Bitcoin Forum

Update: See this thread    https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=108657.0


Greetings Bitcoin community,

There is a group of us who are gathering evidence and collecting names for legal action against Trendon Shavers, Pirateat40, BTCST.

We have collected a large amount of information and are working with the Bitcoin Police. We will be consulting a lawyer and potentially law enforcement.

The main goal would be to have as many coins recovered as possible however a second goal would be legal justice. Sadly at this time we have reason to believe fraud occurred. However we will assume that he is innocent until proven to be guilty.


Soon we will be asking for evidence, time, expert legal help, and BTC.

We are letting the public know that action is being taken and that once we set up a structure we will welcome the communities help.

There will be a meeting this weekend with more information being made public.


If you would like to help please just watch this thread.

At this time we are not collecting BTC, evidence or anything else. We need to set up a structure.

If you feel you could be a key member or even take the point on this please contact me directly.


Thank you ~Goat~

If Pirate provides evidence that he was actually operating a passthrough to Zeek, will you still hold him responsible for returning your coins?

Cool, glad to hear it.  Honestly, I didn't like you at first.  But to me it really looks like you are attempting to help your shareholders.  I hope I'm not wrong.

Cheers!

Train or Plane ?

I think the guys from CLAG should be involved because I doubt anyone will donate btc to you goat even if only indirectly.


https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=76216.0

Bravo, Goat. Glad to see this thread.

I do support the action though. Good luck.

Goat you have my full support and i will donate BTC.

Whether people supported pirate or screamed from the rooftops that he was a ponzi, everyone should support this.
If scammers start to face real life justice we will start to see less and less of them in BTC land.

That can only be a good thing for everyone ( and the price of BTC ).

maybe worth a try:
there is http://www.zeekrewardsreceivership.com/
which claims that there is a lawyer collecting claims. i'd say you can express the suspicion that he was a passthrough to zeek.

from the lawer's pdf:

Will this auspicious collection of righteous souls also be going after the Pass Through operators who made a tidy little profit shilling for pirate, handling the recruitment of his victims, performing the actual transfer of his victim's funds into his scheme and now all want to so handily hide behind his skirt and claim no culpability?

Seems somehow disingenuous for anyone involved as a co-conspirator to get involved in an effort to track down the bad guy. Of course, OJ claimed he was hunting for his ex-wife's killer while still wiping the warm blood off his gloves, so I guess nothing should surprise us any more.

And if this particular clown car actually starts rolling... you may want to check your own records PPT folks... you had a secret clubhouse with the guy, you had ongoing secret dialog with him, it would only be reasonable to think that a gaggle of top flight biznessmen like yourselves would at least have a real name and phone number for the guy you gave $5,000,000 to, wouldn't it?

And in the sense of fair warning... if anybody asks for a penny of "contribution" for this effort, you will be the straw that broke the dam, and will become target number 1 for all abuse, serious questioning, threats of uncertain but very scary harm and concentrated legal action against you. Even stepping onto the path of "creating a structure" for that kind of heaping salt into the wound smacks of wanting to dig in and grab a few coins for yourself after the major crime has been committed.

And drop the potentially. If this effort isn't already exploring every possible legal avenue with full disclosure and cooperation from every PPT operator to help out the investigation on behalf of the victims that you helped create, then this is clearly a scheme for a little extra taste for the poor junior boys who didn't make out like true bandits at the big people's table.

No. Sending one penny to the conspirators who worked with pirate to rip off $5,000,000 of other people's money is exactly the opposite of what anyone should do.

+1 You guys are a bunch of clowns if you're calling the police to get back your ponzi money.

CLOWNS...

+100
Anyone who still has any faith in this cabal should have their heads checked. Its like  the getaway driver investigating the bank robbery.

Good luck Goat. As Loup so eloquently puts it, us 'righteous souls' who take the so terribly illogical step of actually doing something, or at least making pretenses at doing something, will need all the auspiciousness we can get. I know not whether to trust you or frankly anyone these days, but I am willing to help if good reason exists.

Loup, your poignant wordplay is beyond my ability to contest, and I will not bother to endeavor, but unfailing pessimism, while it may attract legions in the tarpits of our dear friend the Internet, has little sway in the strange world outside that glowing screen. For once, I entreat you, use your clear capability in a more pragmatic fashion with regards to this so joyful community. You might be surprised, and I suspect pleased, at what results.

This effort may, and probably is, all for naught - with that I cannot disagree. Regardless, the only way we can guarantee failure is by failing to try. Now, you tell me, where's the fun in that?

Goat, comments like "This is not a job I want." etc. show that you are not the right man for the job. :( Nothing personal.
Get someone else to lead this project. Someone who has the time, brains, balls and desire to see it succeed.

One more thing, please close this thread but keep it updated or this will turn into another 50+ pages of verbal diarrhea and trollfest, where people are jerking of to their own writings on the wall of nonsense. (look at any PPT thread).

Cheers and good luck.

PS! And for fuck sake, stop slinging shit at each other. Concentrate your frustration and anger on pirateat40, asshole who screwed as all! Even those, who never invested in hist scams.

Nice to see something finally happening...
I really think you should contact the CLAG (see here (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=76216.0)), they will probably be of some help.
And clearly you're not the one who should lead this, as a former passthrough operator and someone who defended BTCST as long as it was standing.

All the best to you guys

The justice system doesn't work for free. If  to many demand regulation, taxation will find us maybe even on depositor accounts. If one has a legal Bitcoin business, you are in your right to take legal action as you pay taxes. We  can't have both.

I won't generalize, but in my country, in the EU, participating in a pyramid scheme is illegal, even on the lowest level where you only loose your own money, therefore you have no legal claim to make and as a payment processor or pass through, you have a greater liability and might face jail time . Some might think that governments do not have the right to decide what's a Ponzy, but the fact is that where I live there has never been a large scale gambling / pyramid scandal with a lot of lesser off people loosing their life savings. Pension funds / bank- scandals we have had our share of though.

I support this.  I lost between 300 - 400 bitcoins in TYGRR.BOND-P.  I was gambling and I was wrong.  But I would like to recover what I can.

Some are discussing violence.  Please don't.  My Dad was murdered and it was a very unpleasant experience for everyone.  12 years on and our family is still recovering.

Pirateat40 should do what he can to repay and his lenders should do what they can to get repaid.

The monetary loss is not that big for me.  I earn that much money in a month, with some to spare.  But I do find the whole law versus bitcoin interaction interesting.  I want to see it play out.

I still have faith in Pirateat40.  I'm just a faithful kind of guy.  Plus, he just sent me some more GPUMAX bitcoins.  Part of his buisness is still sticking to its commitments.

This means there is a business opportunity to start private investigation services for bitcoin.

Welp, if this was pirate's address the last of the coins left to go get laundered a few hours ago... 158000BTC...
http://blockchain.info/address/1DkyBEKt5S2GDtv7aQw6rQepAvnsRyHoYM

...

a LOT of wasted hours has convinced me within 95% likeliness that it's not his..


He would be held responsible for fraud in such case for not disclosing that he was doing such with the coins. Not that he disclosed much of anything. But he stated very plainly what he wanted everyone to believe he was doing with the coins. Why anyone believed him is their problem to explane to a judge. ;p But would not much change the actions he was allegedly doing that he provided.

Ahh, so if you don't disclose what you're doing with the coins, that's fraud? So mybitcointrade is a fraud, right? They don't disclose how they "invest" your coins.

Zeek was always vague about what they did. I don't think what Pirate claimed he did is inconsistent with what he might have believed he was doing in passing through to Zeek.

In other words, it may be that all Pirate is guilty of is the same idiocy as the folks who invested with him. Just as they speculated about the ways he might be able to make a profit and thought their speculations were reasonable, he might have thought the same about Zeek.

It would be very helpful on all accounts to see where this money was moving after it was allegedly deposited with Pirate.
aye, that makes about as much sense as what I posted. My point was more that Trendon made direct statements about what he was doing. And none of them said he was 'investing' the coins elsewhere. I am suggesting that he was not at all doing what he even vaguely stated he was.

Why are those people being so quiet? Aside from keeping any actual legal actions quiet, which would be understandable. It would be nice for some fo them, who i know damn well have done nothign yet to alteast act like they are here for more than just their own pockets....

Regarding PPT's: I think either they take action on behalf of their depositors, or the depositors should take action against them. Without the PPT involvement the victims can't even prove they have made any investment to BTCS&T, there is no direct connection. Goat is on the right track here, but he needs more PPT operators transparently on board. Not likely of course.

Regarding legal claims: If the fraud can be proven (yes even with monopoly money), the motivation should be to make the victims whole again. What the nature of Bitcoin is doesn't really matter at that point. I have very low trust in law but I would very much like to see the outcome.

Yes, me too would like to see Pirate put to justice.

But let's be relistically for a second.

If law enforcement is involved we have the following hurdles:

1. We would need competent investigators that actually knew about bitcoin, and knew their way around everything IT.
2. We would need cooperation across country boundaries, even on various continents.
3. As long as the one filling the case is just an individual, I doubt that law enforcement will care much.
4. It could drag out for years..

The ones I've seen sucessfully track international Internet crime are big law agencies, or big law agencies assisted by powerful private cooperations.

I think a private investigation would yield better results than an official investigation, then when the criminal (Trendon Shavers or whatever his real name is) is found, he could be handed over to the real police, with all evidence readily available, or the organization behind the private investigation could select to to aim for alternative methods..

We don't hear so much about it, but there are private companies helping individuals in achiving 'justice' outside the established system. I suspect these organizations may be just a effective, if not even more so than most national law agencies.

The problem with PPT investors going after the PPT operators is that the PPT operators did what they said they would do. Given that they made no provision for deducting collection expenses and the fact that such efforts are unlikely to succeed, it's hard to argue that they're obligated to pursue Pirate for the benefit of their investors at their own expense. As for going after them for running a Ponzi scheme, it's not like they had information much different from what their investors had or that their actions were significantly different from the actions of their investors. The PPT investor's hands are no cleaner than the PPT operator's.

PPT investors might be able to go after Pirate. But even that is looking unlikely. (Though the Madoff precedent, where passthrough investors were ruled unable to collect against Madoff, was specific to SIPC claims for funds involved in SIPA liquidiations, so probably doesn't apply here.)

In fact I suspect that the FBI and other 3 letters agencies would like very much to look closely into this affair, so much that I am quite worried and uncertain about what could come out of their involvement (as a paranoid-anarcoid I expect little of good).

But if in the end you have to refer to them to move things forward and have some chance, then go for it.

The 3-letter agencies are already well aware of Bitcoin. They certainly have the resources necessary to turn every stone in a case like this, but why should they ? Isn't there hundreds of cases that are more important than this case?

Pirate seemed to be a very vocal person, and he obviously liked to show off, which leads me to believe he may not be as a smart as he thinks he is, and thus he may have left traces behind that can be used to track him down.

Is this a man hunt (or is it going to be one) ?

You should think of not using anything illegal to get him ..... Even saing that in public might get u in trouble ...


And why cant the PPT operators try to get their money back? As i understand it, Goat and the others are trying to get the BTC; or at least legal justice; for their costumers?

if they wanted to run with it they wouldn't be that active on the forum?!


If i were an customer of PPTs (i actually hat a share of TYGRR.BOT, but i sold it after a week or two, because i wasn't sure what it "really was!) i would rather trust them, then Pirate with his "give me your address and amount owed" proposal.....?

With all due respect to Goat, I too have an issue of accepting BTC donations to hunt down Pirate. Are we not all on the same boat (triple entendre?)?

~Bruno~

Of course they could try, I'm just looking realistically at the situation, and the chances are slim. I would love to see Pirate behind bars, and Goat and all other PPT operators have everything back.

But I think there's a very important lesson to be learned, to do Due Diligence before you start working with another company. I can see Goat made a really stupid mistake, and being far too trusty in the Pirate show.

I'm not sure why Goat should be selling his private property to reinstate the investors though. Apart from paying back any fees he earned from the operation to his customers (which would be a gentleman's move), Pirate is to blame.

If Goat is to be blamed of anything, it's stupidity.

Pirate never claimed he wasn't running a passthrough to Zeek until after payments stopped. And operating a Zeek passthrough is perfectly consistent with the vague claims he made about his business model. Pirate made it very clear that he wasn't revealing the details of what he was really doing.

At the very least, I'd like to see if someone will really do something about this, and what the response from law enforcement will be if any. It's big enough in scale to pursue and may at least serve as a precedent.

Just so.

Goat is doing his damnest to whitewash his history as a complicit I-know-Pirate's-business-model shill by appointing himself public prosecutor. Good luck with that, Goat, but it's a collosal mistake for anyone else to subsidize one of the leading co-conspirators to this scam.

It is good to hear that people are making "arrangments" to go after Pirate. But all in all. I'm not sure much will come from it.

By all means put Good money into chasing after  bad money. Perhaps you might turn a profit in all of this. Well some PPTs obviously have (i think).

Bitcoin has moved into the strong hands. Get over it. Stop trusting scumbags on the internet to hold your damn bitcoins.

I support this.

People trusted pirate because:

A: He had perfect OTC rating and community respect.

B: He had (up till now) been reliable and did what he said he would do.

C: There was evidence that he was doing some sort of legitimate business (would any of the ponzi-thumping morons like to explain what's up with GPUMax, since you obviously know everything about pirate?)

D: They accepted that whatever he was doing was probably risky, but assumed that he would do right should things go tits up.

I don't think it's reasonable to expect to get any money back, but I think it would be sending the wrong message to let some asshole walk away with millions of dollars like it's nothing. Of course, given how long it took zhoutong to start processing claims for bitcoinica (people were saying he walked with the money, too) it's possible that pirate is currently shitting himself trying to work things out in a fair and manageable way. If that's the case, he'd better speak up before the FBI shows up at his door.

Oh really?  Forge me some TXs then.  Can you make it look like Satoshi sent me 1000 coins in 2009 please? 
 

Finally somebody says it. If you hadn't, I probably would have.

After reading this thread, I am now convinced that all of them will get away, the pirate and all of his cronies, his feeder fund (PPT) operators.

If I were a feeder fund operator, what would I do? If I were not eloquent, I would probably disappear. If I were a psychopathic manipulator, as a scammer usually is, I would state that I am pursuing the pirate on behalf of my investors and would try extremely hard to create the impression that I am a victim, rather than the perpetrator I really am. Never forget that scammers are usually psychopathic controllers who masterfully make you believe what they want you to believe.

You don't believe this? Then you are beyond help. You think that somebody who is able to establish and run a feeder fund for a huge scam operation is unable to recognize the nature of the whole business, in spite of ample and very elaborate explanations and warnings? There are very naive "investors", but there are no very naive feeder fund operators.

I would rather assume that the clique is still communicating and they are covering each other's asses.

So what would I do if I were pirateat40? I would leisurely launder my last bitcoins and disappear into a faraway country for a long and nice holiday. From there I would watch how a bunch of clueless "investors" is being led around by the nose by my comrades, perhaps just by the ones on that notorious photo showing the elusive club of people hand-picked by me, the pirate. If, after a few years, I would consider all clear, I might even return and, if it's still all clear after another year, start the next scam. With all the experience I would have gathered, that would be very smooth sailing.

And a word directly to Goat and any other feeder fund operator who now wants to look like Jesus, the savior. If you want to disprove what I think and write, let some trusted person here select an auditor for you, open your books to that auditor, and show what you have done.

But actually I am now very pessimistic and may even stop reading these hopeless threads. My unhappy prediction is that the pirate will go free.

Goat,

Your doing the right thing. Do not worry about the hecklers.

Best of luck to you. I watch on with interest.

You are brilliant. If this pans out to be a part of a bigger outside scam, the community in general, will look less like a hornets nest of crocks to outsiders, possible like a currency for gullible idealists. Unflattering sure, but far better than the current status. This lesson have shown to all of us that risking your own money in questionable investments is not only damaging to you, but to the whole community.

Good work, go for it.

Jeebers Cripes. Quite the inverted signal-to-noise ratio around here. How tangential can 9 pages of 'replies' be?

Goat - I think a coordinated effort would likely be a good thing. I could see myself ponying up for some of the cost. But first I would like to understand what the assumed costs and benefits may be.

- What are the various possible outcomes of such an effort?
- Can this be approached in a stepwise fashion?
- What wold be the expected cost of each step?
- If this action resulted eventually in some restitution, how would proceeds be allocated?

Goat- it sucks to have to sell stuff to honor your obligations, but those are the realities of owning a business and offering investment opportunities. Some days you win, and some days you have to make your word be worth something, suck it up and pay out. That's the other side of the coin from when you are raking in the profits. The Scammer tag is not for participating, the Scammer tag will be for those who willfully promoted the scheme (which was the scam) were intimately involved in the scam, and do nothing to make good with the victims of the scam.

Good. The more transparency you can offer the better. How about a full data dump on all of the secret IRC discussions, a breakdown on what was discussed and when, and access to the private contact info you have for pirate? The datamining experts here will find things like that valuable in their search for the guilty parties.

Why? What possible use does anybody investigating this have for donations? If there is an action plan developed and a fund to hire professional to investigate- that would be one thing, but just to say- "we need donations" is offensive. And the root cause of why I and others are doubting your sincerity is solving this problem.

Then may I suggest you think again. You were a vocal cheerleader, and enthusiastic early adopter, an insider in every respect, and you made a very public case for what a wonderful place it was to invest. You then proceeded to make significant profits for yourself on channeling the funds to pirate. An explanation in fine print does not make this okay, you have a fiduciary responsibility to those who entrusted you with their money. I realize that this is a pretend world, with a pretend currency, but the real world rules of responsibility for financial transactions apply. To put a none too subtle note on it, you are a very public accessory to a crime. You have channeled a significant amount of wealth through your mechanism of investment to an crime that is well into the felony range in pretty much any jurisdiction world-wide. You don't make that go away with a lame caveat emptor. You bust your ass trying to do the right thing, you dig deep until you bleed to make good to those who trusted you, long before the Court orders you to, and you don't ever ask for a donation to assist in this matter in any way. And you might consider staying out of the limelight. The investigation and subsequent prosecution (on whatever level) of this matter is not something that you should be the face of.

And I have been a very interested observer as you have learned how to put together your ventures. Your learning process has been very public. You just need to think about tightening up on the details now that investment mogul has turned to as-yet uncharged con-conspirator. You are standing at that crossroads where you have to decide who you are- a scummy little sycophant who is trying to bluff his way out of responsibility with empty words, or a man of honor who will do the right thing, and own his mistake, be honest about it, and work to make it better. And perhaps, a small note of humility and contrition?

I cant believe these people are honestly asking for more fucking money. Even if satoshi himself came down from the heavens and hired chuck norris to go after blackbeard its still wrong.

I filed a report with IC3 about a week ago. Do the same if you want to see some action. All this talk is cheap.

+10

As long as you do not contact law enforcement, nothing prevents Trendon Shavers (assuming he is pirateat40) from disappearing, as he has the right to get out of touch at any moment. Do not forget that a suspect in an investigation may be forbidden to leave the country. It does not mean that he would not be able to flee anyway, but that would make it an additional offense, for which he might be convicted even if he gets away with the bitcoins theft.

How exactly does the evidence not support that?

1.5-3% per day isn't unusual for an online ponzi scheme (zeek managed to get to ~$600m and last over a year offering rates like that).
What interests me though is you saying he paid out more than he got in - what details do you have for that?

Thats easy. He took your coins and ran.
Whatever Pirate did with your coins, "invest", sell, gamble, coke or hookers doesnt matter one yota. Why dont you focus on verifying his ID and filing a formal complaint?

Government investigators of fraud, scams and other financial crimes are far better resourced to find out exactly what pirate was doing than anyone this community could employ.  You already have enough to report him to those authorities and for them to begin trying to trace the funds (you have no access to the other side of these transactions - the USD trail - while those investigators do).

There is nothing to stop you from collecting information with regard to taking civil action against pirate (and it's even known that he is due to appear in court in relation to other matters in November so he could be served there), but you don't need a lawyer in order to get the US Attorney's Office (they appear to be who normally investigates ponzis) moving.  There seem to be multiple bodies to whom suspected ponzis can be reported and there's no harm in reporting this to all of them.  It's their job to investigate whether pirate's scheme was a ponzi or some other kind of investment fraud - you don't need to present them with a complete case file in order to make a report.

That kind of makes sense, since once you know it is a ponzi you can figure a way to try to profit from it, such as by sending in lots more lambs to the slaughter, whereas when you didn't know what it was it was maybe harder to see why (or even how) he would ever give you any of your money back...

-MarkM-

Fixed That For You :)

-MarkM-

the first step should be to file a complaint imo.  The sooner the better. Let them do their job.

Why is it even important, is it ponzi or not?
He took money in form of bitcoins and has not returned it with promised with or without interest payments.FULL STOP!
He has failed on 3 deadlines and refuses to communicate with PPT issuers, PPT holders and one who deposited coins directly. 

What he did or did not with the stolen coin (it became stolen when he failed to return it upon request) is irrelevant in this case.

Lets stick to the facts and only facts. Everything else is as valuable as bird farting.



 

There must be an appropriate lawyer in the Bitcoin community somewhere - get an announcement made and start a bounty so Bullshit&Trust investors can pay towards it.

Let's get Julianna Margulies
At least she knows what bitcoin is already :)

I'd strongly advise filing complaints with whatever information you already have and adding any extra information you have as it comes in.  The longer it takes before those who can access all sorts of information about Trendon Shavers which this community cannot start investigating, the more opportunity he has to muddy the trail.

I also believe that it if it was legitimate to ask Bitcoin Magazine to distance itself from Matthew, it is equally legitimate to ask the other members of GPUMax to distance themselves from Trendon and to make a public statement regarding his current role in relation to that entity and whether or not GPUMax itself had any exposure to BS&T (we know that they shared a wallet, but we have no idea to what extent the businesses may have crossed over in other ways).

I doubt very much that no-one closely associated with Trendon knew what he was doing.  It's likely some were complicit in his fraud.

[offtopic]


More concisely: "logorrhea".

[/offtopic]

As long as they don't ask us to invest in the investigation, I'll support it.

I'll chip in my ill gotten BTC2 when you all are ready.

You think someone like pirate could be 'tricked' into a ponzi?

WAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

If he was involved with Zeek he would be fully aware that it must be a ponzi.
Only naive people with no experience can think that a ponzi is not a ponzi.

How about you do a big public apology first to all the people that warned you, but that you have been shouting down and insulting for over 6 months and more importantly,  to the people who trusted your judgement, but that you misled by pretending you knew more than you really did?

The same goes for the rest of the pirate promo team who are now all pretending to be only victims fighting for the righteous cause.

+ graham's number.

QFT. Thats the guy who is going to uncover what Pirate really did ROFL.

Shouldn't the ICCC be the place to go with this ?

The Internet Crime Complaint Center. Co-sponsored by the FBI and the National White Collar Crime Center (NW3C)

http://www.ic3.gov/complaint/default.aspx (http://www.ic3.gov/complaint/default.aspx)

And seeing as people want to file individual complaints as well, how about setting up a locked forum thread where you guys post all the info you currently have on 'pirateat40'

You see, this is where those people were wrong.
If people yell ponzi people should GTFO of the deal, not seek some insured ponzi stuff.
But in those situations usually greed takes over and the FIRST thing greed does is throw reason out the window.
Or would you claim that you honestly thought there was not a huge huge risk that pirate would not pay (and that is not a rhetorical question)?

There are powerful people on this forum, who nor want pirate@40 to be located, neither to see his uncooked accounting made public -- thats why---and thats why it takes 6 weeks

for Goat to open this thread (going after Trendon Shavers) and now to put even that 3 steps back to the  closed one (aggregating data) and IRC and thats why now, even as a

Trendon Shavers will be identified, nor proper accounting, neither the operator of BCST will be found.


;) ;) ;)

Read my posts in bitcoinmax before they are all becoming censored like in here and you can again see in the rear - view mirror :

"Caution - Objects might be nearer than they appear"



@Goat ...are you allowed to tell us who is ment by "we" and "they" ?

Cheers Zyk

You do realize the first thing Goat will consult a lawyer about, is his OWN liability for promoting and facilitating a fraudulent ponzi operation, right? Why do you think he is still pretending its unsure if pirate really ran a ponzi? Goats first concern is not getting your coins back, its keeping his own ass out of trouble, and if that would mean letting Pirate off the hook, you can bet those 2BTC that he will.

It's not important HOW zeek operated, it is important that they had unrealistic returns that are only possible if something is not straight.
Name a form of 'business' that claims such returns and is NOT a ponzi, please.
About bernie, a lot of the unknowing and unexperienced people invested through peripheral routes. They could be kept in the dark.
People dealing (almost) directly with him and who were in the money business absolutely had to know that it was a ponzi.
The only thing they didn't know was when it would bust.
The only respect madoff got in the banking community is from how long he could keep it running.
Of course they would all deny they thought it was a ponzi, but do you realy think big player banks and hedge funds are this naive? They'd be out of business in 2 days if they hired people that stupid.

I hate to be crass, but no shit, Sherlock.

The fact that he likely has only a fraction of the deposits is why some have said this effort is throwing good money after bad. I wish the true victims of this scam luck (ie, the people mislead by co-conspirators such as yourself), but please calibrate your expectations.


You've always said you understand Pirate's business model, so I would appreciate some of your expertise here. How does paying people to "trick" them into think it's a Ponzi help Pirate? Keep in mind, these were the same people telling people not to invest and to pull out their funds--for months, in many cases.

He'll cling to the "not proven ponzi" line till the end.

This is for goddamn certain.

I don't trust any PPT operators.

Theymos (who admits knowledge of and engagement in fraud) and other forum admins (shills) also helped Pirate and PPT operators by facilitating their promotion and encouraging/stickying Patrick's bogus ratings.

best posts:

Frankie,
You are answering your own question although you problably dont see it.


By your own logic:

Pirate only has a fraction of the money so hunting him is to throw good money after bad -> I.e. Do not go after Pirate since he ran a ponzi.

How does paying people to "trick" them into think it's a Ponzi help Pirate? -> If people believe Pirate has no money they wont go after him.


Best regards

Was reading through some of Pirate's old posts and he use to sell video cards. Maybe we can get in contact with a buyer and see if a return label was written on the packaging?

Someone already did. He confirmed that pirateat40 is the same guy as the one in the picture from vegas.

"Captain Jack sparrow" going to caught soon.
The question is, he already planned everything or just doing everything on the go. 

He's probably already gone, he's had a whole month.

Has he been active in IRC at all lately?

"Why do we need to investigate further before filing complaints?"

The more factual info we can provide, the sooner that things can be brought to a conclusion.

Some 'know' that Pirate operated a ponzi. Except they don't know.
Some 'know' that pirate is also Trendon Shavers. Except they don't know.
Some 'know' that pirate accumulated 500KBTC. Except they don't know.
Some 'know' that BST put everything in Zeek. Except they don't know.

I could go on. In the end, the only things we seem to know are that a number of us placed money in an entity known as Bitcoin Savings and Trust, and that we are now unable to withdraw our money.

I'd like to get (some of) my coins back. To this end, I would like to file a formal complaint. But I don't feel I have enough concrete info at this point to do so. I don't even know where I'd file a complaint.

I understand the point that we don't need to have everything all wrapped up before 'the authorities' should be brought in. But the more real concrete info we can provide, the further ahead we will be. Even a trace through block chain analysis would be invaluable. Can you imagine trying to explain to Bitcoin to some noob investigators, who will spend weeks just trying to wrap their minds around this new monetary concept before they actually get on the pirate trail?

My life oscillates between periods of having money but no time, and period of having time but no money. Right now I am in the former. I don't know how to trace money flows through the blockchain. I don't know how to track down individuals from fragments of their online life. Given my current condition of 'money but no time', I am willing to consider chipping in to a coordinated effort.

You dont have to know to file a complaint.  All that matters is that he owes you a sum of money. Let the authorities figure out if/how Pirate squandered it.


Thats a valid point, but again only the authorities would be able to prove this. Its not like you will get his ISP to cough up his real identity without a warrant. File a complaint against Joe Doe and tell the police what you know. If nothing else we have pictures and assumed names, it should be very easy for them to verify if it is indeed Trendon Shavers.


Doesnt matter.


Doesnt matter.


Where I live, you simply go to the police to file a complaint. We have a special branch for internet related crime and fraud, Im sure most countries have that now. And if thats not the appropriate channel, at least they should be able to direct you elsewhere.

In short: stop trying to do the police work yourself, begin by filing a formal complaint. Its about time someone in uniform called up pirate or rang his doorbell.

The first word you will get from police or FBI or anyone, if you try to file a compliant is "idiot"

Is Bitcoin merged mine with mining idiots & it shared by miners?

... and acted all like "what? zeek? i don't know it. Honestly. Trust me." while the community was abuzz with it.
He would have to be locked away in a cave without internet to not know by that time what zeek was.
As i see it this theory is not put to sleep by what pirate claims.
And meanwhile no better explanation from pirate himself...

You are right. Answers to these are likely not required in order to file a complaint. However, any competent investigator will ask these questions at first interview. Ready answers would be beneficial.

I take it as axiomatic that coordination amongst all agencies 'on the case', all sharing what each uncover, will lead to a more timely and satisfactory solution for all (except perhaps for pirate himself). Are you actively advocating against such coordination?

First; I was not participating on Pirate's deals and has not lose or win nothing. Just observing.

The bitcoin course at 19.8 indicates strongly that at that time, Pirate was just trying to pay out all the withdrawals.

If he was trying to steal everyone's bitcoins, he would have no reason to try to exchange his fiat money (or money he controlled) to bitcoins at all cost.

Clearly at that time, someone (most likely Pirate) was trying to buy a lot of bitcoins. That causesd, of course, the price to go up. And at some point, he realized, that the price was too high for him to buy enought bitcoins with the dollars (or Euros etc.) he got.

He must have lost a lot of money trying to fill the demand. If he was going to steal the money, he would not have done that. But that's the start, not necessarily the end. Not a surprice, if, after all what has happened, he just run off with the coins.

If I were a participant, I would suggest pirate just to pay back the capital he owned at 19.8, but not the interest after that. The interest might make it impossible for him to get out without being a criminal and thus he might think better to run away.

There are a million factors that could influence BTC price, but if you must link it to pirate, consider that one plausible theory currently says pirate was constantly selling his coins to invest dollars in Zeek (and perhaps in a very stupid attempt to control BTC price). Just the fact he stopped selling coins could just as easily have caused the price rise, and would still  leave pirate mostly empty handed in both dollars and btc.

Check this with one month timescale. What happened in 18-19 cannot be a coincidence. It must have somethingto do with pirate.
https://mtgox.com/index.html?Currency=USD

And that also reveals he was first buying coins, until at some point he stopped. And that caused a very sudden drop in the price.

I certainly must not, but even if it does, you might have cause and effect reversed. It could be that the increase in price made pirate stop his business (if he was running through zeek, a sharp in crease in btc price would have been a problem since he would make his "profit" in dollar). It could be that people finding out about pirate's imminent default cause an increase, after all a ponzi meant people held 500K coins less than they thought. And most likely, as I said, it could be pirate no longer selling the bulk of his inflow and thus no longer artificially keeping btc price low. I see no shred of evidence that pirate was buying coins on a large scale.

Was really happy that a fresh head gave signal to concentrate on the essentials !  --Find pirate and get his accounting-- full stop !

Funding has to be provided not to goats hands but to one of the "naysayers".

Now you are diverting attention on shit.....fact is : when price rises from 4 to 15 $ and still rests at 11$, the loot is here and not in FIAT !

Would have still been easily found, when not enough time is already been wasted, to get the brotherhood to their senses.

Sorry, if zykloogish again makes your brain - cells sweat.

Cheers Zyk

Do you see where I say "telling people not to invest...ect"?

P4cman's been calling it a likely Ponzi at least since June from what I can tell. Let's say Pirate really did have a miraculous 10% a week profit machine (in spite of the lack of evidence), let's say we're in Goat's public persona's baa-baa land and Pirate is making interest hand over fist, but he turns to the darkside by becoming an ordinary (non-Ponzi!) scammer.

In this infantile fantasy world articulated by Goat's public persona, how does it make sense to spread "FUD" about Pirate before (and usually long before) scammer Pirate takes the money and runs?

Well, I can think of one obvious purpose for GPUMax:

We already know quite a bit that would be useful to the authorities.

1) His name is probably Trendon Shavers, from McKinney TX.

2) He runs gpumax.com, which is registered under "Don Shrents".  A little investigation would easily dig up how these people are related.

3) We have a decent estimate of the USD value of the funds he's liable for, and the fact that he has suddenly gone silent when the bill came due. (tax evasion is treason in the US these days, they'll hunt him if only for that)

4) We have circumstantial evidence that he may have been running a ponzi scheme, and that he could possibly have been involved in money laundering (why pay over par for mining activity?). Even if not, if he doesn't pay then it's still grand theft.

Assuming pirate doesn't come out and make some substantial announcement, and more importantly make a tangible effort to start coughing up, anyway. I think most of us are perfectly willing to accept that he can't pay interest from the time things fell apart, or would be satisfied just getting most of our money back.

However, as long as he fails to inspire confidence that he's not just going to run away, we ought to keep whetting our knifes if only to make sure that pirate knows we're not playing around. There's plenty of useful information we could dig that would speed along the process of conviction should the stick become necessary.

makomk: That still doesn't make much sense. How was he able to pay miners over par and pay out interest at the same time? Unless he had some other purpose for it, that would have made him bleed money much faster.

I reckon a lot of the early GPUMAX demand was probably genuine external customers who wanted to use it for pool hopping, but compared to running a Ponzi scheme that's not hugely profitable for Pirate himself.

I want a piece of him. How can I contribute to the cause?

Let's not forget the IRS is an entity that would be very interested in collecting what's owed on income earned, even if they need to take his house, cars, etc.

1. Who has an BCST account and lives there ? bitlane?

2. Put up a wallet contolled by a "naysayer" who, even if difficult to find, sympathizes with bitlane ;) and has the communities future in mind ( BinaryMage ?).

3. They together finance some Humphrey Bogart to thouroughly investigate location and above mentioned identities around McKinney.

4. Report to in closed thread     https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=108657.0

Cheers Zyk

It's not uncommon for people to (unconsciously) make up aliases that keep some traits of their real names (initials, syllables etc) without realizing it.

Trendon Shavers
Don Shrents

I don't want to detract from the value of your listing this info, and I don't want to run this thread off the rails. However, I think the only bit of evidence we have for the 5.5M USD figure is his single boast of 'controlling' 500K BTC in an irc session. No?

Humphrey Bogarts may be found already ;) but they do no good in virtuality

we need him to feel a real world transmission of contact....that may be enough....to save a lot of efforts and monies, sleazy laywers and judges would extort otherwise.

CK

Again, our blessed saint graces us with his genius.

Midget strip-o-gram.

The best kind of real world transmission of contact mankind has ever known.

A few of the PPT ops have also stated what's on their balance sheets. We could at least pull together a lower bound figure, which is still in the millions, without having to go on his word alone.



Possibly, although that still leaves unanswered questions.



That's likely. Apparently "Trendon Shavers" appears on his ID, although I haven't seen it myself. If that really is who pirate is, then I'd say he either really intends to pay out, or else he's already got citizenship somewhere he can avoid prosecution. That, or he's incredibly stupid.

It usually takes 4-5 years to acquire citizenship in any country, which makes that less likely but not impossible.

Does anyone know how long it took between the time bitcoinica got hacked and the time they started processing claims? It's been 4 weeks or so for pirate now..

Reeses: Please stop quoting zyk. I'm already having to use the ignore button much more than I would like.

Just now that you tell me : "The best kind of real world transmission of contact mankind has ever known."


So, thats really you ?


Cheers Zyk

Depends on the country, Cambodia is 6 weeks:

http://tdvpassports.com/

Really is no point chasing this guy down unless you want to lay criminal charges. You won't get a dime back. Ponzi's work by paying new money out in interest payments, and unless new money comes in there's nothing left. That and ponzi operators like to blow some of it on their lifestyle, like expensive vacations, food, hotels in vegas (lol) but hardly any of them have any hard assets you can sue to get back. Even Madoff had barely anything to show for the $50 billion that disappeared. All that was left was some pocket change and his condos in his wife's name.

Just from googling seems this pirate guy liked to gamble, probably it was all pissed up a rope playing bitcoin poker and he has a $1 left to his name. Or maybe he blew it in vegas when he met everybody. I bet when you find him he has nothing to show for the tons of coins he stole just like every other busted ponzi scheme operator.

Instead you can sue each other to retrieve each other's interest payments claiming it was your own money, since it prob was. That's exactly what happened in the madoff case

I do wish we had more flexible "ignore" and "unignore" capabilities, such as "unignore for thread" or "ignore replies".

I have him on ignore as well, but sometimes he's just so darned cute, like E.T. or Yoda.

Oh my Cutey, lets exchange mails and adresses then , may be we´ll

even marry in Vegas one day :D

Cheers Zyk

Goat!

You need to stop talking on this subject right now. If you think that asking for donations to fund a lawyer is going to help this issue, you are so ignorant of the processes of business that you are dangerous to yourself.

To wit:

Lawyers don't provide information to the FBI.

The FBI does not investigate international financial fraud.

You are as likely if not more so when compared to pirate to be charged in this affair- YOU were the agency of the commission of the crime in accepting money and CLAIMING you sent it off to someone else.

You are the last verifiable point where anybody can state with certainty where the money went, and you are the one coming up with excuses not to return people's funds to them.

You have a well documented history of making very poor decisions- who paid for the trip for you to have drinks with pirate in Vegas is not your investors?

Understand that everything you have said in this matter has been kept on file, and will show up again in the prosecution of this matter, and you are one of the ones most likely to be left without a chair when the music stops. Thus far, at least one of the PPT co-conspirators has refunded his investors, I suggest you do the same immediately and at least get yourself out of that level of trouble, because right now you have a massive target on your back.

Nice info. Paraguay is apparently 2 days, whereas I thought it was more like 3 years. Not all places are equally good to hide, though.


@moni3z: That's basically the gist of it. If we can't have our BTC back, then we'll collect his head instead. Hopefully it won't come to that, but if it does we should be well prepared.

Has anyone added up the amount of btc passed via ppt operators to Pirate?  I'm not interested in what people believed their account balances to be, but the actual net number of Bitcoins that flowed in to pirate...

Also, GPUMAX technologies LLC is a registered company  (https://ourcpa.cpa.state.tx.us/coa/servlet/cpa.app.coa.CoaGetTp?Pg=tpid&Search_Nm=GPUMAX%20TECHNOLOGIES%2C%20LLC%20&Button=search&Search_ID=32046504976) in Texas.

Other managing members of GPUMAX Technologies:

Zach Nakaska (https://www.linkedin.com/in/znakaska) (also on Business Cognition)
Michael Thalasinos (https://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=191324706&pid=69812266&authType=name&authToken=_K83&trk=pbmap)

I think it's important to point out that we don't really know how many depositors he had. Lots of them could have been fluff to promote confidence.

You are much more likely to see a charge for running an unregistered security than a Ponzi (where a Ponzi by definition is an unregistered security).

The only problem is if regulators go after Pirate for offering unregistered securities (whether the Ponzi aspect comes into play or not), they would go after EVERYONE.  All the exchanges here, GLBSE, etc. are illegal, unregistered securities from a US regulator's perspective.  They all pass the Dewey Test.

So while Pirate may have scammed many and you can lay Ponzi/fraud charges on top, having this community pursue civil or criminal action is kind of like a group of drug dealers getting together and complaining about the one dealer who scammed them.

Here's my latest thread dedicated to the Trendon Shavers/Pirate connection: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=108932.0

Nite, all.

~Bruno~

Exactly, I don't why people are acting so naive. Everyone needs to take responsibility for their own investment decisions.

+9000

- 9000

Thats to be found out yet !  if there is any glimmer of "investment"?   Our trophy is the scammers tag - and it will be once regarded as the most valuable symbol

of human kind after or even before the Cheops pyramid -  pun intended ;)

The corrupt fear us, the honest support us and the heroic join us !    Can you see the trees?

Cheers Zyk

So, what you are saying is that only way to take this scammer down is by other means than legal action. Lets hope this happens soon.
Do not forget to post pictures for proof of capture etc.
He has to go down. FULL STOP.

You are putting words in my mouth, of course, like a true troll...

I am advocating for a radical change in direction, far far away from any of these so called "investments".

And whiners who lost money in the latest scam, should eat their losses, and accept that they too were conspirators of an obvious ponzi scheme.

This is all of course if they truly care about Bitcoin and would like to see it succeed.  

If people want to go on a virtual witch hunt, I honestly couldn't think of anything more detrimental to Bitcoin.

It will just prolong this entire incident, and cause even more pain and losses.

IF they don't care about Bitcoin, then I really am not interested in giving those type of people even one minute of my time.

You are putting words in my mouth, of course, like a true troll...
[/quote]

I guess it takes one to know one. Why don you go and find out, wtf troll even means and then search for example how to use the word.



Your 20/20 hindsight is adding exactly 0 value to this thread. OMG, you must be trolling :)

No virtual witch - hunt !  A real world search for our lost son !

Cheers Zyk

P.S. judging is a process......watch HK´s resolve !

And so is does your archaic call for violence. -0- Value in a modern society.

Which BTW would only keep this disgusting and vicious cycle going on for ever.

How the fuck do you guys think the planet got to the state of which it's in now in the first place?

You're seeing it with your very own eyes, and Bitcoin is essentially modeling everything that has happened in the "real world", at an incredibly fast pace.

If we are to change the planet, we must do it by being different, not by following the same old tired rituals of the past.

Instead of falling for the petty pits of deceit and evil, we must transcend as a community, and push for a much better future...

If not then what is the point of all this?

The reality is that people will do what they feel they need to do, whether you are talking about cash, gold or Bitcoins. Lives have been lost over gold and cash, yet it doesn't invalidate them. The Bitcoin "community" already extends far beyond this forum. You can't expect to control what people do and don't do with their coins, just like you can't tell people what to do with their gold and cash.

I think the fact that Bitcoin is inspiring the same type of behavior as real money is a good sign that Bitcoin is replicating money...I would love for society to stop being evil, but, if Bitcoin didn't inspire things like theft, deceit, etc, would it be useful at all?

You still have not added any value to this post. Nothing. Nada.
Can you go and thread crap something in Off-topic section? Let me help you to "fuck off" in right direction: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=9.0  

You see, I am a nice guy :)

Thank you for going away now

GPUMax is a money laundering operation. Havent people noticed the large amount of invites going out since pirate shut down ?

My bet he is laundering ill gotten gains and is content to sit it out for a couple of years paying miners BS&T coins and keeping newly minted coins in a different address. Its the only thing that explains it. The thing we can do as a community s boycott GPUMax if you really want to fuck with pirate.

You have a point.

So my simple question to the community (which is doing alot of soul searching right now) is...

Should this place (effectively ground zero in the Bitcoin world) be a literal BREEDING GROUND, for this kind of deplorable behavior?

Should honest businesses and individuals get hurt (like they are hurting right now) by the actions of a few greedy assholes, all because certain people want to have their "fun"?

That is what is happening right now.

SERIOUS PEOPLE IN THIS COMMUNITY ARE TAKING A SECOND LOOK AT BITCOIN, AND THIS TIME AROUND IT'S NOT A "GOOD LOOK". BE VERY CAREFUL BITCOIN COMMUNITY BECAUSE ONE THING IS VERY CLEAR YOU REAP WHAT YOU SOW!  

The very same system that you guys are fighting so hard to "take down" might be formulating right before your very eyes..

You're an idiot.

/ignored

P.S Putting words in peoples mouths is consider trolling you dumb nub.

Awesome new point (at least for me) ----and the first for a while which really concerns : Re: Going after Trendon Shavers, Pirateat40, BTCST

Thanks Zyk

To boycott just one Ponzi scheme, is to ignore the entire point of this story all together..

You need to start somewhere.

You don´t weed out and establish a garden  ..... by whinig    Heulsuse !

Take your x - legs to get a hold on his accounting and then take  account of yourself  please.

Thanks Zyk

My question is a valid question, and one that many people fail to even comprehend.

What we have is something that is worth much more than the risk of fostering these kinds of "businesses" in the #1 BTC community.

Why the fuck would we want to risk our trillion dollar coin, with small time money? *serious question*

Do you not see how ludicrous we sound when we tell serious people that this currency is supposed to be worth millions of dollars per unit, and then they come over here and see that the only functioning businesses are low-end ponzi schemes, and scam traps in every corner?

I must ask this question again to not only you but every single Bitcoiner reading this message post right now.

Do you not see how ludicrous it is for people to trust us when we can't even begin to trust ourselves?

Bitcoiners live in this paradigm reality, where Bitcoin has already been adopted around the entire world, and this forum only represents a "minority" of it's users, when in fact this forum IS BITCOIN, and most likely represents 80% of it's user-base. The good, the bad , and the ugly. This forum is IT, and incidences like BTCST only prove this theory further (notice how much money and people were involved). There is no outside "support system" holding Bitcoin together, it's only us against this dark and tangled planet we like to call Earth. The sooner we can all come to this honest but harsh reality, the sooner things will start to pick up and hopefully turn around before it's to late...

well said !

But completly off topic ! Please do thread for Utopias.......and let us take care of pirates accounting - don´t you see thats you , who are standing in the way

of your own visions and especially in the way to renew trust in this forum !!!

Thanks for your compliance

Zyk

ZYK your not exactly the most honest person yourself.   ::)

Again off topic :

If you topic - destroyers ( trolls) want to contribute to a greater good, please find the members of this community ,

who still send their coins through GPUmax and convince them otherwise.

Success can be reported here !

@ursay if you want to get your head handed back to you....go in the thread which you opened for that : https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=103037.0

Thanks Zyk

We can't..

Which is why we must speak up in every singular opportunity. You say that my posts are off topic, I say that they are right on the bulls eye! Everyone is missing the most obvious points, while relishing on what the next course of action will be.

Well I say that the next "course of action" for this particular incident (and all related incidences that have to do with ponzi schemes/gambling/bad business) take place far far away from the main meeting place where the general public/media/and businesses come to congregate.

Not everyone is as barbaric as some of the posters in this thread. We are absolutely SICK AND TIRED of all the nonsense, and the time has come for people who are tired of all the bad businesses, to stand up to these atrocities and RID the community of these parasites.

And to you Zyk, if you want to advocate violence against another human being, get the FUCK out of our community, because again, if you come in with that initial mindset, it tells me we don't need people as unstable as you here in the first place.

Personally I think FlipPro is adding more value than you bob.  Simply saying that pirate is an asshat FULL STOP and asking who is going to do something is not helping.

You lost money because you made a bad decision, FULL STOP.  So did I, and I can't blame pirate for my stupidity, and neither can you.

My BTC0.02.

Would you please show me one sentence, where I advocated violence?

What we really need are three more tags to make this community a better place:

1 for false accusations

2 for outright lies

3 for blindness and stupidity                            and may be one for zykloogish but that is there already --- just ignore ;)

Thanks Zyk

P.s, Why  can´t you try to find people using GPUmax? .....because you are too lazy even to verify what you are talking about let alone doing something???

If too lazy for that as well just go  https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=103037.0 and you may get a little hold on Zyk´s character

Uh, so this mentality is supposed to disincentivize scammers? *scratches head*

EDIT: Let me elaborate. Anyone can get scammed, depending on the resourcefulness of the scammer. No sort of research will guarantee an investment. This doesn't mean that thorough research doesn't help, but you want to develop the means to go after scammers as well. For example, why do you trust a person with validated identity more than an anonymous guy, other than it making it easier for you to after them? It all takes a very resourceful sociopath to make it impossible to do any business across borders with Bitcoin, if all you will do is to blame the victims. What if BFL just decides to take the money and disappear tomorrow (stupid example I know, but some people think it's likely)? I'm sure some people will be dancing around the forum blaming the "suckers".

If a trusted member of the forum takes on the task to hire a private investigator, I'd chip in. Goat isn't suitable for this for obvious reasons.

http://www.ratical.org/ratville/JFK/JohnJudge/linkscopy/silenttruth.html

Sorry the third tag was not ment for blindness and stupidity, cause thats too relative but for groupthink and ignorance

which applies for the above ! and is off topic !

Again, this thread is called :    Going after Trendon Shavers, Pirateat40, BTCST

Everybody who wants that the traces of his loot remain uncovered open their own thread please as:

I want twiddle thumps because the wonderful humpty - dumpty of Bitcointrust is going to be put together by himself

Thanks Zyk

Still the problem of this forum is, that there is no tag for groupthink and ignorance, at least you seem to be able to learn thinking for yourself by wanting to chip in privat

investigation. But rather to let it be done by a "trusted member" (cause we know what that OTC ratings and groupthinkshit is worth now)  may I advice you, to just PM

or propose the member in this forum you would trust most ? The most suited member for me would be BinaryMage....hopefully that won´t get him the ignorance tag ;)

Any volunteers , anyone connected in McKinney ?

Did I miss a useful post of you or is it deleted ? Are connected to Vegas....forgot your socks there?

So everything else you took from there including yourself is useless ?  I knew already!

Cheers Zyk

P.S This is the chance, sweetie reeses, to hand Zyk his ass back to him ;)

What nonsense.
A lot of people would want hang pirate, but i don't see them doing what they feel they need to do.
Meanwhile, pirate was very prolific at telling people what to do with their coins.
What you write about is not how reality is unfolding.
Human interactions just don't work that superficially.

Another pirate thread devolved into useless blather

No, the problem with this board is that it is being used in ways it should not be used.
No ammount of tagging will help that.

Thanks to you !!

Cheers Zyk

Here is one related post https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=109363.0 (thanks Joric from IRC)
Hopefully it gets moved to a proper forum. 

+1. I think his advice was very helpful, as well.

WTF happened to https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=108657.0 ? Was that the info consolidation thread that BA was running? I can't find that thread either..

It was deleted.

Why? By whom?

By BA himself.

Well, that's half an answer.

Why? Probably because of pirate threatning the ones who sued him would not see a dime.

I must have missed this. Whoever believes it is a damn fool.

Well, if you put your money in BS&T...you sort of are to begin with.

Considering he's offered no evidence of his ability to pay In Oct or any other time, there's nothing to be scared of. Why take the word of a liar now?

The one mistake (imo only) that's being made is publishing all this, plans need to be quiet and confidential. When we used to plan the takeover of software companies, we never put the thinking into the newspaper so they could poison pill themselves.

Alright. Well I now have a pretty good idea of what needs to be done and in what order. I'll PM you tomorrow goat, and we'll start a new thread on getting this moving. I really didn't want to have to get this involved, but I guess if everyone else is gonna puss out every time pirate says "Boo"..

Awesome.  Now pirateat40 will feel better.  Winning will give him the presence of mind he needs to give Goat his coins back.  Then goat will give me my coins back.

If I get the money back soon enough I will never have to explain to my wife that I bought bonds from a goat.

I'm not even sure why I bother with legit business if people really are this consistantly dumb.

Wish I witnessed this earlier. Comical scheme, really.

They whom? That 4 spineless suckers on irc? And where do you collect the people availability to sue him? Nobody asked me.
Anyway legally speaking it should not make lots of difference if a few or many sue him (apart from the slice of legal fees).

I am readying another load of popcorn for when we will know what the hell Pirate really did with the BTC from a tribunal (I don't expect much more, apart maybe his conviction, since I dont' think he would be still around if he had the BTC).

I thought that you had already established some agreement with a few big lenders. So nobody wants to take the lead?
The fees should be obviously shared proportionally.

It doesn't really matter much whether or not pirate has a lawyer at this point or not.  There's no injunction freezing his non-Bitcoin assets or restraining him from doing whatever the fuck he wants with any BTC which might be under his control (assuming there are any).  He can pay people or not totally on a whim right now and there's little anyone can do about it. 

Yeah, he's fucking with people's heads, but lets not pretend that those to whom he owes BTC are the ones in the position of power right now. 

I've sent a PM to goat. We'll get this handled soon enough. There's also less of a downside for us than you might think, although we've wasted a lot of time which is not in our favor.

If you missed  it on IRC:

So are you saying people had lawyers involved.. pirate made his announcement.. and the lawyers have now advised people not to do anything anymore ?

nah I mean people wanting to Sue Pirate. They had lawyers ? and those lawyers advised them to stop... ?

They had no lawyers. They went "Imma gonna sue that there Captain Blackbeard", then called for mom to bring em another sammich.

Well, besides goat. He might have a lawyer.

That's not how it works.
That's stupid, so stupid...

If you people sue me for not doing the thing you want me to do in order to force me to do the thing you want me to do, I am not going to to the thing you want me to do, that I wasn't going to do in the first place.


Say that 10 times really fast.

We need more pirate comedy.

I would actually donate if someone made youtube videos mocking all of his retarded comments about repaying investors.

Let me go post a thread asking for a loan involuntary donations to buy a webcam real quick.

... and say it with a pirate accent ...

-- Smoov

It's not like he's over in Nigeria. He doesn't have as much power as he thinks.

I mean, as soon as he pays... Theoretically... Who would give him the time of day?

Also, his father is giving conflicting information effectively ruining whatever lies he comes out with.

And then there's the extortion. Liability is liability.

<troll>
Haz teh lulz ben tould yet?

</troll>
Also, shouldn't you not be saying _anything_ until you talk to the lawyer?

My take is that he feels he's in a trap. Most the money is gone and the coins are locked away for future tapping. TS effed up in one major regard and that was letting his true identity be known for now his family is involved on his end. We don't know anything about Tom Williams or Zhou Tong's family. Hell, we even know what church TS attends(ed) thanks to his dad. Imagine if his dad was excommunicated due to him having a son who conducted the largest crypto-currency on the internet. Thanks to one man's actions, the whole family will forever feel the fallout caused by their kinfolk. Thus, it's this aspect alone that has Trendon Shavers the most concern. He could care less about those from which the money came from.

At some point, I envision the dad stepping in and doing everything possible to make this right and protect his family from any future scorn. That's the only hope left, I believe, in recovering any funds. As it already has been proven, there is no lawyer involved at Trendon's end. Just words.

~Bruno~

This may come to a shock to you, but am only one person. I was not aware of the term "cognitive dissonance" until now. To be fair and honest, your interpretation of my post post is pretty close, but not spot on. I guess my hope was to provide options along with expressing what may transpire next. My post was meant to add to the conversation and not dox.

Later, bud.

~Bruno~

EDIT: I remember you from last year, and was surprised to now see you only have 69 posts. Upon searching this site, I found the following:


Now I ask you this: Was bitlane close?

Why would anyone need to X out the following post? https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=62857.msg734632#msg734632 (locked, so I bolded text)

Maybe you could launch an IPO on the GLBSE to finance this affair: shareholders will receive an amount of the loot recovered proportional to their shares. Maybe even some trade with listed PPT bonds could be arranged. And maybe on bitcointalk there is a lawyer specialized in this kind of issues...

Honestly I already thought about that. But it would be like selling pirate debt sorta. Also a lot of the recovered funds that I get will have to go to my bond holders. Sadly no one has offered to pay anyhting and some are even telling me not to sue cuz pirate wont pay... So meh...

I can't even get a lawyer with a decent response time cuz I'm in Thailand... Could really use a hand if anyone here is a lawyer. Thx

I agree too although the authorities may keep bitcoin on the same level as Linden dollars or other virtual currencies. 

In the States it is illegal to call third parties to collect the debt of one of their family members.  It happens often and most collection agencies get away with it because they have a lot of funds, but imagine in civil court where Shavers says, "Oh I would have paid back but I was getting death threats and my family was being harassed and threatened."

This might come to a point that users of bitcoin need to organize themselves into trade unions or consumer groups that sign pledges with other groups to insure their members for negligent actions.

That's the kind of shit I worry about, since the fucking morons here think it's cute to just dox anyone whether they have any legit involvement or not. And whoever that "don shrents" asshole is.. my guess is he's pirate, probably doxed his parents on purpose just for that. Of all the posts that deserve to disappear, the one that deserves it the most still seems to be here..

Of course, that's only an issue if someone will actually sic a lawyer on him before he walks away with however much money he's managed to scam.. idiots.

EDIT: nvm, I see dshrents has been verified by two people, although that was still a stupid thing to do.

In other news, I've already finished preparing the documentation that whatever lawyer is hired will need. That took much less time than I had expected, and as soon as goat hears back from his lawyer we could have clear instructions and an organization thread posted within minutes. We should have legal action moving no later than early next week, assuming a few people are willing to use their brains for a few minutes.

I was at the dinner and am in the famous photo.  However, I have always kept my post count trimmed to a minimum necessary for some purpose, even before that kerfluffle.  I kept it at 69 for a while, then 100 because that was the "full member" status or whatever, and then for shits and grins when it annoyed people, I tried to keep it close to 10.  I've been letting it creep up again.

I posted somewhere but forgot where, that I generally delete my posts once they're quoted because it's no longer necessary to read it twice.  I also delete them if I think they're funny but they fall flat.  I also rely pretty heavily on "Show new replies to your posts" to keep track of threads in which I am actively participating (leaving "watch" for passive threads).  I started deleting to manage that load before "watch" was added and continued deleting posts because (no offense to you with your 40 bajillion posts) I don't want to have this reminder next to a picture of my head that I've wasted so much time on this forum.

Plus, fuck 'em, that's why.  If someone wants to know something, they can ask.  Or they can make things up, which is much more fun and popular.

I've never shilled for pirate, nor have I operated a PPT or encouraged people to invest in one.  I continuously questioned the rationality of the attacks on pirate (especially the, yes, cognitive dissonance of "it's a ponzi" and "he has five million dollars" in the same posts) and grew tired of arguing with people who only care about making their point, over, and over again.  I don't have time for that.  I also don't have time for the psychos on the forum.  One public threat of violence from an illiterate person was enough for me.


I think it was because I had sold the item under offer but couldn't delete the thread.  It was annoying to look at.  Need is irrelevant.  I wanted to.

Reeses, can I borrow 2500 BTC ?

I have 'this thing' that I will be getting soon, to pay you back.

Please send BTC to: 1BEw3Hj7xwCB1qv5CuU2CHM6i3Hcb92pyh

Thanks,
Allan

He's not even coming close to "extortion". He's perfectly free to state that he's not going to pay certain people or that he's not going to pay anyone at all.  Those people are perfectly free to pursue legal remedies to obtain payment, but there are a multitude of ways in which he could fuck with that if he really wanted to and pretty much leave people who haven't been paid having to sue those who have been paid in order to recover funds.

Yes, you should go after him with lawyers, and one of the first things those lawyers should be looking at is freezing his non-Bitcoin assets.  If he's smart, he'll only have minimal non-Bitcoin assets.  You could try to obtain an order to freeze his known Bitcoin addresses, but no-one external can enforce such an order so he'd really only be risking contempt of court if he didn't comply - assuming you could prove to the satisfaction of a court that he actually controls those addresses - and the possible penalties for contempt of court will vary by jurisdiction.

What no-one can control is where any investigation leads.  You can't say to the SEC/the US Attorney's Office that you want pirate investigated for wire fraud and the like but that you don't want the PPT operators investigated.  That's not your call.   Should they investigate, they'll decide who to investigate and for what offences.

Interesting, yet sad and unfortunate; wishing for this sort of thing to happen to people.


Forethought can be a fantastic thing. Sadly, it is often too late for that.

Many lawyers will get involved some people will end up with a small % of their initial deposit and pirate will be eating MrNoodles for the rest of his life.

The only reason that pirate has come forward today...

http://www.talklikeapirate.com/piratehome.html (http://www.talklikeapirate.com/piratehome.html)

Seeing how easy his first scam was why wouldnt he just get another forum account and run more similar scams in future ? Or just  invite any number of scammers in since nothing ever happens to people who scam bitcoins ?

Unless people have some recourse to justice the only thing they have left is law of the jungle or alternatively most people just wont bother using bitcoin.

Sending PM with apologies.

~Bruno~

If that's your only hope, you're fucked. Mom and Dad still have an active Chapter 13 bankruptcy case open, started in 2008, 08-41485 (ED TX), in Feb 2011 the trustee filed a motion to dismiss their bankruptcy because they were not current on their court-ordered payment plan. That was corrected, and it looks like they'll be making payments through July 2013.

Drop me a PM if you want copies of documents, they're public records.

Holy shit there are some paranoid people here.

Bullshit.  How do we know Trendon's dad wasn't in on this shit?  Going broke makes people steal from others everyday.  I think the point the previous poster brought up about his parents in bankruptcy is important.

Yup. That is the best proof of anything I've seen on this forum in a while...

I think I found my long lost cousin: http://maxkeiser.com/2012/08/25/latest-buzz-from-piratemyfilm-com-305/  (read the two comments)

It's only paranoia if they actually steal $ 5,000,000.00 worth of bitcoins from you.

Oh crap, he actually did. The only paranoia should be pirate's, and maybe his father. If my son jacked that kind of dinero, I wouldn't make plans for him joining us at Thanksgiving dinner. He would either be in jail, or in the hospital.

It's kinda funny, but, all he (Trendon) had to do was tell people what was going on (with proof) and keep updating everyone if he was having problems and this would have NEVER reached the level of pirate-hatred that alot of people are feeling right now.

Ah, well. He was too busy threatening not to pay people to bother with the whole transparency thing.

Reeses, can I borrow 2500 BTC ?

I have 'this thing' that I will be getting soon, to pay you back.

Please send BTC to: 1BEw3Hj7xwCB1qv5CuU2CHM6i3Hcb92pyh

I wonder if this whole ordeal has one person behind it or a team. And if a team, which will be the first one to crack...

Why would anyone "crack" unless there are imminent criminal charges on the table?  Lawsuits aren't particularly scary if you have no or few assets which can be seized to satisfy your debts.

+1
i really feel ashamed that so many try to hunt down the family

I think it's because in other cultures shaming the family name is taken as a great insult. In America, nobody really gives a shit.

His family knows about this / is in on it.  Don't have proof, but am working on it slowly.

I'm sure the family will feel far more ashamed when their prodigal son is doing the perp walk to the showers in prison.

Applying pressure to family members is good. They would find this uneasy, and they would talk to Pirate, and he would have the pressure from his family, and I would think that no matter how cynical he is, he will have some love for his family, and he would probably want to save face as well. On the other hand, perhaps he doesn't care about anything or anybody, and such pressure would be futile, but with the right kind of pressure, it's amazing how people can change their opinions, or change their acts.

We should all be glad we don't live in North Corea, then the entire family would be thrown in a workers camp for his wrongdoings.

MAYBE its ok when one (reasonable) person talks to them and explains the situation - only if there is no other way to sue pirate (btw. there are other ways: just hire a lawyer).

but its not ok to publish their contact data on a public forum. esp. bitcointalk: way to many childish gun advocates here ;)

they have nothing to do with this situation. trendon is an adult.

i havent talked to my parents for about ten years: if i would do something similar: why should you talk with them? they wouldn't even care.

He has no love for his family.  Without revealing too much, it is apparent they know and he has told him such.  You can find traces of these actions by his family taking down their social media website and their communications.

Ironically, his wife must be really dumb, because she keeps posting on facebook, although turned up her privacy settings (I believe after checking into it more..).  There is more I am not going to say bc it could cancel out what I am trying to do, but there is a slim chance it will work regardless.  

So, I think the family and friends are the easiest way to gain access to him.  He has no money AFAIK, his parents are going through bankruptcy.. they aren't going too far.

I, too, saw the name of said casino, where craps and blackjack were the games of choice. I wonder if his time spent in Las Vegas after your dinner with him was at said tables with Blondie at his side. I don't think she would have sat at home, allowing him to go to Sin City under the guise of some convention. Hell, I'll even go one better: If I were Trendon, I sure wouldn't leave her home while I go away for a couple days, for I'v seen how my two partners eyeball her, like Bruno eyeballs Maria.

~Bruno~

Rofl.  My little ponzi, my little ponzi (...)  (sang with the my little pony tune).

That is until Shavers keeps records of anyone that contacts his family and countersues for harassment.


Of course some people may be able to argue that the debt was business debt as he was doing business as "Bitcoin Savings and Trust".

That would be a funny thing... ::)

And the wrong kind of pressure could backfire.  I can tell you right now that no matter what they had done, if someone ever threatened my children or my grandchildren my family would close ranks.


Until there's an active criminal investigation, this is a civil matter.  The family is perfectly entitled to take action to legal action in respect of harassment.  Just because you're harassing someone over something illegal doesn't mean that harassment itself is suddenly legal.  Especially in a community where you're well established, the police are for more likely to be concerned with protecting your rights than those of some strangers who live in another jurisdiction.

There'd be no end of,"I can't believe you were so stupid!" and "You are not the child I raised!" but same here.

It is considered a debt right now.  Theft is taking something without the permission of the owner.  The owners of these bitcoins gave the bitcoins to Shavers voluntarily without any written contract on when it will be paid back.  So now people that gave bitcoins to Shavers are trying to collect a debt he has with them where that debt is in a virtual currency that is not legal tender in any jurisdiction.

You people give too much importance to what's "legal tender" or isn't for some government that people don't respect.
Did it ever crossed your mind that his head on a platter may be legal tender to some of the characters around here?

Can we please stop spreading this outright nonsense.

Theft can also be done through fraud by deceiving customers. By your argument, Enron execs should be free of any charges and Madoff would be enjoying his billions on an island somewhere.

Scamming is illegal and committing large-scale fraud over millions of dollars worth of assets is punishable in the US and almost every other country to speak of.

Enron stock isn't legal tender either, but had an easily measurable USD value, just like bitcoins or Pirate deposits.

You're asking too much, don't you think?

Nobody has argued that scamming is not illegal.  Right now, though, there is no known criminal investigation into pirate's operation.  He can't be prosecuted, convicted and punished for fraud without substantial evidence.  Many users are actively against the idea of trying to initiate a criminal investigation because they believe that it will reduce the chances of recovering their funds even further.  Others are unwilling to send good money after bad by pursuing civil action while it's unclear whether pirate has any ability whatsoever to pay any judgements.

Whether pirate's actions are contractual breaches or criminal offences does not affect whether harassing him or his family is in itself an offence.

I agree with those points, and think that harassing pirate's family is an utterly cretinous and infantile idea. But, if people want to press charges, they should. They should also report the scheme to the IC3 as a fraudulent internet business, because that's what it is, apparently.

I was thinking about this earlier today.. Don't you think that CIA/FBI have an active interest in this community, just to see what is up with btc?  My guess is that Trendon Shavers is already being looked at.  For all we know he could have been picked up in the meantime. Shit, we did all the work for them essentially, unless they are ahead of the game. Until then, I see no wrong doing in talking to his parents. 

I also agree, charges should be pressed, but ultimately my guess is the FBI/alphabet agency would love to know personally with whom he was dealing with, if he kept records.

From this, it wouldn't be too much of a stretch for AlphaAg to check and make sure that none of those stolen coins weren't shaved from the pool and converted toward any anti-American concerns.

I think if I was the government, I wouldn't press charges. I wouldn't want any confidence gained in an anonymous currency that's a threat.

At this time bitcoiners are thinly spread around the world so its pretty easy to scam and get away with it because the chances are no one in your town uses bitcoin. Things might change when there is  a reasonable chance that a mob carrying pitchforks will turn up on your doorstep.

This goes to the impersonality of bitcoin where you never really deal with people face to face and its easy to avoid dealing with those you have ripped off.

That's because a lot of consideration exchanged via BTC are for things that aren't exactly legal. I'm speaking of drugs and tax avoidance mainly. If we didn't live in fear of being jailed for victimless crimes if our real identities were to be public for these sort of transactions, then there would be a lot less fraud.

Parts of the government may indeed be interested in BTC (how to shut it down), but I doubt that they are interested in catching the pirate. I would rather believe that they are interested in having as many pirates as possible, who do the dirty work of denigrating bitcoin for them.

From what I read here, I see three groups of people:

1. Those who have benefitted from the fraud and now help the pirate in various ways, like spreading wrong information, offering bad advice, or simply derailing the threads by filling them up with garbage. I could imagine that some of these are in contact with the pirate and get orders from him. Of course he reads these threads and adjusts his delaying and confusing maneuvers accordingly.

2. Those who still believe in the pirate and hope that he will pay them at least some of their money back. I am sure this is sheer stupidity. Nobody will get paid voluntarily, except perhaps as yet another delaying trick with a small amount.

3. Those who want to bring the pirate to justice. I hope they will succeed, but am not optimistic. I hope this group will organise itself well enough to do it.

The pirate is currently trying to get as many people as possible to hope that they will be paid if they behave. He is trying to play these incredibly gullible people against the others. And, no matter how much I shake my head in disbelief, this actually works.

People tried to collect the debt under previously agreed upon contract conditions which are not matter of form. That failed. Now it is debt, or fraud.

I understand completely. That of course means people will be using less than legal methods to recover funds. Its really a two way street and is the same reason you dont rip off a drug dealer.

Don't you think the government would want its cut of this money?  $5,000,000 (if real) could be worth looking into, if only to steal it right from pirate and pocket themselves.  I agree with earlier sentiment that this money was probably gone a while ago anyway.

If that's true then why does he still bother to show up and threaten people? It would take quite a while to sell off that much BTC, and it's not like he can spend it on anything until it's fiat.

We know who he is, he's afraid of legal action already in progress. Time will tell.

What makes you believe that he wasn't selling the majority of it as it came in?

That was my thinking.  If it was truly the entire time a ruse, then that money is likely gone.  He could have owed people a shitload, or just wasted it on fake tits for his wife that will eventually leave him for another pirate with more booty. 

That is why it is called defrauding and not theft.  Enron stock was also regulated by the Securities and Exchange Commission; bitcoins are regulated by whom?  I wish all of you guys to get bitcoins back though.  Maybe next time you will put in the contract if someone is unable to pay back their debt in bitcoins in X amount of time, they will be held liable for the funds in fiat currency.

So, did everyone give up or forget about this? Just odd how steady posts were , then suddenly halted.

Yeah, everyone found a new investment opportunity with 7% interest per week (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=119408.0).

http://soshable.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/shut-up-and-take-my-money.jpg



Does this mean you're out of it now? I'm curious to know whether or not there are any Pirate updates.

I meant in regards to attempting to deal with the Pirate situation, taking matters into your/our own hands.

got him in the pokéball yet?

Do you know if he lost the money or is he just hiding it?

You don't, this is the wild west.

My guess would be that silkroad took all the coins for all the Crack and heroin he's using.

If a vigilante threatened and/or attacked Pirate, I bet someone could make a good made-for-tv movie about the whole ordeal. This would also bring mass media attention to bitcoin. Looking for possible movie taglines.

I bet.....

Stop, all movie rights are locked up under this thread.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=105573.0

Beat you to it  ;D but I make this promise if this does get made into a movie (lifetime would probably be the ones that pick it up but we need a wife to get beaten up) profits will go to the Pirate F'ed me fund.

Nothing will happen.
From what I've seen, everything here is hot air only.
There were lots of threats, but everybody chickened out.
All talk, no action; it's ridiculous.
Expect other scams like this in the future.

Actually is "all scams, no action"

Damn, can't come up with an original idea, but happy that the proceeds are going to charity.

Maybe we can take the reality tv angle.

I've never heard of a bust ponzi scam having anything to show for itself once investing dries up, since they're paying out old investors with new money they end up with nothing except whatever they blew on themselves while the scam was going. Any proof this guy has any money? He's probably living out of a van down by the river and blew it all on lying to women in bars throwing your money around and gambling.

Stanford 7 billion ponzi scheme was left with 88 million when busted, so like ~1.2% to recover, Bernie Madoff had nothing except real estate

well they can't - as a ponzi scheme cannot have enough cash to cover the losses as it would not be a ponzi scheme then
you use the money coming in to pay off the early adopters [or ones that cash out] and when you cannot get enough coming it it all falls over ...
pyramid systems at the best

Running one without taking something four yourself doesn't make sense ... Why run it if there is zero profit?

True. By some estimates, the pirate took something between Ƀ100,000 and Ƀ200,000.

There were indications that he had a money-laundering operation going for quite some time to launder the bitcoins he took.

I think most people would regard the lavish lifestyles which ponzi operators typically lead before their schemes collapse as "taking something for yourself".

We know that many people outside the bitcoin commuinty are following these Trendon Shaver threads.  Thank you for you assistance so far.

We have another request.

Trendon Shavers my have been in the past or currently using assumed names or an alias.  If you have seen or know this guy and know him by a name other then Trendon Shavors we'd like to hear from you.

http://trendonshavers.com/

Is anyone aware of other user names (suspected or confirmed) that Trendon Shavers used on this board besides pirateat40?

That's a question for Theymos.

If you know Trendon Shavers (www.trendonshavers.com) and you know the make and model of the brand new BMW or the F550 truck he recently purchased on any other assets he has,  you might want to let the IRS know about it.  Any assets Trendon Shavors has or controls could only have been purchased with fraudulent income from his Bitcoin Securities Ponzi scheme.

http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/f3949a.pdf
Print the form and mail to:
 
Internal Revenue Service
Fresno, CA 93888
If you do not wish to use Form 3949-A, you may send a letter to the address above. Please include as much information as possible, such as these important points:
Name and Address of person or business you are reporting
The individual’s social security number or the business’ employer identification number
A brief description of the alleged violation(s), including how you became aware or obtained information about  the violation(s)
The years involved
The estimated dollar amount of any unreported income
Your name, address and telephone number*
*Although you are not required to identity yourself, it is helpful to do so. Your identity will be kept confidential.

Will he answer that?

Bump...any news? Perhaps Trendon should take his story to Hollywood....I'd watch that movie!

If the SEC and the FED can not prosecute executives at HSBC, Goldman, Bear, Lehman and MF Global etc. for fraud then there is no way they are bringing in a piker like Trendon Shavers for scamming with his Internet play money. The only hope is income tax fraud cause no way the Shavers' can afford those vehicles and that home on Ashley's Six Flags income.

Legally would he be ok if he claimed it as 1099 investment income?  If he paid taxes then it wouldn't be an IRS issue, correct?

So, this is dead, huh?

Pretty much.

He got away.  Scott Free.

He probably has very few coins left and sold them for a lot cheaper than they are now.

But do we know where he is?

He is living his life with his wife and her two kids like nothing ever happened in McKinney TX.

No, but mostly because the sort of folks (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=106391.0) that'd fall for this sort of thing are blissfully poor by now and only getting poorer.

I don't get why people claim he has xxx,xxx coins...if he even had that many on deposit where do you think the 7% came from?

I wouldn't be surprised If he quit paying out before running out of coin entirely but to say mid 6 figures were left seems crazy

If he's really still living at a known location with no personal "visits" it's quite amusing no one is willing to pay a visit

Luckily almost entirely avoided this odvious scam. Made a few week gamble for the 7% and got out in time xD

This is known as picking up nickels in front of a steamroller.  Fun maybe, but really stupid.

Payday!

https://www.sec.gov/servlet/Satellite/News/PressRelease/Detail/PressRelease/1370539730583#.Ue6yMI1WZ8F

Meaning they haven't frozen his assets yet??

And he lost a lot more, but still, they froze his bank assets, and they can sell his assets AKA house, car. So some of the funds can be used to pay back some people.

yeah, I think it will be hard to get a conviction. Still, I didn't expect the SEC to do anything.

It's gonna be interesting to see if they'll do a Madoff trying to claw back from those that profited from pirate, like theymos.

Me thinks he gets the same treatment like the Sonny K guy from BF...
 
-> 100$ Fine and a slap on the wrist (Bad boy you .... bad .. :()

<-- Technically I'm trolling :D

I wonder if he was smart enough not to put all his eggs in one basket. There's other ways to withdraw wealth from BTC besides an exchange platform.

It depends.  Was funds from the scam used to make house payments.   If so then more than one district attorney has gone the "procedes of a criminal enterprise angle".  More common to deprive drug dealers of physical assets (that they could use for bail) but who knows.

What would be hard about a conviction.  ponzi schemes are completely illegal.  Did he promise investors a return?  Did he pay investors from the deposits of newer investors? That is really all that is needed. Some financial crime can be very tough to prove but something is either a ponzi or not.  

The uncliensed security issue is even easier to prove.  He didn't register with SEC.  They simply needs to find one or more persons willing to testify that Pirate offered them an investment.  Note the word offered.  Proof that funds exchanged hands or securities were sold isn't even a requirement.

BTW though the SEC can't file criminal charges that would be the job of the Justice Dept.  Of course the SEC can hand over everything they have to them.  If Justice Dept doesn't move it probably has more to do with the small scale then any inability to secure a conviction. 

If investments were made in US Dollars it would be far easier to prove he actually received the money, the pseudo anonymity of Bitcoin makes this complicated. Further the legal status of Bitcoin is far from certain. If I make a Ponzi in Eve Online/Wow will the SEC (or the justice department) prosecute me as well?

Well per the press release he deposited 150,000 BTC on an exchange and then lost about half in day trading and then transfered ~$150K worth (USD) into a checking account.    If necessary getting the records of the exchange to obtain his deposit addresses wouldn't be very difficult. 

Investors BTC --->  Ponzi ---> His Exchange Account ----> USD in his checking account.

Pet rocks are serious business.

I would imagine the above connection to be hard to prove.

Really?  With the exchange account in his name?  To withdraw $150K would require full KYC and docs.
To seize assets you require a warrant and that would require proving at least to a judge that there is sufficient cause.

Now if he had kept it all as BTC and sent them to a variety of encrypted and brainwallets that would be a lot harder.  Then again at least according to the press release Pirate was an idiot. I mean he lost the lion's share of what he stole.

Guys the account is in his name sure. Good luck proving the connection with the (alleged) Ponzi though Bitcoins are Bitcoins. In a criminal case Trendon is the accused, he doesn't have to explain how he got the Bitcoins. The prosecution needs to prove how he got it beyond reasonable doubt. IANAL though

They still have to prove he received Bitcoins for the investment. (and even then convince the judge this is a value transfer)

Nope the mere offering of unlicensed security is a crime.

No.  This kind of thing annoys me because it creates a defacto run around the prohibition on ex post facto laws.  FINCen guidance is that the regulations ALWAYS applied to Bitcoin even before the creation of Bitcoin it applied to any theoretical virtual currency. The guidance was merely clarification of existing law/regulation.

Have you seen what you can buy on the Silk Road?

What confuses me is the value of cashing in all those BTC given at around $1.91 each. Unless they're counting each individual "day trade" in that, and him just cashing out his final balance after losses.

Front Page on Australian news

$4.5 million Bitcoin Ponzi scheme - Man charged in alleged Bitcoin scam

http://www.news.com.au/money/money-matters/man-charged-in-alleged-bitcoin-scam/story-e6frfmd9-1226684102340

On Bloomberg as well.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-07-23/bitcoin-ponzi-scheme-alleged-by-sec-in-lawsuit-against-texas-man.html

I can't picture any criminal prosecutor touching this with a ten foot pole.  Civil burden of proof is much lower and the remedies are just monies but criminal is a whole other level.  The proof required on various BTC issues will be a crazy mess for the prosecutor.  BTC addresses and BTC in them can't be owned in a legal sense and if they can be and are payment methods as well then BTC itself is likely an illegal security.  This is what happens when something revolutionary meets old laws.

Seems to be moving forward:
http://www.ibtimes.com/federal-magistrate-says-bitcoin-real-money-he-allows-sec-suit-go-forward-ponzi-scheme-case-1375669?goback=.gde_3721050_member_264189881

This will continue to be a precedent setting case and I believe we'll see criminal prosecution of Trendon and maybe even some of the pass throughs.

As well as an official US legal opinion that bitcoin is legal tender?

What does legal tender have to do with it?

It was my understanding that there was no official US opinion on the fact.  There is now.

FYI,

This is being discussed here:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=269612.msg2884152#msg2884152 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=269612.msg2884152#msg2884152)

its not an official us government legal opinion.  It's just a court ruling that simply stated just because bitcoin is not officially sanctioned money doesn't mean one can accept it without responsibility.  The next interesting concept will be how to legally prove ownership of addresses and BTC inside it.

Again,  This will be a precedent setting case....

+1

trendon should be behind bars - 30 years to life.
there is a difference between an honest business going bad and an obvious ponzi scheme meant to destroy investors and reward the perpetrators.
hopefully after SEC is done with him he goes to jail for a long time (after a criminal complaint is filed)

Regardless of what happens in the civil case I would expect criminal prosecution. 

"bitcoin is money"

He sole money from people.  And other may have been complicit in this effort.  There is a reason none of the PT's wanted to talk to the SEC. However they may already be cooperating with the government in exchange for leniency. 

Madoff took a whole slew of people down with him.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Participants_in_the_Madoff_investment_scandal (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Participants_in_the_Madoff_investment_scandal)

I just read pretty much the whole thread, and boy am I shocked. This is my take on it, I guess he wanted to start out legit and run a legit operation but things didn't work out and he saw all the BTC coming in and just ran it as a Ponzi Scheme until he decided enough was enough and just ran with all the BTC.

Legit operation?? What operation?  It was all a ponzi from start to finish.

Ah, you're probably right. I wasn't around when this stuff happened.

What's your take on your favorite person Matthew regarding this?  Didn't he offer some sort of insurance against Pirateat40 "securities"?

Well that insurance would probably be considered a "security" as well.  Total popcorn time.

Those who aren't sure are fucking idiots. No legit business can offer the kind of returns he offered. I consider everyone who was defending Pirate when he was running his scam partially responsible for the scam growing so big.

A ponzi is an investment fraud crime because interest rate return was being offered.  Back in the old days before those laws came about it was considered hard to prove theft since people gave money willingly.
He is charged with violations of Securities Act of 1933 and Exchange Act of 1934.
http://www.sec.gov/litigation/complaints/2013/comp-pr2013-132.pdf

People who say "X is impossible" are amusing to me, regardless of X.

Okay, let's rephrase that. No legit business, absent rampant hyperinflation scenarios where the real interest rate is much lower, can offer the kind of returns he offered.

Reasoning:

1) Legit businesses do not operate in a vacuum. There's always competition, and even if there isn't, there's a risk of competition.
2) Credit is readily available for legit businesses. Even credit card debt is practically free of interest compared to what Pirate offered.
3) To hedge against the risk of someone else starting a competing business with much lower interest expenses, a legit business, if it ever issues debt at astronomical rates, MUST pay those high-interest loans off immediately when feasible. Actually it wouldn't have made sense to issue debt at those rates to begin with (which is why it was crystal clear from the beginning that BTCST was a ponzi scheme), but even if it had made sense, he would have had no other option than to pay the initial debt off completely very quickly after getting the business running.

It's astonishing how little financial common sense many Bitcoin ethusiasts have. No wonder all those suckers were so easily drawn into the scam.

Stuck in a loop: People who say "a legit business MUST X" are amusing to me, regardless of X.

It's like they've completely shut off the possibility that there could ever be people who know things about business that they don't know.

Everyone on the internet is automatically an expert at everything though.

Yes, because they could be, which means they actually are. Welcome to contemporary America.

This is still going on? Allow me to try once again.

You don't derive that BS&T was a Ponzi using only formal logic statements. Almost anything is somehow possible. If I claim to be an alien who has traveled to Mars and back yesterday, nobody can formally prove me wrong. Pirate's chances of being legitimate were just small -- not in a "I don't believe it" kind of way, but in the way a physicist uses the word. Let's do an example; there are much better combinations in the threads from back then, but this already shows the point:

• BS&T scaled on a smooth exponential, which means its reservoir of unfulfilled trades at horrible rates was really large compared to the entire market. I'd bet chances for that to be below 20%.
• Pirateat40 made statements that seem unbefitting for a qualified trader. I'd give it a maximum 40% that he is able to beat competition by such a wide margin.
• There are wealthy investors around who would finance an operation like his if explained under NDA. This would also help speed up the fundraising process to avoid competition. I'd give him 1:4 at best that he neither found a way to use a large investor nor had a situation in which he'd stop taking deposits and switch to his own funds.
• The above statements are independent.

With only this primitive reasoning, I already expect a maximum probability of legitimacy of 0.2 * 0.4 * 0.25 = 2%.

Go figure what happens when looking at more independent statements, such as the abundant warning signs of a Ponzi scheme! The possibility of legitimacy becomes bunk, nothing a serious analyst would care about. I could not assign a final probability to it because it becomes noise to the probability of myself being insane, among other things that become relevant at such low probabilities.

Now maybe some people disagree on the points above. But it shouldn't be hard to find three to four independent statements like this and conclude that "non-Ponzi" chances are just horribly low.

Oh hai V.

Are you opposed to learning a lesson on some sort of principle? People who say things that are phenomenally improbable and where they have an enormous incentive to lie, where they are anonymous and everyone in the past who has made similar claims has been lying, are almost certainly lying. This is an undeniable fact and the effort spent evading it and attacking the people explaining it would be comical if they weren't doing so much real harm to real people.

Nobody has ever found any legitimate, low risk investment that requires taking on more and more high interest debt, yet any number of scams are based on this. The probability that the person asking you for money will be the first is near zero, and absent some plausible explanation of how they could possibly be that person, only a fool would consider any other possibility than that it's a scam. This is simple, basic common sense.

Simply put, anyone who sees an absurdly high interest rate and thinks "what a wonderful opportunity" rather than "what an obvious scam" lacks common sense. And, honestly, anyone who suggests that the community ought not to learn this lesson, in my opinion, is most likely seeking to exploit that lack of common sense. There is no other reason I can think of to preserve it rather than combat it.

In keeping an open mind, for me it is neither of those.

It is more like "this is probably a scam, but since I recognize that there are things in this universe that I am not an expert in, and will never be an expert in, it's possible that it's actually a wonderful opportunity."

It's not lacking common sense to say that something being a scam is not a complete certainty. It's just logical.

Then just multiply your potential profit with the extreme low probability its not a scam and you can see why its definitely stupid to "invest" in it.

I totally disagree. In fact, to talk about what can be known with "complete certainty" is the very opposite of common sense. Common sense is about making decisions that will almost always be right given that we never have complete certainty. Common sense is not letting scammers sucker you in with arguments about how you can't know their obvious lies are nonsense with "complete certainty" and how you must always entertain the possibility that might have found some miracle. Common sense is knowing there are no miracles, not keeping your mind perpetually opened to the possibility that there might be so that you can be taken advantage of.

Common sense is knowing when *not* to keep an open mind. Common sense is knowing when you know something. Entertaining miniscule possibilities is the antithesis of common sense.

Okay sure, I'll sum up by saying:

Logic compels me to believe in the possibility that some suspicious-looking investment scheme is not a scam.

Common sense compels me to not invest in such wacky schemes, despite the possibility of it being legit.

And I have no problem with that position. What I have a *huge* problem with is people who say things like:

"People who say "X is impossible" are amusing to me, regardless of X."

And

"It's not lacking common sense to say that something being a scam is not a complete certainty."

And

"Stuck in a loop: People who say "a legit business MUST X" are amusing to me, regardless of X.
It's like they've completely shut off the possibility that there could ever be people who know things about business that they don't know."

These are all things you said, and they are all foolish and harmful. Invoking notions of metaphysical certainty, in a conversation about anything but metaphysics, is an attempt to reject common sense and has the actual effect of causing people to make bad decisions. It is also, quite simply, wrong.

"Impossible" does *not* mean "beyond logical possibility". Buying a car that goes 300 miles per gallon of gas is not a logical impossibility, but it is also impossible. "Complete certainty" is a metaphysical concept. Its relevance to investing is nil. And "MUST" does not mean complete metaphysical certainty either.

That is all complete and harmful foolishness.

If that's really true, then this is the point in my day when I learn something, thanks.

Er, now considering the possibility that my definition of 'impossible' is flawed.


No wait, sorry it's still amusing - Why would anyone (who hasn't inspected every single car on the earth) ever claim that buying a car that gets 300 mpg is impossible? How do they know that? Amusing.

I think you may be confusing "impossible" with "improbable". Impossible means that it will never ever happen under any conceivable circumstances. Improbable is just highly unlikely - like guessing a private key is about as unlikely as walking through a wooden door.

No, that's not what "impossible" means. That's a childish word game. In fact, that's a concept that is so rarely useful there is no need to give it is own word. I just picked four completely random uses of the word "impossible" in a Google search:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/johntharvey/2012/09/10/impossible-to-default/
"It Is Impossible For The US To Default"
This clearly means it is impractical under the current circumstances. But this use of the word "impossible" is not wrong. To respond to the writer of this headline that there are conceivable circumstances under which the US would default would be idiotic, and everyone knows it.

http://www.nationalreview.com/david-calling/355981/compromise-impossible-egypt-david-pryce-jones
"Compromise Is Impossible in Egypt"
Really? Compromise will never happen in Egypt under any conceivable circumstances? Really? Is this headline wrong?

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/238710
Okay, this is a poem.

http://news.yahoo.com/blackberry-impossible-value-now-165548321.html
This uses the word "impossible" to refer to something that is merely difficult to do well. Wow, so many people don't understand how to correctly use the word "impossible".

Because that's how the English language works. That's what the word "impossible" means.

Can we stop the childish word games now? Please.

impossible |imˈpäsəbəl|
adjective
not able to occur, exist, or be done: a seemingly impossible task | [ with infinitive ] : it was almost impossible to keep up with him.
• very difficult to deal with: she was in an impossible situation.
• informal (of a person) very unreasonable: “Impossible woman!” the doctor complained.
ORIGIN Middle English: from Old French, or from Latin impossibilis, from in- ‘not’ + possibilis (see possible) .

not. able. to. occur.

It matters not one whit to me that you have been able to find four articles on the interwebs that misuse the word. We already have a concise and compact term for the improbable - and that is.... 'improabable'. Why on earth would we overload the meaning onto another word (impossible), leaving us no compact and concise word to use to convey the meaning of 'not able to occur'? It defies all reason.

As an aside, the real performance of bitcoin against a numeraire of USD is not that far off of Pirate's advertised performance of his so-claimed investment against a numeraire of bitcoin. Using the concept of the numeraire to factor out the evident compounding of BTCST against USD, should we not then logically conclude that the performance of bitcoin is so outrageous as to make it an obvious scam by your stated criteria?

Yes, thank you. I'm dumbfounded that a grown adult (especially one who has decided to use the word 'childish') could define it any other way.

Definitions don't work that way. You can't parse them like a lawyer to figure out what does or doesn't quality.

They were randomly selected. Impossible and improbable don't mean the same thing. Impossible conveys a much higher level of unlikelihood than "improbable" does. There is no common English term for actual metaphysical impossibility because it is only useful in metaphysics.

I know you're being deliberately idiotic but just in case anybody thinks you're being serious rather than playing a childish game of "gotcha", the difference is that nobody claimed that you should trust them to invest your money in Bitcoins because Bitcoins were certain to appreciate in this way and that such an investment was low in risk.

You can't refer to a dictionary to determine the meaning of a word? Crazy.


Seems unlikely, but I'll take your word for it. After all, I can see the predominance of people using 'loose' when they men 'lose'. Just because it is widespread does not make it correct.


Thank you for that admission.


Yes - impossible conveys a probability of zero - to infinite decimal places. So says the dictionary.


Don't be obtuse. Of course there is a simple single word for probability = 0, as it is such a simple and useful concept. As the dictionary so says.


Well, no. I was not being deliberately idiotic. Are you now saying that the relative probability of an event occurring depends directly upon whether or not certain parties are claiming you can make a profit off it? Now who's being metaphysical? Actually, I know that is not what you mean to assert - but I cannot devine what it is that you mean to convey in your retort.

JoeKatz, I respect you in many things. However, If your plan is to argue that the dictionary is employing an incorrect definition, I just don't know how to carry on a meaningful discussion.

No. You can't. You have to look at how native speakers actually use the word. Really.

That is correct, widespread use is not quite equivalent to correctness. I'll happily point you towards sources that explain where the truth is between prescriptivism and descriptivism.

No, it doesn't. "Impossible" is not a measure of probability. It's not a mathematical concept. You can google "* is impossible" and take 50 random samples. The majority of them will *not* be using "impossible" this way.

Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying. Seriously, I just explained it. It's not hard to understand. If the person who claims there's a high chance of a profit is the very same person who claims it's low risk and expects you to trust them with your money with no legal recourse, that increases the probability that it's a scam. Yes. Really. (But the real point was that speculating in the price of Bitcoin is high risk and anyone who says otherwise should be ignored. If it was a sure thing, the price would already be higher.)

If you don't know how to use a dictionary properly, then it really doesn't mean much to me that you respect me. Dictionaries point you at the general concept of a word, actual use by native speakers is authoritative. Native speakers going to a dictionary to tell each other how they "should" use a word is flat out idiotic and flips the way language works on its head. (With the possible exception of words with which they're not familiar.) You are essentially arguing that the majority of uses of the word "impossible" by native speakers is wrong, which is insane.

This idiotic thread keeps popping up to "New post..." list because you 2, armchair linguist, (still practicing armchair law?) are thread crapping as usual. 
LOL, you 2 really need to get a life outside of this forum. Get out, go have a pint in your local and talk to someone, face to face.

It seems that the recent discussion is about whether the pirate, of whom we know that he ran a Ponzi scheme, might have run something else. Isn't that rather pointless?

It seems to me that JoelKatz is perfectly correct. He provided ample proof in the form of traceable citations. I only fear he is wasting his time. It might be more useful to detect the next Ponzi scheme and warn its "investors".

Code red! Someone is wrong on the Internet!

Warning the investors won't work if lessons aren't learned. We warned until we were blue in the face about Pirate, and not enough people listened. For reasons I cannot fathom, there appear to be people actively opposed to learning lessons.

Yes, if even those who already know that Pirate ran a Ponzi scheme now try to argue that he could have been legitimate, then you must be right. Somehow this is funny.

Any suggestions? Is there some other way to say "this is obviously a Ponzi scheme"?

I think for some people the mathematics of Ponzi are just too counterintuitive so that they are not immediately obvious, even if they are able to understand the maths. They let their feelings of confidence and trust override their rational capabilities. It might be that if it seems hard to understand why some people think that something is definitely, without a doubt a ponzi, you need to think it through from a hypothetical scammer's perspective. It's actually very easy to run a ponzi scam (the hard thing is determining when to run with the money). The only thing that is needed is the tendency to let feelings override rationality. Many people who OUGHT TO HAVE KNOWN BETTER have been scammed. Being (susceptible for being) scammed is not the same as being stupid. No amount of intellect can save you if you let your feelings override it.

Greed? Or, to put it more politely, the intense wish to get rich quick.


Very true. But the intensity of the rationalizations kept surprising me. (I don't tend to get emotional when dealing with money.)

Look at this discussion here. Even now, when we know for sure that the pirate ran a Ponzi scheme, somebody is arguing in the direction that it might not have been a Ponzi scheme. Seems rather ridiculous to me, but that is how our buggy brains sometimes work.

I guess people who 'know things for sure' must be much smarter than me.

I honestly can't think of a single thing in this entire world that I know for sure.

Permanently agnostic across all areas it seems.

Well then you know the fact that you don't know anything for sure.  Or are you unsure of that also?   ;)

Of course; Knowing that would be a paradox. Like saying "This statement is false". So in that sense you are indeed correct, that it is also something I'm unsure of.

You must have really enjoyed your Freshman survey class "Western Philosophy from Socrates to Descartes"


"Permanently" you say ....?

According to you, "literally" is literally the same as "figuratively", then.

Off Fucking Topic Guys.

Goat, Just lock this fucking thread.

Christ.