Bitcoin Forum

Well, time to break out the bubbly, its official.

You guys got ripped off... Same with you pass-throughers, gotta have some real balls to build a pt over a ponzi scheme.

and yet they still haven't given him the scammer tag.  ??? WTF !!!

Seriously...

If anybody else would have pulled this crap, they would have been stopped after a few days by either admins or the community as a whole, but the greed just took you bastards for a ride...... welcome to hell.

The bitch is, i can see it now, the first thing all the pass through owners will do is point out the section of the "contract" that leaves them 100% non-liable for the losses.

Nobody disputes that the pass through owners are blameless.  They all made it very clear up front that whatever happens happens..

True, they can always fall back on something. Still though, those poor greedy bastards... (Come on, you got to admit it, 7% weekly?!?! are you shitting me)

Need to make a new label, instead of scammer or member, put "T3h Greed 0wnz Me"

Not just for the passthrough users, but for all bs&t investors.

There are still some very reasonable people who think he'll pay back most/all of the BTC. If he loses both Matthew's bet and Vandroiy's bet and he hasn't at least started a reasonable repayment plan, I'll give him the scammer tag. (It's only symbolic at this point, anyway -- no one's going to be tricked into trading with someone involved in such a high-profile controversy.)

Passthrough operators will not get scammer tags unless they broke explicit contracts.

The key word of your statment.... they "THINK" he will pay back, so far thinking hasn't done much all that good. We all thought pirate was a truthworthy fellow, and we all see how that went.

Thinking doesnt pay the bills (unless your using your ideas for movies like porno), hell it doesnt even mine bitcoin.... Thinking only makes 7% possible for a short period of time :P

Then in comes the 100% pirate bankers fee....

Pirate's recent announcement doesn't add any new information to what was already known before he made the announcement.  His declaration that he is in default is more than a week late.  It was already an indisputable fact that he was in default.

BTW, the forum has lots of good IP addresses logged for pirateat40 (he never used Tor) and 4077 PMs to/from him. This should help the investigation. I'd prefer to release this stuff privately to police, though I may release it publicly in a few months if no police officers contact me about it.

Hopefully



happens and then



won't be needed.

I did expect that you were keeping a curious eye on how he was connecting to the forum. I thought about whether you would alert the forum if he were connecting through Tor; I guess I still don't know if you would have!

You will get the same run around so many others have been getting, Bitcoins arent under their jurisdiction.

Matthew seems to have gone quiet. Maybe he's realized how much money he's losing on Pirate.

Nah, hes in another thread still taking bets.

I've yet to see a single post from anyone who has contacted their state/country's financial/computer crimes/financial intelligence authority and been told that a Bitcoin scam/theft isn't under anyone's jurisdiction.  At the moment, the question is whether this is a straight up civil issue or whether it's an actual fraud/theft.  If people believe it's a ponzi, then they should be reporting it to whoever handles ponzi investigations in their jurisdiction.

If I was totally convinced I'd never see any of my money and simply wanted to fuck up his shit, I'd be reporting him to FinCEN for probable money laundering, the IRS for probable tax evasion and whoever handles racketeering investigations for probable RICO offences.  

People might use the "but Bitcoin" excuse for not reporting shit to the authorities, but it's likely because in many cases they don't want their own financial dealings put under scrutiny - kind of like people don't go to the police when their drug dealer rips them off.

Are You Not Entertained?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FsqJFIJ5lLs

If RICO was brought in, they would take out half the users in this forum....

Yeah they would go further than just this one scam and declare bitcoin itself as a money laundering vehicle.

Off course.  Those operating large scale scams know damned well that many of their users are evading tax or committing other financial offences and are therefore highly unlikely to go crying to the authorities.  

I think that being 4 days offline is enough to call him a scammer as he should be at least 24 hours after all this.

He's been online. 

Can he have a "ponzi legend" tag instead?

Last online August 26, 2012, 03:20:19 PM

Pirate broke explicit contracts.

come on mods just tag him and be done with it.

but dont give it to the pass through ops- maybe create a 'stupidity tag' for them..

I dispute that. Any PPT owner who can be documented as having stated that they think it's a Ponzi scheme, but who nevertheless operated a PPT, is *not* blameless. They are almost as guilty as Pirate is.

If you go to a guy who you have reason to know steals televisions and give him $40 to get you a television, you're as guilty of the theft as that guy is. PPT operators who can be shown to have stated that they thought it was a Ponzi scheme knowingly paid Pirate to transfer other people's money to them knowing that Pirate collected that money by stating that it would be used for legitimate investments and knowing that such payments to them were not legitimate investments.

The issue is not the arrangement between them and their bondholders. The issue is that they knowingly paid Pirate to make them the recipients of fraudulent transfers, making them an accomplice to that fraud.

(Also, I predict that before this is all over, PPT operators will start breaching their agreements. Already there are whispers of them conspiring with Pirate to absolve themselves of their obligation to pass through payments and force their depositors to obtain their own settlements.)

Please vote in the pole:
Is pirate considered a scammer by Bitcoin community?

do you think pirate@40 should get a scammer tag?

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=104322.0

No
Yes
Who is Pirate
I don't care
Yes, at least until he pays.

hahaha......

Finally, a place to place the image I found the other day.

http://www.yourthreshold.com/images/uploads/work_ponzi_1.jpg

That doesn't even make sense. The guys giving PPT did not know Pirate was going to run. They all clearly stated that It might be a Ponzi and that any investment in a PPT would be a risk. That doesn't mean they stole peoples money. The PPT can not be put at fault.

It sounds like Pirate's plan was to take victims' Bitcoin and use it for higher than market-rate payouts at GPUMAX.  In return, he got coins which could not necessarily/easily be traced to him.  He planned to make up the difference by manipulating/playing the currency conversion market.  He planned to be a net seller on highs and then buy up more than he sold for less in USD after he crashed the exchange rate.  Unfortunately for Pirate, the market didn't go his way.  Either it outgrew his influence or people wised up, or he played it poorly and his scheme was up.  He found he wasn't able to swing the market enough to buy back the amount of Bitcoin necessary to pay his returns and has now defaulted.

It's likely they he probably has a bunch of "clean" coins from GPUMAX mining that he's hiding as well, but it's definitely not enough to pay everyone back.  What remains to be seen is what will happen with GPUMAX now that BTCST has collapsed.  I suspect either payouts will 1) drop to below market as Pirate attempts to pay BTCST victims 2) drop to a non-inflated rate now that there's nothing coming into BTCST or 3) it will collapse completely.

Anyway, that's is my theory.

Pirate could've really f-d the PPTs over by claiming he repaid them, and left the PPT investorssuckers wondering *who* really has their bitcoins.

I could buy this theory. As to GPUMAX, I would bet #3, anything and anybody that Pirate was directly involved with, will soon be treated as though it has leprosy.  The Bruce Wagner & ZT effect.

This would be easy to prove/disprove with blockchain.info. Although the shit-storm would be a blast to watch.

He posts mostly on IRC and he's continued doing that.

Not to be rude, but it looks like you didn't even read what I wrote. Please read the sections I bolded. The problem is that they knowingly paid Pirate to fraudulently transfer other people's money to them. (Note that this only applies to PPT operators who can be documented to have stated that they suspected Pirate was likely operating a Ponzi scheme.)

People are still happily joining GPUMax and openly stating that they don't care if pirate owes BS&T users hundreds of thousands of BTC.  Never underestimate the power of human greed and what people are willing to overlook in their quest for riches.

Those people are idiots and enablers.

I think the only thing that would make it fraud is if the PPT knew for a fact that BCST was a Ponzi. They would only be committing fraud legally if there was intent or "mens rea".

I seriously doubt that any users are going to take legal action against the PPT operators anyway because it's likely that the people who were doubling their money every 10 weeks weren't declaring that income (or the BTC they invested in the first place).  In the event that they did, though, some of the operators may be more liable than others if they actively promoted the scheme or acted against the interests of their investors for their own enrichment (the buying up of accounts after pirate defaulted seems to be a real grey area here).

There's also the question of whether PPT could be held liable if they fail to aggressively pursue recovery of client funds from pirate.

You don't need to know "for a fact". You just need to know. Any PPT operator who is on record as saying that they think Pirate is operating a Ponzi is a scammer. It's no different from a guy who pays someone $50 for a TV thinking that person will likely steal a TV and give it to them.

Why not give the pass thru's scammer tags? If it weren't for them, the loss wouldn't be nearly as high as it is.. Granted, they didn't control the scam, but I liken it to a bank robbery.. I consider the pass thru's the get-a-way drivers after a bank robbery.. They didn't actually steal the money, but they helped contribute to the theft.......a getaway driver would be just as guilty in a court of law as the ones inside with the guns that were actually stealing the money..

Just a thought..

So should you be able to sue your stockbroker if the stock you told him to buy on your behalf tanks when all of the information you needed to assess the risk of that stock has been freely available to you?

You're missing the point. The claim is not that PPT operators breached their agreement with their bondholders. The claim is that PPT operators knowingly paid pirate to make them the recipients of fraudulent transfers. (Those of them on record as saying they knew or suspected Pirate was running a Ponzi scheme.)

The liability is like that of a fence who buys property he suspects is likely stolen and then sells it to someone else who also suspects it's stolen. It's not like thieves say to their fences, "You know this property is stolen, right?" The fence just has to suspect it's likely stolen and not look to closely at the fact that the circumstances strongly suggest it's stolen.

If a "stockbroker" helps a woman find a hitman to kill her husband and brokers the deal, he's as guilty of the murder as the hitman is. Yes, even if he kept his deal with the woman by finding a reliable hitman and paying him.

Interesting how you compare a situation with no fraud involved to a situation involving massive fraud.

If a PPT operator knew it was a Ponzi scheme, then weren't they paying Pirate to run the Ponzi scheme and transfer some of the proceeds to them?

I said, "If a PPT operator knew it was a Ponzi scheme". If you're going to pretend to reply to me, please address the argument I actually made in the post you're purporting to reply to.


You are like an evolution denier who, no matter how much evidence he is given, insists that he has none until he gets precisely the specific type of evidence he knows does not exist. The evidence is overwhelming, you just choose to stick your fingers in your ears.

For example, here's the SEC's list of signs of a Ponzi scheme. See what matches Pirate:

http://www.sec.gov/answers/ponzi.htm#RedFlags

This is a 100% perfect match.

Don't ASSume!

I will give them to the police if the police ask for them. Otherwise, I may post them publicly to help people find Pirate and obtain justice.

Pirates are hostis humani generis. ;) I'm not going to preserve the privacy of someone who stole 500,000 BTC.

There could be some other information in those messages that might indite other members. It would be like the wikileaks of bitcoin.

I'm not going to publicly release the PMs until a few months from now, if ever. I'll create a topic about it then and we can have a public debate.

Hmm.  I wonder if the shills were a little be more candid about being shills when talking with the ringleader?

theymos' position makes a lot a sense to me. Respond to official requests if there are any law enforcement investigations, and if there are not, and if we are on a desert island, and JoelKatz has put it, release the information in such a way to help the depositors recover (which may be a full public release, or something more selective).

PPT operators don't deserve scammer tags at all, in my opinion. They provided a service that useful to those who wished to gamble on a black box investment. If people really want to throw their money at a Ponzi scheme, they should by all means be enabled. And I think a Ponzi scheme is a horrible thing.

I don't blame gas station owners for lung cancer because they sell cigarettes. I don't blame the tobacco farmers. If you wanna smoke, you're going to pay for it later. We tried to tell you.

He could probably redact names but Im guessing if no payment comes from pirate in a month then a crime investigation will probably be happening. I would be shocked if its not by that point. Of course he cant release it during a criminal investigation either.

Good, you shouldn't trust anybody with secret personal information--because you don't have to. If you're really worried about the things you say on bitcointalk, or anywhere for that matter... there's an algorithm for that.

I haven't decided yet what I will do. I want to see public discussion about it. It might not be necessary to release his PMs, so there's no point in arguing about it now, though.

I noticed that some people communicated with Pirate using PGP-encrypted messages, which is smart.

We all know it's a Ponzi. Some of us are honest about it and some are not. I understand that it's impossible to get a person to see something when his livelihood and reputation depends on him not seeing it. Perfect certainty is not required for knowledge.

Ah, so you're already reading the pms.  Good to know.

I only scanned through them to make sure that the SQL query (to archive them) worked as I intended. The PGP message blocks stood out.

I only read others' PMs without their permission during scam investigations, and I've only read a user's entire inbox a few times.

And if a user is adjudged innocent, are they still notified that you browsed through them?

That's never happened.

That's somewhat disheartening.

No. The possibility of privacy concerns in these cases never occurred to me, since the stuff I've read has always been boring trade stuff.

FAIL.

You stated it much better than I....

There are millions of laws. I'm probably breaking dozens right now somehow. I'm not going to let these laws stop me from doing what's best. As I mentioned previously, I'm not sure what the best course of action is with the Pirate case -- I'll decide this later after some public discussion.

I learned this years ago... If I want to send something that is private and I don't want the whole world to know what I wrote, I always use PGP.. The only way another party can read it is if the intended recipient unencrypted the messages and sent it to another individual..

I'ts very very easy to use pgp. We should never rely on the board or email operators that they will keep everything private.

After thinking about it, Im not so sure that most of the pass throughs deserve a scammer tag. Now, if they had knowledge of the workings and new it to be illegal, then yes, but the investor should do his/her diligence in learning what they are investing in.

Im sure some will probably deserve it while others no. It all comes down to what they were privy to and how they advertised the pass through..

If Pirate offered 2 percent instead of 7, I think that he would have got a lot more "investors".. Just because 2 percent is a lot more believable than 7.. But then again, when you say 7 percent, all you need is to survive the scam for about 10 weeks and you are paid back..

I believe that when a ponzi is detected, they will actually try to collect money from those that made more than their initial investment.. This will be very very difficult to prove, especially with bitcoin.. I would think that a lot of pass through operators are going to get sued. (Granted, I don't know how many of them let their true identity be known.)

Since so much money was lost, I just don't see those that lost a lot to sit on the sidelines and just let it go.. if I lost over a few thousand dollars, I know that i would be hiring an attorney and doing what I can to recover whatever..

I guess we will have to wait and see how many victims will team up and start suing Pirate and his pass throughs..

i do believe that Pirate will try to pass the blame on to his pass throughs to lighten his load..

I guess phase 2 is about begin in the ongoing Pirate drama... My wife calls it "As the Bitcoin turns"...

Maybe that should be a whole new section. that way all of Pirates threads can be found in one place.. lol..

That's an ironic comment in a thread where people are suggesting that the pass-through operators themselves may have been acting illegally.

Even where privacy laws do apply, the information they protect is not unlimited and nor is the obligation to protect it.  Maybe you could argue copyright in the PMs you authored, but how would you establish damages otherwise?

People are really selective about the extent to which they care about legalities around here.  Pretty much the only people well-positioned to take legal action over anything remotely connected with Bitcoin are those who've done absolutely everything by the book and reported every cent of income they've made from Bitcoin and not been involved in any Bitcoin enterprises which make their money from illegal activity.  I suspect such people are in the absolute minority.  Whether the PPT operators were complicit in the operation of a ponzi scheme or not, they've almost certainly committed other significant financial offences which would be revealed by any attempt they made to sue anyone.

I find that in these instances, it's helpful to compare the situation to one that may happen in real life.

In that instance, this makes bitcointalk.org rather like a hotel lobby. Along one wall is a row of mailboxes. each of us has a key to one of them. Here's the thing: The backs are open. It's well known that the proprietor has access to the contents of them. How else does he periodically save copies in the safe? And you guys are writing to each other using post cards. You want your mail to be private, use an envelope (http://www.gnupg.org/).

Theymos, I recommend the thread where release of those messages is discussed and (potentially) occurs be entitled "Postcards from Pirate".

I'll just leave these here...
Linux: http://www.gnupg.org/
Windows: http://gpg4win.org/
Mac: http://gpgtools.org/

The forum isn't based in the US.

I for one, have previously BEGGED to have my PMs read by theymos or any other MOD capable.....lol

Remember what gigavps said "honest people leave tracks in the sand" ......and I have never tried to hide.

Did you claim your steak dinner under 'capitol gains' on your income tax ?

If so, please forward me the amount, as I need to claim that same amount as a LOSS.

thanks,
bitlane

So who's going to start off all these racketeering and IRS investigations by reporting pirate's scheme (and possibly GPUMax) to the relevant authorities?  There might be a lot of people who want pirate's dealings put under a microscope, but not at the risk of their own financial affairs being subjected to scrutiny.

Thankfully my failed attempt at sarcasm wasn't wasted on you when I used the term 'capitol'.

Does the forum DB archive deleted PMs from a User's Inbox ?

Please do. I've been getting annoyed with you constantly saying that I asked you to do it as a favor. I suggested it.

Couldn't we just encourage Pirate to have sex with some women in Sweden, then let things run their course?

Several shills bragged about gambling on house money. That's a place to start.

At least every user has to be made aware ( or better asked before ), when you are reading his posts, independent of the justification!!!

If your access is declined, then you should search for public discussion to have a just case which backs the intrusion.

We really need to be attentive now not to loose common sense in our bitcoin community and keep rules equal to all of us !


Thanks for consideration

Zyk

It's actually very difficult to waive protection of Sec. 230 of the CDA unless the management actually contributes the content.  For example, even if you intentionally disseminate an email you know to be false and probably libelous, you're OK as long as someone else wrote it (i.e. it was another "information content provider").

Deleting spam and scams would almost certainly not invoke the paradoxical wrath of the good Samaritan duty.  What would expose thymos to liability is not investigating some scams while failing to shut down others (see Gentry v. eBay, Inc., 99 Cal. App. 4th 816, 830 (2002)), but contributing to tortious speech by, for example, writing prose or headings for the scam.  Cf. Hy Cite Corp. v. badbusinessbureau.com, 418 F. Supp. 2d 1142 (D. Ariz. 2005)  Maybe he did that somewhere else, but checking his SQL queries sure doesn't cut it, Mr. internet lawyer.

 ;D

I can assure you, he's not an internet lawyer.  Let's not get into personal name calling.  You know as well as I do that if it goes legal, it will get messy for a bunch of people, regardless of how tenuous of a relationship they might seem to have.

well since theymos  was just securing evidence to a possible crime, he was right to check the pm's.. he is in charge of this forum i believe,so he is responsible that if somebody makes criminal activities around here, that there has to be a possibilty to save the evidence... (at least in my country in europe he would be required to do so) which he checked.. so no point of him overreading the pm's... if u wanna communicate in silence, use encryption and most important, private communication channels...

cheers

this mess is funny

Wouldn't a db backup do just as much to 'secure' evidence.  Pretty sure reading/scanning messages isn't required.

well a complete backup would secure and maybe dispose to investigating people pm's and entries which are not relevant to this... so i think  he needs to sort out...  but actually i gonna be checking our laws in detail on that....

Monitoring and moderating has not resulted in actual liability in any case, even though the law firm circulars caution against doing too much. The safe harbor is actually quite large unless he's actually contributed toward the content. That doesn't happen by removing posts and banning scammers.  A contrary rule would harm the industry, so any site operator sued on such a flimsy bases will receive top-notch industrial support. That ain't happening here, Mr. Internet Lawyer, your threats notwithstanding.

How about actually waiting until a subpoena happens before going and filtering?

Perhaps, but Theymos has already admitting to participating in the 'scheme'.  So now he's just not a spectator, he has/had an active role in it.

Internet and law has always been a pain. You have to comply with every single law in every single country that your website is accessible from, and, let me say it, it won't happen.

And I hate all of this Americanism.

If nothing else, its a .org which does end up pushing certain legalities on it.

I agree there could be a colorable claim for that. Such a claim could be maintained whether or not he allegedly waived Sec. 230 safe harbor protection by monitoring the PMs of scammers (hint: he didn't).

Silly talk about CDA Sec. 230 just happens to be a pet peeve of mine. Carry on.

IANAL nor do I fake to be.

 ::)   (seewhatIdidthere?)

I suppose MtGox has Pirate's real identity...

What is the limit?  Zhou Tong stole close to half a million dollars, but you actually took steps to make sure his privacy was protected.

In unrelated news, Zhou Tong donated a large amount of money to this forum.

Anyway website is located somewhere in the middle of the us, hosted with softlayer.
Guessed by latency, looked the traceroute like 1 year ago...

Remember megaupload?

Nice one reeses.


http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-k4x-_wriSyM/T9TVLUKTftI/AAAAAAAACYI/BMhMR0aqWPU/s1600/user6133_pic34477_1326494238.jpg

I would like to see pirate's ip addresses and PMs made public. If there are concerns about of the privacy of his (perhaps unwitting) co-conspirators, the names of senders and recipients could be redacted.

If privacy of other party (i.e. not pirate) is a concern for mods I hereby grant admins of this forum permission to publish all 3 PM (2 in, 1 out) between myself and pirateat40. (assuming pirate's permission is not required by the mods or they have it)

Not much interesting there, however. Just what I consider/guess a standard initial approach to recruit shills/marks along the lines of "I respect your posts, I am just pushing envelope here and doing some secret stuff that I cannot disclose yadayadayada..." with my noncommittal response.

I am sure both you (reeses) and gigavps will have fun flying to Texas to watch Breaking Bad with Pirate and get drunk when this is all said and done.

Just make sure to continue trying to legally advise him, explain the 'context' of his IRC posts and guard his corporate shield !

You better go back and have a look at the recently posted IRC logs. It's clear that you have a hard-on for Trendon.

Do you have the logs from that chat?

What do you call what I have been doing with you then ?


ps. Although I only quoted a portion of your post, I read it in it's entirety, so feel free to delete it now.

Zhou Tong hasn't been proven to be guilty yet, and the Bitcoinica people have started legal processes to pay back the BTC. If pirateat40 doesn't work toward paying back within a few months, his case will be very clear.

Theymos, Zhou Tong AGREED to the evidence against him, but claimed he was framed.  He never produced any proof of a third party.  That makes him guilty in most world courts - mind you, courts haven't been "paid off".

They're both seeming to be scams, but pirate's not been 'proven' to be a scam any more than zhou tong has 'proven' he wasn't the hacker.

That's the difference (bolded, above). If/when Pirate pays back, the possibility of his PMs coming out will go off the table.

I think that Pirate is simply holding our investments in Trust, so that they can accrue the most interest prior to paying them back to us....so we can enjoy them more.

He is actually doing us a favor and shouldn't be attacked for helping us. Look at how many BTC would be for sale if he paid us back already.

He is simply trying to stabilize the market for us.

+1 Pirate is a hero.

Exactly, right ?

Can I honestly blame him for trying to grow my measly existing 2600+ BTC in my BTCST account, into a Million, over time ?

He's a HERO not a SCAMMER.

Legality aside, decency would suggest you should put a notice on the "private message" page stating that the messages are not private and may be read by moderators. As it stands it gives the impression it is only between the two involved parties.

Not disputing your right to read the messages, but it needs to be clear to people that this is the case when they go to send a message.

As I pointed out earlier in the thread, any electronic communication that isn't encrypted will be read by a 3rd party at some point. Assuming otherwise is like thinking the message on the postcard you sent Grandma is private, too.

There is a difference between avoiding unauthorized interception of traffic and an ongoing policy of authorized interception. The former you assume to happen, the latter should be very clearly made known.

I think I just have a different set of security assumptions than you do.

Luckily, being a member is voluntary and no one forces anyone to join and sent PMs.

All hail Pirate!

It is not about security, it is about trust.


This is true, if I know I am agreeing to this.

Security is about trust. Namely, who to trust. And while you may trust the recipient of your message, you never trust the courier.

Even if you trust theymos, there are 3 other admins, the servers are hosted by Mt Gox, and there's always the possibility of hackers and subpoenas which trust won't save you from. Posting private information (especially if it could incriminate certain people, since we're talking about Pirate that's possible) in plaintext on a forum, pm or not, is asinine. If you value your privacy that much you should take steps to ensure it yourself.

They're "personal messages", not "private messages". ;)

I think it's obvious that the administrators of a site will check PMs when necessary, but I added a note to the page.

Looks good: Note: PM privacy is not guaranteed. Encrypt sensitive messages.

Perfect!

I think it's great that you are disclosing the PMs to the police, and if that fails, publicly. Freedom of information is necessary to bring justice, and once one waives privacy they should not expect it.

That's scamming.

"Hey, I would love to pay you back, but first you need to give me your credit card number, expiry date, and mother's maiden name."

He asked for three pieces of information:  forum/irc nick, address, balance.  Everything else is just fud.

Please tell me how its illegal for him to ask for that.

Trust no one. And don't communicate here. That's what I gathered so far. Posts, PMs and Emails are all open and readable, and someone can always sniff your packets or something. Encryption is important.

And you don't need to answer anything, but you might not get what you want if you don't answer.

I don't even know what happened. Just that everyone is losing sleep over bitcoins. heheh.

I don't know about illegal, but it's unethical. His obligations are to the pass-through operators. Not the individual customers of those operators.

Then send him a certified letter.  Its not like he wasn't dox'd all over the forums.

The guy hasn't confirmed his identity. most of this makes no sense.

the people on the forum seem pretty certain of his identity, even going so far as to call previous employers.. I'd say thats enough info to send him a certified letter.

I disagree with your faith in mobs.

LOL, now you're just making excuses.

If you'd rather not involve lawyers, https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=20985.0

Based on the comment he made to you on IRC, certified mail is the only form of communication his lawyer will be using (helps rein in legal expenses, anyway).

People who've actually met him have confirmed that he's the the same person who has an online presence as Trendon Shavers.  There's a photo of Goat sitting next to him.  Various other pieces of information confirm that he's the real Trendon Shavers and not just someone who has hijacked that identity (the whole family uses a lot of social media - there's a lot of old shit hanging around which is easily found and plenty of photos).

Internet detectives shouldn't be required. Its as if pirate is trying to make sure Matthew has no chance of winning his bet. I mean, just PM an address for certified mail... PM an address for his attorney...

Goat ASKED him for his lawyer's contact details and he didn't provide them.  He said that information will be available on Friday.  He appears to want the lender information from the PPT operators before he gives out the contact information for his lawyers and people are rightly suspicious of that.

Indeed. Probably the IRS and other 3 letters agencies would love to hear about this story and would work for free exacting revenge.

Not free. The cost might be higher than you can imagine.

It's always kind of amazed me that people mostly ignore the possibility of getting caught up in a money laundering or tax evasion investigation when they invest in some of Bitcoin's more sketchy enterprises.  Losing money isn't the only thing they're risking.

sounds logical!

Its the uniqueness of Bitcoin network.
Both Bitcoin & forum members helps to nail scammers in head.

Tell us one scammer who has been nailed so far.

Tell one scammer who hasn't nailed so far using Bitcoin.
They get caught before they can run away. That is what important than any other thing.
It makes money can be recovered by all legal & other ways.

Tom Williams.  Andre Jensen.

Maybe, still Bitcoin scammers cant scam that easily.

Tom williams case is called theft.

I'm going to have to refresh my memory about Andre Jesen, because I read something yesterday where that name came up, but I skimmed over it not thinking of its relevance.


Possibly, but at some point during all this, a while back I say, he was already planning on making his epic asea run. About a month prior to Defcon, he posted that you can meet him eye-to-eye, but afterwards there's yet to be anybody who claimed to have seen him. Soon after Defcon was over, parrot shit started hitting the fan.

~Bruno~

There were several people who met with him in Vegas: giga,goat,burtw,copumkin,reeses. Just to name a few

Do you think that, since they were in Vegas, that Elvis might have been a 'secret' Investor ?

Phinn, is there any connection between Trendon and Elvis ?

You just said that no one said they saw pirate in vegas... I was giving you examples of people who did.  I don't know about Elvis.

Phin, are you suggesting that Goat photoshopped the picture of the Vegas meet-up, because the person in that photo is definitely the person whose image is used on Trendon Shavers' social media and there's enough old images of him online to establish that he's the real life Trendon Shavers rather than a made up or hijacked identity.  Plenty of people operate scams under their true identities.


He operated World Bitcoin Exchange.  He didn't pay people back and dooglus is stuck holding a few remaining Bitcoins which he can't distribute because he has neither the authority nor accurate information to be able to give users a small payout from the only assets not under Andre's control.  Since walking away from WBE, Andre has opened a security business which he hypes as much as he hyped WBE (and High Net Worth Property before that).