Bitcoin Forum

It appears that TradeFortress (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=67058) aka freehugs aka $username aka (a few other aliases) recently has his username changed back to TradeFortress and his custom title changed to SCAMMER.

Does this mean that TF was finally given a scammer tag after two major "hacks" that resulted in the "loss" (aka theft by him) of literally thousands of BTC?

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Best regards.

It's best to assume that the display name, title, and personal text, are all set by the holder of the account as scammer tags have been all phased out.

LOL. I think I have my answer.

The reason I asked is because you were clearly impersonating satoshi which would probably be frowned upon by most.

There have been a few exceptions to giving out what is essentially a scammer tags since they were done away with

I personally think that TF is one of if not the most interesting cases on the forum, probably more interesting then the SR/DPR case.

Looking at TF on his face, he appears to be very honorable and to be someone that is very ethical. TF has done the "hard" thing a number of times while I have been active on these forums. TF has often advocated for what I believe that "society" believes is "right".

With that being said, I also believe that "behind closed doors" (aka what he does when his identity cannot be what he thinks his identity can be linked to what he does), he does less then above board actions. I think there is difficult evidence to reasonably say that the inputs/CL "hack" was actually him. I think that there is good evidence that he was behind the hashie incident.

Even after the inputs hack, TF acted honestly when engaging in small trades. Blazedout had paid him in advance to wear the silver wallets signature and TF delivered.

I think that TF is a good example of what I discussed here (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=853184.msg9512790#msg9512790), in that TF is trustworthy when he is trusted with small amounts, however once he is trusted with 6-7 (USD) figures worth of Bitcoin, his breaking point is reached and he decides to scam. After scamming one time (inputs/CL), I think his breaking point has decreased (hashie). Who knows what his breaking point will be in the future.

I would say that ethically speaking, what TF says is probably legit, however trusting him with money (knowingly or unknowingly) is going to be very risky.

He still owes me 1.2 bitcoins from the "hack" and god knows how many others he has scammed. How can anyone even say he is "legit"? Are you fkking HIGH??

but..... its possible that the current account is run by another scammer..

I was on this forum during the TF scam.  TF and I actually would PM each other about various things.

Then one day, my PMs were blocked.  So were everyone else's.

He removed the ability to PM him, forcing you to use his private email, to hide what he was doing from the forum staff.

The "hack" was planned at least three months before it happened.   :-\



You'll find a lot of people here will turn a blind eye to scams as long as they profit from it.  Many people even suggest we look the other way if we don't like a scam.  TF offers a widget for $5 less than the other guy, Sure I'll trade with you - I don't care that you scammed thousands of dollars.

uhh.  I'm wondering what bizarre reality distortion field you've been hanging around. First time I saw him there was some kerfufflel because he was selling stolen login credentials. Then there was the exploitation of the rotten-ripple flaw in the design of the ripple system and a number of other other small scams (e.g. safecoin) it was clear to many that he was bad news before the inputs.io thing went explosively tits up.

My days here started after the inputs incident, shortly after I joined he started what most people thought was trolling. His trust ratings do not reflect those other small scams and as a result I was not aware of them (I believe you though). I have heard that there were rumors of him doing white hat hacking (with reasonable disclosure) and would then attempt to hack the same sites in a black hat way later on.

My impression of him prior to inputs was that he was highly trusted (enough for people to trust him with collectively thousands of Bitcoin) (bear in mind that I was not around to witness what he was doing prior to inputs), and somewhat of a security "expert" (I have seen comments that say something along the lines of that he didn't follow his preaching when it came to security). I have seen him argue for the ethical thing a number of times since inputs, one specifically that comes to mind was him trying to get people to stop advertising for dicebitco.in after they scammed. I also saw him pay people for when they were advertising his signature months after the inputs incident from what he claimed were his own funds.

I was under the understanding that he had taken steps to conceal his identity when he was engaging in some of the small controversy prior to inputs and that there was not 100% proof he was behind some of his transgressions (I still believe it was him though).

I am curious to know why more people didn't try to warn others about entrusting TF with such large amounts of money if it was so obvious that TF was such bad news.

He was able to game DefaultTrust early on when the trust system came out. Anyone who attempted to question his trustworthiness was given a negative rating by TF and his friends from coinchat and their concerns were ignored by everyone due to the rating.

That sounds somewhat familiar to what happened with someone who was recently removed from level 1 default trust, although the use of negative ratings was not used. Massive amounts of positive ratings were used though.

That's what happens when you have un-moderated trust feedback.

Quick and easy fix : hire Vod as staff, let him moderate trust,and give his word a final say when it comes to abuse of trust; ta daa, problem solved.
At the least, scammer tags should have stayed along with this current default trust joke; so scammers would remain tagged

Just imagine how many scammers (and soon-to-be-one's) would loose their mind to this, aww jiss :)

cheers

The same one inhabited by TF and his ilk. 

Hmmm ... no. This will be really a stupid thing, why a mod should moderate the trust system? Wasn't it untrusted? However OP, I think you can close the thread because you have received the reply from the directly interested user ( $username aka TF).

Why should there be a moderator in trust feedback? Anyone should freely state their trust to anyone without asking someone first to let him do the thing. That would be utter nonsense. However, trust feedback could be easily gamed, but that shouldn't mean that it should be moderated.

Hmmm, well it appears (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=603586.msg6878940#msg6878940) that TF does actually have a scammer tag  :o

Are there actually people here that do not know TradeFortress other infamous alt that scammed and was able to hide his RL identity in Similar fashion?

TF has been successfully "acquiring" revenue for four years I know of.


~BCX~

Are you referring to hashie.co?

No, the hashie.co scam wasn't run well enough to have been a TF operation.

I'm not joking.


~BCX~

There is actually a good amount of evidence that the hashie scam was something that TF was behind. I think it is possible that TF might not have personally ran hashie, however he was likely involved somewhat in the back end programming as well as the "bug" that caused it to get hacked