How The Established Titles Scam Really Works

If a YouTuber wants to amp up income, there's a number of sponsors someone can go with. Maybe educational videos can go with the learning platform Brilliant or documentaries with Curiosity Stream. Politically leaning channels can go with Ground, which analyses and compares news outlet biases. And then, there's always VPN software like NordVPN or ExpressVPN. All of these options are legit. Established Titles, however — which seem to target quirky or all-encompassing channels like SomeOrdinaryGamers or TheQuartering — has been dubbed "YouTube's biggest con", as a Reddit thread calls it, for good reason.

The con was exposed by YouTuber Scott Shafer, who winds us through a web of interlocked companies that form various arms of shady operations connected to Established Titles. Heading over to the Established Titles' About Us page, for instance, links to founder Katerina Yip, whose LinkedIn page lists a host of other businesses. These businesses include Fail Ventures, a venture capital outfit, and Galton Voysey, an e-commerce company. Yip is listed in lead roles in those companies along with William Wolfram, founder of the excessively deceptive DealDash, per Crunch Base. DealDash is a timed, gambling-like bidding website where people make chunks of bids for low-priced items in a high-pressure situation. Even if they lose the item they've bid on, they've got to pay any and all bids they've made. On and on we go, as Insider Paper describes, until we discover that Established Titles doesn't make anyone a lord at all.