Bitcoin Forum

Erik Voheres made his first bitcoin fortune by defrauding people millions through feedzebirds.
Roger Ver made his first substantial sums of BTC by importing MtGox to the USA and earning substantial fees in the process while the exchange was in fact running bankrupt. The only reason he avoided jail time was because he had anulled his citizenship, while his close partner Charlie Shrem did 2 years simply for running an exchange while on US soil!
Mircea Popescu (now reportedly dead) earned BTC that later became valuer millions in $ through misleading fees and trading junk securities on his own exchange.

Can you name more now millionaires that earned their wealth through scamming people out of their BTC? Ideally originating in this forum.

Roger did jail time. Just not for importing mtgox to the US. It was for selling exploits on ebay. (wtf?) The dude did smarten up after going to jail for the first time. He knew it wasn't going to be his first and the last. That's why he dumped his US passport.

Btw this is the first time I hear about Roger's mtgox story anyway. Even after all those years, he can still find a way to surprise me.

As for Erik Voorhees, everybody knows he is a jerk...

Let me make an addition to your list:

Barry Silbert. (another ponzi runner behind the shadows)

1. It wasn't "millions". It was roughly $15k.

https://www.sec.gov/litigation/admin/2014/33-9592.pdf

He raised much more through SatoshiDice, which is also mentioned in the above PDF.

2. I don't like Ver but his biggest MtGOX related mistake was vouching for them in 2013 when they were having apparent solvency issues. Shrem served 15 months of his sentence which was for running an unlicensed money transmission business, which Ver did not.

3. Popescu I'm not about to defend... It would appear he is actually dead so its hard to hold anything against him.

The thing these 3 have in common is they all think (thought) they're too smart to be questioned. This infatigable sense of self-righteousness is quite common among the earliest of bitcoin adopters, and let's face it, this space has always attracted the not-so-morally-inclined. When conniving narcissists are rewarded with huge sums of money and validation, the result is never pretty.

 OP - have you ever thought about ALL the OG bitcoiners who are NOT fraudsters ?
They is hopefully many, many OG bitcoiners living a millionaire’s lifestyle minding their own business, living off their Bitcoin and ignoring this forum and all other social media outlets  :)

Courts knew absolutely nothing about BTC and let Voheeres run with a slap on the wrist fine while no one of the investors became whole.

Ver's involvment in these scemes is very well documented. By his own admission, Ver owned stake in Shrem's Bitinstant.com AND coinlab.com. There's no excuse for him not catching charges other that somebody else that somebody else took the fall. He was equally guilty, if not more. He's doing it all over again selling unlicensed securities right now on bitcoin.com (that's another thread on it's own but here's a little sneak peak):
https://i.ibb.co/L0tpkwq/image.png

Nearly nobody talks about that stuff but some of the now most prolific investors in the space made their fortune initially scamming the community.

Well god knows what else and how deep the rabithole goes.
What happened to all that Bitcoin Foundation moneyz?
Holy shit, from that alone we could name DOZENS of people that became millionaires by offering NOTHING back to the community.
To begin, Brock Pierce with his initial scam, savegox? You got it...

It is much easier for someone to blame others for their misfortunes than it is to accept their own greed and ignorance as the real cause.

What do you achieve with this mindset? Nothing. Fraud must be acknowledged for there to be any improvement on anything.

I acknowledge that there has been a lot of fraud in the crypto space. Educating people about fraud is important. Scammers should be punished, but victims need to learn from their mistakes.

Now, I ask you. What do you hope to achieve by your witch hunt?

It's a healthier mindset than tarring everyone in a certain category with the same brush.  *Some* early adopters were engaged in fraud.  Not all of them.

Sounds as though you've already arrived at a conclusion and you're just looking for further confirmation to reinforce your existing biases.  Consider seeking alternative places to ask for help grinding your axe.  You'll quickly find this isn't a conducive place for that sort of thing.

You mentioned only three names, and you ask the question "Are all early bitcoin millionaires fraudsters?" That doesn't really make much sense to me, because with your post you are actually contradicting yourself. I think that today there are many more fraudsters than there were before Bitcoin was known, but that is now a matter of statistics or your personal impression.

For me, fraudsters were people like John McAfee, Gerald Cotten, along with the recent Kwon and Bankman, although even Musk is not far from that crew, at least for those who believed in him while he was pumping their favorite altcoin.

You mean people became millionaires by scamming others? You managed to tell 3 names, lets assume it as 20 in total even if we name all the scammers who involved shady practice to make millions while 1000s of others became millionaires simply by HODLing. They bought bitcoins for few dollars and in next 5 years it worth millions.

various types of fraud that occur, maybe at first they had no intention of committing these criminal acts. but there is an opportunity to make them think short and without thinking about the embarrassing effects in the future when they are caught by the public. forums are a place to exchange information and discuss but there are some of them who use it for understanding that they shouldn't. also recently with the closing of several exchangers, blatant fraud but I appreciate the current law is starting to develop for it