In a recent video, a YouTuber known as Coffeezilla wears his signature white shirt and red suspenders, and sits in his virtual studio that looks like it’s pulled out of a B-list cyberpunk video game. There are several blinking computer screens, a roof with exposed tubes, and a wall where photos of different people are connected by intersecting red lines, like in the office of an old-school detective who pulls the threads of a major mystery—or like that evergreen conspiracy meme from It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.
It’s a fitting setting for Coffeezilla, whose real name is Stephen. He wouldn’t disclose his last name to Motherboard, to protect his privacy. He calls himself an “internet detective,” and he focuses on exposing scams in the world of cryptocurrencies, web3, and decentralized finance, or DeFi.
And there’s plenty of work to be done. The video is the latest in a series of six videos about the alleged scams promoted by influencers and professional boxer brothers Jake and Logan Paul. In the 8-minute investigation, he accuses Jake Paul of raking in more than $2 million dollars by promoting a series of crypto projects that are actually scams designed to deceive investors, according to Coffeezilla.
“At the end of the day Jake Paul’s fans got screwed while he got rich,” Coffeezilla says in the video.
Three people who claim to have been victims of a “pump and dump” scheme promoted by executives of SafeMoon, a company that launched an eponymous…
