@Luca Netz acquired Pudgy Penguins for 750ETH (worth $2.5 million) at the time, almost entirely through a series of sales and manipulation, in which he and his partners were involved.

At the end of this article, you will see on-chain evidence showing that 99.06% of Luca’s contribution came from shares he acquired through six different sales operations. These projects raised millions of dollars, promising various benefits such as animated series, comic books, BAYC lottery, and more. However, none of these benefits materialized, and the only beneficiary was Luca Netz, who received millions of dollars into his various wallets. You will see that these individuals are a group of serial fraudsters involved in fraudulent activities across multiple industries.

Luca’s Early Years

Before venturing into NFTs, Luca Netz, the CEO of Pudgy Penguins, had a series of remarkable, public, and often exaggerated enterprises and plans. His self-given name “The Beverly Hills Bandit” is quite fitting. We will detail how he created multiple NFT scams before joining Pudgy Penguins, his malicious marketing strategies, his paid trading groups, his claims of “teaching you how to make money,” hyping dozens of tokens and tokens he dumped, multiple arrests, turning his friends into a fake expert and using them to sell courses, committing multiple securities fraud and telecommunications fraud, and more. You will learn that Luca has done every trick in the fraudster’s handbook.

To better understand him, we will start by exploring his early criminal career. Some of Luca’s initial criminal activities included stealing from local stores, dropping out of school at 16, admitting to being a drug dealer. Some of his other early adventures included deceiving property owners, renting them large warehouses, and holding illegal parties without their knowledge. Despite being arrested multiple times, he avoided imprisonment because he was a minor at the time and the contracts he signed were not legally binding, shifting the responsibility of his actions onto the property owners. Quoting Luca: “Believe me, on these streets, on these streets of Los Angeles, being a young adventurer… I can’t even talk about the stuff I’ve done now.” Here are the videos:

In 2017, he started his first company named “LA Gold Cartel, LLC,” of which he still serves as the CEO:

He used the newly established company to sell fake jewelry, counterfeit Airpods, and other devices, and utilized influencers like ‘Supremepatty’ to promote their counterfeit goods. The company used promotional images of genuine Apple products while selling counterfeit goods. These items were advertised as free, but during checkout, an exorbitant shipping fee, exceeding industry standards, was added to profit and deceive customers.

If a seller intentionally inflates shipping costs to cover the actual price of an item while claiming the item is free, this would be considered deceptive or fraudulent business practices under California law. Not to mention, selling counterfeit goods and using images of their genuine products on the website is highly deceptive.

Web Archive link:

https://web.archive.org/web/20200602065940/https://www.supremepatty.com/

Here is a quote from Luca: “I started my first consumer-facing business selling fake gold chains and cubic zirconia diamonds to people who wanted to wear jewelry like rap artists.” Here are the video links:

Like other professional scammers, Luca began buying fake news reports related to himself to create a false impression of credibility. We found 10 articles written between April and May 2021, all using previously unseen photos of Luca. This includes Sun Nigeria, which we believe even falsified the date of the article to 2016, while the photo used was taken in 2021. These media outlets are often exploited by scammers and scam experts to publish false, fraudulent articles. Here is a list of news articles for sale, provided by another scammer Riachu, almost all of Luca’s articles are included, with prices ranging from $200 to $1200.

Additionally, you can see an old fake news report featuring Luca and his good friend and long-term partner Nick Von. Later, we will detail how Nick has defrauded dozens of people of millions of dollars over the past few years. To illustrate the maliciousness of some of the individuals involved, you will see that Nick Von’s victims include his girlfriend and his grandmother, whom he defrauded of $60,000. Here is a list of fake news articles.

Here is Nick in Luca’s podcast, with the video titled “NICK VON How I Made $5 Million in DOGECOIN!!!” (Spoiler: He didn’t make that much money):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EvuQRRVJQQU

Ironically, one of the articles mistook Luca for a namesake German footballer. Our advice to Luca is that the next time he wants to manipulate his public image by buying fake news, he should proofread the articles about himself before the seller publishes them.

We believe that he purchased these articles to enhance his reputation, as he was preparing to execute his largest fraud to date, which he has been trying to cover up since the acquisition of Pudgy Penguins.

Netz Trade

Luca’s next venture began in 2021, which he called Netz Trade, a Discord group open only to subscribers, offering trading advice and “automatic trading signals.” Around this time, he also launched a reselling course worth $1700. Through this course, we can see early signs of Luca’s success, as he taught students to buy Instagram accounts with a large following, purchase fake likes, and create fake comments. Eventually, he even started providing sports betting signals.

To entice people to buy these services, he showcased suspicious trading results, showing huge profits, while also boasting about the performance of his reselling store. On his website, he used the logos of the fake news articles he purchased to increase his credibility, a classic scammer move of “as seen on.” Unsurprisingly, at the time, neither Yahoo nor Business Insider had published any articles about him; he simply inserted fraudulent promotions among all the fake articles.

The question we raise is, why does someone who is “proficient” in trading and an “8-figure reseller” need to sell not just one but multiple paid groups and multiple courses?

It can be said that some business courses can provide value for money. After evaluating some of his courses, we can conclude that they are nothing special, and we believe there are better free courses available on platforms like YouTube. However, the problem arises when you start selling dreams to people, telling them to “join and start making money immediately,” when you overpromise and underdeliver, when you teach your “students” malicious business strategies that they will continue to use to harm consumers, and when you ultimately abandon them.

Furthermore, why would someone with the intention of helping people, who paid thousands of dollars for a course that supposedly would make them financially free, encourage those paying customers to engage in gambling? Below is a message from one of the administrators of Luca’s Discord group encouraging members to gamble and use their referral links while doing so. He is enticing them to engage in something mathematically destined to fail, which has ruined countless lives, and boldly sharing his referral link, remember, the casino only pays them when the people they refer lose money.

Saving Koalas Scam Gimmick

In a section of his $1700 advanced course, Luca is teaching students about “secret insider methods.” The course details strategies such as brand building, running ad campaigns, and copywriting.

The focus product is a series of bracelets and necklaces purchased from Chinese suppliers at the lowest cost and marked up five times the purchase price. His marketing tactic is to sell these jewelry items seemingly as part of a charity initiative to protect endangered Australian koalas from wildfires. According to his promotional claims, a portion of the profits from each purchase will be donated to save and protect these animals. Yes, you read that right, his entire course is teaching people how to deceive those who have sympathy for Australian koalas, as this was during the time of the Australian bushfires, and koalas were suffering from the fires.

Although we strongly doubt that Luca would donate any portion of the profits apart from protecting himself from legal liability, even if he did donate half of the profits, this is still a highly suspicious way of making money, almost bordering on fraud. What’s worse is that he has taught thousands of people, potentially creating a small army of “Beverly Hills Bandits,” to deceive people by exploiting their sympathy.

https://rumble.com/v2nbbj6-4-luca-netz-saving-endangered-koalas-from-fire-sarcasm.html