Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast
This TikTok Star Scammed $22,000,000 - The Gavin Mayo story
Thu, 30 Jan 2025
Gavin Mayo and his business partner Gabriel Hay are allegedly involved in a $22,000,000 NFT scheme.
Chapter 1: Who is Gavin Mayo and what is the NFT scam?
So this TikToker claims to be the world's youngest billionaire, and he's about to get busted in the biggest NFT scam of all time. Allegedly. Now, the TikToker's name is Mayo. He's 23, and Mayo is apparently very, very rich.
Chapter 2: How did Mayo claim to make his fortune?
What's your net worth now, if you want to review this? Yeah, so I can explain this in a way that might sound crazy. I'm a billionaire.
In fact, bro claims he has so much money that he'll just roll up and buy a whole ass village. A lot of you in your apartments, you have hot tubs.
Well, I bought a village and part of this village. We have hot springs.
Now, where did Mayo get all this money? Well, that's where it gets interesting. Because Mayo, he has a TikTok channel with about 250,000 followers. Not bad. And there, he likes to teach people about crypto and investing. And people follow him and they listen to his advice.
See, crypto is that easy, guys. Follow him for more.
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Chapter 3: What was the strategy behind the NFT projects?
And so he makes a bit of money in the stock market and soon he gets really into buying and selling NFTs. Now, eventually he moves to Los Angeles and there is where things really take off for him because that's where he comes up with a plan to multiply his money. And so Mayo teams up with a friend of his, this guy, Gabe. And together, Mayo and Gabe plan to create their own NFTs, completely theirs.
And they use Mayo's online popularity to promote them. So they make a Twitter and a website for this NFT project. And Mayo, he starts hyping the project up on social media. And they release this promo video. And people are pumped about it. And by the way, these are the actual NFTs they're selling if you wanted to see them. I don't know why anyone would pay money for these, but here they are.
But anyway, bam, they launch it and Mayo and Gabe watch the investments pour in. And after they've collected over like a million dollars, kaboom, they allegedly sell off and abandon the project. And of course, this crashes the value of all the NFTs and the people who invested in it are super pissed. because they lost all their money.
Chapter 4: How did Mayo and Gabe allegedly scam investors?
But whatever, Mayo and Gabe got paid, apparently around a million dollars to split. And so they move on and allegedly they decide to do the same thing again. They launch a new NFT based project and they hype it all up and they get people excited to invest and they make a website for it. And if you're curious as to what these NFTs look like, here are a few of them.
And remember, people paid actual real money to invest in these. But anyway, so Mayo and Gabe's new NFT project launches and this one raises more than $420,000. And boom, Mayo and Gabe allegedly sell it off and abandon the project again. And then they allegedly move on and do a similar thing on a new project and they do it again and again and again. And they are just raking in the money.
Now at this point, you might be thinking, Ray, why are people investing in their NFT projects if they keep getting scammed? Wouldn't they have a bad reputation by now? Well, that is apparently the secret. Most of these projects, they launch anonymously without their face or name attached to them.
Sometimes they'll just make up a fake persona and pretend that that person is the brains behind the project, or they'll hire someone to pretend to be the face of the project. Like this guy was apparently just paid money to pretend to be the face of one of their NFT projects. Now, as Mayo and Gabe's little scheme is growing, at some point they need to hire a team to help them.
Chapter 5: Why do investors keep falling for these scams?
And they end up hiring a project manager to organize some stuff. This guy. And I don't know his real name, so we'll just call him Project. And one day, Project is moderating the Discord chat for some of these investors on one of these projects. And this is shortly after they had been scammed by Mayo and Gabe. And people in the chat are talking back and forth like, yo, this feels like a rug pull.
Now, a rug pull is a type of NFT or crypto scam. It's basically what they were accusing the Hawk Tua girl of being involved in. So some of these people are pissed and they're like, yo, this feels like a rug pull. Yeah, it does feel like a rug pull. I think we all got conned. And so Project is moderating this discord. And I don't know if he feels guilty or maybe he just values honesty.
I don't know. But suddenly, kaboom, he reveals to everyone in the discord that Mayo and Gabe are behind the various NFT projects. And Mayo and Gabe see this and they are pissed. I mean, they don't want their name dragged through the mud. I mean, they aren't gonna let this slide.
And so allegedly, they write an email to Project's parents for some reason, which makes me think Project is actually a young guy still living at home. Regardless, they email his parents and they pretend they're attorneys from a law firm like, if Project doesn't stop, he's gonna pay. And in this email, they include Project's parents' home address and their ages.
which is kind of like a veiled threat, like, yeah, we know who you are and where you live. Then, Mayo and Gabe allegedly pretend to be an angry investor, and they text Project from an unknown number, threatening to sue him if he doesn't scrub the chat of Mayo and Gabe's names in the next hour. And this message allegedly includes his parents' names and contact info.
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Chapter 6: Who is the mysterious Project manager in the scheme?
A week later, he gets another email from the fake law firm again. And this time, they directly threaten his family. Specifically, they threaten to publicly expose his parents as P3DOs. Now, as far as we know, right now, Project doesn't reply and nothing bad happens to his parents. But a couple of years go by.
And by this point, Mayo and Gabe have participated in many NFT and crypto schemes, allegedly. By one estimate, they've conned over $22 million from investors. 22 million fucking dollars for JPEGs, pictures that look like this. What the hell is wrong with people? But whatever, now that Mayo is making stupid money, he's living a baller ass lifestyle.
And of course, he's got to let everyone know about it by flexing on the gram. Here he is buying a Lambo. Here he is with what looks like a tiger cub and a lion cub. Here he is on a private plane. And not only is he flexing, but it seems like all this money has turned him into a parody of a rich person. Like look at the way he captions his tweets. I spent $7,000 on a lighter today.
We are not the same. I spent $500,000 on a baby tiger today. We are not the same. I purchased a $30,000 plane ticket. Everything is free when you can print money. Oh, and it's not just when he's talking about money. Like all of his tweets make him look like such an asshole. You need to cheat on your girlfriend to really see if she loves you.
Good morning to everyone except people who believe that dinosaurs actually existed. Which college major produces the most hoes? Definitely nursing. But listen, Mayo is also online giving dietary advice. Like here when he encourages his followers to eat raw chicken.
Bro, you scared about raw chicken? What if you get salmonella? You're gonna get sick. Every ounce of salmonella I have fuels my body.
Yeah, don't do that. Now, it is during this stint of flexing on social media that he's going on podcasts claiming that he's a billionaire.
As far as the money calculator thing, I think my net worth is above a billion dollars.
Well, he may not actually be a billionaire, but he's definitely made millions off of all his shady NFT projects. until suddenly one day bam mayo gets arrested and then bam gabe gets arrested two local men are charged with defrauding investors out of more than 22 million dollars in cryptocurrency apparently at some
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