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I didn't really understand from the article how "Ali" made money from the scam. Can anyone shed light on that?

Sounds like he didn't make money, but he did convince ~50 people to work on a commission-only basis during a probationary period. Sounds like he started around August 2020.

"But no deals were ever finalised. By February 2021, not a single client contract had been signed. None of the Madbird staff had been paid a penny."

Somewhat interesting that across 50 people, some of whom quit fairly quickly, but others that stayed on...none were able to make a single sale in a 6 month period.

It could well be that the client companies saw enough red flags to decline doing business with them, even though the employees fell for the ongoing deception and the sunk-cost fallacy - it should be noted that this was a time of great uncertainty and certain people would have been loath to walk away from what seemed like a legitimate job when there were few other reasonable options easily available.

Best guess is that he was trying to parlay others (free/commission) work into a real company by signing design contracts.

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