Youtuber makes a living scaming people into signing contracts without knowing?

[u/CentristaSensato]

My question is: How is tricking people into signing contracts allowed in the USA?

If I disguise myself as a delivery person and go to someone's house and ask them to sign my phone, most people will sign without question, without reading the contract, they just scrible away at my phone screen.

This is nice and well if I don't have bad intentions and I am a real delivery guy. But....
But if I have a pdf file on my phone with a full contract that obliges them to fulfill it and pay me damages in case they don't. This is allowed in the US? this is legal and valid?

This is the reason I'm asking:

This youtuber called Reckless Ben.
I've seen about 10 of his videos, they are quite long and involve always some sort of "investigation" style jourlalist investigation type of video involving crime, curroption of some sort.

Eventually in every video he gets someone else to go up to the "villain" of the week and pretend to be a delivery guy and then asks for a signature and without knowing the person is signing a contract with Ben.

This contract always includes a "Damages Clause" in case the person that signs does not fullfill the contract.
The Damages are always around 12.000$ and he always gets the money because he serves the person the papers, and it goes to Small Court. But Ben makes sure they fail to show up in court, by tricking them into thinking the papers are fake or its just a joke.

He seems to be making a living from ticking people into signing contracts, then serves them papers, they fail to showup in court for some stupid made up contract, and he automatically pockets the damages money plus the court fees.

It really undermines the whole point of his videos, because, in the videos he portrays himself as a underdog and doing the right thing, searching for truth or trying to make right by someone else.
But now it seems he is does not care about making right by people or isnt really interested in the investigation, it seems he just uses some "charitable cause" as pretense to trick others into signing a contract and getting thousands of dollars in damages.

There's a video where he even brags about it, that the Law allows him to do this, and trick people into signing the contract with him, and uses this against them....

It seems he just found a loophole in the US Law that allows him to keep tricking people into forged contracts and getting damages and makes a living of of it, and records it all for even more profit.

[u/AutoModerator]

Location Reminder

To get better advice on this subreddit, we strongly recommend including the city, state, and country you're asking about at the beginning of your post. If you are asking about an area outside the U.S., please list the country.

This post has been left up, but adding a location will help others give you relevant advice!

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.

[u/ex0e]

There is no enforceable contact because there's no performance and no consideration. Fraud in the inducement would be the legal term for what you're describing though.

However, if you don't show up in court, you can't defend yourself and default is entered with the requested damages. Of course anyone can say they filed suit and won for a video, but it's unlikely that he's actually making money from this or actually succeeding. Improper service is an easy motion to vacate/set aside judgment depending on jrx, particularly if he's somehow tricking people into believing the papers are fake. Process is a highly structured series of documents and requirements for delivery. You can't fake court filings and if the served papers aren't what's required, there's no process and no personal jurisdiction to enter a default judgment, much less collect on it. No one is going to casually hand over $10k+ and just say "darn he got me"

But he might say they did for a video

[u/CentristaSensato → u/ex0e]

He doesn't fake documents. He really creates binding contracts, and the papers to serve are real.

But he tricks the person to sign the contract, citing Duty to Read.

But he makes sure the person misses the Small Court date, so he wins by default. The judge doesn't even consider that the contract might have been obtained by fraud because the victim is never there to claim fraud.

Also, he recorded it and posted multiple times, and he shows the Small Court final papers, with the damages and fees, the documents look real and in at least one case I saw the other person trying to get out of paying the damages so it's not made up for the video.

So would you say there is some loophole in the law? and it's possible to scam people out of money?
Or in this particular case, he uses the default judgement to get even more content out of the victim, asking them to make interviews and extract more content out of them, while holding the already settled "damages" on his pocket.

Also this gives him leeway, because he anticipates that they will sue him for difamation, once he publishes his video, so he already has nerfed the victim and has a warchest of money to fight against the difamation lawsuit.

Can you analyse what I just wrote above.