a hint of caramelised evil.
I suppose it's time to ask the man himself. First, I wanted to know how Zachjuv began this nefarious scheme, and how he expanded his VicoXan operations to become one of the top guys in the Xanax market.
"I had no idea it would work as well as it did when I started. Hedas did it first, and I was buying Xanax for him. However, he got busy and I, all of a sudden, had all these Xanax runners bringing me Xanax and nowhere to sell it. I was drowning in Xanax, so I started doing it myself."
"I've never had serious trouble with cash flow or managing any stock of items for the most part. Occasionally there's a random huge burst of supply at the same time I invested heavily into a stock or other items. I do have access to people who will loan me a few b without questions, so it doesn't affect me as much as it should.
When I asked Zachjuv how he controlled the market so well, he replied quite bluntly that he "pays the most". Furthermore, it seems that while in the early days he worked alone, Zachjuv did imply that he may have one or two employees today. Regardless of whether he does or not, it seems that many small traders now rely on Zachjuv to make money, since they are able to buy Xanax at one price and sell it on to him for profit. So if Zachjuv wasn't scamming people, many other legitimate traders may lose out, and the price of Xanax itself could rise as a result.
Does that revelation make what Zachjuv is doing morally righteous? Is he a bad person? Let's find out what he thinks.
"It certainly isn't the cleanest practice but I feel like it fits into the game we are playing. I have some base rules about giving it back to noobs and poor people if they ask nicely. I don't want to take more than 10% of someone's networth or from people under 100ish days."
"If it's a bigger player that asks for a refund, I generally politely decline until they threaten/attack/bounty or w/e and say something like 'sorry that's not how this works'. If they do threaten me, or attack/bounty, I tell them something that was started as kind of a joke thing that I said but it became kinda true. "You can laugh and the Vicodin can be the joke, or you can be mad and you can be the joke." Most are just blowing off steam and I let them, but when they get mad and/or start attacking then JFA gets to see it all."
The fact that Zachjuv has JFA backing him up makes this scam more frightening than it seemed before. A screenshot of one of the lone revenge attackers was shared with us here, with Zachjuv seemingly finding their efforts amusing rather than threatening. However, if someone goes too far, as Assassin96 did, Zachjuv's retribution can be brutal.
"I feel a little bad about the last guy because that guy quit. He did insult my grandma though and then went on to spend his entire ~400m networth bountying me and quit."
A rare moment of guilt; does this provide further evidence that Zachjuv has a heart? Perhaps, perhaps not. The old adage that there is honour among thieves seems to ring true, given that Zachjuv has a code dictating who he refunds and how he responds to them. That alone deserves some respect, even if it does pale into insignificance next to his history of skullduggery.
But when all is said and done, perhaps it is a fool's errand to attempt to categorise someone like Zachjuv. Many players believe that his actions are unforgivable and that Zachjuv is a criminal. Others respect him, or at the very least they begrudgingly acknowledge his accomplishments. Either way, it doesn't really matter. Zachjuv will continue to do whatever he feels he needs to make a little money.
Still, while the refunds may help him sleep at night, and he may believe he's doing some kind of service to the community, the fact is that Zachjuv will never be loved. He may be playing Torn how it is supposed to be played. He may be buying in completely to the criminal spirit of the city in which we live. But if Zachjuv were to quit tomorrow, would a tribute post appear in the forums? Or would his spot simply be taken by another wannabe scammer.
Who can say? This reporter is merely speculating wildly. I hold none of the opinions expressed in this article. I just love munching on premium 840k Vicodin.
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