Bitcoin Forum

Is this so difficult?

The victims of the pirate scam are probably busy giving away the rest of their bitcoins to another scammer. Hell, half the victims still support and defend pirate.

Sooooooooo, never?

 We cant even get the active scammers shut down, much less track down the old ones.




This place makes me sad.

I'm doing my God Damned best, but my last efforts have all been for not. I found a strong connection between Pirate and Global Oil Fund, but all those posts have been removed.

I am not very happy now.

~Bruno~

I would like you to know that I appreciate your efforts from the bottom of my heart.

What have you done so far but post on this forum about it?

Who removed them and why ?

What do you mean by "finding pirate".  His real life identity was known long before he defaulted as were the identities of some of his real life business associates and his family.  We even know when he's next due in court in relation to other matters.

What is needed now is for people who've lost funds to actually go ahead and file complaints with the various agencies responsible for investigating investment fraud, cyber-crime, etc.  The more people who do that, the better.  As such frauds go, this is not a big one, so a large volume of formal complaints is highly desirable.

Yes. Who? And why?
I suppose it was an admin of this forum, wasn't it?

That's what I'm really wondering...  First, if his identity isn't know, can we not at least get a log from the forum admin with all the IP addresses he logged in with and go from there?  Second, if his identity is known, can we not get a complaint form together for BTCST customers to fill out so that a formal complaint or class action lawsuit may be filed?

"formal complaint or class action lawsuit"

What you are asking is that a group of crypto-anarchists should get together and seek legal redress from a central authority. Do you not understand how silly that request sounds and how it goes entirely against the fiber of this community?

So far the only consensus reached on punishment for Pirate has been to assign him a "Scammer" tag. If you believe additional punishment is needed from the community, then by all means outline what you intend. I am not interested in hearing about attempts at punishment than involve state actors. In my opinion it should be entirely community/consensus driven and peer-to-peer, just like Bitcoin itself.

If you don't like it, feel free to not participate. As an anarchist you should appreciate that others have the freedom to seek other forms of action if they feel it necessary, and they should also be able to discuss without you talking down on them or saying you aren't interested in hearing about it. If you don't want to hear about it, then close the thread and go start your own.

+1

This could be posted in several threads.

+1

Point taken and thanks for the advice.  I will continue to seek out those interested in community/peer-to-peer driven solutions to this problem and either ignore or argue against those who wish to resort to state backed coercive tactics.

Nice, we could use more sane anarchists here. Welcome to the forums  ;).

We just need a few locals to exercise their right to free speech and picket his house, while also exercising their Texas right to open carry.

Texas doesn't have an open carry law.

I agree.  Victims of this crime should hire a private collection agency.

I don't care if it's private or what I just think someone needs to start busting some balls.

Who is making the claim that one must be a 'crypto-anarchist' (whatever the hell that means) in order to use bitcoin? If bitcoin is useless to all who are not crypto-anarchists [sic], we have a very long slog going forward.

And while anarchy may end up being a just principle for societal organization, it will not so be until some mechanism arises by which justice can be dispensed.

There may be a rational argument that joint vigilantism may be as just as what our current society provides. However engaging in such in today's environment exposes the 'vigilantes' (need a better term here) to being thrown in a cage.


No. Not at all.


I don't particularly care what _your_ interest may be. Do you not recognize the irony in an anarchist trying to coordinate a top-down enforcement of a single type of response to what pirate has done?

Bottom line, each injured party is free to pursue (or not) whatever remedy they so desire. For my part, I would like to share resources (time talent and treasure) with other such injured parties to bring pirate to justice. If after all we learn, the state is the most expeditious route to recovering some of my property, so be it.

I'm not a "crypto-anarchist" (whatever that means), I'm a social democrat, and I would have no issue going to a central authority to get my money back (if I had gotten any money taken in one of these schemes, that is).

Not everyone here subscribes to your political affiliation.

I think that is why private was in bold.  ;)

Was there a contract you agreed to when investing with Pirate? If so can you post the text of the contract and/or indicate if were there any default remedy/recourse clauses in the contract? Was there a risk disclosure?

The longer you wait, the smaller chance you have of getting the money back.

I say hell with the 'few months'. If a shovel ready initiative is floated, I'm likely to jump on board.

At this point, I might be molliified by an actual open audit by a capable trustworthy party into his operation. As I posted elsewhere, I am still open to the possibility that BST was at least initially a good-faith business attempt. I can live with a failed biz. But all anyone has heard from him since is a lot of self-serving passive-aggressive bullshit -- at least heard publicly. A person in his claimed position (i.e. failed biz) should be bending over backwards to provide his creditors with information.

But if this was a scam from the outset, I would expect that any initiative in which I was involved would prosecute him to the extent that any other felon who stole x USD worth of private property would.

I'm not sure what the texas rules are, but if they're is no law, then it's ok to do.  Michigan doesn't have an open-carry law, so I'm free to open carry here.

We don't have a green shirt law either, so, I'm free to wear a green shirt any time I please.

IMHO, either Pirate is Mr. Shavers or nobody is ever going to find him.

put up a bounty...

let people contribute to the  bounty

let the bitcoin bounty hunters do the rest.

for the right price i would find him, the question is where would you want him delivered...

Man has 500k btc, if someone would return all funds to investors, they would agree to pay him 1% of sum. Which brings us to 5k btc bounty, think thats enough...

5k is not enough, 50k would be worth the trip to texas...Just highering a lawyer would be way more than 5 k...think about it, i have to get him and hold him somewhere...this would not be done legally... ;)

Unless a new name-your-own-fee-bounty-hunter (Bounty CoinHunters Inc.[?]) enters the scene. Such a person, or team, would track down the fink(s), use what ever means is possible to have the bitcoins transferred to a new account, then announce to the community that such-and-such took place (sans any crimson details), and the returning of 90% of all bitcoins recovered will now be returned to their previous owner.

Since the internet is the new TV, and "Dog" seems be without a contract, he could do what some other fallen stars have done--create their own internet show. Dog the Coinhunter does have a nice ring to it. What's nice about this idea is than he wouldn't need a license in any state or country to do this.

~Bruno~


We cross-posted, but on the same page as to the fee, but my idea eliminates the lawyer(s).

He doesn't have 500k in BTC. lol

He has nothing. It's a ponzi scheme, so all funds get paid out as interest payments until he can no longer get new funds and they dry up, ponzi goes bust, he disappears.

You could sue each other to claw back interest payments, since it was probably your money who went to everybody else. There's nothing left to recover. Madoff had nothing to show for his $50+ billion ponzi.

Who removed them?

So then who owned the bitcoin address that had 500k coins in it and then started shipping coins off in large chunks to many other addresses after the scheme broke down?  Total # of coins exchange could be >>500k with 500 being the peak when all the cash out reqs happened.

FTFY

as time passes this will just drift into the background and thanks to MNW 3 valuable weeks have been wasted which are arguably the 3 most important weeks following any crime to catch him

the more time hes got to distance himself from the money and prepare  hard luck stories the less chance anyone has of being repaid .............

Exactly. More than enough information has been know about Mr. Shavers for weeks now.  No victim has done anything, not a single thing.  I don't even think anything non-constructive (prank phone calls, or vandalism) has been done.  The victims have done ABSOLUTELY NOTHING.  It isn't for a lack of information.  Hell if you were a real investor you had all the info before sending him a single coin.

Why?
1) For weeks many continued to defend him.
2) For weeks many bought into the whole delayed payout, needing more info, shifting the blame to PPT, Matt idiot gamble, etc, etc, etc.  
It was designed to delay, obfuscate, and gradually get you use to the idea that you weren't ever seeing your coins again.   If you held out even the slightest hope in the past 3 weeks well it worked.  

So pick one:
a) hire a laywer
b) meet him at his front door with baseball bats
c) STFU

How many threads are needed?  Do something or don't but there are like 200,000 posts related to the scam.  Does anyone really think talking about it for a couple more weeks is going to make Bitcoins rain out the sky?  Really?  If "one more thead" going to magically convince Mr. Shavers to just hand your coins back?

TL/DR:
The reality is if you haven't already done anything, you AREN'T going to do anything.  Being honest with yourself is the first step in resolving a problem. Just admit it to yourself, what Pirate already knows, that you aren't going to do a single thing about it.  He got away with your money and you know deep down you already know you aren't going to do anything.  If you were you would have talked to a lawyer or driven to Texas with your bat weeks ago.  Once you are honest with yourself you can move forward with your lives and maybe stop posting about what someone "should" do.

BTW: I heard Rusty is offering 3% per week.  Just put twice as much money into Rusty's "super secret can't share any details money making biz" and in a couple months you will have even more money than before Pirate defaulted.  It is that easy.  You believed it the magic once, why not believe in it again.

Wow has pirate said anything lately? lol

someone posted a recent IRC paste which said something like :

are the PPT owners that didnt comply going to get paid ?

and the answer was something like :

they will have to fend for themselves on the high seas  :D.......... or something like that

i think i may have read it in the bitcoinmax thread but so many similar pirate threads thesedays .....:(

That would be interesting.......as pirate sometimes seems to be made appear and disappear and tell this and that in IRC.

Cheers Zyk

I applaud you, sir.

I find that a) is a great idea. On the other hand b) is not recommended. Please see below.

Follow the money !

I applaud you Sirs for letting them divide the loot on IRC, rather than trying to do it here !!

Well done

Cheers Zyk

d) Hire a private collection agency.

My understanding of US law in respect of collection agencies is that all one needs to do is demand that they provide proof of the debt and if they are unable to do that within the required time they must cease contacting you - if they don't do that, then they are subject to fines every time they contact you.  At this point in time, I'm not sure how easy it would be for people to provide sufficient proof.  People ignore debt collectors all the time.  The only real leverage debt collectors have is the threat of your credit being damaged, and I doubt pirate is concerned about that at this point.

Well I would say the amount ended up being a coincidence, and DPR (owner of Silkroad) saw this.  He didn't like drawing attention to the address and having it related to a potential court case ponzi scheme.  So he began washing the coins out to multiple addresses, making it seem like it belonged to BTCST and not Silkroad's cold storage.  Least that's one scenario I can come up with since others have proven that theres 1 transaction hop from depositing to Silkroad, to 1DkyBE.

More here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=94675.msg1196791#msg1196791