Zadehkicks pre orders

[sneakaprince]

Good data above, with good sources, examples and reasoning behind it.

Cats aren't going to admit this but Zadeh wasnt that far off with his guess of 800, especially if he was able to source through authentic channels at near retail.

Not to mention there is no answer to how many he sold at 400 vs 800.

 

[1212theory]

I don’t think the FBI is involved because of counterfeit shoes. I think they’re here for money laundering.

Agree, FBI doesn't seem to be directly involved yet. No indication of FBI involvement.

I might have missed this, but why did Zadeh voluntarily dissolve the LLC in the first place? Someone must've shook this mans up *enter Michael Keaton with the Batman 6's* The Petition to Dissolve didn't give much backstory.

sneakaprince
It's funny how, people gathering facts in here, and on twitter, to construct an opinion based on factual evidence that is publicly available all in the name of communal discussion. Then that opinion is met with thin air rebuttals or "trust be bro, your opinion too far fetched you conspiracy theorist."

Yep agree, he set TS1 at @ $400 a pop and knew he messed up, marking them back up to $800 months later lol. But he did course correct, and did collect at $800 which is wild too. On a related note, I almost bit on preorders for the Georgetown 85's with him, but glad I didn't. Just ended up copping on Goat.

 

[jordanhead718212]

If the FBI isn't involved, then why would they tell people to contact the FBI if they feel like they were victims?

 

[thedrifter]

Agree, time gives sneakers time to go up, especially sneakers like TS, Union, OW etc till the bubble pops.

But for conversation sake, here's Zadeh's preorders:

TS1 preorders. Retail Release was on 5/11/2019 (StockX)
$400/Jan 2019,
$800/April 2019,

StockX Chart for price history

So with his 10 years of experience, he determined that a preorder at $400 and $800 was fair. Even with early pairs, the first sell of my size in StockX's dataset is around $1800. Zadeh thought consumers weren't going to pay anywhere near that hence $400/$800 preorders. As you can see in the chart above, the market eventually set the minimum floor resell of $921 on StockX data. Looks like sometimes even with X years of experience, the "experts" get it wrong.

Wasn't he wrong about 9 out of 10 time? Isn't that part of his shtick, selling sneakers for better price than the market. My friend first introduced me to him around the og ts 1's and I thought he was a fool buying bulk amount of those and thought it was fake or maybe the guy knows something we dont know and they were going to release a ton, but he actually fulfilled his bulk and I was pretty astonished at first. Then I think he blew up more and he started telling me that he was receiving less and less shoes from his bulk orders and at a longer wait.

 

[ady2glude707]

The bulk order issues didnt start occurring until 2021. He blamed it due to being unable to source all at once because of some retailers/sources being closed and global shipping delays, both due to covid, which all couldve been very much true considering that today releases for a specific sneaker still release on different dates rather than one launch date. I started buying with him in '17 and never had any problems with orders including TS, OW, Chunky Dunkys, legit and orders fulfilled in full.

 

[mr s j king]

Seems like the customers that only purchased personal pairs are overlooking the fact that it's been said he was taking 5 and 6 figure orders

How was he fulfilling these orders OR did he never completely fulfill any of the orders and just straight up pocketed people's money like some kind of mafia boss

 

[sneakaprince]

I've seen proof of him fulfilling a 5 figure order as recently as last year. I think homie above was talking about a bulk order of Travis' which is sure a five figure order.

 

[SolesNGoals99]

If the FBI isn't involved, then why would they tell people to contact the FBI if they feel like they were victims?

Enough complaints regarding the same circumstances against the same person/business would prompt them to open up an investigation.

 

[sneakaprince]

Enough complaints regarding the same circumstances against the same person/business would prompt them to open up an investigation.

A 1/2 a million dollar chargeback is probably gonna put you a couple people's radar.

 

[turbo95eg6]

I speculate neither: It’s straight-forward fraud. I wasn’t really watching this thread page-by-page (thank lawd), but the site offered “preorders”? The intent of a preorder -in general- is so a business can get a headcount of how much inventory to order: that’s why they’re dominant in the video game industry and game retailers: so a store isn’t purchasing 200k of soft/hardware no one will buy. Not really a preorder when you’re using buyers fund on a chance to get the shoes your buyer ordered, then only offering a credit on another chance and no full refund if he doesn’t procure the order.

So you think a dude like this kept 100% legit receipts for his taxes? Doubt he was able to keep track most of his orders, assuming it was a one man operation.

 

[1212theory]

If the FBI isn't involved, then why would they tell people to contact the FBI if they feel like they were victims?

involved is probably not the most accurate word, but I think what people including myself mean is, FBI is not actively investigating, which means no case is open, at least not publicly known - a point that SolesNGoals99 mentioned above. The hotline provided in the email is probably used for exactly that - to fact find and see if they can build a case.

 

[sneakaprince]

I also think the FBI could be attempting to trace how far back some of these unfulfilled orders will go. Is there still people just "waiting" on sneakers from 2020?

 

[thedrifter]

Seems like the customers that only purchased personal pairs are overlooking the fact that it's been said he was taking 5 and 6 figure orders

How was he fulfilling these orders OR did he never completely fulfill any of the orders and just straight up pocketed people's money like some kind of mafia boss

He fulfilled most if not all orders of shoes that actually exist prior to pandemic. Once the pandemic started and he got more followers and everyone became an overnight reseller, my friend notice he got less and less shoes as the pandemic went on other than when it's "brick" shoes which he wasn't profiting or losing money for him then he would usually get much higher amount each time he ships.

 

[AllGrails]

All I know is the fallout over the last week is

 

[jttegx]

I also think the FBI could be attempting to trace how far back some of these unfulfilled orders will go. Is there still people just "waiting" on sneakers from 2020?

I have 1 outstanding order from 2019 when Bred 1 was rumored to drop in 2020. It turned out to be the Hi 85 Bred 1 and Zadeh sent out email stating we weren't getting that

 

[norim21]

The AJ 1 TS frag high was maybe the nail in the coffin. Looks like he sold them at 1k to so many people and just couldn't fulfill orders. That cook group ordered 500 pairs but there isn't that many available on S/X. That's one of the reason the value is at 4k. Those shoes were never fully released by Nike, for whatever reason. A few months ago, this lawyer from Australia had bought 40 pairs himself and was threatening legal action if Zadeh couldn't fulfill his order. A lot of people were complaining about this specific TS order and everyone heard it on social media

 

[ady2glude707]

Yup. One thing I read about in the TS thread before the release of the TS Frag Hi is that they stopped production well short of what was expected to be produced. It seemed like Zadeh offered the TS Frag Hi wayyyy too many times via Bonus emails as soon as pictures first started to surface, possibly expecting the original higher production run. Coupled with him accepting bulk purchases from individuals and entire cook groups a lot of people were skeptical he wouldve been able to pull it off.

 

[thedrifter]

The AJ 1 TS frag high was maybe the nail in the coffin. Looks like he sold them at 1k to so many people and just couldn't fulfill orders. That cook group ordered 500 pairs but there isn't that many available on S/X. That's one of the reason the value is at 4k. Those shoes were never fully released by Nike, for whatever reason. A few months ago, this lawyer from Australia had bought 40 pairs himself and was threatening legal action if Zadeh couldn't fulfill his order. A lot of people were complaining about this specific TS order and everyone heard it on social media

My friend who got the bulk og ts high got all the order that he got from og ts highs, double his order for this one since he received all the pairs. He said that he got 100 pairs for almost 75k. I was tempted to actually buy one from him, but kind of glad I didn't. I think zadeh probably thought he could get similar amounts of frags like the og's, and also not to mention he got more customers and hype of travis was different from his first preorders and when he did the frag preorders.

 

[dannyarcher]

I can’t help but just looking at him. The V neck with the baby chain. The typical hypebeast setup in the background. The guy tried to sound smart saying he knows all types of scams while also sounding completely stupid for falling for this one .

He made a new video, where he talks about all the ways he has lost money before. At what point does the blame go from the scammer to the scammee? He also says Zadeh was the plug for other plugs, and yet people here claim Zadeh was getting his shoes from stockx. So why don't Zadeh's customers get the shoes directly from stockx themselves? Because Zadeh is a nice guy and covers the loss?

 

[dannyarcher]

So with his 10 years of experience, he determined that a preorder at $400 and $800 was fair. Even with early pairs, the first sell of my size in StockX's dataset is around $1800 in Feb 2019. Zadeh thought consumers weren't going to pay anywhere near that hence $400/$800 preorders. As you can see in the chart above, the market eventually set the minimum floor resell of $921 on StockX data. Looks like sometimes even with X years of experience, the "experts" get it wrong.

**So you can see how fast and far underwater he can be with drops like TS1s. TS1, TS1 frags - those $500K orders probably buried his business -->insolvent.

Doesn't your chart just prove my point though? He was wrong because the prices went up, and I'm saying he knew this would happen, and that's why he set the prices the way he did, to lure people in to get their money. If he was setting 'fair' prices, he wouldn't have received as much upfront pre-orders as he did.

My point is the guy's whole business model was to under price shoes to get people to pay for pre-orders up front. Now the question is how did he last so long running such a purportedly loss making business - was it reps or was it a ponzi scheme?

 

[dannyarcher]

Agree, FBI doesn't seem to be directly involved yet. No indication of FBI involvement.

What do you mean? It literally says there's a federal government criminal investigation, and for victims to contact the FBI.

 

[therealest1]

There are so many variables with this guy's business model based on what I read, most of which seem logical.

This guy seemed to be dealing with something similar to an adjustable rate mortgage in a sense. It's like when some homeowners sign up for an adjustable rate mortgage instead of a fixed rate mortgage because the interest rates are astronomically lower during a set period in the early part of the loan, but the interest rate eventually inflates exponentially to correspond with the current market interest rate after the set period ends to the point where the borrower can no longer afford to keep making payments, which leads to foreclosure.

This guy's business seems to resemble that loan concept, but the only difference is he dealt with shoes through an ordering type of business instead of having a property with a mortgage attached to it in a sense.

Based on all the stuff I read on here, it seems like this guy got overzealous in assuming he could cover all those orders he took, but he got overwhelmed and clearly couldn't fulfill all the orders placed with him. He wanted his money fast but didn't anticipate the magnitude of what he wasn't capable of fulfilling. The problem stems from him not having the merchandise in his possession legitimately because he had to bank on being able to secure the goods from other sources. He basically bit off more than he could chew for sure.

His disadvantage was that he wasn't an authorized dealer with a Nike account who would be able to secure a set quantity of goods. His whole business was basically a gamble on all angles.

People don't believe there is money to be made on some of these gr Jordans but there is.

A 40k flip even if it took 6 months is better than any of the wins you would've gotten in the market unless you timed it extremely well.

The irony about my experience is I thought the same way for YEARS. There are mentions of Zadeh on this site /in this section specifically going back to at least 2017.

After years of seeing the name and thinking "damn this **** still popping" I finally took the leap last year.

Reputation is fluid tbh. Nice kicks was once a fake site now they have a reputation of being a reputable sneaker media company.

I been buying shoes online for nearly 20 years (I think my first pair was paid for via money order with instyleshoes). While it's nice to take such a strong stance on unauthorized retailers we've all more than likely spent at least some money with a shop or "seller" that doesn't exactly have a Nike account.

That's why I don't resell, I just don't like the fact that it's not a fixed rate and it's all about timing and demand, which I have no patience for. I don't have the space to hoard shoes to resell either. That's why I just stick to getting a pair for myself to keep and wear occasionally as long as it matches something.

Now if I could make over 90% profit per sale, then I sure as hell would be reselling the hell out of shoes! But that's only wishful thinking realistically.

You got me on that one because I have bought outside of a traditional retailer because I can recall I got a couple pair of Nike LeBron X off eBay several years ago. And I haven't bought shoes off eBay since then. I'd rather just stick with my retail option with releases and not retroactively get shoes from other outlets or sellers outside of standard retail.

I can proudly say I've never bought from a secondhand shop with jacked up prices in my life. And it will remain that way until I die.

Red flags for me go up when a dude starts taking preorders for rumored releases months in advance. People don't even know stock allocation or how easy they will be to get. It tells me, he just wants your money and I'll worry about the rest later.

This is exactly how crooked sellers do it online. They'll take money for orders with goods they don't actually have in their possession, then they'll try to fulfill the order by trying to obtain the goods illicitly or whatever crooked way they can.

These kinds of bogus sellers basically just deal with anticipation on all ends of their operation.

I'm not sure if this has already been posted, but there definitely hasn't been enough attention paid to this point that there's a criminal investigation going on. I wonder what crimes are being investigated?

Here's my guess, based on following this thread since it opened:

This guy Zadeh has a business where he takes pre-orders at a set price and then fulfills those orders at market price some time in the future. So he's essentially short-selling hype sneakers, hoping that he'll get enough pre-orders on shoes that tank in value to make a profit and keep going. Then, the sneaker boom happens and all of the sudden he's having a harder and harder time making a profit, and he eventually starts taking big losses on stuff like Travis Scott's that didn't really exist when he started this. He knows that as soon as he stops fulfilling orders the whole thing will cave in, so he covers his losses the only way he can - taking more and more orders. Eventually it catches up to him and he realizes that there isn't gonna be another big payday to save him, so he calls it quits and dissolves his LLC. Everybody and their cousin put in a Paypal claim, some for hundreds of thousands, and this obviously raises red flags at Paypal, who then call the feds and report a possible case of fraud. This is big money, so the feds take it seriously and investigate.

While I'm not a law expert, all the legal fallout with this guy and his business model can be considered wire fraud because he took money that was wired to him online for merchandise he didn't actually have. And to compound the problem, he didn't deliver the goods he claimed to have after he collected money from a mass amount of people. It can be deemed that he stole money by doing it online.

This is definitely a matter for the FBI because he used the internet to steal money from many people from across the country. This necessitates FBI involvement because state lines were crossed and money was involved since he was swindling people across several states via world wide web instead of doing it with physical locations and interactions.

I can speak on what I've seen with Zadeh. Could be two things: 1) Small profit is better than no profit, 2) Most likely: To get the more exclusive sneakers in bulk, Zadeh use to have a preferred list of customers that got first dibs on it and every one else was SOL. From what I've heard, you had to spend a good amount of money on bulk to get to that list. Could be he was setting up for the future with this order.

This all seems like a pyramid scheme involving shoes in a way.

Unfortunately, that's why people and businesses like this who are predatory exist because they can prey on peoples' desperation or unnecessary wants for material goods that will eventually be perishable regardless of whether they're worn or not.

This guy and his business was destined to fail because both sides, the seller and the buyers, were basically dealing with anticipation and estimations as opposed to having clarity with numbers and quantities on both ends.

 

[1212theory]

Doesn't your chart just prove my point though? He was wrong because the prices went up, and I'm saying he knew this would happen, and that's why he set the prices the way he did, to lure people in to get their money. If he was setting 'fair' prices, he wouldn't have received as much upfront pre-orders as he did.

My point is the guy's whole business model was to under price shoes to get people to pay for pre-orders up front. Now the question is how did he last so long running such a purportedly loss making business - was it reps or was it a ponzi scheme?

My previous take novel :
"Let's say Joe preordered 10 pairs of TS1 lows for $500 ea. On that purchase Zadeh now has $5000 cash. We're going with this shoe as an example because that's what your question is seeking.

Sometime 6 months later, Zadeh hopes that the TS1 low drops below $500 but he's SOL cos the fiends gobble up the TS1 lows from resell markets and even his plugs don't have any spare pairs. He waits and waits but they settle on $2K on resell. What are his options then? ...

All of the +impact scenarios leave his pockets flush with cash, but arguably the best scenario would be to try to keep customer hush hush so complaints won't spook future buyers..."

Here's your reply to my TS1 example above:
"This is a very unrealistic scenario, given Zadeh has been in the game for 10 years or so, and if you believe what others say on here, he had plugs that could source him these authentic pairs for under what he was selling to people. Anyone with that type of experience and connections is not going to underestimate a pair like that and to that extent. In fact, most people in the sneaker game buy assuming the prices go up over time, not down." Let me paraphrase your point: Your point is that Zadeh wouldn't underestimate preorder prices for drops like that because has has 10 years of experience and connections. I didn't misconstrue your thoughts right?

I then responded to your orange text with screen grabs of preorders, and stockx data to show you that Anyone with that type of experience and connections is not going to CAN ERRONEOUSLY underestimate a pair like that and to that extent. Zadeh did exactly that; erroneously set preorder of OG TS1 @ $400/$800. He couldn't fulfill orders because these only dipped back down to $921 in my size before going all the way up to $2K.

In the novel I said he likely starts to fulfill partial orders to keep current customers somewhat happy and not scare off new buyers. If you want to paraphrase my assertion, you already did: "My point is the guy's whole business model was to under price shoes to get people to pay for pre-orders up front." Without being overtly pedantic, under price shoes is the same as erroneously underestimate price as they have the same result.

As folks been saying, norim21 post, frags probably bodied Zadehkicks.com. Zadeh underpriced AND oversold the Frags ady2glude707 post, similarly to what the OG TS1 did.

 

[1212theory]

What do you mean? It literally says there's a federal government criminal investigation, and for victims to contact the FBI.

clarification literally on this page

In other words, we don't know if the FBI has begun an investigation or formally filed for a case against Zadehkicks for counterfeit goods or money laundering or fraud or whatever.

Telling people to call the FBI sounds like they're trying to get more information to determine if customers believe were a victim of fraud. So if the FBI is collecting information, we will see if the FBI drops a case on him.

 

[sneakaprince]

I can actually give you a personal example of Zadeh making a win on a preorder price. I personally paid close to 500 for these

There was preorder that went around last summer. I don't follow the sacais much but my girl always wanted a pair. I was in the midst of a couple big flips from other side hustles and had money to blow. One day I caught the email and figured I'd save myself the headache of chasing it around release.

Of course the release comes and goes and I figure out that I paid way too much for these but a deal is a deal and I honor my deals so I just waited until her pair came and kept it pushing.

Although I never had intentions on becoming a bulk buyer I prefer not to burn bridges over pennies. Even if he sourced via stockX a week or two before sending to me he probably made 2-300 bucks.

I'd be willing to bet that happens more frequently than you think.

The moral of the story is you always take a chance when you price or purchase based on speculation.