This thread must be the topic of the year, not the topic of the month. I've been away 24 hours and got more notifications than I've got when I posted the best stuff in my own journey thread... This is crazy, but I believe mods know what they do and have a good reason not to lock this thread (otherwise they'd do it already).
Actually I saw his blog, there is a picture of a trip to Vietnam on a motorcycle.
In Southeast Asia with 500,000 dollars you can live very well without working practically anything for the rest of your days if you manage this money well.
Sartre posted many different photos, apparently of different people too. Could the one with his motorcycle be the real Sartre?
funny someone makes an assumption he made 500k, now everyone takes it for granted like its a fact he made 500k and go on with new speculations based on that.
thats why i first suggested to wait instead of putting up wild theories as it just gets worse and worse. someone has a theory and anotherone takes it as fact and continues by adding own assumptions and so on and so on
It was me who made the speculation--and I meant it as a speculation. Now things even spinned-off, and some members claimed 1 million, or 1.5 million

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Surely it is all speculations, but you cannot deny some members here posted valid information about their deals with Sartre, his websites, origin of the pictures he posted on his sites, even Skype conversations with him etc.
So
while there is a lot of speculation here, there is also a lot of factual evidence posted here that can eventually help to shed more light on the entire issue.
I don't think he planned all this. He didn't plan to scam BHW members.
He was selling a service promising (Get in MV within 6 months or refund). I believe he knew what he was doing when he started the service and was confident about his service. In the last 6-months, Google made some updates which seem that hit his sites and client sites. The client wants refunds because he promised to. But seems like he decided not to refund and faked a "hack"... I hope I am wrong though! 10k is a lot of money tbh. And I know some BHW members that already paid for that service.
I hope is not but I am thinking to make a documentary on this.
If I had time, I'd join you in making the documentary. Because it is interesting, from so many points of view. And it will remain interesting, even if Sartre magically turns back

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And I share many of your sentiments, though I am not that sure he was confident about his service. If he was, why would he not accept PayPal payments for example? I know he said (besides of million other things he said) that PayPal closed his account once and held funds, but for someone like him (or who he claimed to be), with bank accounts and companies in 7 different countries, etc, it could not been a problem opening another and another PayPal account, could it???
Based on the info shared here so far, he took almost all his payments in crypto, where there is no chance to force a refund until the seller wants to grant it...
How did the buyers pay him? Had satre a real bankaccount or something like this as a business? Wouldn’t a scam be really hard with this setup?
He claimed to have bank accounts in about 7 countries as I remember...
I think his disappearance has convineint timing with "$10K A.I site" where the refunds are due around this time (said by somebody else).
Given his reputation, I think he probably sold 100-150 such A.I site packages. Now everything is failing, he probably thought its better to bail out than refund the $1M-$1.5M
I think he's set for life and he's not coming back, he's probably laughing at this thread from somewhere on the beach sipping Piña colada.

You grew my 500K speculation even further.
@itz_styx is gonna be furious

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Were you his client of that Black Friday Mediavine project?
Mate, RealDaddy is one of those guys on BHW who's main income is from his activity on the forum, and not any real IM activity. I think it isn't a secret for anyone sensible here... No way he ever had $10K to purchase the AI website from Sartre, or do any other business with him..
People comparing him to Sartre here (in any means of IM skills or knowledge or earnings) is by far the biggest speculation and joke on the entire thread. If Sartre reads this thread somewhere on Bahamas drinking pinacolada (as someone here speculated), he for sure couldn't stop laughing reading that.
Since this thread started, I've eaten two lunches and one dinner reading it. I love crime stories and this feels like I'm in the centre of one!
Waiting for the twists!
What I noticed he was really into psychology, using it as one of his main powers. It was family here, family there, my wife this, my wife that... he used "family" too much and it's easy to assume he knew it will get him much much more trustworthiness - a good father caring for a beautiful family.
If he really is a scammer (which I believe he is), then he is a good one, but far from the perfect one! He had a great pre-scam strategy, but didn't think much of post-scam events.
Regardless of whether he is a scammer or not, he's a genius when it comes to human psychology and selling. We can learn from it in a good way, and perhaps use this knowledge for something good...