There's a new net marketing kid on the block, and his name is Maksym Vysochanskyy, (or Maksym V for the spelling challenged). He has a new product, due for release on January 21, called Treasure Coach. He claims to have come up with a new online business model that nobody's thought of before, and he wants to teach it to you. Who is this guy, and why should you listen to him?
I wondered that myself when I first detected the buzz about this product. Here's what I've learned. Maksym (I'm really not on a first name basis with him, but his first name is much easier to type than his last name) accustomed be a package pirate. Know what that is? Basically, he sold embezzled, bootlegged (or pirated) copies of package -- big-name package, from companies like Borland, Microsoft, and Adobe. This is very common practice in some parts of the world, and apparently Maksym was very,
very
good at it.So good that, in 2003, he was inactive patc on vacation in Thailand, after US Secret Service and US Postal Inspection Service agents learned he would be there by monitoring his email. In 2004, he was extradited to the US, where he was eventually sentenced to 35 months in prison. Oddly, his sentencing didn't occur until May 2006... roughly 35 months after his arrest. His own website states that he spent a year in Thai prison and two years in US prison, and that he was freed in May 2006, so the logical conclusion is that when his case was finally detected, he was sentenced to the time he had already served.
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He calls himself the "1 Billion Software Pirate" in the promotional materials for Treasure Coach. Evidently that number comes from the following headline on a Thai newspaper following his arrest: "$1-billion 'Pirate' Held". But the related story says that he is accused of marketing package worth US $3 million. So a billion seems to be a little of plug artist exaggeration by the Thai press. Even the $3 million figure is suspect: a 2006 report on his sentenciing, from Computerworld magazine, quotes a US Attorney involved in the case as mentioning "more than US $20,000 sent to him via wire transfers to a bank account in Lithuania". I think it's safe to say that if Maksym had sold anything even about $3 million, the US Attorney would have mentioned that, rather than a lilliputian $20 in wire transfers.
So what are we left with? A guy who sold enough embezzled package online to get the attention of the US authorities, who kept him in prison for a total of three years, then sentenced him to the three years he had already served. Not exactly a billion dollar pirate, but still: the guy had a booming -- if embezzled -- online business model.
At any rate, the rest of the story is that after his release from prison, Maksym distinct to continue doing business online, but this time legally. He now claims to have come up with a new, 100% legal, online business model that he can teach to you, if you buy his product, Treasure Coach. Will he be able to satisfy that claim? Only time will tell.
