Coffeezilla is a YouTuber who exposes scams. He is known for his work on Tether, SafeMoon, and several of Logan Paul's projects, including Dink Doink and CryptoZoo. He is also a Cyberpunk detective who gets many of his leads from a robot bartender.
His channel can be found here
.
This show provides examples of:
- The Bartender: Maxwell the robot, introduced as a framing device for his Tether expose, serves Coffee drinks from his bar.
- Bittersweet Ending: Coffee's most stylized videos often end in a similar fashion; Coffee and Maxwell successfully expose the perpetrators they're after and detail every crime they've committed, but in the end, that's all they can do. They can't actually do anything to help the victims because it's ultimately up to law enforcement to decide whether or not they'll do anything about it (and even if law enforcement gets involved, victims can expect to receive pennies on the dollar), and there's inevitably another scam right around the corner.
- Chroma Key: The ten-million-dollar studio, his flying car, Maxwell's bar Ballmer's Peak, the Internet Archive, SBF's penthouse.
- Content Warning: His video on Ryan Piasente starts as a typical financial scheme, but halfway through it segues to stories of sexual abuse allegations; before it does, Coffee switches from the stylized storytelling in the bar to the Ten Million Dollar Studio to warn the viewers that the accusations are disturbing and not for the faint of heart. To go even further, the full stories are censored, with a message saying that finding and reading the full stories is up to the viewers' discretion, and the stories are told with the absolute bare minimum amount of detail necessary to establish a case.
- Cool Car: Starting with his Tether videos, he drives a flying Lamborghini.
- Everyone Has Standards:
- Coffee is dedicated to journalistic integrity, meaning that he always reaches out to the subject of his videos for comment and includes their responses even if he believes they're lying, and he always honors requests to remain off the record or anonymous even if it hurts his case. He also generally leaves people unnamed if they don't add anything to the story to protect their identity (such as an influencer who turned down an offer to be an ambassador for SaveTheKids, who Coffee leaves unnamed to avoid dragging them into the mess unnecessarily).
- Maxwell and Coffee expose a lot of crypto scammers who stole billions of dollars and have often expressed hatred for the perpetrators, but Ted Safranko, the owner of Traders Domain, disturbs them on a personal level. Coffee describes even talking to him as "frightening" and several of the victim interviews genuinely refer to him as a sociopath, a word he never even used when referring to Sam Bankman-Fried.Coffee: It's like talking to a shell of a human being.
- His video on Ryan Piasente not only warns the viewers that dark content related to sexual assault is coming, but it censors the full allegations so as to avoid risking triggering any viewers. While he does include small quotes, none include any details (beyond the recurring detail of a shower because it's important to the case), and a message on the screen says that looking up the full stories is up to the viewer but warns that they are very disturbing allegations.
- Hypercompetent Sidekick: Maxwell is generally the reason that Coffee is able to get anything done, often directing him towards the most productive leads, hammering in the need for more evidence when he's ready to call it a day, reminding him to focus on the victims and not just the technical jargon, and keeping him motivated when he's about to throw in the towel.
- Hypocrite: In his interview with Ted Safranko, Coffee and Maxwell call out that Ted keeps insisting his disgust with America's disregard for "family values", even though Ted's scheme destroyed several families' livelihoods and his only defense is to blame them for financial choices he tricked them into making.
- Indulgent Fantasy Segue: In "Insane Creator Scam", the story starts with Coffee taking a call from the roof of a building like a superhero, whereupon Maxwell calls him on it, and it turns out he was actually playing Batman: Arkham City:Okay, so maybe I exaggerated the setting, a bit, but I did get a call.
- I Need a Freaking Drink: When Coffee gets too stressed or burned out from an investigation, he goes to Maxwell's bar and gets plastered.
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business: The video on Revolt the merch company and its owner Ryan Piasente is drastically different from his other videos; most notably, he never makes a single joke or even smiles throughout the video, and he outright says that the investigation was emotionally exhausting. Given that Ryan's video is far from the typical financial scam he covers - though he did scam people out of money, half of the video is dedicated to sexual assault allegations - it makes sense that the tone of the video is different from the get-go.
- Personal Dictionary: Many scammers attempt this under interrogation; for example, Bryan King Legend of Safuu attempts to wriggle out of stealing the Fire Pit moneynote by pretending to not understand the difference between possession and ownership and saying that the accusation that he secretly had the ability to spend the funds was an admission that he had the right to take them; likewise, many scammers, most notably Ted Safranko, have expansive definitions of free will that imply that their victims had it coming, and many victims (eg, Scott Melker in "Billion Dollar Bankruptcy Gets WORSE") have insisted that they don't meet the definition of victims.
- Pet the Dog: During his investigation into SaveTheKids, Coffee goes out of his way to exonerate Teeqo, one of the influencers/ambassadors of the project who had been suspended from FaZe Clan for his participation in the coin, by revealing that he put over $40,000 into the project and then never sold a single token. This investigation led to Teeqo getting reinstated by the group.Coffee: In all of this, Teeqo seems to be the only one who actually wanted to help save any kids.
- Running Gag: Particularly ridiculous or brazen schemes are described as "flying Lamborghini-level".
- Wunza Plot: He's a detective who lives in a dreary cyberpunk world and exposes minor scams on the internet. He works with a robot bartender who used to be a professor but can't help police directly because they screen robocallers. Together, they expose bigger scams on the internet. Or at least Maxwell is aiming for this sort of dynamic.
