Amir Tofangsazan – a viral campaign

An image from the hard-drive of the man who “sold faulty laptop”

This site tells part of the extraordinary story of how one man – Thomas Sawyer – was sold a non-functioning laptop on eBay, failed to get redress from the seller, and devoted his energy and resources to using the internet to damaging Tofangsazan’s reputation.

The laptop seller, Amir Tofangsazan, lives in Enfield, North London. Before he sold the laptop, he used it to store scans of his passport, his and his mother’s banking details and photographs he had surreptitiously taken on the tube of women’s legs. Sawyer started posting these to his blog.

The topic has become a touchstone for many people who are annoyed about dodgy eBay sellers. It has become a kind of viral lynching of Tofangsazan.

What is intriguing about this is that it shows something we have working on with our corporate clients, which is that if there is an existing conversation (eBay fraud) then a single campaign – even one as idiosyncratic as this – can become an internet phenomenon.

The comments section 960 comments! (When I started writing this story it was 831)

There is a wikipedia article here.

The Google search has 40,000+ entries.

Via Antony Mayfield …