Bitcoin Forum

Most people thought it was a joke, but..

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=50822.msg615018#msg615018

I don't even know what to think when I see threads like that.

Out of curiosity, was pirateat40 a trusted member of the community before his grand finale? It seems as if he was.

I do like this on the next page:


chungenhung
SCAMMER
Hero Member

Posts: 1192

"Sent 50BTC to "pirateat40"."


If legit, it would've been funny seeing a scammer get scammed.

Damn, that pirateat40 story is so totally fucked. Damn.

Oh absolutely. People were yelling at us to leave pirate alone and clamoring to get us banned when we tried to warn them about the obvious ponzi. The whole thing was beautiful in its absurdity.

Have you ever read Catch-22?

Nope, is it any good?

I notice nobody talks much about Clipse, gigavips, PatrickHarnett, or any of pirates other hero shills in relation to this incident.

That's the funny thing about the new activity system and being a Hero member. Almost every scammer that's really fucked this community hard has been a long standing Hero member. There should be a warning on the rating system, only trust Sr. Member and below with low post counts. Speaking of ex-mod Hero members, has anyone heard from Nefario lately? Last I heard the scammer ianbakewell was the last one to talk to him.

I highly recommend it. It's worth a trip to a physical library/bookstore.

Then have a beer and look at some posts from August 2012.

pirateat40 is hiding in plain sight.

I'm a hero member, but you'd be hard-pressed to call me a scammer.

It's less of a "hero members scam more" than a "only hero members can scam". Everyone else is untrusted.

You're not a scammer until you are. Here's what I think about scammers: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=251530.msg2729223#msg2729223

You would really enjoy the Bitcoinica fiasco, then. Wait till you read about the relic guy.

It's interesting to see so many people who don't even know about pirateat40 or his ponzi. I've even seen some people wonder if the ponzi actually existed or if it is a story made up by the feds.

You're the first one I've seen.

Well, it was bigger indeed. The shocking thing is the quantity of greedy suckers that promoted his obvious Ponzi. The guy knew it was so obvious that joked about it from the very beginning, in fact he really laughed at everybody's face from the moment he chose his nick :)

Just an example, on the very first page of the thread: "...it could be one big ponzi scheme. :) its too bad the Bently dealership doesn't take BTC." (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=50822.msg608562#msg608562)

But in fact the guy was so BAD at what he did that he ended up losing everything daytrading (no Bentley I'm afraid, and this is the guy who scammed 700k BTC), when he could have ended up millionaire. But again, what really amazes me is how dozens of people are willing to participate in obvious scams organized by retarded kids just because of greed.

indeed he pulled one bigger jailtime than mybitcoin.com

Any more than the number of people willing to orchestrate pyramid schemes?  It's not as profitable to be in the second-highest level of a pyramid scheme as it is being a capstone, and you don't have as much control, but your risks are also much lower. A good pyramid scheme is profitable for everyone involved but the bottom tier.

Now that I think of it, I remember pirateat40 rising or at his popularity peak when I left the community. When I returned and read through what hapenned later amazed me.