The coffee maker sputters to life. A sharp, bitter scent fills the air as black Folgers drips into a
chipped Hawkeyes mug. John doesn’t bother with cream or sugar. Real coffee, he says, should
taste like it’s working. He sips, exhales, and stares out the dark kitchen window. Another day of
being the most hated man in Iowa City. 

The faded wood floors creak in familiar protest as he moves through the quiet hallway. He pulls
on khakis and a polo with the faded Parking and Transportation Services logo stitched across the
chest. His “tool belt” —a black satchel—crosses his chest, carrying his handheld parking meter
scanner. Last comes the baseball cap. It shades his eyes and, in his mind, softens the sting of the
words people throw his way.

John is one of Iowa City’s most despised figures: The parking enforcement officer who writes
tickets and dodges insults every day. Most people only see the car, the citations, and the fines.
What they don’t see is why he’s doing it at sixty-nine, or who he’s doing it for.
Behind every ticket tucked under a windshield wiper is a person enforcing it. For John, that job
isn’t about punishment or power. It’s about survival. After decades as a mechanic, he took one of
the city’s most hated jobs to support his wife, Kathy, as she battles cancer. The flexible hours
and health insurance allow him to be there for her—at chemo appointments, doctors’ visits, and
late nights when she needs him most. At sixty-nine, John’s knees can’t handle the physical toll of
working on cars anymore. But this job? It gives him a chance to stay off his feet, manage the
stress, and still have a steady paycheck.

John takes one last sip from his thermos, now lukewarm, and heads for the door. It creaks as he
pushes it open, the familiar chill of the morning air biting at his skin. He slides into his white
Chevy Equinox, unmistakable with the University of Iowa logo on the side and the tracking
antenna on top. For the next few hours, the car is his kingdom, and he will patrol the same
streets, the same meters, the same faces.
...
Time’s up.
The meter flashes 00:00, cuing John’s opportunity to strike. His posture stiffens, eyes narrowing
into the worn wrinkles beside them. He taps license plate numbers into the handheld device.
With a final press of his thumb, the machine spits out the ticket. The thud of the windshield
wiper pinning the ticket down seals the fate of another parking violator. It is the moment every
driver dreads.

As John slips into his university-marked Parking and Transportation Services vehicle, a woman
stomps over, eyes bulging. “Seriously?” she snaps, snatching the ticket and slamming her door.
Minutes later, a college-aged man storms up, crumples his ticket into a ball, and hurls an insult
through John’s half-shut window.

“Do you really have nothing better to do? Get a life, you old piece of shit.”
Think of all the words your mother told you never to say. John has been called all of them.
In Iowa City, few jobs spur as much hostility as parking enforcement. The city is a battleground
of limited spaces and constant turnover, where the clock is always ticking. People feel the weight
of every meter, every ticket, and every fine, and John is the face of that system. What they don’t
see, however, is how much money the university makes off those tickets. In fiscal year 2025, the
University brought in over $1 million from parking tickets. That’s just under 4% of total
University revenue. But what many don’t realize is that behind each citation is a man doing a job
he never imagined at his age and doing it for a reason most will never see.
...
The sun hasn’t even hinted at the horizon when John’s alarm rattles the quiet of his quaint 3-
bedroom house. Their house sits just outside Iowa City, a little worn and crooked but alive with
years of memories. The grass outside is uneven, and the paint on the porch rail has started to
chip, but the door still opens to warmth. Inside, dusty bookshelves line the walls, crowded with
novels, family photos, and old mugs that never quite made their way back to the kitchen. The
faded leather recliner dips low in the middle, molded perfectly to John’s frame. The smell of
coffee lingers, and the soft hum of the refrigerator fills the quiet. Their home looks like them—
aged, imperfect, and deeply loved. Every dent in the wall and scratch on the table tells the story
of John and Kathy and the children who once filled it with laughter and chaos. It’s the first house
they ever bought together, and even after all these years, it still feels like the safest place on
earth.

He blinks twice, stretches his stiff knees, and swings his legs over the side of the bed. The
floorboards creak, a sound he’s heard every morning for nearly fifty years.
“I get yelled at almost every shift,” he says. “I’ve been called things I wouldn’t repeat in front of
my wife. Some days I wonder if it’s even worth it.” As the city wakes, so does the hostility. A car door slams somewhere behind him, followed by hurried footsteps. “You’ve got to be kidding me,” a woman shouts, waving a ticket in the air.
John keeps walking, eyes fixed on the next meter. He doesn’t respond. Silence, he’s learned, is safer.

In the beginning, John would let the insults sting. He’d feel the sharpness of the words for a
moment, sometimes longer, depending on the tone, the anger in their eyes. But over time, he
learned to shut it out. He’d press his lips tight, feel the oxygen of his inhale expand his chest, and
focus on the task. ‘I’m just doing my job,’ he tells himself. His skin has thickened, not from his
own doing, but from the unrelenting barrage of painful words. But inside, it still hurts.
Still, he keeps writing. Each ticket flutters under a wiper like a white flag, though there’s no
surrender here. Just duty. He knows what everyone thinks of him, but he also knows why he’s
here.

“People see a ticket, not a person,” he says. “I get it. But I’ve got to do my job. We all do what
we have to.”
He takes another sip from his thermos of black coffee, now lukewarm and metallic. The sun
breaks over the brick buildings on the south side of the Iowa campus. John pulls his hat lower
against the glare. Another morning, another round.
...
At the Holden Comprehensive Cancer Center at the University of Iowa, Kathy reclines in a chair
that has become all too familiar. Her pale skin prickles with goosebumps as the cytotoxic drugs
enter through the port in her chest, spreading like frost through her veins. Her tongue sticks to
the roof of her mouth as a metallic, salty tang floods in—the taste of chemo. The beeping of the
IV pump breaks the silence every few seconds, steady and unrelenting.

John visits whenever he can between shifts, carrying his same thermos of black coffee and a
quiet smile that hides how tired he feels. He sits beside her, rubbing his thumb over the wedding
ring that hasn’t left his finger in forty-five years.

“I married her forty-five years ago, and I’d do anything for her,” he says. “Even a job like this,
because she’s the love of my life.”

They met in high school, a connection sparked by a mutual friend, but they didn’t start dating
until a few years later. After one year together, they married and had one daughter. John and
Kathy’s relationship is built on years of mutual understanding and quiet support.
The room smells faintly of antiseptic and stale air. Kathy keeps a small fleece blanket draped
over her legs, a gift from their daughter who lives a few hours away. When the chills hit, she
pulls it tighter, trying to trap what little warmth she can. The nurses know her by name now.
They know John, too, even if he rarely says much.

When the session ends, Kathy leans back and closes her eyes, the energy sucked from her body.
John stands, takes her hand, and helps her up. For a brief moment, the exhaustion and bitterness
of his job disappear, replaced by the quiet understanding that everything he does is for her.
When John and Kathy return home, the dim sunlight spills through their front window, catching
flecks of dust that hang in the air like tiny snowflakes. John sinks into his recliner while Kathy
settles into the couch, her blanket tucked around her legs. The two sit in comfortable silence.
Outside, the sun slips behind the horizon, painting their small living room gold.

It’s peaceful here, but the quiet doesn’t erase the weight of what’s next. The bills will come soon,
as they always do. John leans forward, rubbing his temples. His eyes land on the stack of
envelopes on the counter: hospital forms, insurance paperwork, and a past-due notice folded
inside a white envelope he hasn’t opened yet. The weight of it all presses down on him, but in
this moment, he doesn’t let it show.

They sit like this, together, drawn into a shared understanding of the struggle ahead. It’s not just the financial worries or the cancer. It’s everything. The years, the memories, the quiet, and the loud. The love that never seems to fade, even when everything else is hard. John exhales slowly and leans back in his chair, easing the tension in his shoulders. He glances at Kathy, her eyes closed as she rests. She doesn’t ask him about the day’s struggles or how many insults he endured. She doesn’t need to. She knows. John reaches over, gently tracing the line of her cheek, grounding them both in a sanctuary of peace. A moment where the thoughts of insults, bills, and cancer disappear.

A bitter December wind bites at the red, swooping serif “Monica’s” plastered on the Italian
restaurant. A year ago, Monica Wali could be found above the sign in her thermal pants and
boots, shoveling snow off the roof to prevent any more leaks. Now, there’s no drama. No snow
gear. Inside the warm, leak-free building, she simply adjusts the thermostat and picks up a stray
straw wrapper. Her coarse, thick hair is straightened and worn down, hitting an inch below her shoulders and
competing with a turtleneck sweater. Three hours later, it takes on its rush hour look, held back
by a striped headband in a bun that flops when she walks.

Monica’s Friday nights weren’t supposed to look like this. She never planned to run this
business. The decision was made for her by Randy Larson in his will, the same man who, two
decades earlier, decided that the restaurant would bear her name.

Randy was a multi-business owner and locally famous attorney who represented the family of
Chris Street, the University of Iowa basketball player who died in a car accident during his junior
year. He was also Monica’s former boss and opposite: he, the magnetic social mayor of Iowa
City, and she, a country girl craving a simple life.

But after Randy died of an aggressive throat cancer in 2023, keeping Monica’s open became her
way of keeping his legacy alive in Iowa City. Even as the job grew heavier than she ever
imagined.

“It’s a weight that I’m not carrying well,” Monica said. “ It’s overwhelming because of how it
came to be. I didn’t go buy a restaurant. I didn’t choose this.”
—————————
Monica adjusts her excuse for a bun and calls a leaving customer, Bruce, by name. She turns and
shrugs, saying that was a rare occasion: she usually struggles remembering names. But she
almost always knows their orders. When her eight-year-old son watches Iowa basketball games,
she can’t help but see the players as “the tall guy who orders chicken strips” or “the one who
loves potato balls.”

But Randy would have known their names. Randy knew everyone.
He ran Prime Time and Game Time, summer basketball leagues that brought together Iowa’s
best high school, college, and professional players. And according to Iowa basketball legend Jess
Settles, if there was one person who was born to run the leagues, it was Randy.

“He had the independence, the charisma, the loud voice,” Jess said. “He had as genuine a love
for the game of basketball as anyone who’s ever been born in the state of Iowa.”

Even Jess admits it was a wonder Randy had any time for the leagues. Randy would play 18
holes of golf, watch Iowa basketball practices and games, be in the restaurant for lunch and
dinner, practice law, and play a few rounds of pickup basketball himself. And that’s a normal
day.

“ I’m sure he only slept a couple of hours a night because no one could do that. It was like he was
putting two days in one,” Jess said.
He also co-owned The Airliner and established a new restaurant, Bob’s Your Uncle, where
Jimmy’s Brick Oven used to sit.

Monica waitressed at Jimmy’s to get herself through nursing school. Plus, work was becoming
what she preferred over academics. Maybe she worked too much, she admits now. But she liked
the feeling of being at the restaurant.

When Randy transformed Jimmy’s into Bob’s Your Uncle, he chose Monica to be a manager. But
before long, Randy started hinting at transforming Bob’s into something new. Monica assumed
she’d still be part of the staff. Maybe help run the floor. Maybe manage.

Monica remembers cleaning off an oven, the same one that’s cooked the pizzas for 26 years,
when Randy said, “I’m going to name it Monica’s.”

Monica had the same question as everyone else: Why?
—————————
Twenty years later, Monica fidgets with her sweater as she tries to answer the same question–
this time about why she’s still in this business. Why does she miss family events? What makes
her work through holidays? She starts to answer, then shakes her head. Finally, she sighs,
defeated, “I don’t know my why.”

It’s hard to get her to talk about herself. Every answer circles back to the restaurant, how Randy
was a wonderful example, and her “fantastic staff.” And they all finish the same, too.
“That wasn’t a good answer. I’m sorry.”

After the silence that follows her apology, she thinks for a moment more. “I just think restaurants
are a really special place,” she says at last. “I wish people still felt the need to get together.”
Monica knows what it’s like to crave that kind of gathering. She has a blood disorder that limits
where she can go. To keep from getting sick, she avoids crowds, travel, and most sporting
events. As a homeschooled kid, isolation was her norm, and it was a big deal when she got to
attend public school every other day. But the really special days were when she could convince
her parents to take the family out to the nearest Pizza Hut. Not for the food, but for the
experience.

Monica’s eyes wrinkle in a smile as she talks about the family rides in the convertible to go eat.
The beginning of her love for restaurants.
But loving restaurants is different from feeling worthy of one. And the more she talks about the
joy they once gave her, the more she grapples with the pressure of running one.
“I’m not Randy,” Monica says. “I can’t fill his shoes.”
And she’s not wrong. She’s not former Iowa Men’s Basketball Coach Fran McCaffery’s dear
friend. She’s not a walking billboard on the local golf course who reminds well-off Iowa Citians
to come through her restaurant’s doors. Many of those people haven’t visited Monica’s since the
summer Randy passed. Maybe the restaurant reminds them of him. Maybe they only came
because of Randy.

Monica wishes she could invite them back. She wishes things could go back to the way they
were.

Now, each morning, the back door clicks shut behind her as she says hello to the chefs she used
to “shoot the shit” with. But now their backs straighten. They smile stiffly and give her a dry,
polite response. Her old friends reset into a version of themselves meant for the boss.
But she doesn’t blame them. Monica remembers when her own body used to tense up, too. It’s
the same instinct she felt when Randy stepped through the doorway. The reaction she hoped she
would never inherit. And yet, because of Randy, she did.
Maybe Randy isn’t here physically, sliding into booths to chat with loyal customers. But he’s all
over Monica’s.

A photo of Randy is framed on the wall by the front door. His basketball, signed by the 2019
Iowa men’s team, is underneath. Customers unknowingly sit on the original booths he brought

over from Bob’s. One day, his prized book collection was even scattered throughout the
restaurant, allowing Monica’s customers to take home a piece of his library.
But the reminders of Randy are kept subtle, the way he would have wanted it. Randy never gave
himself the spotlight and made sure his name wasn’t where everyone could see– even though
everyone knew him.

But that’s exactly what Monica pushed for.
The day after Randy announced the restaurant would be named after his manager, Monica put
together a presentation, her pitch for “Randy’s” complete with a logo made by her
then-boyfriend, now-husband.

But Randy never saw it. He simply walked away; his mind was made up to name the restaurant
after Monica. There was no changing it. No conversation. That’s just who he was.
—————————
Cornered by Randy’s sister at his funeral visitation, Monica heard the words that changed her
life, “You’re in his will.”
It was there, in the funeral home, that Monica learned she had inherited a million-dollar
restaurant from a man whose house she’d never even seen.

But there was no time to process the contents of her boss’s will. She ran to her car and threw the
door open. It was time for Randy’s funeral luncheon– and the restaurant he had just left in her
name was hosting.
Monica pulled into the parking lot that was now hers. It wasn’t a joyous moment. She still cries
when she talks about that day. But as the first guests arrived, she did what she’d been trained to
do for decades.

She slipped on the mask.
Her voice broke the silence in the restaurant of Randy’s mourners, telling them who she wasn’t.
She wasn’t his daughter. She wasn’t his wife. She wasn’t a secret lover. She was a former
waitress whom he wanted to run one of his businesses. And when it came time to name his
restaurant, he refused to put his own name on the door.
“So there,” she told them, “is mine.”

The hostess voice. The steady hands. The version of herself built for rooms full of people who
needed something from her.
It’s the same mask she still wears. And somehow, over time, people stopped seeing it as a mask
at all.

Monica’s closest friends and staff members talk about her like she talks about Randy. Her
tenderness. Her intelligence. Her work ethic. And most interestingly, her memory, something she
feels is one of her biggest weaknesses.
“She remembers things you’ve told her,” Monica’s old classmate and frequent customer, Wendy
Geiger, says. “She always follows up, too.”
And when Wendy took her dad to Monica’s after cancer treatments, Monica always made sure
their table was served free cupcakes– a page out of Randy’s book.
For Sal Hnesh, Monica’s business partner and head chef, she’s like family.
“ Besides my wife and my kid, she is the first one to call.”
Sal and Monica share wins together, like the titles of Best All Around Restaurant and Best
Curbside and Carry-Out in 2023. But like most other things, they dedicate it to Randy.
“There are exciting times,” Monica said. “But it’s always overshadowed by the fact that Randy is
gone.”
Sometimes, the grief feels baked into the walls. A month before moving Monica’s to its current
location on 2nd Street, Monica’s sister, Danielle, died of cancer. A few years later, she lost her
dad. Then Randy.

She spent many of those days in the restaurant, away from her husband and son. Or, in Monica’s
words, she spent it running.
“This business is like being on a treadmill, and you just have to stay on it, and everything is
coming at you. People can come, people can go, customers can bring in something stressful, but
you can never stop running on the treadmill.”

That’s why she often spends the half-hour commute to “the treadmill” in complete silence. It’s a
moment she needs before the chaos. Some days, she doesn’t even remember driving it.

It’s become a routine, but to anyone who hasn’t lived it for nearly 30 years, it would feel like a
sentence. But this life is part of her, whether she chose it or not.
“ I never wanted to do this business without Randy,” Monica admits. “That was always my go-to
line.”

But now she’s doing it. And she’s good at it.
Monica still runs it like Randy would, down to the detail of never turning anyone away– not for a
job, not for food, not even for a promotion. She’s had to learn things, like the accounting
bookwork that she’s four months behind on. But she’s also gained something she’s proud of.
Something she chooses, consciously, every day: her restaurant.

The future is uncertain. Her business partner, nearing retirement, will soon need to be bought out.
A new head chef will need to be hired. Monica dreads those decisions so much that she wishes
someone would come along and tell her what to do.

In moments like this, she wonders what her life might have looked like if she had never begun
the first waitress job at Jimmy’s.

“At one point, I wanted to be an artist,” she said. “I wanted to be a flower farmer. I wanted to
open a little antique shop.”
With a shrug, Monica apologizes one last time for the answer she gave.
“But it doesn’t matter,” Monica said. “Because I’m here.”

A trifecta of computer screens illuminate not just Ben Ketza’s face, but his six-figure
moneymaking scheme. Framed around his keyboard sit a pile of Target receipts, a white
Playstation controller, and a can of Coors Light. But don’t be confused by this disorganization.
He’s preparing for one the biggest days of the year in his genius, get-rich-quick plot. Amazon
doesn’t stand a chance.
The monitor to his left presents balance from his limitless American Express credit card. The
laptop in front him unveils Amazon’s website, where he holds 30 accounts. His right monitor
tracks sales and offers easy reimbursement. With a click on his glow-in-the-dark mouse, Ketza
sends an army of bots to attack a deal of his liking. The bots log in to one account, buy up a
certain quantity of one product, then repeat the process on another.
It’s around 1 a.m. on Oct. 7. Amazon Prime’s Big Deal Days are less than an hour old. Most of
America will wake up after the sun rises and purchase a marked-down crock pot or air fryer.
Ketza’s buying is complete by 3 a.m., his cart stuffed with products he’ll never see but his
pockets soon overflowed with cash.
Across Amazon’s two-day event, the average household purchase was approximately $104.69,
according to Yahoo Finance. For Ketza and hundreds of others, the promotion holds the key for a
simple strategy anyone can follow, but few have the courage to commit to.
When Ketza puts his head on the pillow, he will have spent $60,000, spreading the wealth among
Apple Watches, IPads, and laptops. He expected to spend more, but he’ll spin a profit
nonetheless. His alarm will remind him to wake up for class at Moraine Valley Community
College, a 20 minute drive from his home in Oak Forest, Illinois. His schoolwork is a more
pressing matter than how he will pay off his credit card bill.
Ketza’s haul of products will never reach his doorstep. All are shipped directly to a warehouse in
Portland, Oregon, home to a buying group who will pay at or above retail for Ketza’s purchases.
Ketza will receive a wire or ACH transfer by next week to complete the resell. All too easy,
right?
“I’m sure there’s a million complaints about these groups,” he said. “But if you do everything right,
you shouldn’t have a problem.”

Ketza learned about buying groups from an Instagram ad. He’d been involved in reselling groups
since he was 16, but didn’t have the necessary capital to make bulk purchases. His 18th birthday
presented him a golden opportunity – an application for an American Express credit card. 
After some quick paperwork, Ketza held the financial flexibility he needed. “American 
Express is too generous,” he said. “I was just as surprised as you are.”
While Ketza acquired the ability to make large payments, he didn’t necessarily have the funds to 
pay them off. His only job experience was a stint as a cart attendant at Meijer grocery store, 
where was fired for poor attendance. Ketza’s father works as a chef while his mom is an X-ray 
technician. The family’s 3,000-square foot house features Ketza’s white 2008 Ram truck sitting
in the driveway. With buying groups, paying bills was never a concern.
The buying group Ketza mainly uses, aptly named The Buying Group, claims itself as an
arbitrage group. Arbitrage refers to the simultaneous buying and selling of commodities in
different markets by taking advantage of price differences of a certain product. The Buying
Group holds its acquired products in a warehouse just north of Portland. Most buying groups 
hail from sales-tax free states like Oregon and Delaware.
“We work with hundreds of individual resellers and vendors to secure bulk amounts of
electronics products for buyers around the globe,” The Buying Group’s website reads.
Such a simple description dodges the question of why buying groups exist in the first place. 
Why would a company pay other people to buy products 
when said company could purchase them themselves?
Corporations like Amazon often have quantity limits for certain products to ensure fair access 
for customers, and buying groups demand products in bulk. Thus, they enlist Ketza and hundreds of others 
to make such purchases.
Ketza’s first purchase for The Buying Group was in 2021and reached six figures. Rather than
send the product, in this case Amazon Firesticks, directly to the warehouse, he opted to 
stay cautious and ship them to his house, giving himself a bailout option to return the product in case he had second thoughts.
Needing help from his friends, Ketza called up Peter Augustyniak, who arrived at Ketza’s
two-car garage with shattered expectations.

What he thought would be an odd job felt like a shift in a factory. Augustyniak spent the next
few hours packing the small, orange Firestick cases into larger, 3-by-5 boxes.
“I figured it would be 50 or 60 and then we’d be out of there,” Augustyniak said. “But I walk in
there and there’s, like, 400 Firesticks.”
The final step in Ketza’s process was slapping on the shipping label and sending his product 
to people he never met. He admitted he was a little nervous that a payment would never arrive.
Discussions on buying groups populate Discord and Reddit channels, where usernames conceal 
true identities. How can Ketza ensure any financial guarantees in such an opaque world?
“You don’t,” he said casually. “If it works it works, and you keep doing it.”
Ketza’s bold financial move paid off when The Buying Group sent him a payment. He paid his
first credit card in full and lined his pockets with extra cash. Plus, with American Express points, 
which he essentially acquired for free, could be traded in for money – every 100,000 points
equates to $1,125.
“I was like, ‘Cool, I just made $20,000 sitting in my bedroom, eating McDonalds,’” he said.
“‘Let’s keep doing this.’”
Yet Ketza’s purchasing ability with buying groups is hindered by roadblocks. Owning multiple 
accounts violates Amazon’s policy and some of Ketza’s account orders were cancelled due to this reason, he said.
In addition, retailers like Amazon, Walmart, and Costco sign contracts with Apple or Dell for
selling and distribution authorization. For instance, Amazon and Apple agreed in 2018 that 
Amazon would be allowed to sell the latest Apple technology and determine licensed resellers.
With hundreds of different people buying products for a buying group and shipping to the 
same address, such activity could be flagged as sending to an unauthorized reseller.
Yet Ketza and others boast an easy solution. Altering an address to add Apt. 123 or even 
just a period will “jig” the address and confuse Amazon’s detection services.
Nonetheless, tricking an algorithm may be simple, but fooling a person working in retail is more
difficult. In December last year, Google stores ran a promotion where a Google Pixel 8 phone
could be traded for a Pixel 9. Ketza acquired Pixel 8s in bulk online or would receive them from 
The Buying Group promising to upgrade. Each Pixel 9 was worth about $100 from The Buying
Group, he said.

Twice a day over winter break, Ketza popped into the Google store in Oak Brook, a western
suburb of Chicago. He traded in two phones in the morning and another pair in the afternoon.
The everyday routine was going smoothly until the store’s management became suspicious 
and asked Ketza his intentions.
“I just said, ‘I got a guy who needs all these,’” he remembered. “I’m not gonna bullshit them.”
When asked why “his guy” doesn’t buy them himself, Ketza claimed his buyer was out of the
country. Technically true, but not good enough. Management told Ketza he reached his limit, 
but just like entering an address online, he made a minor adjustment.
Returning to Peter and his friends, Ketza hired them to continue the trade-ins. For Ketza, 
$30-40 per phone would suffice. For Augustyniak, his trips to the Google store were more 
nerve-racking than his factory shift in the garage. 
He didn’t want to let his friend down, but buying rather than packaging illuminated the harsh reality of Ketza’s plan.
“I don’t like to use the word scam, but in a sense, it’s like you’re exploiting the flaws in the
system of these stores,” Augustyniak said.
Ketza is far less apologetic. The way he sees it, stores concede to losing money when running
promotions. The last thing they want is for others to profit from reselling, but ultimately, a sale 
is a sale. The economically-enlightened will take advantage.
“In the end there’s a million other people actually going in and doing this, getting themselves a
phone,” he said. “I’m just making money off it.”
However, not everyone involved with buying groups is easily profiting. A buying group known as Maxout Deals received a criminal complaint in September alleging two men committed
money laundering via the domestic sale and international exportation of “millions of dollars’
worth of consumer electronics and gift cards.” The illegality of the business centered on the
product being acquired through criminal means such as wire fraud, bank fraud, and identity theft.
Complicit in the scheme or not, members of Maxout Deals on Reddit claim to have not been
reimbursed for their orders. Maxout Deals appears still operational. A call to its 1-800 number
connects you with a friendly woman named Mary who will politely take your number and
message, but Maxout Deals’ “dedicated representatives” have not reached out. 
The Buying Group lists an email, as well as a WhatsApp number to call or text. Repeated
attempts at contact were not returned. Mark Mann, the CEO of The Buying Group, holds 21
connections on LinkedIn and did not return requests for comment.
Ketza said he hasn’t used Maxout Deals, but isn’t concerned about his money being irretrievable.
Worst comes to worst, he joked, his rich friends can bail him out. In his eyes, working with a 
buying group is a business-to-business transaction that can be easily handled in court.
“If his end of the business messes up, my business will sue his business,” Ketza said.
But not everyone is comfortable with legal action as a backup plan, much less spending money
they don’t have. Ketza said he’s tried to convince his friends to join buying groups, but many back 
out and return the product they ordered.
“They either don’t know what they are doing or scared when it comes to this amount of money,” he said. 
“You could spend $50,000 in a day and be, like ‘Holy shit, what am I gonna do?’”
Buying groups aren’t some secret club. A Google search of “buying groups” pulls up The
Buying Group’s website. Making an account is free. Just enter your phone number, email, and
address. The most stringent step is taking a photo of your ID.
Then, the once foreign world presented in Ketza’s right monitor appears before your eyes. 
The website neatly arranges products in rows, each tagged with the group’s price and where 
the product is available. But in order to view the community chat and see what registered users are saying, 
one must be an “active user” and commit to an order first. Until then, trust is as good as an anonymous word.
“You’ve got to take risks if you want to make money,” Ketza said. “That’s really it.”