Bitcoin Forum

Attention Lawyers & BFL Customers. Here is a very good argument for a Class Action lawsuit against BFL (Butterfly Labs) for incredibly late Monarch development, refused refunds and misleading grossly inaccurate estimated target dates.

This is due to extremely late Monarch development and refusal of customer refunds. Links to supporting evidence below, as well as estimated delivery dates which were not kept and estimates and impressions given customers which turned out to be completely false.

http://shotcallin.pbworks.com/w/file/fetch/82497388/BFL_Late_Monarch_and_How_to_Handle_it_-_Josh_as_COO_I_request_your_reply_to_this.htm (http://shotcallin.pbworks.com/w/file/fetch/82497388/BFL_Late_Monarch_and_How_to_Handle_it_-_Josh_as_COO_I_request_your_reply_to_this.htm)

Also, please up-vote it on reddit so it gets more attention (and hopefully a lawyer's):

http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/29jvlh/attention_lawyers_here_is_a_very_good_argument/ (http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/29jvlh/attention_lawyers_here_is_a_very_good_argument/)

Perhaps we can get something accomplished.



I have submitted this information to the Wood Law Firm below. I recommend all Monarch customers do the same, and provide factual information including correspondence and refused refunds information.

http://www.woodlaw.com/cases/butterfly-labs-and-bf-labs-inc-bitcoin-miners (http://www.woodlaw.com/cases/butterfly-labs-and-bf-labs-inc-bitcoin-miners)


Other firms/lawyers are welcome.

Update:

You can submit your information to Wood Law Firm's Class Action Lawsuit on Butterfly Labs below:

http://www.woodlaw.com/cases/butterfly-labs-and-bf-labs-inc-bitcoin-miners (http://www.woodlaw.com/cases/butterfly-labs-and-bf-labs-inc-bitcoin-miners)

There is a form at the bottom of the page.

I filled it out. I recommend all Monarch customers do the same, and provide factual information including correspondence and information on refused refunds.

lawyers only care about getting paid..

the best solution is to get debt recovery companies involved first. then get lawyers.

the reason/logic:
going to court first, may prove that BFL owes funds, but then it gets passed onto debt recovery agencies, which BFL can then just avoid answering their office doors to.

but by going the debt recovery route first (its cheaper option too initially as no retainer is asked for upfront) and if BFL hide away from paying. this can then be used in the court as evidence that BFL will not pay. making the sentence more harsh and more actions instead of debt recovery would be given.

EG, prison time, seizure of assets/whole company, stiffer fines.. rather than just a set small fine, with low/slow re-payment schedule.

do you really want to waste court time where BFL will just show an empty FIAT bank account AFTER a court asks them to pay a fine? or do you want to pre-empt that defense by proving they wont pay. and then get some actual positive result

Ding ding ding, this man is right. This is why MtGox operations should have been ordered to resume ASAP as a non-profit aimed at reimbursing the lost bitcoin.

You realize what you said makes no sense right?  Your argument, if I understand you correctly, is to NOT file a lawsuit, because if\when you win, BFL will just ignore the debt collectors you send to collect the debt.  Instead you suggest they go straight to debt collection, so that BFL has to ignore them, which you can then use in court to get a judgement against them, which.....you just said 2 seconds ago BFL can just avoid answering the door when the debt collectors show up.  Brilliant!

read it again... by proving that debt collection does not work. THEN do the lawsuit adding the ammo that proves they wont repay via collection agents ...the court will offer a different solution!

no point going to court, getting it palmed off to debt collection agents, BFL refuses to open the door. which then causes another court case to be sought...

its called saving time/money and ensuring BFL cant just waste people time, but to instead ensure BFL get a punishment that cant be ran away from the first time, not second time round. because there would be no need of a second court case, cause you have already used up the debt collection card.

Did you read the lawsuit?  BFL denies all allegations.  Showing up in court and saying they wouldn't pay you doesn't prove anything because BFL denies they owe the money in the first place.  That's the whole point of a lawsuit, to get a legal judgement against them which means they are court ordered to pay.  You can't do anything to them without a court order.  I don't think you know how these things work.

If you win a lawsuit against someone you get a judgment against them. This judgment will allow you to attack a lien on any of their property that the court has jurisdiction over so you would be paid if the money is there (assuming they do not successfully appeal)

weldone now put some perspective into it. after the court has made judgement.. allowing you to attack a lien on any of their property. think real hard.. i mean real hard. get your mind to master how exactly the process works after judgement.. have a cup of coffee.. sit there and really imagine the process after that first judgement.

ok now you have had time to realise that its done through debt recovery agents..

ok now your upto date...

so BFL had the judgement th debt recovery agents would try establising a repayment schedule.. BFL would show the recovery agents an empty FIAT bank account, (because they are hiding bitcoin).
so the debt recovery agents go in and assess the value of the property, and then go back to court with the audit, where the court.. second time round would force them to hand over assets listed to the value of the claim or get sent to prison.

hmmm
how about .. get the debt recovery agents in first to arrange the repayment schedule and audit the property. saving time and money..
..... thus avoiding the endless cycle of court cases.

you do realise that MTGOX saga could have been sorted far sooner by doing debt collection first.. now everyone is waiting till after february 2015!!! all because of the court run-around.

lawyers should be last resort. not first..

but oh well BFL customers see you in 2016 when something may happen with your lawyer first route... lawyers love run-arounds as thats how they get paid. they hate swift actions
i have saved this message for prosterity. lets see in 2016 how many court room hearings and run arounds there will be..

so far dates of importance involving expensive lawyers and/or judges where payment schedule or asset auditing has not yet happened:
april 4th
april 29th
april 30th
june 4th
june 25th

Okay I see you aren't that bright so I will use small words to make it simpler for you.

The debt collection company has no power to force payment of a debt or do anything at all to BFL until you have already gone to court and gotten a judgement against them.  BFL would have to be willing to agree they owe the money and work out a payment schedule with the debt collector.  Obviously, if BFL was willing to do that we wouldn't be having this conversation, as it would have already been done and the debt paid.  The whole point of all of this is they deny they owe anyone any money.

It would never get that far anyway because you go to the debt collector and try to hire them to collect the debt for you, the first thing they will do is ask you what proof you have of the debt.  But since you haven't gotten a judgement yet, you don't have any proof to give them. 

I know you aren't that bright but not even you are stupid enough to think if a debt collection company shows up unannounced with no judgement they are just going to hand over the cash. 

silly man... debt collections agencies can do pre-legal collection services. but hell. its too late now as the legal wheel has begun..

but to answer your point. i know BFL wont hand over the funds, just like most people ignore bills and threats of debt collection agents when they see their credit card headed letters for instance.. but thats the point.
1) it gives the defense more ammo
2) if BFL were going to own up to the debt of refunds before it went to court, then the person would get paid. (which we know BFL wouldnt do)

the point is to not have the legal process take months-years just to establish the fact. even today the courts do not know if BFL intend to repay, even if a judgement is made.

its called ammo, to hurry the process along and save time/costs

see you guys in a year or so because i can already see what is gonna happen next

Okay you must be trolling, no one is this obtuse.  I used to wonder how BFL thought they would ever get away with this, but I guess they figured with people like you in their customer base.....

im not a customer.

but your missing my point entirely, as to the purpose of using a debt collection first.

ask yourself why credit card companies do debt recovery first, court room second..

seriously, i mean it, ask yourself why.. then look it up.. google is your friend.

The point is, why did people even bother buying anything anymore from BFL as they KNEW and KNOW they are either NOT getting they're producs or getting them LATE.

I call that pure ignorance and sorry but buying from them just proved you are plain stupid.

In addition to the ongoing legal maneuvering there is this:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=150803.msg7760011#msg7760011

Check it out!

I have no personal interest in this matter; but, in general, when a company begins to stall on many of its customers, it is a waste of time to continue talking to them.  It depends on your country, but you either go to a small claims court directly, or hire a lawyer who will notify them of your intention to sue if they do not deliver the goods/refund immediately; and then sue them right away if they don't.  

WHY they failed to fulfill your order is totally irrelevant, you do not have to be "understanding".  They are a business, so dealing with them should be strictly business.

In this case there is already a class action going on, so there is no need to think about that.

Also, do not waste your dream energy by dreaming of a takeover of the company by some miraculous management that would get your money faster or better than a lawsuit would.  If the company cannot right itself under the pressure of lawsuits, it cannot be saved by a takeover.  If a lawsuit cannot get your money back, a reborn company will not give it to you, either. That goes for MtGOX too, by the way.

EDIT: Also, when a company gets to the point of stalling on many of its customers, they stop caring for bad press in the internet or the media.  Look at MtGOX.  The most one can do through those means is warn other people before they send more money to the company.

Who would want to take over the debt-ridden mess that is BFL?

Makes no sense at all!

From the BFL website:
From the Checkout page on the BFL website:
Please note the "or more" part of the terms. As much as I dislike BFL and think that it is a horrible idea to pay for preorders as BFL's customers do, it appears that they are at least somewhat covered by not giving a hard upper bound timeframe as to when the machines will be ready and delivered.

Well, keep an eye on:

WeDemandJusticeFromBFL.com

I'm sure Sonny is!

We at WeDemandJusticeFromBFL.com are dedicated to ensuring that BFL delivers product in a timely manner or make immediate refunds to those who request it.

BFL will rue the day that it failed to do either!

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=150803.msg7760011#msg7760011

The Dutchman.

One of the most critical aspects of this program, which I did not touch upon on the website (I forgot to paste in a couple of paragraphs but I will fix that when I do final editing today!) is the loss of Page Rank in the search engines or SERPS.

What are SERPS?

Short for search engine results page, the Web page that a search engine returns with the results of its search. The major search engines typically display three kinds of listings on their SERPs. Listings that have been indexed by the search engine's spider, listings that have been indexed into the search engine's directory by a human, and listings that are paid to be listed by the search engine.

A program such as ours can cause a previously listed Page One entity to move so far down the page rank that it is hard to find.

We know of one such instance in which a Page One was reduced to Page 65 in only a matter of days.

Combine loss of SERPS with an overloaded inbox and a telephone system that is on fire and on the verge of melting down and you're going to get someone's attention.

Fortunately there are laws against such tactics. It is not legal to never deliver a product nor a refund.

http://www.business.ftc.gov/documents/bus02-business-guide-mail-and-telephone-order-merchandise-rule


"or more" is not a certain time frame, and thus the 30-day rule comes into effect.

If you look at the paragraph above the one you quoted

It appears that the 30 day rule only goes into effect if no statement is made as to when the product would ship.

I do not at all advocate for what BFL has done but I think they are covered here. They have had massive delays before without legal consequence. If they were not covered by their disclaimer then the FTC would be all over them for their previous and current delays.

Do you honestly believe it's legal that if you promise to ship "someday" you can hold customer funds forever and never give a refund?

Well, BFL seems to beleive that and so far is doing a damned good job of it!

BFL has a horrible history of massive delays with their miners. I am surprised that people are still doing business with them.

I know how to build a fire under BFL's ass.

Check my sig.

Correct me if I'm wrong but BFL is not bankrupt right now right?  That means you can get fiat from them, heck use them get a judgment and say pay up or you're going bankrupt.

Jusgements take time and can be appealed into the next century.

I have a way to hold BFL by its nose and kick it in the ass until it squeals like the pig it is and can't get any interest in the program.

I do not understand.

That link gets me to a HostGator window that asks me to log in. Shouldn't the site have public access?

Oh, you are getting a cached version of the site.  HG will hang onto those sometimes for a while.

Try this:

http://wedemandjusticefrombfl.com/

Ugh. You mean you intend to robot-spam all kind of sites, bypassing their captchas and such?  You want to annoy a dirty scumbag who stole money from 20'000 people by wasting the time of millions of readers and administrators who have nothing to do with that?

You lost me there.  I hope the law gets to you somehow, as well as to the BFL scumbags.  Bye.

Sorry, Charlie!

Nothing I suggest is illegal.

Nothing.

I assure you that BFL would be far, far more than "annoyed".

The search cengines detest this sort of thing and can even de-index the target as a result and I can't think of nicer people that BFL for that to happen to.

Now, as long as we're on the subject, you're telling me that it is NOT Ok to be perhaps a bit unethical when trying to stop a firm that has:

Stolen money from customers.

Lied about delivery dates.

Defrauded thousands.

Refused refunds.

Continued lawsuits ad absurdum.

Very probably broken Federal law in failure to properly label and certify equipment.

Dug in while people's lives go down the tubes.

Who you want them to call?

Ghostbusters?

I no longer think that there is one single pair of cojones in all of this forum.

Get all namby-pamby about a little very effective Negative SEO against scumbuckets.

What?

Naw, we just tell'em about the scumbuckets.

No harm in that or laws broken and no waiting for the so-called "wheels of justice" to turn at their pitifully slow rate.

Now, let me tell you what you have done this fine Sunday morning.

I've had five cups of really strong French Roast coffee so far today and I am locked an loaded for bear.

You've lit my rockets, tthat's what you've done!

Bother people on the Internet beause "ONLY" 20,000 people have lost their hard-earned money?

NO!

I want to "BOTHER" the whole Goddamned world with it!

In those 20,000 people are those who now cannot feed their families because of the fraud of BFL.  There are those who cannot afford proper medical care for thier children because of the fraud of BFL.

There are even some who have lost their fucking homes because of the fraud of BFL and you want to stand on YOUR laurels and "principles" and be above the whole thing?

Well, you just stand on your laurels and principloes and hope to fuck that one day YOU don't all off.

You don't fight thieves and fraudsters by being a nice guy and playing by Marquis of Queensbury rules.

You get'em in a knockdown dragout, you bite off eir ears and noses, you gouge their eyes, you grab their cojones and squeeze as had as you can, you hit'em abvoe the belt; you hit'em below the belt, you kick them when they are down and you keep hitting and kicking until they PAY THE FUCK UP!

This is what my plan is about and if you don't like, quite frankly I think that you should do one of two thing:

(1) Offer a better plan.

(2) Just shut the fuck up.

Makes no difference to me.

Rant over for now.

Thanks for reading.

The Dutchman.

No it is not legal to hold customer funds "forever" however if there are legit delays in producing the product that is being sold then as far as I can tell then would be acceptable in the eyes of the law.

Delays must be accepted by the customer, and if the customer refuses to accept the delay, a "prompt refund" is required. Never ending delays without refunds is not legal. Period.