First of all, I am incredibly privileged. When my grandpa passed away in March, I inherited $30,000. I had $10,000 saved up as well from working the prior summer and that $10,000 was already invested in the stock market. In high school I found out about stocks in my economics class and the day I turned 18 I invested every penny I had.
Once again, I am privileged to be able to invest this money at all.. I have a college fund to pay my tuition, I don’t have to worry about when my next meal is coming, and I have the freedom to spend my money as I choose.
Anyways, in March & April when the market crashed I decided it was time to really dive into the stock market. I spent about 5 hours every day researching companies and I’m here to share what I’ve learned.
In my opinion, the companies you invest in should be an extension of your worldview. Where do you think the world will be in 10 years+ and what industries will prosper from the change. As I was raised in a liberal family and hold these values, I’m quite concerned with Climate Change. I’ve taken college classes in this realm since and learned more about the risks we face. I believe that any company whose mission revolves around mitigating the climate crisis will prosper in the coming decades.
That being said, I’ll list the companies I hold and a very brief synopsis of what they do and why I hold their stock. Please do your own research; this is only meant to introduce young investors to a certain mindset that I hold and the companies that I choose to support.
1) Tesla (TSLA)
portfolio weight: 22.86%
gain/loss 1026% gain
You guys all know what Tesla is about. They are the premier EV company with goals of cutting battery costs by 56% and producing 20,000,000+ cars in the decade. They also have a growing energy business with solar roofs, panels, battery storage and an autobidder software. Tesla is priced insanely high by traditional metrics. If these metrics are your investing style then it’s not for you. If you’re like me, and you look for companies to hold for decades then I believe Tesla is one of the best investments out there. What other company will benefit from the transition to renewables in response to climate change and changing political conditions?
2) MP Materials (MP)
portfolio weight: 12.68%
gain/loss: 197% gain
MP is the only active rare earth mineral miner in the U.S. They produce neodymium concentrates which are important components in NDPR magnets; used in EV motors, wind turbines, electronics & much more.
I bought MP during their early pre-merger days and have already seen considerable profits in a few months. I’ve been shaving this position to keep it around 10% because it is a commodity play which can be quite risky. That being said, rare earths are expected to appreciate substantially in price as EV demand increases. Furthermore, MP is moving downstream to refine their rare earths themselves, as they currently ship them to China to be refined, and in the future they plan on manufacturing their own NDPR batteries. This will increase their margins greatly.
3) Planet 13 (PLNHF)
portfolio weight 5.35%
gain/loss: 147.71% gain
This one is a MJ stock and I’m focusing mostly on my Climate Change investments on this post so I’ll keep it brief. They own a superstore in Vegas and have their own brands. I believe the MJ industry is going to explode soon and PLNHF will benefit.
4) Jinko Solar (JKS)
portfolio weight: 4.91%
gain/loss: 268.88% gain
Jinko Solar is a leading solar panel manufacturer in China. They’ve seen market consolidation in China and are poised to benefit from increasing demand and incentives around solar energy. Specifically, South East Asia is expected to see dramatic growth in renewables as China/India are responsible for a large portion of global emissions and are also seeing considerable growth in GDP and population. It’s a play on the South East Asian economy and renewable industry.
5) SolarEdge (SEDG):
portfolio weight: 4.89%
gain/loss: 108.5% gain
SolarEdge is the global leader in panel inverters, which turn the sun’s D.C. current into usable electricity for households (A.C. current). The inverter space is a much more consolidated industry with higher margins than panels. They trade at a more expensive multiple and are expected to see dramatic top and bottom line growth in the coming years. Solar panels need inverters to perform; simple as that. With fewer companies focused on this space, I expect the top players to have a large market share and grow along with the solar energy market. SEDG is also expanding into the energy storage and EV charging markets with recent acquisitions.
6) Enphase Energy (ENPH)
portfolio weight: 4.43%
gain/loss: 203.08% gain
Enphase is also in the inverter market, with their differentiated microinverters. Micro Inverters are generally used in smaller systems and optimal for residential solar. Everything said above about the inverter market is true for Enphase as well. Enphase’s business goes beyond inverters though. They are targeting a full residential energy ecosystem, with storage and their “Enlighten” software App, which will manage home energy usage and sell excess energy back to the grid. Enphase is very much a play on a future decentralized microgrid, with homes trading energy to each other as prices fluctuate.
7) Canadian Solar (CSIQ)
portfolio weight: 4.42%
gain/loss: 118.32% gain
Canadian Solar is another panel manufacturing company. They are also seeing growth in market share as smaller players struggle during the pandemic. CSIQ is a low cost producer with residential, commercial and grid level projects. They are planning on expanding their recurring revenue stream through full and partial ownership of solar projects. You can read more about this on the IR page. CSIQ is a pure solar play with an international footprint and vast management expertise. They will certainly benefit from any movement towards renewables, especially if legislation is passed to set a price on carbon.
8) Lemonade (LMND)
portfolio weight: 3.93%
gain/loss: 112.52 gain
Lemonade is not a climate change related investment. It’s highly speculative but I think their management team and business model is really cool so I put some money in (and quickly more than doubled it). I’ll be brief here, but basically they are a home/rentepet insurance company that takes a flat 25% cut of premiums as revenue and uses the remaining money to pay out claims. They aim to align incentives by donating anything left over beyond the 25% to a charity of customers choosing. Also, their use of AI makes the registration and claims process seamless and “delights” customers.
9) TPI Composites (TPIC)
portfolio weight: 3.73%
gain/loss: 153.99% gain
TPIC manufacturers wind blade composites. They supply the top five wind turbine companies outside of China. I wrote about them on prior posts so I’ll just copy & paste here:

63% of total wind blade manufacturing is outsourced to companies like TPI and they are the market leader in this space with about 20% market share globally. The business currently has low margins, but they target a 12% EBITDA margin for the future, and they trade at a measly 0.74 P/S ratio currently. They are also expanding into EV composite manufacturing and have a contract with Workhorse to manufacture vehicle parts for them.

10) Skyworks Solutions (SWKS)
portfolio weight: 2.83%
gain/loss: 60.57% gain
Skyworks is a semiconductor focused on connectivity chips for all kinds of devices. They aren’t climate change related which is the point of this post so I’ll leave it at that.
11) Tattooed Chef (TTCF)
portfolio weight: 2.65%
gain/loss: 55.90% gain
Tattooed Chef is a play on the rising plant-based food trend. They make a variety of frozen food items, widely available in Walmart, Costco and Target. They are expanding into Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s and many more stores, where I expect them to be very successful. The plant based market is exploding for a couple of reasons. Firstly, there is more research on the health benefits of a plant based diet, with athletes such as Chris Paul & Todd Gurley endorsing these brands. Also, consumers are becoming increasingly aware of the threat of climate change and how avoiding red meat can have a positive impact on the planet. I expect TTCF to benefit off of these trends and continue innovating in the plant-based space. I bought in 3 weeks ago and the price has exploded since then.
12) Workhorse (WKHS)
portfolio weight: 2.60%
gain/loss: 35.90% gain
Workhorse is an electric delivery van company. They manufacture last mile electric vehicles and are developing drones to further decrease last mile delivery costs. They are a play on the e-commerce industry and electrification of vehicles. I’m invested in them because last mile delivery is responsible for a large chunk of transportation carbon emissions and in desperate need of electrification. I also believe that Workhorse will get a large chunk of the upcoming USPS contract which will provide a stable revenue stream.
13) Aphria (APHA)
portfolio weight: 2.45%
gain/loss: 53% gain
Aphria is another MJ play for me. Once again they aren’t a climate change investment so I’ll keep it brief. They just finalized a merger with Tilray, making them the biggest cannabis producer in the world. They are based in Canada and I believe they will be the market leader in Europe, due to their infrastructure advantage through owning CC Pharma.
14) Vestas Wind Systems (VWDRY)
portfolio weight: 2.40%
gain/loss: 197.44% gain
Vestas is the global leader in wind turbine manufacturing and installation. They are one of the few pure wind plays in the stock market, making them an attractive choice for anybody looking to get exposure to wind. A big driver if future growth will be their service and maintainace business, which their management team has been focused on in recent quarters. This is a higher margin business with consistent recurring revenues.
15) Facebook (FB)
portfolio weight: 2.38%
gain/loss: 20.61% gain
I’m selling out of FB very soon but I still hold them for now. FB is an incredible business and I’m sure they’ll see growth in the future, but it just isn’t for me (anymore). I consider ethics a lot in my investments, which many of you may consider stupid but idc.
16) Hannon Armstrong (HASI)
portfolio weight: 2.18%
gain/loss: 57.40% gain
HASI is a REIT, which solely makes climate change related investments. They invest in the land under solar projects, energy efficient buildings and much more. HASI is a great dividend play and I expect their stock price to appreciate as climate change worries are exacerbated in the future.
17) Beyond Meat (BYND)
portfolio weight: 2.10%
gain/loss: 21.24% gain
I made a post with some DD earlier this year on Beyond so I’ll just link that below:
https://www.reddit.com/stocks/comments/if9tmj/beyond_meat_bynd_fundamental_analysis_with_my/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf
18) Brookefield Renewable Partners (BEPC)
portfolio weight: 2.06%
gain/loss: 87.23% gain
BEPC owns and operates a portfolio of renewable energy assets. Earlier this year they completed a merger with Terraform Power, expanding their solar & wind footprint. They are also the primer owner of hydroelectric power plants, which produce a consistent source of electricity. BEPC has a strong management team and owns valuable assets that will greatly appreciate in value as government incentives expand around renewable energy consumption. They also pay a nice dividend.
19) Disney (DIS)
portfolio weight: 2.03%
gain/loss: 50.06% gain
I’m invested in Disney mostly for some portfolio diversity. I’m a big fan of their streaming platform and business strategy revolving around that. This one isn’t climate change related so I’ll leave it at that.
20) First Solar (FSLR)
portfolio weight: 1.84%
gain/loss: 70.47% gain
First Solar is an American based panel manufacturer and projects operator. They used differentiated technology with Cadmoum Telluride panels, which are supposed to increase output and lifetime at a higher cost. FSLR is just another play on the growing solar industry, and being U.S. based seems to reward them a higher earnings multiple in the market than their peers. They also have a beautiful balance sheet.
21) Trulieve Cannabis (TCNFF)
portfolio weight: 1.44%
gain/loss: 5.33% gain
Trulieve is another Cannabis play. This one based in the U.S. with a large medical market in Florida. Nuff said. (Do your own research)
22) Star Peak Energy Transition (STPK)
portfolio weight 1.43%
gain/loss: 55.45% gain
Star peak is a brand new holding for me and already shot up like crazy. It’s one of these merger companies (the word is censored on this subreddit). merging with Stem energy storage. Stem is involved in the battery storage industry, with mostly grid level storage systems. They currently have an even larger market share than Tesla and my reason for holding this stock is mostly as a hedge against Tesla’s energy business.
23) Shopify (SHOP)
portfolio weight: 1.10%
gain/loss: 18.19% gain
Shopify is an eCommerce platform, which allows customers to seamlessly design their own website and process payments. I’ve used Shopify in the past and am a big fan of the business, which is a big part of why I’m invested. They have a steep valuation but I plan on holding for 10+ years.
Total gain: 181.52%
(Note: I’ve taken some profits on a few of my stocks so the unrealized gain from my current holdings is less than my “total” gain by a few % points.)
Yes, I’m young and idealistic and have a lot to learn but I do know a few things. Here’s some of the lessons I’ve learned along my 1 and a half year journey in the market.

By investing in a company, you are supporting them financially. Buying pressure on companies’ stocks increases the price and allows them to raise capital more efficiently. It might be hard to hear, but when you buy Exxon stock, you are helping them destroy our planet. The same is true vice versa.
Don’t listen to anybody on reddit. Seriously. Nobody here knows any better than you. Do your own research, form your own judgements. If you’re gonna pick individual stocks then following advice on reddit is not the way to go. Reading through investor relations pages is the best way to go. Watch videos and read articles about both sides of the story with different companies. Don’t take these videos as facts though, just absorb what other people think and judge the validity of the information for yourself. It’s important to become an independent thinker. This is a slow process but eventually you’ll get the hang of things.
Invest with a 10+ year timeline. This is especially true if you’re young like myself. Don’t concern yourself with daily or even monthly swings in a stock. Ask yourself if the company will be worth substantially more in a decade. If not, then say, if so then buy and hold. Don’t try to time the market or swing trade. You’re just bringing on unnecessary risk. Buy and hold and buy some more.
Assess your own risk tolerance. As I’m sure several people will point out, my portfolio is incredibly speculative and risky from a traditional viewpoint. I have a really fucking high risk tolerance, so I invest with a “riskier” mindset. If I were to lose all my money tomorrow, I’d be fine. I’m going to have a college degree in a couple years and I’m not worried about being able to find a job. My reason for investing is about having the financial freedom to do whatever I want in life, and not worry about money in the future. If you’re investing for retirement or to pay off student loans, then I recommend taking a more conservative approach and maybe buying some index funds. However, if you’re young and have a stomach for risk like myself, then go crazy.

In conclusion, I’ve had an incredible year or so in the market. I don’t expect to have even close to these same returns in the future, but I’ve learned a thing or two and I’m here to share this information. You may disagree with everything I said and all the stocks I own and that’s okay! Don’t copy my portfolio and take everything I say with a grain of salt, however I hope you find some wisdom from this post!
Edit: Since a bunch of people pointed out angrily in the comments that holding FB, DIS, SHOP and MJ stocks don't really align with "your investments should be an extension of your worldview," I agree with you guys. There are some notable exceptions, and not everything that us as humans do in our everyday lives align with our values. This is true of my portfolio too, however about 80% of the investments are climate change related, 10% weed (which I like) and the other 10% tech. If 90% of your actions in life further your world view then you're doing pretty damn good IMO
Edit2: Also people seem to be pissed bc I inherited a lot of the money (3/4 of it) that I invested. I acknowledged already that I'm very lucky to be in this position and I don't really know what else to say about that, other than I aim to do something good with the money that I make

The Definitive Price and Quality Ranking of 25 British GYW shoe brands (obviously it's not definitive, it's completely subjective, but let's go with it)

Edits since publishing - Added more specific price info per range. Bumped Edward Green & John Lobb Main Range up a tier. Split Loake 1880 into separate entry. Added George Cleverley RTW. Shuffled Oliver Sweeney and Jeffery West down a tier. Bumped JL Main Range back down a tier - sorry JL. Added a D Tier to differentiate at the low end. Removed Oliver Sweeney - they are made in Italy. Added Tim Little. Added Wildsmiths. Added some comments to Church's.
Most of my shoes come from British makers and thanks to the dubious political direction my country is going and ever increasing import fees, this trend looks likely to continue in future. This is intended as an overview of the major British makers who are primarily RTW focused, and will also pull out RTW collections from bespoke makers where viable. It won't talk about bespoke shoes, even if the maker in question does produce them.
This post is not an attempt to diminish or demean shoes from any of the "lower tier" brands, just to provide a bit of guidance to a selection of makers that can sometimes be impenetrable and a bit confusing.
This post is visible on my (very much non-monetised) blog.
"Methodology" (such as it is)
In instances where a RTW maker has ranges of significantly different quality I’ll attempt to highlight it, although ultimately many makers will have a smaller, high-end range made to a higher specification that may belong in a higher tier (such as Cheaney Imperial or Loake Export Grade), and the list might get a bit overwhelming with too much detail.
Obviously quality and value are tricky, subjective concepts so I’ve resorted to the time-honoured tradition:

S Tier - Highest
A Tier - High
B Tier - Mid
C Tier - Low

After feedback I'm also adding "D Tier - Lowest" to differentiate some of the brands at that end.
For quality I’ll be considering the consistency, choice and quality of leather used; fineness and consistency of finishing; how appealing the styling is (very subjective obviously) and the overall quality of the construction.
“C / Low” quality in this context doesn’t mean terrible by any means - it’s just relative to the quality of the other makers. Clearly, Clarks make a lower quality shoe than Gaziano & Girling - that doesn’t mean they are “bad” for the money, because you can buy 15 pairs of Clarks for the price of one pair of Gaziano & Girling.
For price the breakdown is as follows:

££££ for shoes £1,000+
£££ for shoes £500 - £1,000
££ for shoes £200 - £500
£ for shoes less than £200

Edit: I've added in more precise price information per entry following feedback that some bands were too broad. All prices include VAT (20%).
Lastly the most difficult to assess notion, which is value. For this you need to balance the price against the quality and ultimately decide how much you’re willing to spend - to my mind, Crockett & Jones Main Range is the best value readily available RTW shoe.
I’m pretty confident in the below - I’ve owned at least one pair of shoes from all of these makers and sub-brands, and many more in the case of some of them - although obviously your mileage may vary somewhat. But hopefully it’s a good introduction at the least.
Gaziano & Girling Main Range - ££££ (£1,300) / S Tier
G&G are the current darling of the English shoe industry. A relatively young, forward looking and energetic brand who make strikingly styled shoes and boots. Undeniably expensive, but the drama and theatre of their designs makes them my favourite maker. Their leather quality is impeccable and their finishing is generally pretty unimpeachable.
Foster & Son New RTW - ££££ (£1,600) / S Tier
As one of the most venerable bespoke makers, Foster & Son traditionally outsourced a lot of their RTW offerings to brands like Crockett & Jones. They now produce RTW in their own factory, and some of the new designs are of a strikingly high quality (and with prices moving into the £1,600 region you’d hope so!). I spent some time handling them in their shop (back when going to shops and handling things used to be a thing) and would put them above G&G in terms of finishing, if a bit more conservative in styling.
John Lobb Prestige Range - ££££ (£1,500) / S Tier
Similar in quality to Edward Green’s Top Drawer, the designs in JL’s Prestige Line have finer finishing and smaller, limited edition design compared to their main range. I’ve compared the finishing quite closely between the two as I was considering some as wedding shoes, and would say the extra cash is worth it if you can afford it, if only because the main range designs can be a tad monotonous compared to more flamboyant makers like G&G.
Anthony Cleverley - ££££ (£1,300) / S Tier
George Cleverley is a legendary bespoke maker, and their Anthony Cleverley line is made to very high standards with a surprisingly broad range of designs. Quite aggressively styled to reflect the aesthetics of the bespoke models from GC proper, with a very slim fit and profile, these are really top tier. Not to be confused with the more readily available George Cleverley RTW options, which are I think made by Crockett & Jones for GC.
Edit - as pointed out in comments, prevailing opinion is that AC models are made by Edward Green for GC. It's possible that the AC range in general is being wound down, as they are increasingly difficult to actually order
Edward Green Main Range - ££££ (£1,000 - £1,300) / S Tier
Not a maker that needs a lot of introduction, with iconic models like the Galway boot or the Dover split-toe derby. I personally find their pricing just a bit uncomfortably high for what you get, but can’t fault the quality of their output. While I love the drama of Gaziano & Girling, many would probably find EG to be a more practical day-to-day maker. They also have a number of models in the sub-£1000 price range, though the aforementioned iconic designs lean towards £1,300-ish pricing. EG also have a Top Drawer MTO range, with finer waist treatment, finishing, materials and customisation options, although it's not readily available online.
John Lobb Main Range- ££££ (£1,000) / A Tier
Another very well established maker - the RTW options are from the Hermes owned brand, distinct from the bespoke makers at John Lobb St. James. You can expect a supremely well-made pair of shoes, although JL’s designs and choices of leather are a bit sterile and boring sometimes. Scrolling through their current collection lacks oomph compared to Edward Green or even the much cheaper Crockett & Jones.
Edit - from the comments, Main Range finishing can be ropey. I'd second this from quite a lot of time spent going over them in store, so moving to A Tier
Alfred Sargent Handgrade / Exclusive - ££ £ (£400 - £600) / A Tier
Alfred Sargent are an underrated maker - it’s unsurprising as they keep a pretty low profile online. They’re actually quite hard to buy at this point, particularly the higher end ranges here which I think now can only be ordered straight from the brand. Tiers are a bit tricky for this one - Handgrade probably belongs in A tier, and the Exclusive collection is potentially B tier, but both punch well above their weight in terms of quality and styling, and should be picked up quickly if you see them for a good price on eBay.
Crockett & Jones Handgrade - £££ (£600) / A Tier
The Handgrade collection sports better finishing, sharper and more asymmetric last shapes, and a higher grade of leathers. The price increase from the main range is noticeable, and many would find the increase in quality marginal, so I'm torn on recommending them over the main range.
Gaziano & Girling Classic Range - £££ (£600) / A Tier
A newer range from Gaziano & Girling - pricing is about equivalent to Crockett & Jones Handgrade. The styling is noticeably less sharp than G&G's main collection designs and the construction is relatively cruder (though still really impressive), but they have a solid collection of models that would fit in an everyday dress shoe rotation. Is it worth losing the quality from the main range just to get the G&G name and lose half the price? I’m on the fence.
George Cleverley RTW - £££ (£525) / A Tier
A distinct collection from Anthony Cleverley, George Cleverley RTW is priced just into this tier at about £525. Prevailing opinion is that they are made by Crockett & Jones for GC.
Tricker’s - ££ (£465) / B Tier
Tricker’s are best known for their boots but they have a respectable selection of dressy shoes too. Robust and long-lasting - provided the chunkiness of the aesthetic works for you - a pair of Tricker's, properly cared for, really will last a lifetime. Readily available at reduced prices in regular sales and from Tricker’s own outlet website.
Crockett & Jones Main Range - ££ (£450) / B Tier
If money was no object I’d have only Gaziano & Girling shoes, but as it is I think Crockett & Jones offer the best value of any British maker. They have an extremely wide range of styles and continue to innovate seasonally, and their Shell Cordovan is second to none in the British market. They are my go-to recommendation for anybody looking to buy their first decent pair of shoes (though I think I've probably owned about 30 pairs by this point). They also have, by a wide margin, the friendliest and most helpful store experience of any of the big Jermyn Street stores. Compare and contrast with some of the higher end stores which sometimes give the impression they'd rather not have you cluttering the shop up.
Alfred Sargent Main Range - ££ (£300) / B Tier
Solid but not spectacular, Alfred Sargent’s main range options are a good choice. Like the higher grade ranges, they appear to have been withdrawing from a number of more prominent online retailers - maybe they are looking to consolidate sales through their own site in the future?
Cheaney - ££ (£300-£400) / B Tier
A robust and strong maker that continues to fly under the radar compared to brands like Crockett & Jones or Tricker’s. Unfortunately a lot of their designs can stray into quite gimmicky territory - as a brand they seem to lack a core identity or sense of direction.
Church’s- ££ (£500) / B Tier
Church’s long and storied history is largely, and I think fairly, overshadowed by the perceived decline in quality since their purchase by Prada and shift towards designs defined by sequins, spikes and horrible bookbinder leather. They still make an excellent and classic shoe in models like the Consul, but brand name aside they don’t really hold a candle to Crockett & Jones these days. They do have a strong international presence, and continue to sell very well on eBay though.
Wildsmith - ££ (£500) / B Tier
Not a widely known name, but one with a lot of interesting history. The brand was formed in 1847, though the company in its current form is owned by Herring Shoes, with shoes made by Sargent, Cheaney and Barker. They don't have a wide collection - I remember they had a relatively large relaunch a few years ago, but the range seems to have shrunk since. Only a handful of models are now available to order through Herring directly, so in spite of some slick looking models I fear the brand isn't that long for this world.
Tim Little - ££ (£410) / B Tier
I forgot to include these in the initial list, which is surprising as I have a pair of Tim Little shoes hidden at the back of my wardrobe. They are a small brand with only one shop, but the owner is also the owner and Creative Director of Grenson, so they clearly have some manufacturing weight behind them. The Goodyear welted options are made in the UK. The pair I have are well made, although the last is a bit banana-shaped and elongated in the toe for my tastes. May be worth picking up on eBay or at a discount.
Grenson- ££ (£300 - £400) / B Tier
Grenson aren’t without their charms - the Triple Welt boots have a real chunky appeal. Like Cheaney, I think they tend to cast their net a bit wide in terms of wild new designs without maintaining a core stylistic focus like a brand like Crockett & Jones manage to. In a rapidly more crowded pricepoint, makers like Grenson, Cheaney, Barker and Loake are facing real challenges in staking a claim.
Loake 1880 Export Grade / 1880 Legacy / 1880 - ££ (£250 - £400) / B Tier
As suggested from comments, I've split Loake's higher grade collections out. The 1880 Export Grade have some particularly impressive models, though a pretty limited range of designs.
Sanders - ££ (£200 - £350) / B Tier
Very similar models and aesthetic to Tricker’s, but somewhat cheaper - at a glance you’d be forgiven for confusing their Acorn calf Aintree boots with Tricker’s Stow boots. No real standout designs, but as a pair of reliable boots you could do a lot worse.
Herring Shoes Premier - ££ (£350 - £400) / B Tier
As well as being one of the best UK sites for buying a number of brands on this list, Herring have their own label with unique designs. Some of the Premier models are a tad overdesigned with a lot of mixed materials and bold colours, but Herring's regular sales offer a good chance to get some of the classier models for a good price. Edit - I may have been thinking of past collections more with this - the current collection is pretty understated. Also pointed out in comments that Herring's own brand are made by Alfred Sargent, Barkers, Cheaney and Loake. I'm going to leave them as their own entry as the range of designs is quite large, and the designs are quite distinctive to Herring
Jeffery West - ££ (£250 - £400) / C Tier
Largely defined by gaudy colours, pointy (or square toes) and an overall eye-sore, wrong-side-of-dandy look. To say I am not a fan would be a delicate understatement - I would say Jeffery West have the distinction of making the ugliest shoes on this list, but appreciate this is my own preference talking.
Good insight from the comments: "Whilst Jeffrey West are a bit out there and some of their designs miss the mark a tad, I do think it's nice to see something a bit different to the usual kinda dull offerings I think English shoemakers put out." Fair point and I agree to an extent, so do take my own views with a pinch of salt!
Barker - ££ (£250) / C Tier
Barker are not in an enviable position - they are a relatively well-known brand but lean more into eye-catching, gaudy models each season without much connection to a central aesthetic. Some of their higher end models are okay, but they really dive deep into the low-end too which mars things a bit, and are competing with a lot of other makers for their slice of the pie.
Herring Shoes Classic - £ (£120 - £250) / C Tier
Herring has some really cheap and cheerful models at the lower end. Even so, a lot of the designs are pretty classic and versatile, and alongside Herring’s excellent service these are actually a really solid bet in the sub-£200 price range.
Edit: pointed out in comments that Herring's own brand are made by Alfred Sargent, Barkers, Cheaney and Loake. I'm going to leave them as their own entry as the range of designs is quite large, and the designs are quite distinctive to Herring
Loake Shoemakers / L1 - £ (£150) / C Tier
Loake offer a pretty bewildering array of ranges and quality levels - at best the 1880 Export Grade could comfortably slip into tier B, and at worst their L1 or Loake Lifestyle ranges (which I believe are made in India, although Loake's site very much fails to make this clear) would fall to the bottom of Tier C. Most of their output these days falls into this lower standard of quality, although they are probably the most readily available maker on this list in terms of third-party sellers. A good option for those who need a sensible pair of shoes but don't want to splash out C&J money.
NPS / Solovair - £ (£170) / C Tier
NPS have the “British work-boot” aesthetic nailed down - not astounding quality, but a far better alternative if you’re thinking of buying a pair of Doc Marten’s. NPS did produce Doc Marten's under license in the 50s, but by the 80s the company was nearly dead in the water until it was saved in the mid-2000's. Speaking of DMs...
Doc Marten’s - £ (£180) / D Tier
It's remarkable that this brand is so far down the list, as it probably had more cultural impact than any other maker here. In the 60s and 70s Doc Marten's became a bona-fide cultural icon - a uniform of the anti-establishment. The company fell to near bankruptcy in the 2000s, but appear to have bounced back since. Although they do still have a selection of boots made in England in the original factory, much of their output are cemented models that will fall to bits pretty rapidly.
Clark’s - £ (£100) / D Tier
I know, I know - Thou Shalt Not Disparage the Desert Boot, but Clarks sticks in my head as the place my mum took me to buy shoes for school. They seem to have given up the push from a few years ago into competing with higher quality GYW boots, and what we are left with is, in terms of material and construction, the lowest position on this list.
Anyhow, that's pretty much it. Please comment with any I've forgotten, and feel free to chastise me if you think I've viciously misrepresented your favourite maker.

Welcome new members, news reporter and media houses

Playboy going public: Porn, Gambling, and Cannabis

NEW INFO 5 Results from share redemption are posted. Less than .2% redeemed. Very bullish as investors are showing extreme confidence in the future of PLBY.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/playboy-mountain-crest-acquisition-corp-120000721.html
NEW INFO 4 Definitive Agreement to purchase 100% of Lovers brand stores announced 2/1.
https://www.streetinsider.com/Corporate+News/Playboy+%28MCAC%29+Confirms+Deal+to+Acquire+Lovers/17892359.html
NEW INFO 3 I bought more on the dip today. 5081 total. Price rose AH to $12.38 (2.15%)
NEW INFO 2 Here is the full webinar.
https://icrinc.zoom.us/rec/play/9GWKdmOYumjWfZuufW3QXpe_FW_g--qeNbg6PnTjTMbnNTgLmCbWjeRFpQga1iPc-elpGap8dnDv8Zww.yD7DjUwuPmapeEdP?continueMode=true&tk=lEYc4F_FkKlgsmCIs6w0gtGHT2kbgVGbUju3cIRBSjk.DQIAAAAV8NK49xZWdldRM2xNSFNQcTBmcE00UzM3bXh3AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA&uuid=WN_GKWqbHkeSyuWetJmLFkj4g&_x_zm_rtaid=kR45-uuqRE-L65AxLjpbQw.1611967079119.2c054e3d3f8d8e63339273d9175939ed&_x_zm_rhtaid=866
NEW INFO 1 Live merger webinar with PLBY and MCAC on Friday January 29, 2021 at 12:00 NOON EST link below
https://mcacquisition.com/investor-relations/press-release-details/2021/Playboy-Enterprises-Inc.-and-Mountain-Crest-Acquisition-Corp-Participate-in-SPACInsider-ICR-Webinar-on-January-29th-at-12pm-ET/default.aspx
Playboy going public: Porn, Gambling, and Cannabis
!!!WARNING READING AHEAD!!! TL;DR at the end. It will take some time to sort through all the links and read/watch everything, but you should.
In the next couple weeks, Mountain Crest Acquisition Corp is taking Playboy public. The existing ticker MCAC will become PLBY. Special purpose acquisition companies have taken private companies public in recent months with great success. I believe this will be no exception. Notably, Playboy is profitable and has skyrocketing revenue going into a transformational growth phase.
Porn - First and foremost, let's talk about porn. I know what you guys are thinking. “Porno mags are dead. Why would I want to invest in something like that? I can get porn for free online.” Guess what? You are absolutely right. And that’s exactly why Playboy doesn’t do that anymore. That’s right, they eliminated their print division. And yet they somehow STILL make money from porn that people (see: boomers) pay for on their website through PlayboyTV, Playboy Plus, and iPlayboy. Here’s the thing: Playboy has international, multi-generational name recognition from porn. They have content available in 180 countries. It will be the only publicly traded adult entertainment (porn) company. But that is not where this company is going. It will help support them along the way. You can see every Playboy magazine through iPlayboy if you’re interested. NSFW links below:
https://www.playboy.com/
https://www.playboytv.com/
https://www.playboyplus.com/
https://www.iplayboy.com/
Gambling - Some of you might recognize the Playboy brand from gambling trips to places like Las Vegas, Atlantic City, Cancun, London or Macau. They’ve been in the gambling biz for decades through their casinos, clubs, and licensed gaming products. They see the writing on the wall. COVID is accelerating the transition to digital, application based GAMBLING. That’s right. What we are doing on Robinhood with risky options is gambling, and the only reason regulators might give a shit anymore is because we are making too much money. There may be some restrictions put in place, but gambling from your phone on your couch is not going anywhere. More and more states are allowing things like Draftkings, poker, state ‘lottery” apps, hell - even political betting. Michigan and Virginia just ok’d gambling apps. They won’t be the last. This is all from your couch and any 18 year old with a cracked iphone can access it. Wouldn’t it be cool if Playboy was going to do something like that? They’re already working on it. As per CEO Ben Kohn who we will get to later, “...the company’s casino-style digital gaming products with Scientific Games and Microgaming continue to see significant global growth.” Honestly, I stopped researching Scientific Games' sports betting segment when I saw the word ‘omni-channel’. That told me all I needed to know about it’s success.
“Our SG Sports™ platform is an enhanced, omni-channel solution for online, self-service and retail fixed odds sports betting – from soccer to tennis, basketball, football, baseball, hockey, motor sports, racing and more.”
https://www.scientificgames.com/
https://www.microgaming.co.uk/
“This latter segment has become increasingly enticing for Playboy, and it said last week that it is considering new tie-ups that could include gaming operators like PointsBet and 888Holdings.”
https://calvinayre.com/2020/10/05/business/playboys-gaming-ops-could-get-a-boost-from-spac-purchase/
As per their SEC filing:
“Significant consumer engagement and spend with Playboy-branded gaming properties around the world, including with leading partners such as Microgaming, Scientific Games, and Caesar’s Entertainment, steers our investment in digital gaming, sports betting and other digital offerings to further support our commercial strategy to expand consumer spend with minimal marginal cost, and gain consumer data to inform go-to-market plans across categories.”
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgadata/1803914/000110465921005986/tm2034213-12_defm14a.htm#tMDAA1
They are expanding into more areas of gaming/gambling, working with international players in the digital gaming/gambling arena, and a Playboy sportsbook is on the horizon.
https://www.playboy.com/read/the-pleasure-of-playing-with-yourself-mobile-gaming-in-the-covid-era
Cannabis - If you’ve ever read through a Playboy magazine, you know they’ve had a positive relationship with cannabis for many years. As of September 2020, Playboy has made a major shift into the cannabis space. Too good to be true you say? Check their website. Playboy currently sells a range of CBD products. This is a good sign. Federal hemp products, which these most likely are, can be mailed across state lines and most importantly for a company like Playboy, can operate through a traditional banking institution. CBD products are usually the first step towards the cannabis space for large companies. Playboy didn’t make these products themselves meaning they are working with a processor in the cannabis industry. Another good sign for future expansion. What else do they have for sale? Pipes, grinders, ashtrays, rolling trays, joint holders. Hmm. Ok. So it looks like they want to sell some shit. They probably don’t have an active interest in cannabis right? Think again:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/javierhasse/2020/09/24/playboy-gets-serious-about-cannabis-law-reform-advocacy-with-new-partnership-grants/?sh=62f044a65cea
“Taking yet another step into the cannabis space, Playboy will be announcing later on Thursday (September, 2020) that it is launching a cannabis law reform and advocacy campaign in partnership with National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML), Last Prisoner Project, Marijuana Policy Project, the Veterans Cannabis Project, and the Eaze Momentum Program.”
“According to information procured exclusively, the three-pronged campaign will focus on calling for federal legalization. The program also includes the creation of a mentorship plan, through which the Playboy Foundation will support entrepreneurs from groups that are underrepresented in the industry.” Remember that CEO Kohn from earlier? He wrote this recently:
https://medium.com/naked-open-letters-from-playboy/congress-must-pass-the-more-act-c867c35239ae
Seems like he really wants weed to be legal? Hmm wonder why? The writing's on the wall my friends. Playboy wants into the cannabis industry, they are making steps towards this end, and we have favorable conditions for legislative progress.
Don’t think branding your own cannabis line is profitable or worthwhile? Tell me why these 41 celebrity millionaires and billionaires are dummies. I’ll wait.
https://www.celebstoner.com/news/celebstoner-news/2019/07/12/top-celebrity-cannabis-brands/
Confirmation: I hear you. “This all seems pretty speculative. It would be wildly profitable if they pull this shift off. But how do we really know?” Watch this whole video:
https://finance.yahoo.com/video/playboy-ceo-telling-story-female-154907068.html
Man - this interview just gets my juices flowing. And highlights one of my favorite reasons for this play. They have so many different business avenues from which a catalyst could appear. I think paying attention, holding shares, and options on these staggered announcements over the next year is the way I am going to go about it. "There's definitely been a shift to direct-to-consumer," he (Kohn) said. "About 50 percent of our revenue today is direct-to-consumer, and that will continue to grow going forward.” “Kohn touted Playboy's portfolio of both digital and consumer products, with casino-style gaming, in particular, serving a crucial role under the company's new business model. Playboy also has its sights on the emerging cannabis market, from CBD products to marijuana products geared toward sexual health and pleasure.” "If THC does become legal in the United States, we have developed certain strains to enhance your sex life that we will launch," Kohn said. https://cheddar.com/media/playboy-goes-public-health-gaming-lifestyle-focus Oh? The CEO actually said it? Ok then. “We have developed certain strains…” They’re already working with growers on strains and genetics? Ok. There are several legal cannabis markets for those products right now, international and stateside. I expect Playboy licensed hemp and THC pre-rolls by EOY. Something like this: https://www.etsy.com/listing/842996758/10-playboy-pre-roll-tubes-limited?ga_order=most_relevant&ga_search_type=all&ga_view_type=gallery&ga_search_query=pre+roll+playboy&ref=sr_gallery-1-2&organic_search_click=1 Maintaining cannabis operations can be costly and a regulatory headache. Playboy’s licensing strategy allows them to pick successful, established partners and sidestep traditional barriers to entry. You know what I like about these new markets? They’re expanding. Worldwide. And they are going to be a bigger deal than they already are with or without Playboy. Who thinks weed and gambling are going away? Too many people like that stuff. These are easy markets. And Playboy is early enough to carve out their spot in each. Fuck it, read this too: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jimosman/2020/10/20/playboy-could-be-the-king-of-spacs-here-are-three-picks/?sh=2e13dcaa3e05
Numbers: You want numbers? I got numbers. As per the company’s most recent SEC filing:
“For the year ended December 31, 2019, and the nine months ended September 30, 2020, Playboy’s historical consolidated revenue was $78.1 million and $101.3 million, respectively, historical consolidated net income (loss) was $(23.6) million and $(4.8) million, respectively, and Adjusted EBITDA was $13.1 million and $21.8 million, respectively.”
“In the nine months ended September 30, 2020, Playboy’s Licensing segment contributed $44.2 million in revenue and $31.1 million in net income.”
“In the ninth months ended September 30, 2020, Playboy’s Direct-to-Consumer segment contributed $40.2 million in revenue and net income of $0.1 million.”
“In the nine months ended September 30, 2020, Playboy’s Digital Subscriptions and Content segment contributed $15.4 million in revenue and net income of $7.4 million.”
They are profitable across all three of their current business segments.
“Playboy’s return to the public markets presents a transformed, streamlined and high-growth business. The Company has over $400 million in cash flows contracted through 2029, sexual wellness products available for sale online and in over 10,000 major retail stores in the US, and a growing variety of clothing and branded lifestyle and digital gaming products.”
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgadata/1803914/000110465921005986/tm2034213-12_defm14a.htm#tSHCF
Growth: Playboy has massive growth in China and massive growth potential in India. “In China, where Playboy has spent more than 25 years building its business, our licensees have an enormous footprint of nearly 2,500 brick and mortar stores and 1,000 ecommerce stores selling high quality, Playboy-branded men’s casual wear, shoes/footwear, sleepwear, swimwear, formal suits, leather & non-leather goods, sweaters, active wear, and accessories. We have achieved significant growth in China licensing revenues over the past several years in partnership with strong licensees and high-quality manufacturers, and we are planning for increased growth through updates to our men’s fashion lines and expansion into adjacent categories in men’s skincare and grooming, sexual wellness, and women’s fashion, a category where recent launches have been well received.” The men’s market in China is about the same size as the entire population of the United States and European Union combined. Playboy is a leading brand in this market. They are expanding into the women’s market too. Did you know CBD toothpaste is huge in China? China loves CBD products and has hemp fields that dwarf those in the US. If Playboy expands their CBD line China it will be huge. Did you know the gambling money in Macau absolutely puts Las Vegas to shame? Technically, it's illegal on the mainland, but in reality, there is a lot of gambling going on in China. https://www.forbes.com/sites/javierhasse/2020/10/19/magic-johnson-and-uncle-buds-cbd-brand-enter-china-via-tmall-partnership/?sh=271776ca411e “In India, Playboy today has a presence through select apparel licensees and hospitality establishments. Consumer research suggests significant growth opportunities in the territory with Playboy’s brand and categories of focus.” “Playboy Enterprises has announced the expansion of its global consumer products business into India as part of a partnership with Jay Jay Iconic Brands, a leading fashion and lifestyle Company in India.” “The Indian market today is dominated by consumers under the age of 35, who represent more than 65 percent of the country’s total population and are driving India’s significant online shopping growth. The Playboy brand’s core values of playfulness and exploration resonate strongly with the expressed desires of today’s younger millennial consumers. For us, Playboy was the perfect fit.” “The Playboy international portfolio has been flourishing for more than 25 years in several South Asian markets such as China and Japan. In particular, it has strategically targeted the millennial and gen-Z audiences across categories such as apparel, footwear, home textiles, eyewear and watches.” https://www.licenseglobal.com/industry-news/playboy-expands-global-footprint-india It looks like they gave COVID the heisman in terms of net damage sustained: “Although Playboy has not suffered any material adverse consequences to date from the COVID-19 pandemic, the business has been impacted both negatively and positively. The remote working and stay-at-home orders resulted in the closure of the London Playboy Club and retail stores of Playboy’s licensees, decreasing licensing revenues in the second quarter, as well as causing supply chain disruption and less efficient product development thereby slowing the launch of new products. However, these negative impacts were offset by an increase in Yandy’s direct-to-consumer sales, which have benefited in part from overall increases in online retail sales so far during the pandemic.” Looks like the positives are long term (Yandy acquisition) and the negatives are temporary (stay-at-home orders).
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgadata/1803914/000110465921006093/tm213766-1_defa14a.htm
This speaks to their ability to maintain a financially solvent company throughout the transition phase to the aforementioned areas. They’d say some fancy shit like “expanded business model to encompass four key revenue streams: Sexual Wellness, Style & Apparel, Gaming & Lifestyle, and Beauty & Grooming.” I hear “we’re just biding our time with these trinkets until those dollar dollar bill y’all markets are fully up and running.” But the truth is these existing revenue streams are profitable, scalable, and rapidly expanding Playboy’s e-commerce segment around the world.
"Even in the face of COVID this year, we've been able to grow EBITDA over 100 percent and revenue over 68 percent, and I expect that to accelerate going into 2021," he said. “Playboy is accelerating its growth in company-owned and branded consumer products in attractive and expanding markets in which it has a proven history of brand affinity and consumer spend.”
Also in the SEC filing, the Time Frame:
“As we detailed in the definitive proxy statement, the SPAC stockholder meeting to vote on the transaction has been set for February 9th, and, subject to stockholder approval and satisfaction of the other closing conditions, we expect to complete the merger and begin trading on NASDAQ under ticker PLBY shortly thereafter,” concluded Kohn.
The Players: Suhail “The Whale” Rizvi (HMFIC), Ben “The Bridge” Kohn (CEO), “lil” Suying Liu & “Big” Dong Liu (Young-gun China gang). I encourage you to look these folks up. The real OG here is Suhail Rizvi. He’s from India originally and Chairman of the Board for the new PLBY company. He was an early investor in Twitter, Square, Facebook and others. His firm, Rizvi Traverse, currently invests in Instacart, Pinterest, Snapchat, Playboy, and SpaceX. Maybe you’ve heard of them. “Rizvi, who owns a sprawling three-home compound in Greenwich, Connecticut, and a 1.65-acre estate in Palm Beach, Florida, near Bill Gates and Michael Bloomberg, moved to Iowa Falls when he was five. His father was a professor of psychology at Iowa. Along with his older brother Ashraf, a hedge fund manager, Rizvi graduated from Wharton business school.” “Suhail Rizvi: the 47-year-old 'unsocial' social media baron: When Twitter goes public in the coming weeks (2013), one of the biggest winners will be a 47-year-old financier who guards his secrecy so zealously that he employs a person to take down his Wikipedia entry and scrub his photos from the internet. In IPO, Twitter seeks to be 'anti-FB'” “Prince Alwaleed bin Talal of Saudi Arabia looks like a big Twitter winner. So do the moneyed clients of Jamie Dimon. But as you’ve-got-to-be-joking wealth washed over Twitter on Thursday — a company that didn’t exist eight years ago was worth $31.7 billion after its first day on the stock market — the non-boldface name of the moment is Suhail R. Rizvi. Mr. Rizvi, 47, runs a private investment company that is the largest outside investor in Twitter with a 15.6 percent stake worth $3.8 billion at the end of trading on Thursday (November, 2013). Using a web of connections in the tech industry and in finance, as well as a hearty dose of good timing, he brought many prominent names in at the ground floor, including the Saudi prince and some of JPMorgan’s wealthiest clients.” https://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/08/technology/at-twitter-working-behind-the-scenes-toward-a-billion-dollar-payday.html Y’all like that Arab money? How about a dude that can call up Saudi Princes and convince them to spend? Funniest shit about I read about him: “Rizvi was able to buy only $100 million in Facebook shortly before its IPO, thus limiting his returns, according to people with knowledge of the matter.” Poor guy :(
He should be fine with the 16 million PLBY shares he's going to have though :)
Shuhail also has experience in the entertainment industry. He’s invested in companies like SESAC, ICM, and Summit Entertainment. He’s got Hollywood connections to blast this stuff post-merger. And he’s at least partially responsible for that whole Twilight thing. I’m team Edward btw.
I really like what Suhail has done so far. He’s lurked in the shadows while Kohn is consolidating the company, trimming the fat, making Playboy profitable, and aiming the ship at modern growing markets.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-twitter-ipo-rizvi-insight/insight-little-known-hollywood-investor-poised-to-score-with-twitter-ipo-idUSBRE9920VW20131003
Ben “The Bridge” Kohn is an interesting guy. He’s the connection between Rizvi Traverse and Playboy. He’s both CEO of Playboy and was previously Managing Partner at Rizvi Traverse. Ben seems to be the voice of the Playboy-Rizvi partnership, which makes sense with Suhail’s privacy concerns. Kohn said this:
“Today is a very big day for all of us at Playboy and for all our partners globally. I stepped into the CEO role at Playboy in 2017 because I saw the biggest opportunity of my career. Playboy is a brand and platform that could not be replicated today. It has massive global reach, with more than $3B of global consumer spend and products sold in over 180 countries. Our mission – to create a culture where all people can pursue pleasure – is rooted in our 67-year history and creates a clear focus for our business and role we play in people’s lives, providing them with the products, services and experiences that create a lifestyle of pleasure. We are taking this step into the public markets because the committed capital will enable us to accelerate our product development and go-to-market strategies and to more rapidly build our direct to consumer capabilities,” said Ben Kohn, CEO of Playboy.
“Playboy today is a highly profitable commerce business with a total addressable market projected in the trillions of dollars,” Mr. Kohn continued, “We are actively selling into the Sexual Wellness consumer category, projected to be approximately $400 billion in size by 2024, where our recently launched intimacy products have rolled out to more than 10,000 stores at major US retailers in the United States. Combined with our owned & operated ecommerce Sexual Wellness initiatives, the category will contribute more than 40% of our revenue this year. In our Apparel and Beauty categories, our collaborations with high-end fashion brands including Missguided and PacSun are projected to achieve over $50M in retail sales across the US and UK this year, our leading men’s apparel lines in China expanded to nearly 2500 brick and mortar stores and almost 1000 digital stores, and our new men’s and women’s fragrance line recently launched in Europe. In Gaming, our casino-style digital gaming products with Scientific Games and Microgaming continue to see significant global growth. Our product strategy is informed by years of consumer data as we actively expand from a purely licensing model into owning and operating key high-growth product lines focused on driving profitability and consumer lifetime value. We are thrilled about the future of Playboy. Our foundation has been set to drive further growth and margin, and with the committed capital from this transaction and our more than $180M in NOLs, we will take advantage of the opportunity in front of us, building to our goal of $100M of adjusted EBITDA in 2025.”
https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20201001005404/en/Playboy-to-Become-a-Public-Company
Also, according to their Form 4s, “Big” Dong Liu and “lil” Suying Liu just loaded up with shares last week. These guys are brothers and seem like the Chinese market connection. They are only 32 & 35 years old. I don’t even know what that means, but it's provocative.
https://www.secform4.com/insider-trading/1832415.htm
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/mountain-crest-acquisition-corp-ii-002600994.html
Y’all like that China money?
“Mr. Liu has been the Chief Financial Officer of Dongguan Zhishang Photoelectric Technology Co., Ltd., a regional designer, manufacturer and distributor of LED lights serving commercial customers throughout Southern China since November 2016, at which time he led a syndicate of investments into the firm. Mr. Liu has since overseen the financials of Dongguan Zhishang as well as provided strategic guidance to its board of directors, advising on operational efficiency and cash flow performance. From March 2010 to October 2016, Mr. Liu was the Head of Finance at Feidiao Electrical Group Co., Ltd., a leading Chinese manufacturer of electrical outlets headquartered in Shanghai and with businesses in the greater China region as well as Europe.”
Dr. Suying Liu, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Mountain Crest Acquisition Corp., commented, “Playboy is a unique and compelling investment opportunity, with one of the world’s largest and most recognized brands, its proven consumer affinity and spend, and its enormous future growth potential in its four product segments and new and existing geographic regions. I am thrilled to be partnering with Ben and his exceptional team to bring his vision to fruition.”
https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20201001005404/en/Playboy-to-Become-a-Public-Company
These guys are good. They have a proven track record of success across multiple industries. Connections and money run deep with all of these guys. I don’t think they’re in the game to lose.
I was going to write a couple more paragraphs about why you should have a look at this but really the best thing you can do is read this SEC filing from a couple days ago. It explains the situation in far better detail. Specifically, look to page 137 and read through their strategy. Also, look at their ownership percentages and compensation plans including the stock options and their prices. The financials look great, revenue is up 90% Q3, and it looks like a bright future.
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgadata/1803914/000110465921005986/tm2034213-12_defm14a.htm#tSHCF
I’m hesitant to attach this because his position seems short term, but I’m going to with a warning because he does hit on some good points (two are below his link) and he’s got a sizable position in this thing (500k+ on margin, I think). I don’t know this guy but he did look at the same publicly available info and make roughly the same prediction, albeit without the in depth gambling or cannabis mention. You can also search reddit for ‘MCAC’ and very few relevant results come up and none of them even come close to really looking at this thing.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1gOvAd6lebs452hFlWWbxVjQ3VMsjGBkbJeXRwDwIJfM/edit?usp=sharing
“Also, before you people start making claims that Playboy is a “boomer” company, STOP RIGHT THERE. This is not a good argument. Simply put. The only thing that matters is Playboy’s name recognition, not their archaic business model which doesn’t even exist anymore as they have completely repurposed their business.”
“Imagine not buying $MCAC at a 400M valuation lol. Streetwear department is worth 1B alone imo.”
Considering the ridiculous Chinese growth as a lifestyle brand, he’s not wrong.
Current Cultural Significance and Meme Value: A year ago I wouldn’t have included this section but the events from the last several weeks (even going back to tsla) have proven that a company’s ability to meme and/or gain social network popularity can have an effect. Tik-tok, Snapchat, Twitch, Reddit, Youtube, Facebook, Twitter. They all have Playboy stuff on them. Kids in middle and highschool know what Playboy is but will likely never see or touch one of the magazines in person. They’ll have a Playboy hoodie though. Crazy huh? A lot like GME, PLBY would hugely benefit from meme-value stock interest to drive engagement towards their new business model while also building strategic coffers. This interest may not directly and/or significantly move the stock price but can generate significant interest from larger players who will.
Bull Case: The year is 2025. Playboy is now the world leader pleasure brand. They began by offering Playboy licensed gaming products, including gambling products, direct to consumers through existing names. By 2022, demand has skyrocketed and Playboy has designed and released their own gambling platforms. In 2025, they are also a leading cannabis brand in the United States and Canada with proprietary strains and products geared towards sexual wellness. Cannabis was legalized in the US in 2023 when President Biden got glaucoma but had success with cannabis treatment. He personally pushes for cannabis legalization as he steps out of office after his first term. Playboy has also grown their brand in China and India to multi-billion per year markets. The stock goes up from 11ish to 100ish and everyone makes big gains buying somewhere along the way.
Bear Case: The United States does a complete 180 on marijuana and gambling. President Biden overdoses on marijuana in the Lincoln bedroom when his FDs go tits up and he loses a ton of money in his sports book app after the Fighting Blue Hens narrowly lose the National Championship to Bama. Playboy is unable to expand their cannabis and gambling brands but still does well with their worldwide lifestyle brand. They gain and lose some interest in China and India but the markets are too large to ignore them completely. The stock goes up from 11ish to 13ish and everyone makes 15-20% gains.
TL;DR: Successful technology/e-commerce investment firm took over Playboy to turn it into a porn, online gambling/gaming, sports book, cannabis company, worldwide lifestyle brand that promotes sexual wellness, vetern access, women-ownership, minority-ownership, and “pleasure for all”. Does a successful online team reinventing an antiquated physical copy giant sound familiar? No options yet, shares only for now. $11.38 per share at time of writing. My guess? $20 by the end of February. $50 by EOY. This is not financial advice. I am not qualified to give financial advice. I’m just sayin’ I would personally use a Playboy sports book app while smoking a Playboy strain specific joint and it would be cool if they did that. Do your own research. You’d probably want to start here:
WARNING - POTENTIALLY NSFW - SEXY MODELS AHEAD - no actual nudity though
https://s26.q4cdn.com/895475556/files/doc_presentations/Playboy-Craig-Hallum-Conference-Investor-Presentation-11_17_20-compressed.pdf
Or here:
https://www.mcacquisition.com/investor-relations/default.aspx
Jimmy Chill: “Get into any SPAC at $10 or $11 and you are going to make money.”
STL;DR: Buy MCAC. MCAC > PLBY couple weeks. Rocketship. Moon.
Position: 5000 shares. I will buy short, medium, and long-dated calls once available.

NYT article on scammers.

Not really about Kitboga. The author talks to Jim Browning. Very interesting. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/27/magazine/scam-call-centers.html
[Edit: adding the text of the article which was sent to me by a friend from a call center]
Who’s Making All Those Scam Calls?
One afternoon in December 2019, Kathleen Langer, an elderly grandmother who lives by herself in Crossville, Tenn., got a phone call from a person who said he worked in the refund department of her computer manufacturer. The reason for the call, he explained, was to process a refund the company owed Langer for antivirus and anti-hacking protection that had been sold to her and was now being discontinued. Langer, who has a warm and kind voice, couldn’t remember purchasing the plan in question, but at her age, she didn’t quite trust her memory. She had no reason to doubt the caller, who spoke with an Indian accent and said his name was Roger.
He asked her to turn on her computer and led her through a series of steps so that he could access it remotely. When Langer asked why this was necessary, he said he needed to remove his company’s software from her machine. Because the protection was being terminated, he told her, leaving the software on the computer would cause it to crash.
After he gained access to her desktop, using the program TeamViewer, the caller asked Langer to log into her bank to accept the refund, $399, which he was going to transfer into her account. “Because of a technical issue with our system, we won’t be able to refund your money on your credit card or mail you a check,” he said. Langer made a couple of unsuccessful attempts to log in. She didn’t do online banking too often and couldn’t remember her user name.
Frustrated, the caller opened her bank’s internet banking registration form on her computer screen, created a new user name and password for her and asked her to fill out the required details — including her address, Social Security number and birth date. When she typed this last part in, the caller noticed she had turned 80 just weeks earlier and wished her a belated happy birthday. “Thank you!” she replied.
After submitting the form, he tried to log into Langer’s account but failed, because Langer’s bank — like most banks — activates a newly created user ID only after verifying it by speaking to the customer who has requested it. The caller asked Langer if she could go to her bank to resolve the issue. “How far is the bank from your house?” he asked.
A few blocks away, Langer answered. Because it was late afternoon, however, she wasn’t sure if it would be open when she got there. The caller noted that the bank didn’t close until 4:30, which meant she still had 45 minutes. “He was very insistent,” Langer told me recently. On her computer screen, the caller typed out what he wanted her to say at the bank. “Don’t tell them anything about the refund,” he said. She was to say that she needed to log in to check her statements and pay bills.
Langer couldn’t recall, when we spoke, if she drove to the bank or not. But later that afternoon, she rang the number the caller had given her and told him she had been unable to get to the bank in time. He advised her to go back the next morning. By now, Langer was beginning to have doubts about the caller. She told him she wouldn’t answer the phone if he contacted her again.
“Do you care about your computer?” he asked. He then uploaded a program onto her computer called Lock My PC and locked its screen with a password she couldn’t see. When she complained, he got belligerent. “You can call the police, the F.B.I., the C.I.A.,” he told her. “If you want to use your computer as you were doing, you need to go ahead as I was telling you or else you will lose your computer and your money.” When he finally hung up, after reiterating that he would call the following day, Langer felt shaken.
Minutes later, her phone rang again. This caller introduced himself as Jim Browning. “The guy who is trying to convince you to sign into your online banking is after one thing alone, and that is he wants to steal your money,” he said.
Langer was mystified that this new caller, who had what seemed to be a strong Irish accent, knew about the conversations she had just had. “Are you sure you are not with this group?” she asked.
He replied that the same scammers had targeted him, too. But when they were trying to connect remotely to his computer, as they had done with hers, he had managed to secure access to theirs. For weeks, that remote connection had allowed him to eavesdrop on and record calls like those with Langer, in addition to capturing a visual record of the activity on a scammer’s computer screen.
“I’m going to give you the password to unlock your PC because they use the same password every time,” he said. “If you type 4-5-2-1, you’ll unlock it.”
Langer keyed in the digits.
“OK! It came back on!” she said, relieved.
For most people, calls like the one Langer received are a source of annoyance or anxiety. According to the F.B.I.’s Internet Crime Complaint Center, the total losses reported to it by scam victims increased to $3.5 billion in 2019 from $1.4 billion in 2017. Last year, the app Truecaller commissioned the Harris Poll to survey roughly 2,000 American adults and found that 22 percent of the respondents said they had lost money to a phone scam in the past 12 months; Truecaller projects that as many as 56 million Americans may have been victimized this way, losing nearly $20 billion.
The person who rescued Langer that afternoon delights in getting these calls, however. “I’m fascinated by scams,” he told me. “I like to know how they work.” A software engineer based in the United Kingdom, he runs a YouTube channel under the pseudonym Jim Browning, where he regularly posts videos about his fraud-fighting efforts, identifying call centers and those involved in the crimes. He began talking to me over Skype in the fall of 2019 — and then sharing recordings like the episode with Langer — on the condition that I not reveal his identity, which he said was necessary to protect himself against the ire of the bad guys and to continue what he characterizes as his activism. Maintaining anonymity, it turns out, is key to scam-busting and scamming alike. I’ll refer to him by his middle initial, L.
The goal of L.’s efforts and those of others like him is to raise the costs and risks for perpetrators, who hide behind the veil of anonymity afforded by the internet and typically do not face punishment. The work is a hobby for L. — he has a job at an I.T. company — although it seems more like an obsession. Tracking scammers has consumed much of L.’s free time in the evenings over the past few years, he says, except for several weeks in March and April last year, when the start of the coronavirus pandemic forced strict lockdowns in many parts of the world, causing call centers from which much of this activity emanates to temporarily suspend operations. Ten months later, scamming has “gone right back to the way it was before the pandemic,” L. told me earlier this month.
Like L., I was curious to learn more about phone scammers, having received dozens of their calls over the years. They have offered me low interest rates on my credit-card balances, promised to write off my federal student loans and congratulated me on having just won a big lottery. I’ve answered fraudsters claiming to be from the Internal Revenue Service who threaten to send the police to my doorstep unless I agree to pay back taxes that I didn’t know I owed — preferably in the form of iTunes gift cards or by way of a Western Union money transfer. Barring a few exceptions, the individuals calling me have had South Asian accents, leading me to suspect that they are calling from India. On several occasions, I’ve tested this theory by letting the voice on the other end go on for a few minutes before I suddenly interrupt with a torrent of Hindi curses that I retain full mastery of even after living in the United States for the past two decades. I haven’t yet failed to elicit a retaliatory offensive in Hindi. Confirming that these scammers are operating from India hasn’t given me any joy. Instead, as an Indian expatriate living in the United States, I’ve felt a certain shame.
L. started going after scammers when a relative of his lost money to a tech-support swindle, a common scheme with many variants. Often, it starts when the mark gets a call from someone offering unsolicited help in ridding a computer’s hard drive of malware or the like. Other times, computer users looking for help stumble upon a website masquerading as Microsoft or Dell or some other computer maker and end up dialing a listed number that connects them to a fraudulent call center. In other instances, victims are tricked by a pop-up warning that their computer is at risk and that they need to call the number flashing on the screen. Once someone is on the phone, the scammers talk the caller into opening up TeamViewer or another remote-access application on his or her computer, after which they get the victim to read back unique identifying information that allows them to establish control over the computer.
L. flips the script. He starts by playing an unsuspecting target. Speaking in a polite and even tone, with a cadence that conveys naïveté, he follows instructions and allows the scammer to connect to his device. This doesn’t have any of his actual data, however. It is a “virtual machine,” or a program that simulates a functioning desktop on his computer, including false files, like documents with a fake home address. It looks like a real computer that belongs to someone. “I’ve got a whole lot of identities set up,” L. told me. He uses dummy credit-card numbers that can pass a cursory validation check.
The scammer’s connection to L.’s virtual machine is effectively a two-way street that allows L. to connect to the scammer’s computer and infect it with his own software. Once he has done this, he can monitor the scammer’s activities long after the call has ended; sometimes for months, or as long as the software goes undetected. Thus, sitting in his home office, L. is able to listen in on calls between scammer and targets — because these calls are made over the internet, from the scammer’s computer — and watch as the scammer takes control of a victim’s computer. L. acknowledged to me that his access to the scammer’s computer puts him at legal risk; without the scammer’s permission, establishing that access is unlawful. But that doesn’t worry him. “If it came down to someone wanting to prosecute me for accessing a scammer’s computer illegally, I can demonstrate in every single case that the only reason I gained access is because the scammer was trying to steal money from me,” he says.
On occasion, L. succeeds in turning on the scammer’s webcam and is able to record video of the scammer and others at the call center, who can usually be heard on phones in the background. From the I.P. address of the scammer’s computer and other clues, L. frequently manages to identify the neighborhood — and, in some cases, the actual building — where the call center is.
When he encounters a scam in progress while monitoring a scammer’s computer, L. tries to both document and disrupt it, at times using his real-time access to undo the scammer’s manipulations of the victim’s computer. He tries to contact victims to warn them before they lose any money — as he did in the case of Kathleen Langer.
L.’s videos of such episodes have garnered millions of views, making him a faceless YouTube star. He says he hopes his exploits will educate the public and deter scammers. He claims he has emailed the law-enforcement authorities in India offering to share the evidence he has collected against specific call centers. Except for one instance, his inquiries have elicited only form responses, although last year, the police raided a call center that L. had identified in Gurugram, outside Delhi, after it was featured in an investigation aired by the BBC.
Now and then during our Skype conversations, L. would begin monitoring a call between a scammer and a mark and let me listen in. In some instances, I would also hear other call-center employees in the background — some of them making similar calls, others talking among themselves. The chatter evoked a busy workplace, reminding me of my late nights in a Kolkata newsroom, where I began my journalism career 25 years ago, except that these were young men and women working through the night to con people many time zones away. When scammers called me in the past, I tried cajoling them into telling me about their enterprise but never succeeded. Now, with L.’s help, I thought, I might have better luck.
I flew to India at the end of 2019 hoping to visit some of the call centers that L. had identified as homes for scams. Although he had detected many tech-support scams originating from Delhi, Hyderabad and other Indian cities, L. was convinced that Kolkata — based on the volume of activity he was noticing there — had emerged as a capital of such frauds. I knew the city well, having covered the crime beat there for an English-language daily in the mid-1990s, and so I figured that my chances of tracking down scammers would be better there than most other places in India.
I took with me, in my notebook, a couple of addresses that L. identified in the days just before my trip as possible origins for some scam calls. Because the geolocation of I.P. addresses — ascertaining the geographical coordinates associated with an internet connection — isn’t an exact science, I wasn’t certain that they would yield any scammers.
But I did have the identity of a person linked to one of these spots, a young man whose first name is Shahbaz. L. identified him by matching webcam images and several government-issued IDs found on his computer. The home address on his ID matched what L. determined, from the I.P. address, to be the site of the call center where he operated, which suggested that the call center was located where he lived or close by. That made me optimistic I would find him there. In a recording of a call Shahbaz made in November, weeks before my Kolkata visit, I heard him trying to hustle a woman in Ottawa and successfully intimidating and then fleecing an elderly man in the United States.
Image Murlidhar Sharma, a senior police official, whose team raided two call centers in Kolkata in October 2019 based on a complaint from Microsoft. Credit...Prarthna Singh for The New York Times
Although individuals like this particular scammer are the ones responsible for manipulating victims on the phone, they represent only the outward face of a multibillion-dollar criminal industry. “Call centers that run scams employ all sorts of subcontractors,” Puneet Singh, an F.B.I. agent who serves as the bureau’s legal attaché at the U.S. Embassy in New Delhi, told me. These include sellers of phone numbers; programmers who develop malware and pop-ups; and money mules. From the constantly evolving nature of scams — lately I’ve been receiving calls from the “law-enforcement department of the Federal Reserve System” about an outstanding arrest warrant instead of the fake Social Security Administration calls I was getting a year ago — it’s evident that the industry has its share of innovators.
The reasons this activity seems to have flourished in India are much the same as those behind the growth of the country’s legitimate information-technology-services industry after the early 2000s, when many American companies like Microsoft and Dell began outsourcing customer support to workers in India. The industry expanded rapidly as more companies in developed countries saw the same economic advantage in relocating various services there that could be performed remotely — from airline ticketing to banking. India’s large population of English speakers kept labor costs down.
Because the overwhelming majority of call centers in the country are engaged in legitimate business, the ones that aren’t can hide in plain sight. Amid the mazes of gleaming steel-and-glass high-rises in a place like Cyber City, near Delhi, or Sector V in Salt Lake, near Kolkata — two of the numerous commercial districts that have sprung up across the country to nurture I.T. businesses — it’s impossible to distinguish a call center that handles inquiries from air travelers in the United States from one that targets hundreds of Americans every day with fraudulent offers to lower their credit-card interest rates.
The police do periodically crack down on operations that appear to be illegitimate. Shortly after I got to Kolkata, the police raided five call centers in Salt Lake that officials said had been running a tech-support scam. The employees of the call centers were accused of impersonating Microsoft representatives. The police raid followed a complaint by the tech company, which in recent years has increasingly pressed Indian law enforcement to act against scammers abusing the company’s name. I learned from Murlidhar Sharma, a senior official in the city police, that his team had raided two other call centers in Kolkata a couple of months earlier in response to a similar complaint.
“Microsoft had done extensive work before coming to us,” Sharma, who is in his 40s and speaks with quiet authority, told me. The company lent its help to the police in connection with the raids, which Sharma seemed particularly grateful for. Often the police lack the resources to pursue these sorts of cases. “These people are very smart, and they know how to hide data,” Sharma said, referring to the scammers. It was in large part because of Microsoft’s help, he said, that investigators had been able to file charges in court within a month after the raid. A trial has begun but could drag on for years. The call centers have been shut down, at least for now.
Sharma pointed out that pre-emptive raids do not yield the desired results. “Our problem,” he said, “is that we can act only when there’s a complaint of cheating.” In 2017, he and his colleagues raided a call center on their own initiative, without a complaint, and arrested several people. “But then the court was like, ‘Why did the police raid these places?’” Sharma said. The judge wanted statements from victims, which the police were unable to get, despite contacting authorities in the U.S. and U.K. The case fell apart.
The slim chances of detection, and the even slimmer chances of facing prosecution, have seemed to make scamming a career option, especially among those who lack the qualifications to find legitimate employment in India’s slowing economy. Indian educational institutions churn out more than 1.5 million engineers every year, but according to one survey fewer than 20 percent are equipped to land positions related to their training, leaving a vast pool of college graduates — not to mention an even larger population of less-educated young men and women — struggling to earn a living. That would partly explain why call centers run by small groups are popping up in residential neighborhoods. “The worst thing about this crime is that it’s becoming trendy,” Aparajita Rai, a deputy commissioner in the Kolkata Police, told me. “More and more youngsters are investing the crucial years of their adolescence into this. Everybody wants fast money.”
In Kolkata, I met Aniruddha Nath, then 23, who said he spent a week working at a call center that he quickly realized was engaged in fraud. Nath has a pensive air and a shy smile that intermittently cut through his solemnness as he spoke. While finishing his undergraduate degree in engineering from a local college — he took a loan to study there — Nath got a job offer after a campus interview. The company insisted he join immediately, for a monthly salary of about $200. Nath asked me not to name the company out of fear that he would be exposing himself legally.
His jubilation turned into skepticism on his very first day, when he and other fresh recruits were told to simply memorize the contents of the company’s website, which claimed his employer was based in Australia. On a whim, he Googled the address of the Australian office listed on the site and discovered that only a parking garage was located there. He said he learned a couple of days later what he was to do: Call Indian students in Australia whose visas were about to expire and offer to place them in a job in Australia if they paid $800 to take a training course.
Image The Garden Reach area in Kolkata. Credit...Prarthna Singh for The New York Times
On his seventh day at work, Nath said, he received evidence from a student in Australia that the company’s promise to help with job placements was simply a ruse to steal $800; the training the company offered was apparently little more than a farce. “She sent me screenshots of complaints from individuals who had been defrauded,” Nath said. He stopped going in to work the next day. His parents were unhappy, and, he said, told him: “What does it matter to you what the company is doing? You’ll be getting your salary.” Nath answered, “If there’s a raid there, I’ll be charged with fraud.”
Late in the afternoon the day after I met with Nath, I drove to Garden Reach, a predominantly Muslim and largely poor section in southwest Kolkata on the banks of the Hooghly River. Home to a 137-year-old shipyard, the area includes some of the city’s noted crime hot spots and has a reputation for crime and violence. Based on my experience reporting from Garden Reach in the 1990s, I thought it was probably not wise to venture there alone late at night, even though that was most likely the best time to find scammers at work. I was looking for Shahbaz.
Parking my car in the vicinity of the address L. had given me, I walked through a narrow lane where children were playing cricket, past a pharmacy and a tiny store selling cookies and snacks. The apartment I sought was on the second floor of a building at the end of an alley, a few hundred yards from a mosque. It was locked, but a woman next door said that the building belonged to Shahbaz’s extended family and that he lived in one of the apartments with his parents.
Then I saw an elderly couple seated on the steps in the front — his parents, it turned out. The father summoned Shahbaz’s brother, a lanky, longhaired man who appeared to be in his 20s. He said Shahbaz had woken up a short while earlier and gone out on his motorbike. “I don’t know when he goes to sleep and when he wakes up,” his father said, with what sounded like exasperation.
They gave me Shahbaz’s mobile number, but when I called, I got no answer. It was getting awkward for me to wait around indefinitely without disclosing why I was there, so eventually I pulled the brother aside to talk in private. We sat down on a bench at a roadside tea stall, a quarter mile from the mosque. Between sips of tea, I told him that I was a journalist in the United States and wanted to meet his brother because I had learned he was a scammer. I hoped he would pass on my message.
I got a call from Shahbaz a few hours later. He denied that he’d ever worked at a call center. “There are a lot of young guys who are involved in the scamming business, but I’m not one of them,” he said. I persisted, but he kept brushing me off until I asked him to confirm that his birthday was a few days later in December. “Look, you are telling me my exact birth date — that makes me nervous,” he said. He wanted to know what I knew about him and how I knew it. I said I would tell him if he met with me. I volunteered to protect his identity if he answered my questions truthfully.
Two days later, we met for lunch at the Taj Bengal, one of Kolkata’s five-star hotels. I’d chosen that as the venue out of concern for my safety. When he showed up in the hotel lobby, however, I felt a little silly. Physically, Shahbaz is hardly intimidating. He is short and skinny, with a face that would seem babyish but for his thin mustache and beard, which are still a work in progress. He was in his late 20s but had brought along an older cousin for his own safety.
We found a secluded table in the hotel’s Chinese restaurant and sat down. I took out my phone and played a video that L. had posted on YouTube. (Only those that L. shared the link with knew of its existence.) The video was a recording of the call from November 2019 in which Shahbaz was trying to defraud the woman in Ottawa with a trick that scammers often use to arm-twist their victims: editing the HTML coding of the victim’s bank-account webpage to alter the balances. Because the woman was pushing back, Shahbaz zeroed out her balance to make it look as if he had the ability to drain her account. On the call, he can be heard threatening her: “You don’t want to lose all your money, right?”
I watched him shift uncomfortably in his chair. “Whose voice is that?” I asked. “It’s yours, isn’t it?”
Image Aniruddha Nath spent a week on the job at a call center when he realized that it was engaged in fraud. A lack of other opportunities can make such call centers an appealing enterprise. Credit...Prarthna Singh for The New York Times
He nodded in shocked silence. I took my phone back and suggested he drink some water. He took a few sips, gathering himself before I began questioning him. When he mumbled in response to my first couple of questions, I jokingly asked him to summon the bold, confident voice we’d just heard in the recording of his call. He gave me a wan smile.
Pointing to my voice recorder on the table, he asked, meekly, “Is this necessary?”
When his scam calls were already on YouTube, I countered, how did it matter that I was recording our conversation?
“It just makes me nervous,” he said.
Shahbaz told me his parents sent him to one of the city’s better schools but that he flunked out in eighth grade and had to move to a neighborhood school. When his father lost his job, Shahbaz found work riding around town on his bicycle to deliver medicines and other pharmaceutical supplies from a wholesaler to retail pharmacies; he earned $25 a month. Sometime around 2011 or 2012, he told me, a friend took him to a call center in Salt Lake, where he got his first job in scamming, though he didn’t realize right away that that was what he was doing. At first, he said, the job seemed like legitimate telemarketing for tech-support services. By 2015, working in his third job, at a call center in the heart of Kolkata, Shahbaz had learned how to coax victims into filling out a Western Union transfer in order to process a refund for terminated tech-support services. “They would expect a refund but instead get charged,” he told me.
Shahbaz earned a modest salary in these first few jobs — he told me that that first call center, in Salt Lake, paid him less than $100 a month. His lengthy commute every night was exhausting. In 2016 or 2017, he began working with a group of scammers in Garden Reach, earning a share of the profits. There were at least five others who worked with him, he said. All of them were local residents, some more experienced than others. One associate at the call center was his wife’s brother.
He was cagey about naming the others or describing the organization’s structure, but it was evident that he wasn’t in charge. He told me that a supervisor had taught him how to intimidate victims by editing their bank balances. “We started doing that about a year ago,” he said, adding that their group was somewhat behind the curve when it came to adopting the latest tricks of the trade. When those on the cutting edge of the business develop something new, he said, the idea gradually spreads to other scammers.
It was hard to ascertain how much this group was stealing from victims every day, but Shahbaz confessed that he was able to defraud one or two people every night, extracting anywhere from $200 to $300 per victim. He was paid about a quarter of the stolen amount. He told me that he and his associates would ask victims to drive to a store and buy gift cards, while staying on the phone for the entire duration. Sometimes, he said, all that effort was ruined if suspicious store clerks declined to sell gift cards to the victim. “It’s becoming tough these days, because customers aren’t as gullible as they used to be,” he told me. I could see from his point of view why scammers, like practitioners in any field, felt pressure to come up with new methods and scams in response to increasing public awareness of their schemes.
The more we spoke, the more I recognized that Shahbaz was a small figure in this gigantic criminal ecosystem that constitutes the phone-scam industry, the equivalent of a pickpocket on a Kolkata bus who is unlucky enough to get caught in the act. He had never thought of running his own call center, he told me, because that required knowing people who could provide leads — names and numbers of targets to call — as well as others who could help move stolen money through illicit channels. “I don’t have such contacts,” he said. There were many in Kolkata, according to Shahbaz, who ran operations significantly bigger than the one he was a part of. “I know of people who had nothing earlier but are now very rich,” he said. Shahbaz implied that his own ill-gotten earnings were paltry in comparison. He hadn’t bought a car or a house, but he admitted that he had been able to afford to go on overseas vacations with friends. On Facebook, I saw a photo of him posing in front of the Burj Khalifa in Dubai and other pictures from a visit to Thailand.
I asked if he ever felt guilty. He didn’t answer directly but said there had been times when he had let victims go after learning that they were struggling to pay bills or needed the money for medical expenses. But for most victims, his rationale seemed to be that they could afford to part with the few hundred dollars he was stealing.
Shahbaz was a reluctant interviewee, giving me brief, guarded answers that were less than candid or directly contradicted evidence that L. had collected. He was vague about the highest amount he’d ever stolen from a victim, at one point saying $800, then later admitting to $1,500. I found it hard to trust either figure, because on one of his November calls I heard him bullying someone to pay him $5,000. He told me that my visit to his house had left him shaken, causing him to realize how wrong he was to be defrauding people. His parents and his wife were worried about him. And so, he had quit scamming, he told me.
“What did you do last night?” I asked him.
“I went to sleep,” he said.
I knew he was not telling the truth about his claim to have stopped scamming, however. Two days earlier, hours after our phone conversation following my visit to Garden Reach, Shahbaz had been at it again. It was on that night, in fact, that he tried to swindle Kathleen Langer in Crossville, Tenn. Before I came to see him for lunch, I had already heard a recording of that call, which L. shared with me.
When I mentioned that to him, he looked at me pleadingly, in visible agony, as if I’d poked at a wound. It was clear to me that he was only going to admit to wrongdoing that I already had evidence of.
L. told me that the remote access he had to Shahbaz’s computer went cold after I met with him on Dec. 14, 2019. But it buzzed back to life about 10 weeks later. The I.P. address was the same as before, which suggested that it was operating in the same location I visited. L. set up a livestream on YouTube so I could see what L. was observing. The microphone was on, and L. and I could clearly hear people making scam calls in the background. The computer itself didn’t seem to be engaged in anything nefarious while we were eavesdropping on it, but L. could see that Shahbaz’s phone was connected to it. It appeared that Shahbaz had turned the computer on to download music. I couldn’t say for certain, but it seemed that he was taking a moment to chill in the middle of another long night at work.

SEO is easy. The EXACT process we use to scale our clients' SEO from 0 to 200k monthly traffic and beyond

Hey guys!
There's a TON of content out there on SEO - guides, articles, courses, videos, scams, people yelling about it on online forums, etc etc..
Most of it, however, is super impractical. If you want to start doing SEO TODAY and start getting results ASAP, you'll need to do a TON of digging to figure out what's important and what's not.
So we wanted to make everyone's lives super easy and distill our EXACT process of working w/ clients into a stupid-simple, step-by-step practical guide. And so we did. Here we are.
P.S: startups, and seo loved the guide, so I thought you guys might like it too.

A bit of backstory:

If you guys haven't seen any of my previous posts, me and my co-founder own an SEO/digital marketing agency, and we've worked w/ a ton of clients helping them go from 0 to 200k+ monthly organic traffic. We've also helped some quite big companies grow their organic traffic (from 1M to over 1.8M monthly organic), using the exact same process.
So without further ado, grab your popcorn, and be prepared to stick to the screen for a while, cause this is going to be a long post. Here's everything I am going to cover:

Get your website to run and load 2x - 5x faster (with MINIMAL technical know-how)
Optimize your landing pages to rank for direct intent keywords (and drive 100% qualified leads)
Create amazing, long-form content that ranks every time
How we get a TON of links to our website with ZERO link-building efforts
How to improve your content’s rankings with Surfer SEO

Step #1 - Technical Optimization and On-Page SEO

Step #1 to any SEO initiative is getting your technical SEO right.
Now, some of this is going to be a bit technical, so you might just forward this part to your tech team and just skip ahead to "Step #2 - Keyword Research."
If you DON'T have a tech team and want a super easy tl;dr, do this:

Use WP Rocket. It's a WordPress plugin that optimizes a bunch of stuff on your website, making it run significantly faster.
Use SMUSH to (losslessly) compress all the images on your website. this usually helps a TON w/ load speed.

If you’re a bit more tech-savvy, though, read on!

Technical SEO Basics

Sitemap.xml file. A good sitemap shows Google how to easily navigate your website (and how to find all your content!). If your site runs on WordPress, all you have to do is install YoastSEO or Rankmath SEO, and they’ll create a sitemap for you. Otherwise, you can use an online XML Sitemap generation tool.
Proper website architecture. The crawl depth of any page should be lower than 4 (i.e: any given page should be reached with no more than 3 clicks from the homepage). To fix this, you should improve your interlinking (check Step #6 of this guide to learn more).
Serve images in next-gen format. Next-gen image formats (JPEG 2000, JPEG XR, and WebP) can be compressed a lot better than JPG or PNG images. Using WordPress? Just use Smush and it’ll do ALL the work for you. Otherwise, you can manually compress all images and re-upload them.
Remove duplicate content. Google hates duplicate content and will penalize you for it. If you have any duplicate pages, just merge them (by doing a 301 redirect) or delete one or the other.
Update your ‘robots.txt’ file. Hide the pages you don’t want Google to index (e.g: non-public, or unimportant pages). If you’re a SaaS, this would be most of your in-app pages. ]
Optimize all your pages by best practice. There’s a bunch of general best practices that Google wants you to follow for your web pages (maintain keyword density, have an adequate # of outbound links, etc.). Install YoastSEO or RankMath and use them to optimize all of your web pages.
If you DON’T have any pages that you don’t want to be displayed on Google, you DON’T need robots.txt.

Advanced Technical SEO

Now, this is where this gets a bit more web-devvy. Other than just optimizing your website for SEO, you should also focus on optimizing your website speed.
Here’s how to do that:
Both for Mobile and PC, your website should load in under 2-3 seconds. While load speed isn’t a DIRECT ranking factor, it does have a very serious impact on your rankings.
After all, if your website doesn’t load for 5 seconds, a bunch of your visitors might drop off.
So, to measure your website speed performance, you can use Pagespeed Insights. Some of the most common issues we have seen clients facing when it comes to website speed and loading time, are the following:

Images being resized with CSS or JS. This adds extra loading time to your site. Use GTMetrix to find which images need resizing. Use an online tool (there are a ton of free ones) to properly resize images (or Photoshop even), and re-upload them.
Images not being lazy-loaded. If your pages contain a lot of images, you MUST activate lazy-loading. This allows images that are below the screen, to be loaded only once the visitor scrolls down enough to see the image.
Gzip compression not enabled. Gzip is a compression method that allows network file transfers to happen a ton faster. In other words, your files like your HTML, CSS, and JS load a ton faster.
JS, CSS, and HTML not minified/aggregated/in-lined. If your website is loading slowly because you have 100+ external javascript files and stylesheets being requested from the server, then you need to look into minifying, aggregating, and inlining some of those files.
Use Cloudflare + BunnyCDN Why the combo? Why not just Cloudflare? Well, I won't get into details, I've experimented a bit with it, and if you are looking for something cheap and fast this is the best combo. Cloudflare you can opt in for the free account. BunnyCDN on the other hand is on a pay-as-you-go basis, and unless you are getting over 100K+ visits a month, you'll likely never go above their minimum monthly threshold of $1.

Want to make your life easier AND fix up all these issues and more? Use WP Rocket. The tool basically does all your optimization for you (if you’re using WordPress, of course).
Lastly, if you want to validate the website speed optimization changes you've made, or if you simply want to test how your current site is performing, you can use Google Page Speed Insights*.*
In May 2020, Google rolled out its Core Web Vitals update, which in layman terms means starting next May (2021), the three most important website load speed metrics you will need to worry for ranking will be:

LCP - Largest Contentful Paint -> under 2.5s
FID - First Input Delay -> under 100ms
CLS - Cumulative Layout Shift -> under 0.1

Step #2 - Keyword Research

Once your website is 100% optimized, it’s time to define your SEO strategy.
The best way to get started with this is by doing keyword research.
First off, you want to create a keyword research sheet. This is going to be your main hub for all your content operations.
You can use the sheet to:

Prioritize content
Keep track of the publishing process
Get a top-down view of your web pages

And here’s what it covers:

Target search phrase. This is the keyword you’re targeting.
Priority. What’s the priority of this keyword? We usually divide them by 1-2-3…
- Priority 3 - Top priority keywords. These are usually low competition, high traffic, well-converting, or all 3 at the same time.
- Priority 2 - Mid-priority keywords.
- Priority 1 - These are low priority.
Status. What’s the status of the article? We usually divide them by…
- 1 - Not written
- 2 - Writer has picked up the topic for the week
- 3 - The article is being written
- 4 - The article is in editing phase
- 5 - The article is published on the blog
Topic cluster. The category that the blog post belongs to.
Monthly search volume. Self-explanatory. This helps you pick a priority for the keyword.
CPC (low & high bid). Cost per click for the keyword. Generally, unless you’re planning to run search ads, these are not mandatory. They can, however, help you figure out which of your keywords will convert better. Pro tip: the higher the CPC, the more likely it is for the keyword to convert well.

Now that you have your sheet (and understand how it works), let’s talk about the “how” of keyword research.

How to do Keyword Research (Step-by-Step Guide)

There are a ton of different ways to do that (check the “further readings” at the end of this section for a detailed rundown).
Our favorite method, however, is as follows…
Start off by listing out your top 5 SEO competitors.
The key here is SEO competitors - competing companies that have a strong SEO presence in the same niche.
Not sure who’s a good SEO competitor? Google the top keywords that describe your product and find your top-ranking competitors.
Run them through SEMrush (or your favorite SEO tool), and you’ll see how well, exactly, they’re doing with their SEO.
Once you have a list of 5 competitors, run each of them through “Organic Research” on SEMrush, and you'll get a complete list of all the keywords they rank on.
Now, go through these keywords one by one and extract all the relevant ones and add them to your sheet.
Once you go through the top SEO competitors, your keyword research should be around 80%+ done.
Now to put some finishing touches on your keyword research, run your top keywords through UberSuggest and let it do its magic. It's going to give you a bunch of keywords associated with the keywords you input.
Go through all the results it's going to give you, extract anything that’s relevant, and your keyword research should be 90% done.
At this point, you can call it a day and move on to the next step. Chances are, over time, you’ll uncover new keywords to add to your sheet and get you to that sweet 100%.

Step #3 - Create SEO Landing Pages

Remember how we collected a bunch of landing page keywords in step #2? Now it’s time to build the right page for each of them! This step is a lot more straightforward than you’d think. First off, you create a custom landing page based on the keyword. Depending on your niche, this can be done in 2 ways:

Create a general template landing page. Pretty much copy-paste your landing page, alter the sub-headings, paraphrase it a bit, and add relevant images to the use-case. You’d go with this option if the keywords you’re targeting are very similar to your main use-case (e.g. “project management software” “project management system”).
Create a unique landing page for each use-case. You should do this if each use-case is unique. For example, if your software doubles as project management software and workflow management software. In this case, you’ll need two completely new landing pages for each keyword.

Once you have a bunch of these pages ready, you should optimize them for their respective keywords.
You can do this by running the page content through an SEO tool. If you’re using WordPress, you can do this through RankMath or Yoast SEO.
Both tools will give you exact instructions on how to optimize your page for the keyword.
If you’re not using WordPress, you can use SurferSEO. Just copy-paste your web page content, and it’s going to give you instructions on how to optimize it.
Once your new landing pages are live, you need to pick where you want to place them on your website. We usually recommend adding these pages to your website’s navigation menu (header) or footer.
Finally, once you have all these new landing pages up, you might be thinking “Now what? How, and when, are these pages going to rank?”
Generally, landing pages are a tad harder to rank than content. See, with content, quality plays a huge part. Write better, longer, and more informative content than your competition, and you’re going to eventually outrank them even if they have more links.
With landing pages, things aren’t as cut and dry. More often than not, you can’t just “create a better landing page.”
What determines rankings for landing page keywords are backlinks. If your competitors have 400 links on their landing pages, while yours has 40, chances are, you’re not going to outrank them.

Step #4 - Create SEO Blog Content

Now, let’s talk about the other side of the coin: content keywords, and how to create content that ranks.
As we mentioned before, these keywords aren’t direct-intent (the Googler isn’t SPECIFICALLY looking for your product), but they can still convert pretty well. For example, if you’re a digital marketing agency, you could rank on keywords like…

Lead generation techniques
SaaS marketing
SEO content

After all, anyone looking to learn about lead gen techniques might also be willing to pay you to do it for them.
On top of this, blog post keywords are way easier to rank for than your landing pages - you can beat competition simply by creating significantly better content without turning it into a backlink war.In order to create good SEO content, you need to do 2 things right:

Create a comprehensive content outline
Get the writing part right

Here’s how each of these work...

How to Create a Content Outline for SEO

A content outline is a document that has all the info on what type of information the article should contain Usually, this includes:

Which headers and subheaders you should use
What’s the optimal word count
What information, exactly, should each section of the article cover
If you’re not using Yoast or Rankmath, you can also mention the SEO optimization requirements (keyword density, # of outbound links, etc.)

Outlines are useful if you’re working with a writing team that isn’t 100% familiar with SEO, allowing them to write content that ranks without any SEO know-how.
At the same time, even if you’re the one doing the writing, an outline can help you get a top-down idea of what you should cover in the article.
So, how do you create an outline? Here’s a simplified step-by-step process…

Determine the target word count. Rule of thumb: aim for 1.5x - 2x whatever your competitor wrote. You can disregard this if your competition was super comprehensive with their content, and just go for the same length instead.
Create a similar header structure as your competition. Indicate for the writer which headers should be h2, which ones h3.
For each header, mention what it’s about. Pro tip - you can borrow ideas from the top 5 ranking articles.
For each header, explain what, exactly, should the writer mention (in simple words).
Finally, do some first-hand research on Reddit and Quora. What are the questions your target audience has around your topic? What else could you add to the article that would be super valuable for your customers?

How to Write Well

There’s a lot more to good content than giving an outline to a writer. Sure, they can hit all the right points, but if the writing itself is mediocre, no one’s going to stick around to read your article.
Here are some essential tips you should keep in mind for writing content (or managing a team of writers):

Write for your audience. Are you a B2B enterprise SaaS? Your blog posts should be more formal and professional. B2C, super-consumer product? Talk in a more casual, relaxed fashion. Sprinkle your content with pop culture references for bonus points!
Avoid fluff. Every single sentence should have some sort of value (conveying information, cracking a joke, etc.). Avoid beating around the bush, and be as straightforward as possible.
Keep your audience’s knowledge in mind. For example, if your audience is a bunch of rocket scientists, you don’t have to explain to them how 1+1=2.
Create a writer guideline (or just steal ours! -> edit: sorry had to remove link due to posting guidelines)
Use Grammarly and Hemingway. The first is like your personal pocket editor, and the latter helps make your content easier to read.
Hire the right writers. Chances are, you’re too busy to write your own content. We usually recommend using ProBlogger or Cult of Copy Job Board (Facebook Group) to source top writing talent.

Step #5 - Start Link-Building Operations

Links are essential if you want your content or web pages to rank.
If you’re in a competitive niche, links are going to be the final deciding factor on what ranks and what doesn’t.
In the VPN niche, for example, everyone has good content. That’s just the baseline. The real competition is in the backlinks.
To better illustrate this example, if you Google “best VPN,” you’ll see that all top-ranking content pieces are almost the same thing. They’re all:

Well-written
Long-form
Easy to navigate
Well-formatted (to enhance UX)

So, the determining factor is links. If you check all the top-ranking articles with the Moz Toolbar Extension, you’ll see that on average, each page has a minimum of 300 links (and some over 100,000!).
Meaning, to compete, you’ll really need to double-down on your link-building effort.
In fact, in the most competitive SEO niches, it’s not uncommon to spend $20,000 per month on link-building efforts alone.

Pro Tip
Got scared by the high $$$ some companies spend on link-building? Well, worry not!
Only the most ever-green niches are so competitive. Think, VPN, make money online, health and fitness, dating, CBD, gambling, etc. So you know, the usual culprits.
For most other niches, you can even rank with minimal links, as long as you have top-tier SEO content.

Now, let’s ask the million-dollar question: “how do you do link-building?”

4 Evergreen Link Building Strategies for Any Website

There are a TON of different link building strategies on the web. Broken link building, scholarship link building, stealing competitor links, and so on and so on and so on.
We’re not going to list every single link building strategy out there (mainly because Backlinko already did that in their link building guide).
What we are going to do, though, is list out some of our favorite strategies, and link you to resources where you can learn more:

Broken link building. You find dead pages with a lot of backlinks, reach out to websites that linked to them, and pitch them something like “hey, you linked to this article, but it’s dead. We thought you’d want to fix that. You can use our recent article if you think it’s cool enough.”
Guest posting. Probably the most popular link building strategy. Find blogs that accept guest posts, and send them a pitch! They usually let you include 1-2 do-follow links back to your website.
“Linkable asset” link building. A linkable asset is a resource that is so AWESOME that you just can’t help but link to. Think, infographics, online calculators, first-hand studies or research, stuff like that. The tl;dr here is, you create an awesome resource, and promote the hell out of it on the web.
Skyscraper technique. The skyscraper technique is a term coined by Backlinko. The gist of it is, you find link-worthy content on the web, create something even better, and reach out to the right people.

Most of these strategies work, and you can find a ton of resources on the web if you want to learn more.
However, if you’re looking for something a bit different, oh boy we have a treat for you! We’re going to teach you a link-building strategy that got us around:

10,000+ traffic within a week
15+ leads
50+ links

...And so much more, all through a single blog post.

Link-Building Case Study: SaaS Marketing

“So, what’s this ancient link-building tactic?”
I hear you asking. It must be something super secretive and esoteric, right?
Secrets learned straight from the link-building monks at an ancient SEO temple…
“Right?”
Well, not quite.
The tactic isn’t something too unusual - it’s pretty famous on the web. This tactic comes in 2 steps:

Figure out where your target audience hangs out (create a list of the channels)
Research the type of content your audience loves
Create EPIC content based on that research (give TONS of value)
Promote the HELL out of it in the channels from step 1

Nothing too new, right?
Well, you’d be surprised how many people don’t use it.
Now, before you start throwing stones at us for overhyping something so simple, let’s dive into the case study:
How we PR’d the hell out of our guide to SaaS marketing (can't add a link, but it's on our blog and it's 14k words long), and got 10k+ traffic as a result.
A few months back when we launched our blog, we were deciding on what our initial content should be about.
Since we specialize in helping SaaS companies acquire new users, we decided to create a mega-authority guide to SaaS marketing (AND try to get it to rank for its respective keyword).
We went through the top-ranking content pieces, and saw that none of them was anything too impressive.
Most of them were about general startup marketing strategies - how to validate your MVP, find a product-market fit, etc.
Pretty “meh,” if you ask us. We believe that the #1 thing founders are looking for when Googling “saas marketing” are practical channels and tactics you can use to acquire new users.
So, it all started off with an idea: create a listicle of the top SaaS marketing tactics out there:

How to create good content to drive users
Promote your content
Rank on Google
Create viral infographics
Create a micro-site

...and we ended up overdoing it, covering 41+ different tactics and case studies and hitting around 14k+ words.
On one hand, oops! On the other hand, we had some pretty epic content on our hands. We even added the Smart Content Filter to make the article much easier to navigate.
Once the article was up, we ran it through some of our clients, friends, and acquaintances, and received some really good feedback.
So, now we knew it was worth promoting the hell out of it.
We came up with a huge list of all online channels that would appreciate this article:

entrepreneur and startups (hi guys!). The first ended up loving the post, netting us ~600 upboats and a platinum medal. The latter also ended up loving the post, but the mods decided to be assholes and remove it for being “self-promotional.” So, despite the community loving the content, it got axed by the mods. Sad. (Fun fact - this one time we tried to submit another content piece on startups with no company names, no links back to our website, or anything that can be deemed promotional. One of the mods removed it for mentioning a link to Ahrefs. Go figure!)
Hacker News. Tons of founders hang out on HN, so we thought they’d appreciate anything SaaS-related. This netted us around ~200+ upvotes and some awesome feedback (thanks HN!)
Submit on Growth Hackers, Indie Hackers, and all other online marketing communities. We got a bunch of love on Indie Hackers, the rest were quite inactive.
Reach out to all personal connects + clients and ask for a share
Run Facebook/Twitter ads. This didn’t particularly work out too well for us, so we dropped it after 1-2 weeks.
Run a Quuu promotion. If you haven’t heard of Quuu, it’s a platform that matches people who want their content to be shared, with people who want their social media profiles running on 100% auto-pilot. We also got “meh” results here - tons of shares, next to no likes or link clicks.
Promoted in SaaS and marketing Facebook groups. This had awesome results both in terms of traffic, as well as making new friends, AND getting new leads.
Promoted in entrepreneur Slack channels. This worked OK - didn’t net us traffic, but got us some new friends.
Emailed anyone we mentioned in the article and asked for a share. Since we mentioned too many high profile peeps and not enough non-celebs, this didn’t work out too well
Emailed influencers that we thought would like the article / give it a share. They didn’t. We were heart-broken.

And accordingly, created a checklist + distribution sheet with all the websites or emails of people we wanted to ping.
Overall, this netted us around 12,000 page views in total, 15+ leads, 6,000 traffic in just 2 promotion days.
As for SEO results, we got a bunch of links. (I would have added screenshots to all of these results, but don't think this subreddit allows it).
A lot of these are no-follow from Reddit, HackerNews, and other submission websites, but a lot of them are also pretty authentic.
The cool part about this link-building tactic is that people link to you without even asking. You create awesome content that helps people, and you get rewarded with links, shares, and traffic!
And as for the cherry on top, only 2 months after publishing the article, it’s ranking on position #28. We’re expecting it to get to page 1 within the new few months and top 3 within the year.

Step #6 - Interlink Your Pages

One of Google's ranking factors is how long your visitors stick around on your website.
So, you need to encourage users reading ONE article, to read, well, the rest of them (or at least browse around your website). This is done through interlinking.
The idea is that each of your web pages should be linked to and from every other relevant page on your site.
Say, an article on "how to make a resume" could link to (and be linked from) "how to include contact info on a resume," "how to write a cover letter," "what's the difference between a CV and a resume," and so on.
Proper interlinking alone can have a significant impact on your website rankings. NinjaOutreach, for example, managed to improve their organic traffic by 40% through better interlinking alone.
So, how do you do interlinking “right?”
First off, make it a requirement for your writers to link to the rest of your content. Add a clause to your writer guidelines that each article should have 10+ links to your other content pieces.
More often than not, they’ll manage to get 60-70% of interlinking opportunities. To get this to 100%, we usually do bi-annual interlinking runs. Here’s how that works.
Pick an article you want to interlink. Let’s say, for example, an article on 'business process management'.
The goal here is to find as many existing articles on your blog, where ‘business process management’ is mentioned so that we can add a link to the article.
Firstly, Google the keyword ‘business process management’ by doing a Google search on your domain. You can use the following query:
site:yourwebsite.com "keyword"
In our case, that’s:
site:example.com “business process management”
You’ll get a complete list of articles that mention the keyword “business process management.
Now, all you have to do is go through each of these, and make sure that the keyword is hyperlinked to the respective article!
You should also do this for all the synonyms of the keyword for this article. For example, “BPM” is an acronym for business process management, so you’d want to link this article there too.

Step #7 - Track & Improve Your Headline CTRs

Article CTRs play a huge role in determining what ranks or not.
Let’s say your article ranks #4 with a CTR of 15%. Google benchmarks this CTR with the average CTR for the position.
If the average CTR for position #4 is 12%, Google will assume that your article, with a CTR of 15% is of high quality, and will reward you with better rankings.
On the other hand, if the average CTR is 18%, Google will assume that your article isn’t as valuable as other ranking content pieces, and will lower your ranking.
So, it’s important to keep track of your Click Through Rates for all your articles, and when you see something that’s underperforming, you can test different headlines to see if they’ll improve CTR.
Now, you’re probably wondering, how do you figure out what’s the average CTR?
Unfortunately, each search result is different, and there's no one size fits all formula for average CTR.
Over the past few years, Google has been implementing a bunch of different types of search results - featured snippet, QAs, and a lot of other types of search results.
So, depending on how many of these clutter and the search results for your given keyword, you’ll get different average CTRs by position.
Rule of thumb, you can follow these values:

1st position -> ~31.73% CTR
2nd pos. -> ~24.71%
3rd pos. -> 18.66%
4th pos. -> 13.60%
5th -> 9.51%
6th -> 6.23%
7th -> 4.15%
8th -> 3.12%
9th -> 2.97%

Keep in mind these change a lot depending on your industry, PPC competitiveness, 0-click searches, etc...
Use a scraping tool like Screaming Frog to extract the following data from all your web pages:

Page title
Page URL
Old Headline

Delete all the pages that aren’t meant to rank on Google. Then, head over to Google Search Console and extract the following data for all the web pages:

CTR (28 Day Range)
Avg. Position

Add all of this data to a spreadsheet.
Now, check what your competition is doing and use that to come up with new headline ideas. Then, put them in the Title Ideas cell for the respective keyword.
For each keyword, come up with 4-5 different headlines, and implement the (seemingly) best title for each article.
Once you implement the change, insert the date on the Date Implemented column. This will help you keep track of progress.
Then, wait for around 3 - 4 weeks to see what kind of impact this change is going to have on your rankings and CTR.
If the results are not satisfactory, record the results in the respective cells, and implement another test for the following month. Make sure to update the Date Implemented column once again.

Step #8 - Keep Track of Rankings & Make Improvements On-The-Go

You’re never really “done” with SEO - you should always keep track of your rankings and see if there’s any room for improvement.
If you wait for an adequate time-frame after publishing a post (6 months to a year) and you’re still seeing next to no results, then it might be time to investigate.
Here’s what this usually looks like for us:

Audit the content
- Does your content have an adequate word count? Think, 1.5-2x your competitors.
- Is the content well-written?
- Do the images in your article add value? E.g. no stock or irrelevant images.
- Is the content optimized for SEO? Think, keyword density, links to external websites, etc.
Audit internal links
- Does the content link to an adequate number of your other articles or web pages?
- Is the article linked to from an adequate number of your web pages or blog posts? You can check this on Search Console => Links => Internal Links. Or, if you’re using Yoast or RankMath, you can check the # of internal links a post has in the WordPress Dashboard -> Posts.
Audit the backlinks
- Do you have as many backlinks as your competitors?
- Are your backlinks from the countries you want to rank in? If you have a bunch of links from India, but you want to rank in the US, you’d need to get more US links.
- Are your links high quality? More often than not, low DA / PA links are not that helpful.
- Did you disown low-quality or spam links?
Audit web page
- Does the web page load too slow? Think, 4+ seconds.
- Did you enable lazy loading for the images?
- Did you compress all images on the web page?

...And that's it.
Hope you guys had a good read and learned a thing or two :) HMU if you have any questions.
If you want to read the full version in a more reader-friendly format, you can check out our SEO process blog post here.

NY Times: Who’s Making All Those Scam Calls?

Fascinating piece published today by NY Times Magazine on scammer call centers in India. The reporter even tracks one scammer down, travels to India and confronts him. Link and article below:
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/27/magazine/scam-call-centers.html

NY Times: Who’s Making All Those Scam Calls?

Every year, tens of millions of Americans collectively lose billions of dollars to scam callers. Where does the other end of the line lead?
One afternoon in December 2019, Kathleen Langer, an elderly grandmother who lives by herself in Crossville, Tenn., got a phone call from a person who said he worked in the refund department of her computer manufacturer. The reason for the call, he explained, was to process a refund the company owed Langer for antivirus and anti-hacking protection that had been sold to her and was now being discontinued. Langer, who has a warm and kind voice, couldn’t remember purchasing the plan in question, but at her age, she didn’t quite trust her memory. She had no reason to doubt the caller, who spoke with an Indian accent and said his name was Roger.
He asked her to turn on her computer and led her through a series of steps so that he could access it remotely. When Langer asked why this was necessary, he said he needed to remove his company’s software from her machine. Because the protection was being terminated, he told her, leaving the software on the computer would cause it to crash.
After he gained access to her desktop, using the program TeamViewer, the caller asked Langer to log into her bank to accept the refund, $399, which he was going to transfer into her account. “Because of a technical issue with our system, we won’t be able to refund your money on your credit card or mail you a check,” he said. Langer made a couple of unsuccessful attempts to log in. She didn’t do online banking too often and couldn’t remember her user name.
Frustrated, the caller opened her bank’s internet banking registration form on her computer screen, created a new user name and password for her and asked her to fill out the required details — including her address, Social Security number and birth date. When she typed this last part in, the caller noticed she had turned 80 just weeks earlier and wished her a belated happy birthday. “Thank you!” she replied.
After submitting the form, he tried to log into Langer’s account but failed, because Langer’s bank — like most banks — activates a newly created user ID only after verifying it by speaking to the customer who has requested it. The caller asked Langer if she could go to her bank to resolve the issue. “How far is the bank from your house?” he asked.
A few blocks away, Langer answered. Because it was late afternoon, however, she wasn’t sure if it would be open when she got there. The caller noted that the bank didn’t close until 4:30, which meant she still had 45 minutes. “He was very insistent,” Langer told me recently. On her computer screen, the caller typed out what he wanted her to say at the bank. “Don’t tell them anything about the refund,” he said. She was to say that she needed to log in to check her statements and pay bills.
Langer couldn’t recall, when we spoke, if she drove to the bank or not. But later that afternoon, she rang the number the caller had given her and told him she had been unable to get to the bank in time. He advised her to go back the next morning. By now, Langer was beginning to have doubts about the caller. She told him she wouldn’t answer the phone if he contacted her again.
“Do you care about your computer?” he asked. He then uploaded a program onto her computer called Lock My PC and locked its screen with a password she couldn’t see. When she complained, he got belligerent. “You can call the police, the F.B.I., the C.I.A.,” he told her. “If you want to use your computer as you were doing, you need to go ahead as I was telling you or else you will lose your computer and your money.” When he finally hung up, after reiterating that he would call the following day, Langer felt shaken.
Minutes later, her phone rang again. This caller introduced himself as Jim Browning. “The guy who is trying to convince you to sign into your online banking is after one thing alone, and that is he wants to steal your money,” he said.
Langer was mystified that this new caller, who had what seemed to be a strong Irish accent, knew about the conversations she had just had. “Are you sure you are not with this group?” she asked.
He replied that the same scammers had targeted him, too. But when they were trying to connect remotely to his computer, as they had done with hers, he had managed to secure access to theirs. For weeks, that remote connection had allowed him to eavesdrop on and record calls like those with Langer, in addition to capturing a visual record of the activity on a scammer’s computer screen.
“I’m going to give you the password to unlock your PC because they use the same password every time,” he said. “If you type 4-5-2-1, you’ll unlock it.”
Langer keyed in the digits.
“OK! It came back on!” she said, relieved.
For most people, calls like the one Langer received are a source of annoyance or anxiety. According to the F.B.I.’s Internet Crime Complaint Center, the total losses reported to it by scam victims increased to $3.5 billion in 2019 from $1.4 billion in 2017. Last year, the app Truecaller commissioned the Harris Poll to survey roughly 2,000 American adults and found that 22 percent of the respondents said they had lost money to a phone scam in the past 12 months; Truecaller projects that as many as 56 million Americans may have been victimized this way, losing nearly $20 billion.
The person who rescued Langer that afternoon delights in getting these calls, however. “I’m fascinated by scams,” he told me. “I like to know how they work.” A software engineer based in the United Kingdom, he runs a YouTube channel under the pseudonym Jim Browning, where he regularly posts videos about his fraud-fighting efforts, identifying call centers and those involved in the crimes. He began talking to me over Skype in the fall of 2019 — and then sharing recordings like the episode with Langer — on the condition that I not reveal his identity, which he said was necessary to protect himself against the ire of the bad guys and to continue what he characterizes as his activism. Maintaining anonymity, it turns out, is key to scam-busting and scamming alike. I’ll refer to him by his middle initial, L.
The goal of L.’s efforts and those of others like him is to raise the costs and risks for perpetrators, who hide behind the veil of anonymity afforded by the internet and typically do not face punishment. The work is a hobby for L. — he has a job at an I.T. company — although it seems more like an obsession. Tracking scammers has consumed much of L.’s free time in the evenings over the past few years, he says, except for several weeks in March and April last year, when the start of the coronavirus pandemic forced strict lockdowns in many parts of the world, causing call centers from which much of this activity emanates to temporarily suspend operations. Ten months later, scamming has “gone right back to the way it was before the pandemic,” L. told me earlier this month.
Like L., I was curious to learn more about phone scammers, having received dozens of their calls over the years. They have offered me low interest rates on my credit-card balances, promised to write off my federal student loans and congratulated me on having just won a big lottery. I’ve answered fraudsters claiming to be from the Internal Revenue Service who threaten to send the police to my doorstep unless I agree to pay back taxes that I didn’t know I owed — preferably in the form of iTunes gift cards or by way of a Western Union money transfer. Barring a few exceptions, the individuals calling me have had South Asian accents, leading me to suspect that they are calling from India. On several occasions, I’ve tested this theory by letting the voice on the other end go on for a few minutes before I suddenly interrupt with a torrent of Hindi curses that I retain full mastery of even after living in the United States for the past two decades. I haven’t yet failed to elicit a retaliatory offensive in Hindi. Confirming that these scammers are operating from India hasn’t given me any joy. Instead, as an Indian expatriate living in the United States, I’ve felt a certain shame.
L. started going after scammers when a relative of his lost money to a tech-support swindle, a common scheme with many variants. Often, it starts when the mark gets a call from someone offering unsolicited help in ridding a computer’s hard drive of malware or the like. Other times, computer users looking for help stumble upon a website masquerading as Microsoft or Dell or some other computer maker and end up dialing a listed number that connects them to a fraudulent call center. In other instances, victims are tricked by a pop-up warning that their computer is at risk and that they need to call the number flashing on the screen. Once someone is on the phone, the scammers talk the caller into opening up TeamViewer or another remote-access application on his or her computer, after which they get the victim to read back unique identifying information that allows them to establish control over the computer.
L. flips the script. He starts by playing an unsuspecting target. Speaking in a polite and even tone, with a cadence that conveys naïveté, he follows instructions and allows the scammer to connect to his device. This doesn’t have any of his actual data, however. It is a “virtual machine,” or a program that simulates a functioning desktop on his computer, including false files, like documents with a fake home address. It looks like a real computer that belongs to someone. “I’ve got a whole lot of identities set up,” L. told me. He uses dummy credit-card numbers that can pass a cursory validation check.
The scammer’s connection to L.’s virtual machine is effectively a two-way street that allows L. to connect to the scammer’s computer and infect it with his own software. Once he has done this, he can monitor the scammer’s activities long after the call has ended; sometimes for months, or as long as the software goes undetected. Thus, sitting in his home office, L. is able to listen in on calls between scammer and targets — because these calls are made over the internet, from the scammer’s computer — and watch as the scammer takes control of a victim’s computer. L. acknowledged to me that his access to the scammer’s computer puts him at legal risk; without the scammer’s permission, establishing that access is unlawful. But that doesn’t worry him. “If it came down to someone wanting to prosecute me for accessing a scammer’s computer illegally, I can demonstrate in every single case that the only reason I gained access is because the scammer was trying to steal money from me,” he says.
On occasion, L. succeeds in turning on the scammer’s webcam and is able to record video of the scammer and others at the call center, who can usually be heard on phones in the background. From the I.P. address of the scammer’s computer and other clues, L. frequently manages to identify the neighborhood — and, in some cases, the actual building — where the call center is.
When he encounters a scam in progress while monitoring a scammer’s computer, L. tries to both document and disrupt it, at times using his real-time access to undo the scammer’s manipulations of the victim’s computer. He tries to contact victims to warn them before they lose any money — as he did in the case of Kathleen Langer.
L.’s videos of such episodes have garnered millions of views, making him a faceless YouTube star. He says he hopes his exploits will educate the public and deter scammers. He claims he has emailed the law-enforcement authorities in India offering to share the evidence he has collected against specific call centers. Except for one instance, his inquiries have elicited only form responses, although last year, the police raided a call center that L. had identified in Gurugram, outside Delhi, after it was featured in an investigation aired by the BBC.
Now and then during our Skype conversations, L. would begin monitoring a call between a scammer and a mark and let me listen in. In some instances, I would also hear other call-center employees in the background — some of them making similar calls, others talking among themselves. The chatter evoked a busy workplace, reminding me of my late nights in a Kolkata newsroom, where I began my journalism career 25 years ago, except that these were young men and women working through the night to con people many time zones away. When scammers called me in the past, I tried cajoling them into telling me about their enterprise but never succeeded. Now, with L.’s help, I thought, I might have better luck.
I flew to India at the end of 2019 hoping to visit some of the call centers that L. had identified as homes for scams. Although he had detected many tech-support scams originating from Delhi, Hyderabad and other Indian cities, L. was convinced that Kolkata — based on the volume of activity he was noticing there — had emerged as a capital of such frauds. I knew the city well, having covered the crime beat there for an English-language daily in the mid-1990s, and so I figured that my chances of tracking down scammers would be better there than most other places in India.
I took with me, in my notebook, a couple of addresses that L. identified in the days just before my trip as possible origins for some scam calls. Because the geolocation of I.P. addresses — ascertaining the geographical coordinates associated with an internet connection — isn’t an exact science, I wasn’t certain that they would yield any scammers.
But I did have the identity of a person linked to one of these spots, a young man whose first name is Shahbaz. L. identified him by matching webcam images and several government-issued IDs found on his computer. The home address on his ID matched what L. determined, from the I.P. address, to be the site of the call center where he operated, which suggested that the call center was located where he lived or close by. That made me optimistic I would find him there. In a recording of a call Shahbaz made in November, weeks before my Kolkata visit, I heard him trying to hustle a woman in Ottawa and successfully intimidating and then fleecing an elderly man in the United States.
Although individuals like this particular scammer are the ones responsible for manipulating victims on the phone, they represent only the outward face of a multibillion-dollar criminal industry. “Call centers that run scams employ all sorts of subcontractors,” Puneet Singh, an F.B.I. agent who serves as the bureau’s legal attaché at the U.S. Embassy in New Delhi, told me. These include sellers of phone numbers; programmers who develop malware and pop-ups; and money mules. From the constantly evolving nature of scams — lately I’ve been receiving calls from the “law-enforcement department of the Federal Reserve System” about an outstanding arrest warrant instead of the fake Social Security Administration calls I was getting a year ago — it’s evident that the industry has its share of innovators.
The reasons this activity seems to have flourished in India are much the same as those behind the growth of the country’s legitimate information-technology-services industry after the early 2000s, when many American companies like Microsoft and Dell began outsourcing customer support to workers in India. The industry expanded rapidly as more companies in developed countries saw the same economic advantage in relocating various services there that could be performed remotely — from airline ticketing to banking. India’s large population of English speakers kept labor costs down.
Because the overwhelming majority of call centers in the country are engaged in legitimate business, the ones that aren’t can hide in plain sight. Amid the mazes of gleaming steel-and-glass high-rises in a place like Cyber City, near Delhi, or Sector V in Salt Lake, near Kolkata — two of the numerous commercial districts that have sprung up across the country to nurture I.T. businesses — it’s impossible to distinguish a call center that handles inquiries from air travelers in the United States from one that targets hundreds of Americans every day with fraudulent offers to lower their credit-card interest rates.
The police do periodically crack down on operations that appear to be illegitimate. Shortly after I got to Kolkata, the police raided five call centers in Salt Lake that officials said had been running a tech-support scam. The employees of the call centers were accused of impersonating Microsoft representatives. The police raid followed a complaint by the tech company, which in recent years has increasingly pressed Indian law enforcement to act against scammers abusing the company’s name. I learned from Murlidhar Sharma, a senior official in the city police, that his team had raided two other call centers in Kolkata a couple of months earlier in response to a similar complaint.
“Microsoft had done extensive work before coming to us,” Sharma, who is in his 40s and speaks with quiet authority, told me. The company lent its help to the police in connection with the raids, which Sharma seemed particularly grateful for. Often the police lack the resources to pursue these sorts of cases. “These people are very smart, and they know how to hide data,” Sharma said, referring to the scammers. It was in large part because of Microsoft’s help, he said, that investigators had been able to file charges in court within a month after the raid. A trial has begun but could drag on for years. The call centers have been shut down, at least for now.
Sharma pointed out that pre-emptive raids do not yield the desired results. “Our problem,” he said, “is that we can act only when there’s a complaint of cheating.” In 2017, he and his colleagues raided a call center on their own initiative, without a complaint, and arrested several people. “But then the court was like, ‘Why did the police raid these places?’” Sharma said. The judge wanted statements from victims, which the police were unable to get, despite contacting authorities in the U.S. and U.K. The case fell apart.
The slim chances of detection, and the even slimmer chances of facing prosecution, have seemed to make scamming a career option, especially among those who lack the qualifications to find legitimate employment in India’s slowing economy. Indian educational institutions churn out more than 1.5 million engineers every year, but according to one survey fewer than 20 percent are equipped to land positions related to their training, leaving a vast pool of college graduates — not to mention an even larger population of less-educated young men and women — struggling to earn a living. That would partly explain why call centers run by small groups are popping up in residential neighborhoods. “The worst thing about this crime is that it’s becoming trendy,” Aparajita Rai, a deputy commissioner in the Kolkata Police, told me. “More and more youngsters are investing the crucial years of their adolescence into this. Everybody wants fast money.”
In Kolkata, I met Aniruddha Nath, then 23, who said he spent a week working at a call center that he quickly realized was engaged in fraud. Nath has a pensive air and a shy smile that intermittently cut through his solemnness as he spoke. While finishing his undergraduate degree in engineering from a local college — he took a loan to study there — Nath got a job offer after a campus interview. The company insisted he join immediately, for a monthly salary of about $200. Nath asked me not to name the company out of fear that he would be exposing himself legally.
His jubilation turned into skepticism on his very first day, when he and other fresh recruits were told to simply memorize the contents of the company’s website, which claimed his employer was based in Australia. On a whim, he Googled the address of the Australian office listed on the site and discovered that only a parking garage was located there. He said he learned a couple of days later what he was to do: Call Indian students in Australia whose visas were about to expire and offer to place them in a job in Australia if they paid $800 to take a training course.
On his seventh day at work, Nath said, he received evidence from a student in Australia that the company’s promise to help with job placements was simply a ruse to steal $800; the training the company offered was apparently little more than a farce. “She sent me screenshots of complaints from individuals who had been defrauded,” Nath said. He stopped going in to work the next day. His parents were unhappy, and, he said, told him: “What does it matter to you what the company is doing? You’ll be getting your salary.” Nath answered, “If there’s a raid there, I’ll be charged with fraud.”
Late in the afternoon the day after I met with Nath, I drove to Garden Reach, a predominantly Muslim and largely poor section in southwest Kolkata on the banks of the Hooghly River. Home to a 137-year-old shipyard, the area includes some of the city’s noted crime hot spots and has a reputation for crime and violence. Based on my experience reporting from Garden Reach in the 1990s, I thought it was probably not wise to venture there alone late at night, even though that was most likely the best time to find scammers at work. I was looking for Shahbaz.
Parking my car in the vicinity of the address L. had given me, I walked through a narrow lane where children were playing cricket, past a pharmacy and a tiny store selling cookies and snacks. The apartment I sought was on the second floor of a building at the end of an alley, a few hundred yards from a mosque. It was locked, but a woman next door said that the building belonged to Shahbaz’s extended family and that he lived in one of the apartments with his parents.
Then I saw an elderly couple seated on the steps in the front — his parents, it turned out. The father summoned Shahbaz’s brother, a lanky, longhaired man who appeared to be in his 20s. He said Shahbaz had woken up a short while earlier and gone out on his motorbike. “I don’t know when he goes to sleep and when he wakes up,” his father said, with what sounded like exasperation.
They gave me Shahbaz’s mobile number, but when I called, I got no answer. It was getting awkward for me to wait around indefinitely without disclosing why I was there, so eventually I pulled the brother aside to talk in private. We sat down on a bench at a roadside tea stall, a quarter mile from the mosque. Between sips of tea, I told him that I was a journalist in the United States and wanted to meet his brother because I had learned he was a scammer. I hoped he would pass on my message.
I got a call from Shahbaz a few hours later. He denied that he’d ever worked at a call center. “There are a lot of young guys who are involved in the scamming business, but I’m not one of them,” he said. I persisted, but he kept brushing me off until I asked him to confirm that his birthday was a few days later in December. “Look, you are telling me my exact birth date — that makes me nervous,” he said. He wanted to know what I knew about him and how I knew it. I said I would tell him if he met with me. I volunteered to protect his identity if he answered my questions truthfully.
Two days later, we met for lunch at the Taj Bengal, one of Kolkata’s five-star hotels. I’d chosen that as the venue out of concern for my safety. When he showed up in the hotel lobby, however, I felt a little silly. Physically, Shahbaz is hardly intimidating. He is short and skinny, with a face that would seem babyish but for his thin mustache and beard, which are still a work in progress. He was in his late 20s but had brought along an older cousin for his own safety.
We found a secluded table in the hotel’s Chinese restaurant and sat down. I took out my phone and played a video that L. had posted on YouTube. (Only those that L. shared the link with knew of its existence.) The video was a recording of the call from November 2019 in which Shahbaz was trying to defraud the woman in Ottawa with a trick that scammers often use to arm-twist their victims: editing the HTML coding of the victim’s bank-account webpage to alter the balances. Because the woman was pushing back, Shahbaz zeroed out her balance to make it look as if he had the ability to drain her account. On the call, he can be heard threatening her: “You don’t want to lose all your money, right?”
I watched him shift uncomfortably in his chair. “Whose voice is that?” I asked. “It’s yours, isn’t it?”
He nodded in shocked silence. I took my phone back and suggested he drink some water. He took a few sips, gathering himself before I began questioning him. When he mumbled in response to my first couple of questions, I jokingly asked him to summon the bold, confident voice we’d just heard in the recording of his call. He gave me a wan smile.
Pointing to my voice recorder on the table, he asked, meekly, “Is this necessary?”
When his scam calls were already on YouTube, I countered, how did it matter that I was recording our conversation?
“It just makes me nervous,” he said.
Shahbaz told me his parents sent him to one of the city’s better schools but that he flunked out in eighth grade and had to move to a neighborhood school. When his father lost his job, Shahbaz found work riding around town on his bicycle to deliver medicines and other pharmaceutical supplies from a wholesaler to retail pharmacies; he earned $25 a month. Sometime around 2011 or 2012, he told me, a friend took him to a call center in Salt Lake, where he got his first job in scamming, though he didn’t realize right away that that was what he was doing. At first, he said, the job seemed like legitimate telemarketing for tech-support services. By 2015, working in his third job, at a call center in the heart of Kolkata, Shahbaz had learned how to coax victims into filling out a Western Union transfer in order to process a refund for terminated tech-support services. “They would expect a refund but instead get charged,” he told me.
Shahbaz earned a modest salary in these first few jobs — he told me that that first call center, in Salt Lake, paid him less than $100 a month. His lengthy commute every night was exhausting. In 2016 or 2017, he began working with a group of scammers in Garden Reach, earning a share of the profits. There were at least five others who worked with him, he said. All of them were local residents, some more experienced than others. One associate at the call center was his wife’s brother.
He was cagey about naming the others or describing the organization’s structure, but it was evident that he wasn’t in charge. He told me that a supervisor had taught him how to intimidate victims by editing their bank balances. “We started doing that about a year ago,” he said, adding that their group was somewhat behind the curve when it came to adopting the latest tricks of the trade. When those on the cutting edge of the business develop something new, he said, the idea gradually spreads to other scammers.
It was hard to ascertain how much this group was stealing from victims every day, but Shahbaz confessed that he was able to defraud one or two people every night, extracting anywhere from $200 to $300 per victim. He was paid about a quarter of the stolen amount. He told me that he and his associates would ask victims to drive to a store and buy gift cards, while staying on the phone for the entire duration. Sometimes, he said, all that effort was ruined if suspicious store clerks declined to sell gift cards to the victim. “It’s becoming tough these days, because customers aren’t as gullible as they used to be,” he told me. I could see from his point of view why scammers, like practitioners in any field, felt pressure to come up with new methods and scams in response to increasing public awareness of their schemes.
The more we spoke, the more I recognized that Shahbaz was a small figure in this gigantic criminal ecosystem that constitutes the phone-scam industry, the equivalent of a pickpocket on a Kolkata bus who is unlucky enough to get caught in the act. He had never thought of running his own call center, he told me, because that required knowing people who could provide leads — names and numbers of targets to call — as well as others who could help move stolen money through illicit channels. “I don’t have such contacts,” he said. There were many in Kolkata, according to Shahbaz, who ran operations significantly bigger than the one he was a part of. “I know of people who had nothing earlier but are now very rich,” he said. Shahbaz implied that his own ill-gotten earnings were paltry in comparison. He hadn’t bought a car or a house, but he admitted that he had been able to afford to go on overseas vacations with friends. On Facebook, I saw a photo of him posing in front of the Burj Khalifa in Dubai and other pictures from a visit to Thailand.
I asked if he ever felt guilty. He didn’t answer directly but said there had been times when he had let victims go after learning that they were struggling to pay bills or needed the money for medical expenses. But for most victims, his rationale seemed to be that they could afford to part with the few hundred dollars he was stealing.
Shahbaz was a reluctant interviewee, giving me brief, guarded answers that were less than candid or directly contradicted evidence that L. had collected. He was vague about the highest amount he’d ever stolen from a victim, at one point saying $800, then later admitting to $1,500. I found it hard to trust either figure, because on one of his November calls I heard him bullying someone to pay him $5,000. He told me that my visit to his house had left him shaken, causing him to realize how wrong he was to be defrauding people. His parents and his wife were worried about him. And so, he had quit scamming, he told me.
“What did you do last night?” I asked him.
“I went to sleep,” he said.
I knew he was not telling the truth about his claim to have stopped scamming, however. Two days earlier, hours after our phone conversation following my visit to Garden Reach, Shahbaz had been at it again. It was on that night, in fact, that he tried to swindle Kathleen Langer in Crossville, Tenn. Before I came to see him for lunch, I had already heard a recording of that call, which L. shared with me.
When I mentioned that to him, he looked at me pleadingly, in visible agony, as if I’d poked at a wound. It was clear to me that he was only going to admit to wrongdoing that I already had evidence of.
L. told me that the remote access he had to Shahbaz’s computer went cold after I met with him on Dec. 14, 2019. But it buzzed back to life about 10 weeks later. The I.P. address was the same as before, which suggested that it was operating in the same location I visited. L. set up a livestream on YouTube so I could see what L. was observing. The microphone was on, and L. and I could clearly hear people making scam calls in the background. The computer itself didn’t seem to be engaged in anything nefarious while we were eavesdropping on it, but L. could see that Shahbaz’s phone was connected to it. It appeared that Shahbaz had turned the computer on to download music. I couldn’t say for certain, but it seemed that he was taking a moment to chill in the middle of another long night at work.

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