The aforementioned member contacted the GSC Admin team today asking if they had heard of “The Men Event” sex party. He learned of this event from a listing on adam4adam posted under the profile name TheMenEventNYC. He said he was interested in attending but thought it was odd that he had to buy tickets in advance through eventzilla. Let me first say that there are in fact completely legitimate party promoters that ask for attendees to pay in advance for their events, so that in and of itself does not necessarily mean the party is a scam, but I will get to what and who to trust regarding that a little farther down. It is certainly not a usual practice and you should always be wary when asked to spend money up front.
The member was curious to find out if the party was legitimate or not so he decided to visit the address where the party is supposedly happening this evening according to the information on the event purchase page. What he found at the address was a townhouse that appears to be under renovation. So this was looking more and more suspicious all the time.
Now I certainly am not one to throw around the word “scam” lightly, but once I had a look at the event page myself, I saw that there were certain immediate red flags that stood out with this one. First of all was the claim that there are usually around 200 guys at each party. So that would make this one of the biggest parties in the city and so it would seem curious that neither I nor any one of my party-going acquaintances know about it. Who are the 200 guys going to this party? I’m the first to admit that there are likely many parties in this city that I have yet to hear about, but that is because they are under-the-radar smaller, more private affairs (presumably wanting to stay that way). But a party of 200? And what was even more suspicious was the description of the party itself, a portion of which reads:
“The Exclusive House in Upper East Side (Manhattan), includes a bar, clothes check, a stage with nude dancers, a maze, a live DJ and huge “wet areas” with a lounge area to watch porn and chill. You can fuck ANYWHERE you like!
This is a "SAFE SEX" (NO CONDOM FREE) and drug-free event. 18 to party, 21 to drink.
Our parties are 'WATERSPORTS FRIENDLY' - but not essential. You do not have to be "into W/S" to come to our parties. We get the hottest youngest crowd of any party in NYC, and lots of our guys are not into W/S but come for the sex, the hot boys/ free drinks / good music.... ;)
Is a safe sex event with 200 guys at the house....it's got a stage, a live DJ, clothes check, an open bar, chill out lounge and huge 'wet' play areas, a maze with booths, and several tubs, and private showers you can use any time during the party."
Replace “Upper East Side (Manhattan)” with “Park Slope (Brooklyn)” and it sounds an awful lot like GBU, doesn't it? (Well, when GBU was still a safe sex party that is.) And the reason why I mention this is because the GBU host emailed his list back in May to inform them that someone was running a scam by impersonating him and trying to sell advanced tickets to his parties online. Just like this gent is trying to do now (and this guy’s Adam profile even mentions that he also hosts parties in Park Slope). And he’s doing it with a description that sounds like a cut-and-paste job from one of GBU’s old invite emails.
What makes this cut-and-paste job even more apparent is that the text written before and after the party description is full of some pretty noticeable grammatical errors as if it was written by someone without the best command of the English language. Here’s a sample:
“If the event appears like "Sold Out" and you wanna still coming to the party, you can make a payment higher than $32 if you coming alone (ADMIT ONE) and a payment higher than $37 if you coming with a friend (ADMIT 2x1)”
Does that sound like the same person that wrote the oh-so-very-similar-to-GBU description that then follows on the page? And then there is not only how that sentence is being said, but what it is actually trying to say, which is basically that you can still buy a ticket even if the event is "Sold Out" by paying an unspecified amount above the already exorbitant $32/37 ticket price. Now that is very unusual indeed.
At this point I was fairly convinced that this was indeed a scam (to put it mildly). Of course there was absolutely no information about the host in the “Organizer” section – no contact email, no website, no phone number, nothing. , but then I clicked on the “View Other Events” link in that Organizer section and that took me to a page that really convinced me that something evil was afoot. The page had a listing of “Events hosted by Jonas Jonas” that listed nine additional parties in three other locations (Elizabeth, NJ, Miami Beach, FL, Beverly Hills, CA) that the “organizer” was selling advanced tickets for and was supposedly also hosting tonight at 10pm. Wow. Impressive. That is a host with serious super-human powers to be able to host ten parties concurrently in four cities coast to coast. Now is it entirely possible that this one organizer represents multiple hosts that just so happen to be hosting ten parties at the same time? I suppose anything is possible. But extremely unlikely. So I call a scam on this one.
I highly suspect this is the same person that was duping unsuspecting GBU-ers out of their hard-earned cash a few months ago, so I encourage you all to keep an eye out for similar scams in the future. Just keep this in mind: NEVER PAY FOR A PARTY UP-FRONT UNLESS YOU HAVE BEEN ABLE TO CONFIRM THAT THE PARTY AND HOST IS FOR REAL! Obviously the really large parties around holidays and Pride which are hosted by well-established party promoters (like Daniel Nardicio for instance) are going to, at times, sell tickets in advance. And there are times when hosts will ask guys to pay up front if the host needs to pay in advance for a space and needs to make sure there will be enough in attendance to cover costs. The host of the Milk Chocolate parties sometimes does this. And the host of Footmennyc recently announced he will be doing it as well. But those are two well-established parties that have been around forever so you can feel somewhat secure that they won’t be skipping town with your money.
To try to determine if a party is “legit” or not, check to see if the party is listed on groupsexinthecity.com and, if so, if anyone has written reviews or posted comments about it. When in doubt, remember that google is your friend. If you can’t find any information anywhere online regarding the party or the promoter/host then proceed with heightened caution.
If you don’t remember anything else about this post, please do yourself a favour and remember: “DO NOT EVER PAY UP-FRONT FOR A PARTY UNLESS THE PARTY OR THE HOST IS WELL-ESTABLISHED AND YOU CAN VERIFY THAT YOU ARE DEALING DIRECTLY WITH THE HOST, OR THROUGH THEIR OFFICIAL WEBSITE! (No, a page on eventzilla does not count as an official website.)
Here is a link to the event page in question. Have a look so you may have an idea of what you might want to look for in the future. I have reported this user to eventzilla so in case the pages are taken down, I have included screenshots of the pages below.
The NYC party page:
http://gaysexpartynyc.eventzilla.net/web/event?eventid=2139087084
The List of other Parties Organized by the same user
http://www.eventzilla.net/organizer?clientid=2135785725
UPDATE:
The
GSC member who originally brought this to my attention forwarded me the
message exchange he had with the supposed host on Adam. In it, the host
who calls himself "Jonas" claims that he hosts bi-sexual parties every
Friday, Saturday and Sunday at 5th Avenue, Park Slope, Brooklyn. I have
just confirmed with the owner of the 5th Avenue space that "Jonas" is
indeed a scammer and is not in any way associated with that space.
Screenshots from the pages on eventzilla:
Thanks for reading and, as always, stay safe and "let’s be careful out there!” (in more ways than one)
No comments:
Post a Comment