Meet YouTube Creator Busting Crypto Scams – Rolling Stone

Christopher Lee for Rolling Stone

Stephen Findeisen, better known as YouTube star Coffeezilla, sits in what appears to be a cyberpunk detective’s office, with slow-moving ceiling fans, a bay of screens flashing simulated data, and harsh light filling the windows behind him. It’s part of what he jokingly calls his $10 million studio, which, along with his signature outfit of a white collared shirt and dark suspenders, cast him as an old-school private eye plunging into a bizarre new future. As Coffeezilla, Findeisen investigates cryptocurrency scams spreading across the internet and is currently looking into an alleged scheme resembling a “Bernie Madoff situation”, with as much as $300 million stolen by the founder. “It’s crazy,” he says, laughing.

Such are the high, even ridiculous, stakes of a Coffeezilla story, and Findeisen’s barely contained giddiness at the prospect of breaking one. The 29-year-old has become a cheerful, grim reaper of financial fads, exposing fraudsters to an audience now approaching 3 million. His findings, delivered in playfully edited segments, break down the complex manipulations of crypto in terms anyone can understand. Findeisen alternates between winking sarcasm and disbelief at how rude the industry’s worst actors can be.

Findeisen has no formal education in journalism or business; at Texas A&M University, he studied chemical engineering. “The math helped” with his current work, he says, “but pretty much nothing else.” After joining YouTube in 2014, he started posting as a generalist, but eventually found some success breaking down big ideas like “Why bad science spreads.” However, he continued to return to corporate deception, with titles such as “How to Start a Pyramid Scheme.”

In 2018, he adopted the Coffeezilla persona and began working on videos exposing the pitches of multilevel marketers and “fake gurus” offering guaranteed returns on stock trades. From then on, Findeisen was hooked. His “crash course” in fraud involved studying the subject not only from the victim’s side, but also from the perpetrator’s side: “I have people who want to expose their business partner or competitor, and they’ll say, ‘Let me explain to you how this scam works.’ Findeisen is amused by how eager they are to sniff each other: “It’s a den of snakes, of course!”

The past few months have cemented Coffeezilla as a formidable force. In a three-part series, Findeisen detailed the demise of influencer Logan Paul’s “CryptoZoo,” an NFT game that never worked properly after launch, and interviewed investors who said they lost hundreds of thousands of dollars. Paul has since blamed his developers, but he is named along with other CryptoZoo founders in a class action lawsuit. (Paul has denied any wrongdoing, and his reps tell Rolling Stone that “all deserving parties will be reimbursed.”)

Findeisen’s reporting has earned him some high-profile fans. “You have to fight fire with fire,” says Ben McKenzie, an actor known for OC and Gotham who has become Hollywood’s most outspoken crypto critic. “Nobel prize-winning economists have said, ‘This is bullshit.’ [But] no one cares. You need people like Coffeezilla out there making YouTube videos.”

Some of what Findeisen uncovers may appear to have significant legal consequences. Following the implosion of crypto exchange FTX in November, Findeisen confronted its founder, Sam Bankman-Fried, on Twitter’s live audio platform Spaces as the former CEO attempted damage control. Bankman-Fried gave an answer about the commingling of customer funds, which Findeisen believes constitutes a confession of fraud. Less than a week after Findeisen released the video of that meeting, Bankman-Fried was arrested on charges including wire fraud and money laundering. He has pleaded not guilty and is awaiting trial under house arrest.

That settlement came shortly after Findeisen celebrated the guilty plea of ​​Jebara Igbara, also known as Instagram influencer Jay Mazini. Back in 2021, Findeisen had published videos accusing Igbara of orchestrating financial crimes for which he could now spend 20 years in prison. In court, Igbara admitted to carrying out investment schemes that netted him about $8 million. For Findeisen, prayer was proof that this work can make a difference: “Influencers are going to launch new NFTs, wondering: ‘Is Coffeezilla coming for me?’ ”

Findeisen will not say whether public agencies have contacted him for information, but he acknowledges that his work is only part of the solution. A big reason why Findeisen never runs out of leads, he says, is that “regulators are behind the eight ball – I think even they would admit that.”

His role is therefore to give people a chance to avoid being cheated in the first place. Hearing from those who are able to move their money before a crash is hugely rewarding for him, even if it’s just a drop in the bucket. What he is really up against, he says, is a confidence game “as old as time”.

“There’s no free lunch, and especially no free lunch from a guy in a Lambo,” says Findeisen. “Because he had to buy that Lambo. Where do you think he got that money from?”