Investigating the HypeDrop PC "Scam" (Again)
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- čas přidán 8. 04. 2024
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A few years ago, we investigated the lootbox website HypeDrop after receiving targeted ads for PC building enthusiasts. Today, we take a second look at their business model, spend $1,000 in box openings, and await any products we may have won. Come along for this wild ride!
Check out our original HypeDrop video: • Investigating the Hype...
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Just a quick update: the RAM has arrived. I didn’t mention it in the video because it wasn’t one of the two products we were told we wouldn’t receive. But for the sake of transparency, I wanted to be sure the audience was aware of what was delivered and what _wasn’t._ Thanks for watching!
hey greg i would suggest to go to your bank and report it as a scam or show them the messages that you received from those scammers.
hope you get your money back
thanks for your videos they have supported me through a bad time and now i am a pc freak haha
greetings from germany
Hey greg Big fan from Trinidad love the video's and hope you're having a awesome day
ever thought been cheeky email this video to them
I'll take the 5500 off your hands if you want to resell...
@GregSalazar my name's Gary I live in Scotland and I am always watching your videos just love learning about different issues you can get with pcs since I built my own pc in January last year so your videos help me out with ideas and that for my system keep up the good work and I will keep watching
Grab your emails and connect your credit card. Report the scam and get all your money back. They deserve to have government agencies go after them
Hope he gets the money back. Also people who scam others should go to jail for decades. I just hate evil human beeings and those need to get locked away.
the company is based in cyprus so that may be hard for the us government to go afte them
@@dawn1berlitz they can use their jets or something .
@dawn1berlitz can still chargeback
@@KevinEF that is if the site hasnt closed the account the charges went to
The “upgrade” button turning a CPU into a pair of shoes almost made me fall out of my chair 🤣
😂😂😂😂😂😂
Well they are worth more but still a 45% chance to get nothing is crazy
They do run faster.
its a gambling site, your not meant to go on there to get certain items, the upgrade feature you put in the multiplier you want and it uses the closest item on site value wise to the amount it would be, by default its set as 2x
its a gambling site dont see why this is so surprising lol
The South Park "aaand it's gone" clip very much applies here.
Lmao 😂 nailed it
Hype Drop also had to exit scam recently because the owner found the site to not be profitable and has since moved on to announce a v2 of the site where everyone's progression and rewards will be gone and also holding people's balance on his other sites and not allowing players to withdrawal. The owner is a complete scammer and exposed for his exit scams
Literally fraud. But they are shipping some of the cheap stuff for plausible denial purposes.
Dude we know. Its pretty obvious
@@retro5945 chill out they clearly just didn't watch the whole video
Was hypedrop not a csgo gambling site at first? It had a different name first but I can’t remember.
Not csgoroll btw, I just finished the video.
Pretty sure it was skinhub at first.
@@morrison1292 There are mutiple sites having the same business model but involving counter-strike skins. IRL item lootboxes aren't a new thing, ricegum and jake paul made videos about one of those sites and reportedly made 7 figures in one time payments. Hypedrops owner is also the owner of csgoroll which is heavily in critique in the csgo scene (but so are gambling sites in general). According to rumours the hypedrop owner tries to sell hydrop and his casino site hypeup since a few month ago and some people in the cs scene speculate their cs site will follow, soon.
Basically an unregulated slot machine. People will throw money away on just about anything.
Real life lootboxes
Watch it mister. I maintain slot machines. 😂
Literally better to go to a casino and play roulette or craps. Or blackjack, which gives you the best odds. But if they were smart enough to learn how to play blackjack well, they wouldn't be gambling on an unregulated site.
It’s truly astounding just how foolish people are.
Gambling addictions are real problems.
Cringy online gift box sites…. Yeah, I’ll pass.
Ever wonder how Vegas was built to have an oasis in the desert???? Yeah, the house always wins in the long run. Even if you figure a way to even the odds, they will ask you to leave when you consistently do well.
if u r just lucky they wont really but they would try and get u to stop by trying to offer u free stuff as that gives them time to win the money back or find out if u r cheating
It’s called gambling not give us ur money an we give u prize, it’s called pull out when you’re up, people have a addiction then blame a website when they lose
I never knew “PC Master Race” was a company and I bet the scam website owners didn’t either. I always thought it was just an online meme among PC gamers about how superior their platform is. That’s how I’ve seen it used and never in reference to a company called PC Master Race.
It's a trademarked brand, channel, and subreddit with millions of followers.
it’s PC master race till it’s on COD then it’s all crying in the comments lol
but i didn’t know it was a company either
I can’t believe this is something that even exists. So sad.
It is like buying a 40 series Nvidia GPU, you pay an absolute inflated fortune and receive something that is much less value than the performance. A thousand dollars for an old model aio and 5500 and some fans. That is brutal.
That we are floored that these things even exist says there are a few of us left in the wild with morals and ethics. It is just cherry machine gambling with a different product tied to it.
@@fuzzylumpkins6034 yes but degenerate gamblers the reason why this thing exist in the first place and i will never sorry for those kind of people
With casinos more available these days in the US than any time since the end of the westward expansion, it seems like blackjack or even roulette or craps would be a better bet for anyone really. If I took a grand to the blackjack table (closest one is about 5 miles from me), I'd have a good chance of walking away with a lot more money than I walked in with. Even going to the casino and playing the slots would make more sense. You are gambling with a black box that is not regulated by any governmental authority. Quite literally the definition of 'shell game'.
people want to believe they are special and they can be the "one" to get lucky.
@@AlexCS8You don’t need to feel sorry for them, that’s fine, but gambling has been studied and evaluated plenty. Gambling addictions are statistically harder to overcome than substance abuse disorders and result in a much higher rate of “unaliving”.
I myself became addicted at 14 years old on CSGO gambling and it took me almost a decade to break free. 10 years of losing every single dollar I made, it’s brutal.
Instead of getting that dopamine rush from winning from a loot box, just go to a real shop and look for something within your budget pay for em, then go home and cry at the beauty of your new PC parts also maybe about how much everything cost. Not that I'd know anything about that... 😭😭😭
But that's not gambling, that's commerce!
Well all I can say is whatever we pick, men do cry after finding out that our wallets are empty and we'll probably need to live off ramen and grilled cheese sammiches for months. 🤣🤣
Damn, I can't even access the website - says I've been blocked despite never been on the website.
LOL
my man took net 0 from the video
Because you watch Greg vids 😂
Oh lord lol
Same
How is this even legal? It's quite literally a slot machine...
As long as you are an adult and they actually send you the products you win then it's not illegal...It's just very stupid! lol
Very borderline illegal.
No no no friend you misunderstand. These are *loot boxes!* You can't win any money so it's not gambling. You're just buying *loot boxes* it's totally different.
Offshore registered businesses in Cypress, legally untouchable.
Just like when the Poker websites were big years ago. All off shore companies legally untouchable.
You said it yourself, it's a slot machine and guess what.. slot machines are legal
OmniFarious is a play on the two words Omni and Nefarious. Omni meaning "all" and nefarious meaning " Extremely wicked or villainous".
Yes. It is pretty obvious they are up to no good. But a lot of scammers will do stuff like that because they really only want to rip off ignorant and stupid people so it is easier to get away with it.
Glad I'm not the only one who found that a lil alarming
YEAH PICKED UP ON THAT RIGHT AWAY
If you sound it out it sounds like “I’m nefarious” with an accent. At least they’re honest.
sue them for those items that they did not send.
Dk how it is in america, but in EU i had no problems with reporting even small things like hair dryeer or vacum cleaner to the office of Competition and Consumer Protection and they would take it further to the point i either got my items or money or even additional compensation.
do you think they have a paper trail big enough for that lol
Suing these idiots is a waste of time. Looks like they are shutting down and most likely are going to be filing bankruptcy making getting your money back much harder.
@sol-hb8zg so? Once i recieved broken product, and the seller disappeared from auction site, closed their internet shop. Sure it took like year and some, but police caught scammers and ppl who reported things got compensated.
Do you think that he is the only one that did not get GPU, MOBO, CPU or any other hardware from that site? No! If enough ppl go to the police the better.
But as i mentioned, inhave no idea how police and overal gov things work in america when it comes to regullar common consumer protection.
I base my experience on german/austrian/czech/polish laws in last decade of (A LOT) internet purchases.
@@sajmon154 not disagreeing with you, more so a question
*I haven't heard/seen THEM scam anyone sorry.
I'm astounded that people even fall for sites like this.
To be fair the site literally shut down because they weren't/were barely making money. Even Greg almost won all of his money back somehow. They probably only refused to send the 4090 because they were already getting ready to quit. Seems like people were winning a little too much and they got tired of sending out the prizes it was too expensive. The house was not winning lol.
@@bestieswithtesties it was actually a 4070, not a 4090. If it were a 4090, they obviously would have lost money. It's a game of chance and it's still extremely scummy to not send out the 4070 because that would mean they only broke even, instead of robbing him blind.
to paraphrase PT Barnum, a mark is born every day. This is basically an arguably legal scam. It is thinly veiled gambling with far worse odds than a government regulated casino. They are shutting down because the US Federal Government is finally getting around to properly regulating online gambling. They will have to come up with a new business model to skirt new regulations. They may never even launch the v2.0 site. It is likely they will have to register as an online gambling business which I doubt the owner wants to do. They will find a new gray area to exploit, most likely. Meanwhile, they are doing an exit fraud, which is why Greg didn't get his 4070.
If you want to gamble, you learn how to play blackjack properly and go to a casino. Something like 90% of Americans live within a 2 hour drive of a casino these days, thanks to riverboat gambling and Native casinos. You can often catch a free shuttle from major population centers. Even craps and roulette would be a better bet than this website. You are gambling with an unregulated black box where the house can change the odds any time they want and swing it in their favor. A modern version of the shell game.
Failing to ship won items is an actual crime, called fraud. There is no problem with stock issues, they just want to grab as much cash as they can on the way out the door and are quite literally defrauding people to do so. Meanwhile, they'll ship the cheap stuff to make it look like they are trying to fulfill orders.
Problem here is that there is likely nobody to sue since the owner is likely based overseas. It sounds like they don't have any business assets in the US and Greg's 4070 money is likely already in a Swiss bank and/or a Bitcoin wallet. It is a shame he didn't try to withdraw crypto. You can learn how to set up a wallet from a 5 minute YT vid. My guess is he wouldn't get that either.
my buddy told me to try it one time and i did so i put $20 in and i pulled a overclocked 4080 on the rivals case he was opening, took out 800 to ethereum and i got every dollar, never went back tho lmao
They knew the site was shutting down so why wouldn't they boost the probability of winning items to incentivize spending more on the platform and then choose not to send the high value items.
Because they apparently plan on launching a 2.0 version that hopefully is a bit more profitable this time because the original was barely scraping by. If they completely ripped everyone off in a blatant exit scam they would ruin any chance of making a new site.
Greg, I am from Cyprus and the phone number looks like that is a Cypriot number in US format but missing a few digits.
The +357 is the country code for Cyprus and there should be another 8 digits to be a valid number.
So it seems that they just scrambled some numbers.
I also found the address and the company in case you are interested. 😂
living in 🇫🇮 and having +358
Give them a visit and tell them Greg wants his RTX 4070. lol
I stopped updating myself on PC tech almost 4 years ago and I still know everything there is know it's crazy how little innovation has occurred in pc tech as of recent
We hit a bottleneck for now when it comes to modern hardware. Even the gpu producers are way more into finetuning software with stuff like dlss and such. I personally think the biggest advancement will be in AI and hardware wise AR and VR glasses.
Haha, the "closure notice" has been updated, it's now set for June 26th. I think they might be on the "forever closing down so buy now" kind of business model.
This was a great video; definitely deserves more views! Thanks for the entertaining investigative journalism. :) would love to see more of these.
Who would have thought that a real world loot box, might be a scam...
You'd be surprised how many folks DON'T think that.
@@GregSalazar Regarding to that CPU, if you email support showing that they overcharged you for that item, they'll refund you the remaining $60 which you overpaid back into hypedrop credits
So, wait, its a site where you click on a button to lose money? 🤔 Genius idea.
They are probably in the process of being sued.
Gamblers had it coming (the part about losing money in the end). What is not acceptable is the issue about the items that were awarded but not sent.
It's insane how popular these sorts of things 'gamble you chance' for tech gear have become. Especially the competition giveaway sites: "Pay just $1 and go in the draw to win an RTX 4080" etc
Love this type of video by the way. Would love more content like this
The fact that you even got anything at all is wild, even though it was dropshipping which is a nice addition to the scam. Then the fact that they're making excuses to not send you things you won is not surprising at all.
greg got dat new green wall and came out swingin'. love to see it
Gambling is such a dangerous venture. They are greedy people preying on greedy people, knowing they will always come out on top. I'm glad you revisited this topic again Greg.
Yup that's gambling in a nut shell. I don't think the people who gamble are greedy, well at least most of them. They are usually poor and desperate for money. In their minds a big win would be life changing but unfortunately they are usually terrible at budgeting money and they blow it on crap that they really don't need or even worse they double down and gamble it away..
@@MrNota500 That's incorrect, people do it for the dopamine not the money.
Greg with the "Los Pollos Hermanos" t-shirt! Love it! BB FTW!
Really working that green screen, arent't we... 🤣
Did you order the 7800x3d
He sold it to keep gambling.
Wow... That is HORRIBLE. This is disgusting and deserves the call out. Thanks for sharing with us, Greg!
My first experience with this business model was in 1987, as a midshipman visiting New Orleans for a choir performance. Naturally, my classmates and I really enjoyed the 32 oz. Hurricanes, while walking the streets during Mardi Gras. A couple of us stumbled (literally) into this tombola show, where you could buy in and win a new Stereo System or some other expensive hook. Each round...you threw in another $5-10 bucks, or so. I think I ended up with a NASA pen for about $200. I still have that pen! It's worth about $5-$10, or thereabouts.
I still have to chuckle at the insane stupidity.
Greg putting his own money on the line to shed light on these scammers and save our wallets. Thank you sir.
im down about 11k on hypedrop, but i have to say that this video was not a real
representation of the site, the avrage user will go to hypedrop with intention to do a battle future and cashout in crypto. so although i hate the site i have to say this video is like watching a todler tring to ride a bike.
@@m4rcus025 says the guy who's down 11 thousand dollars......😂 😂
Nice video. I'm glad you showed everything that happened and didn't end the video on a cliffhanger.
High value content, as always Greg
Good video thanks for the insight. Much appreciated.
16:45 if you look at the check it says that it costs 155 without tax and its on sale, so makes sense that they put the full price on their site?
I know the mystery box scam but I hope I never fall victim to any other scams, there is like a trillion different scams out there....
Just don't trust ANYTHING on the internet... or also do what I do and type in the name of the site with reddit at the end lol
I know its a scam but I must have missed something somewhere in the video. It showed you won a Ryzen 7800X3d then later we see a Ryzen 5500 in the list of items you won.
He sold it to keep gambling.
This is how you get people to open up new websites, you show them that at least some people will spend a lot of money to show how bad they are.
what is that AMD graphics card you have in the Antec case that has Flight crew written on it?
I really hope this gets millions of views. People need to share this video. Websites like this should be all over social media and CZcams with warning about how big a scam it is. Shared.
beach audio is where the fans came from after googling the number.
What a blast to the past...completely forgot about this
I have to say... I really didn't expect you to receive anything and the fact that you didn't receive the 4070 was more on par with what I expected. you know the old saying, a fool and their money are soon parted. I think you have shown the people who watched this video just how these companies function. Great video and keep it up!
Total ripoff. The big bad internet. Buyer beware.
Thanks for exposing them 👍
So ya have a product listing that you're clearly "selling" but its not in stock? then close the boxes? they're quick to take money but not dish out items?
So the most expensive item is magically phased out of existence according to their employees?
Shocker!
That's for doing this Greg.
It might have cost you a bit but in the long run, we can share this with people who think sites like this are worth a shot and that way they get much less or even no more money hopefully!
There is an old saying that goes; " The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results." I didn't even know there were scam sights like this out there and it's just a testimony at how screwed up our world has become. The fact that so many people are gullible enough to fall for this to make it profitable for these criminals is just terrifying to me. But, just as P.T. Barnum once said; "There's a sucker born every minute!"
Nice video. This HypeDrop website is a lot like the machines found in restaurants that say $1.00 per try , to win some random { Prize } but taken to a much higher level. This could also maybe lead to some type of identity theft.
what happend to the 7800x3d at 4:46? your cash diddint go up so guess you didnt sell it and you did not atempt a upgrade either? did it magicly dissapear and you went with the other cpu instead makes no sence?
remember that era where everyone was having an aneurism over online/ingame gambling?
we should bring that back
Lol I guess this is a learning experience for some. Coming from an older nerd myself. I've seen many of these companies come and go. For whatever reason, they want money, and instead of honest work, they take from suckers. Greg I applaud, and thank you for being that ever so protective wrapping on said suckers for they do not know what they do. The young don't always do as they are told. Cheers.🤓
You can exchange your stuff in the cart, there is a option so exchange or withdraw the items.
the easter bunny outside your door is mad cute. why the watering can tho lol
So if they don't send out the GPU shouldn't you be able to get the value they assigned to it (which is better value anyways)?
I would love to watch the video series where you sue them.
covers the address; leaves the USPS tracking number ...
A good person wouldn't point that out.
I don't see a tracking number. I see a serial number. Edit. I see it now. Just shows that it's delivered to Groveland Florida. No address
That is so wrong, But there are also big company doing nonsense like this, The world we live in today everyone is so dishonest. So its great to see that you get people like yourself that try help.
Great content.
Senna's helmet caught my eye on the background! Nice!!!
I wonder if they were clearing out stock in advance of closing the site so the odds were better than in normal operation?
Glad you made content on these BS gambling sites .
You have truely shown them for what there worth , witch is know ones time or money 👍👍
i believe you can still partially charge back their advertised amount for the modo and graphics card. especially because of how well it was documented.
feel like the owner is obligated to fulfil, or meet equivalent. You wouldn't be costing them, every item could have been sourced lower than your initial deposit. if it wasn't expensive I'd tell you to sue them.
Of course they dropshipped some of the shitty low value items to appear as legit as possible for as long as possible while they ran with the majority of the money.
Hey Greg, I am from Cyprus. i was quite shocked when i saw that the cpu receipt was from Cyprus. The Address shown is an address near where i live in Strovolos but when i checked it (in google maps) it seems like its a dead end (more than likely a fake address). Also, the phone number, has a (357) in front which is the Cyprus international country code, but the next numbers are not of a Cyprus phone number. They all usually start with 99, 98, 97, 96, and some with 95 followed by 6 other numbers, so i have no idea whatsup with that.
Now that i dug a little bit more i found out that Omnifarious Services limited is actually Hype Drop's registered company name and address in Cyprus. they registered a company in Cyprus under a fake address which is quite common for a lot of overseas companies. They do this because in Cyprus there is a low tax and alot of corruption inside the government which makes it easy for overseas companies to move around money through Cyprus banks/other facilities.
Randomly hitting wins that went unexpectedly. The question is going to be does it arrive and is it workable.
We answer that in this same video :-)
I cannot beleive that people still fall for this obvious scam!!!
Honestly amazed you received anything if I'm completely honest. Apart from that, love the shirt, I need a new DC's top.
all gambling sites is scams, do not gamble kids if you wanna do it just do it for fun i recommend to never do it you’ll get addicted i’ve been through it now i’m free from gambling for nearly a year. Life is 1000% better without gambling
I remember sites like these were huge in 2016 ish had no idea it was still a thing
Getting scammed sucks but it can be a good lesson for the naïve
This has the same sort of shenanigans of farmland on temu. Its designed to addict weak and dumb people into wasting time and money. People sink like 60hrs and end up buying stuff multiple times for small bits of points to eventually win about 15 dollars of free junk. All these things should seriously be labeled illegal gambling.
Just fyi. The website has a built in item exchanger, so when he said to exchange the GPU, he meant for you to use that. It’s available through your cart.
I'm not surprised that you didn't get the graphics card, it seemed a bit too good to be true. At least you got a lot of spare parts for more Fix or Flop videos!
15:58 you might wanna blur the tracking code. only thing i am currently missing from your address would be the street. and looking at the map, there do not appear to be so many streets in your city. ;-)
I appreciate your use of the word plethora ….. it means a lot.
8:50 lmfao it's crazy seeing him get looped in at real time 😅
For those suggesting Greg fo a charge back, he addressed this while talking about the Apple loot box at 14:00. Since thry use a deposit system, and woukd identify themselves as a gambling site to CC companies, getting miney back is unlikely unless Greg confirmed the card was compromised (ehich is wasn't)
i would def back charge my card if i did something as idiotic as participate with a site like that. I would have to be extremely intoxicated to give a company like that my money.
Did they sell the 7800x3D? Never seen thay mentioned.
the nzxt cooler is from a place called beach audio. just google the number on the top left of the invoice
Amazon says the GIGABYTE Z590 AORUS Xtreme is worth $848.48 so they are not far off on price.
Any update on the missing components? I guess you never got them?
Maybe its time to do a "Beekeeper" on these scammers.
in any slot style system you have to spend around 500.00 before payout. The AIO came from Newegg I know that pack slip anywhere.
What happened to the 7800X3D you won? Why did you get a Ryzen 5 5500 instead?
Thats some straight up bullshit that theyre not wanting to send you that GPU. They might as well just have mugged you and jacked you for your ends.
obligatory heckling the scammers post: big apple box? new york called, it wants its title back.
Definitely surprised you actually got any product at all, and not surprised at all that they weaseled their way out of the 4070.
and the 7800x3d
8:06 bro has never heard of gambling before
Haven’t seen one of these in years. Are you sure this is still going on? Loot boxes are dead as far as I’m aware
They are going to take the money and run.
Love the Los Pollos Hermanos shirt...and the content
This is amazing promo 😂
What a scam of a company.
Can you update us on whether you got your money back in the end please?