‘Fake’ Pirate3D campaign raising money on Indiegogo

Update (29 July): The campaign appears to have been removed. Our attempt to reach the creator has been left unanswered.

Burclader, anyone?

A Pirate3D campaign has launched on crowdfunding platform Indiegogo, but the company says it is fake. Pirate3D is a Singapore company that successfully raised USD 1.43M on Kickstarter for its Buccaneer printer.

Aside from a name change — the copy 3d printer is called Burclader — the campaign is identical to the Kickstarter version.

It is started by one ‘Nick Colleranos’, supposedly from Canada. He claims that the company has an admin and marketing office in Toronto. A search online, however, showed nobody with that name who is connected to Pirate3D.

Pirate 3D has put up a notice on Facebook decrying the campaign as an impersonation:

While crowdfunding has opened up new fundraising vistas for startups, it is also exposed to scammers out to make a quick buck. Several fake campaigns have already been spotted on Indiegogo and Kickstarter.

Such efforts are less likely to succeed since the best campaigns are usually followed with marketing and customer outreach efforts. Building credibility and transparency online is also critical.

However, there’s nothing stopping scam artists from passing off legitimate-looking campaigns that raise modest amounts of money.

Indiegogo has a fraud-detection process in place. All campaigns and contributions go through a review, and the company looks out for high fraud risks and seeks more information from them.

Finally, all campaigns have to go through a final examination before funds are disbursed.

It’s worth noting that when the Pirate3D team put up their campaign on Kickstarter, they liaised with an actual personnel who requested for more information about the 3D printing company.