Paid a seller in January for six placements. No links, no replies, and I feel like an idiot

Sorry if this is the wrong section and sorry that it's a stupid one.

I found a seller through a group chat, not a marketplace. He had a sheet of sites, the metrics looked reasonable, the prices were about 30% under what I'd been quoted elsewhere, and two people in the chat vouched for him. I paid 940 for six placements on the 9th of January. In crypto, because that's what he took.

First two weeks he replied same day. Then it became every few days. Then "waiting on the editor". Last message from him was the 3rd of February and nothing since. Not blocked, the messages show delivered.

I know the answer is probably that the money is gone. What I want to know is whether there's anything worth doing at all, or whether people just write it off, and also whether the two who vouched for him are worth asking about because I don't know how these things usually work.

the two who vouched are the first thing worth doing and the only thing

Money's gone. Sorry. But grindstone is right that the vouches are the useful thread to pull, and here's how to pull them without making yourself the problem.

Message both privately, separately, and ask one question: have your own placements from him gone live, and when. Don't ask them to intervene and don't accuse anyone of anything. What you're finding out is whether he's dead, overloaded, or whether the vouches were part of the setup.

Three outcomes and they mean different things. If both say their links are live and recent, you've been deprioritised rather than robbed and public pressure in the chat might actually work. If both are also waiting, he's collapsed and there'll be a queue of you. If they go quiet on you too, you have your answer about the vouches.

On prevention, because that's the only part with any value left: 30% under market for placements is not a discount, it's a signal. Real placement costs are dominated by what the host charges, and no reseller has a structural 30% edge on that. What they have is a working capital gap they're filling with your prepayment.

I'd never pay for more than one placement up front with someone I hadn't used before. One, delivered, then the batch. Costs you a week.

Was the sheet of sites his, or was it circulating in that chat before he showed up with it?

30% under market has cost me about 2k across three sellers. every time

I don't know, and now that you ask it I realise I never checked. Someone else posted a very similar sheet in the same chat in November. I assumed they were both getting it from the same broker upstream. That might have been generous of me.

The circulating sheet is the oldest trick in this corner of the business and it has not changed since about 2011.

Here's how it works. A real broker has real relationships with fifty sites. His sheet leaks, as they always do. Somebody with no relationships takes that sheet, discounts it 30%, and sells placements he cannot deliver. He fully intends to deliver at first — the plan is to take your money, go to the real broker, pay 70% of what you paid, and keep the spread. It works right up until he mistimes it or spends the float.

So the person who took your 940 was probably not a con artist in January. He became one in February. That distinction is worth nothing to you financially and quite a lot for understanding why he's still reading your messages and not answering them.

The modern version has a chat group and a crypto address. The 2011 version had a forum thread and an escrow service that everyone ignored. Same shape.

Write it off. Then go and find out who the upstream broker is, because that sheet came from somewhere and that somewhere is who you actually wanted to buy from.

Nine hundred quid for the phone number of a man you could have found for free. Expensive introduction.

Update in case it helps anyone searching this later.

Messaged both vouchers separately like byte_broker said. One never replied at all. The other was very decent about it, said his own last two placements never landed either and he'd written off about 1,200 in December but hadn't said anything in the chat because he "didn't want to start a pile-on".

So there were at least three of us and none of us told each other. That's the actual lesson and it's not about link buying.

No money back. I did find the upstream — the sheet is from a broker who has been doing this since 2019 and who quoted me almost exactly the price my guy charged plus 30%, which was the price all along. Bought one placement from him. It went live in eleven days.

Thanks all, individually. I'd rather have learned this at 940 than later.