Bitcoin Forum

EAL's Profile: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=140584

I've left him neutral trust for the time being, waiting on hearing his response.


I received this PM


Almost all of the above accounts that are claiming the PD giveaway share the same Non Tor/VPN IP as EAL on their Primedice accounts. This is petty low level giveaway scamming, I wouldn't trust EAL given this information and I don't think he should remain a Staff member of this forum.

I'd like to hear more opinions on this as it isn't malicious "scamming", it's just dishonest behavior/abuse. What really pisses me off is that I've paid him for half a year to advertise PD and dealt with him in an honest and professional manner and he chose to game our bitcointalk giveaway for such a trivial amount. I had previously positive trusted him twice.

So you claim that since Eal is smarter than you he should be demoted?

This doesn't have anything to do with Bitcointalk.

Besides he does a good job at modding.


~BCX~

There should really be IP restrictions on making accounts.
I remember people used to do this for bipolararbob's (remember him?) giveaways, and managed to get hundreds of dollars of gift cards by just using the alts to redeem in his threads.
Its a really rotten thing to do, ESPECIALLY for giveaways
And a staff doing this?
...
SMH

Smarter? How does claiming multiple times from multiple accounts show any kind of smartness?
What EAL did (if confirmed, it seems it is) is definitely not trustworthy. I'm not sure if it deserves a trusted negative feedback -probably does- but it's definitely an untrustworthy behavior. I strongly believe staff members should be very trusted because they're somehow seen as representatives of the forum (regardless of whether they're really that or not). Unless EAL does a magnificent work as Staff then I agree he should be demoted. Admins should definitely check this.

Doesn't make him untrustworthy, but it makes him shady.
This deserves negative feedback from stunna, its blatantly stealing money from his great site.
Since he is staff, he deserves more than a slap on the wrist.
Why would we want a guy abusing a giveaway, being staff on this forum?
I vote for a demote

Newbies crack me up.

You really think the forum works this way?

Make baseless accusations and get mods canned?



~BCX~

Yes newbies definitely see Staff members as representatives of the forum, even if it's not that way. The word 'Staff' kind of implies that.


Baseless? Stunna can check the IP addresses of the accounts:

And of course Admins should check the IPs here too and take other measures to confirm those are his alts before taking any actions.

Anyone with a staff under their name should not be doing shady things like this.
And the accusations are NOT baseless at all. With real IP evidence, that is all you need for something like this.
Match up the IPs with the IP of the users that redeem it (probably the same) and that is 100% evidence there is abuse of the giveaway.
Admins, please check the IPs, thanks.
Staff should NOT be doing stuff like this. Period.

There are only two instances of staff members scamming, Matthew N. Wright (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=106310.0) defaulting on a bet that a ponzi would fail that amounts to millions of dollars that he has no way of ever repaying, and  xDeathwing (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=287622.0) failing to pay a bounty.

EAL has had a scam accusation (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=970157.0) open against him before, although it was eventually resolved when he repaid marcotheminer the money he supposedly owed him. He did however claim that he has a group of friends that visit the forum together when they are together (IIRC). There are a number of examples of their potentially alt accounts claiming giveaways.

I am not sure if his actions warrant his removal from being a staff member, however I wouldn't say it is appropriate for a staff member to show up as having negative trust (that is visible by default) as it sends somewhat of a bad message about the forum.

maybe just stop the "petty low level giveaway"s on btct, all they create is drama and spam comparable to signature campaigns...

But isn't that the best message about the trust system to newbs.
It isn't controlled by the staff/forums.
Whenever a newb receives negative trust, we could just point to EAL and say, see, even staff can have negative trust.

Nothing against EAL, have no real stance on this matter, but that would be the best representation of the trust system as something untouched by the staff.

I don't think you're quite connecting the dots.


Dot#1 Shit that happens on Primedice

Dot#2 Shit that happens on Bitcointalk.


Oh wait, nevermind you're right!

Shit that happens on Primedice is not connected to shit that happens on Bitcointalk.



Anything that happens on Primedice or any evidence generated on Primedice has no influence or legitimacy on Bitcointalk.


~BCX~

How the connection of all accounts has been made in the first place?

Tor IPs are shared and modify themselves from time to time, so several people will share the same Tor IP if they use Tor, while the IP of a same person probably will change during his Tor section. I think the user has no control over it.

Any confirmation from admins that the accounts are probable alts of Eal? Or any blockchain evidence connecting the accounts?




The giveaway happened here, on Bitcointalk

They can be linked using cookies.

do you even reading comprehension?

Crux of the issue is using multiple accounts to claim giveaways. I see it a lot, never really cared before, not sure why I'd start now.

It isn't fair to hold one user to a higher standard than other users and single them out just because they also volunteer their time to help moderate the forum (if it's true). Though it is something I would keep in mind about a person if I saw it.

It seems more like a violation of a site's TOS, than a scam, and not really deserving of negative trust. If that deserves negative trust, then so do people who abuse dropbox referrals, or buy Facebook/youtube likes and views, pay people for using their referral links, buy and use .edu mails to get discounts on whatever, etc. All these actions harm the company or other users in some way.

That was I mean a stupid question, did you think police will reveal the name of the informant?

This.  If he is not guilty he would prove so and set the story straight.

Is he going to pay you back at least? What was the total amount of BTC claimed by those alt accounts? If he did in fact do it and doesn't pay it back then he should definitely get negative trust IMO.

I don't really agree with you and to me this is a form of scamming.

Many other people have have received negative trust for similar kinds of things. Tspacepilot comes to mind.

Well, if Stunna cares, can't he appropriately note so in his trust and let other users know that he doesn't trust EAL?
If other users feel the same, they could care too and give EAL negative trust.


Well, wouldn't Stunna be justified to find someone abusing the ToS of PD untrustworthy?
Not saying that it is a scam, but if the trust system is about trust, wouldn't Stunna be justified to give negative trust?

There's a Turkish Topic about Bitcoin giveaways on Turkish Section; https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=292290.0
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=292290.msg11837668#msg11837668

Why are you assuming every user on Turkish section is EAL?

This accusation had nothing to do with EAL. You're just shitposting. (I know because I've repaid some amount of bitcoins because of marcotheminer's FAULT.)

xDeathwing's topic was quite something else.

@OP aka "Rocket Scientist"

Yes the giveaway happened here.

Yes Stunna is citing evidence from Primedice.

Is it clear now?





@Blazr


Well I guess the bad news is your opinion doesn't count.

Long live EAL

 ;D ;D ;D

~BCX~

Here are the two Pm's I received from him.


I messaged him back and pointed out that the IP's were turkish IP addresses and not VPNs. And how he's basically arguing that he uses a popular VPN which is a turkish IP to bypass restrictions placed on turkish IP's. I asked him to own up to what he did and I would remove the trust placed on him and lock the thread which I thought was a super reasonable way to deal with this situation.

In response he replied with.


So basically, according to EAL everyone in Turkey has the same IP address as him and this is an issue with his ISP.


Feel free to form your own opinions based on this. I've left him neutral rather than negative trust. I'm disappointed he was unwilling to come clean over such a trivial and forgivable matter. This doesn't effect his ability to moderate this forum but I will never do business with him again. I'll lock this in a few days, I'm not upset about the minimal amount of money but rather the persistent dishonesty from him.

Eh, I've had bad experiences with EAL before, but this isn't really something that someone should be demoted over. It's shady and it definitely isn't a "nice" thing to do, but it isn't really scamming in the truest sense of the word.

I had this guy marked negative before over some other stuff (if anyone cares I could dig it up). I agree if he is a good mod then let him stay, but he is not someone I would trust at all. The whole IP story is kinda funny - hint it does not work like that. I do agree he did not scam though and my issue with him was resolved obviously.

He didn't scam 'stunna' but we can agree that he was not really honest at 100%.

If he claimed the giveaway multiple times then he absolutely scammed Stunna.

When a company is giving away money to people, you need to look at the context of the goals of the giveaway (you need to make some assumptions to do this). If for example someone is literally giving money away then someone claiming through multiple alts is really not scamming, the person giving away money is simply giving money to the same person multiple times.

If on the other hand, someone is trying to promote their business then claiming multiple times is absolutely scamming. In this case, Stunna was giving money away to people in exchange for them to have an account, and visit his site. He is hoping that after visiting the site, players will decide to deposit Bitcoin and play at their casino. By claiming from multiple accounts, Stunna is being robbed of this opportunity because only one person is visiting his site verses the seven or eight or however many of EAL's alts claimed.

You can pretty much say that every scam is simply a violation of the TOS. Hell, even moreia had posted at one point that he wasn't scamming because one of his scam sites had something about gambling and risk in the TOS. If someone were to default on a loan, then they could argue that them not paying back is an TOS issue and they shouldn't receive negative trust.

The last time EAL was accused of being others who had done something they shouldn't, he claimed that he held Bitcoin for his friends. To the vast majority of people I would be quick to call BS on that, however being a representative of the forum (by having a staff title, you are assumed to be a representative of the entity you hold that title on), I think he deserves a little bit of the benefit of the doubt. With that being said, the question of if these accounts all belong to the same person should definitely be looked into.

Okay, let's assume for the purpose of this post that EAL did claim the giveaway multiple times like Stunna is saying and that his excuses are lies. Personally I think this is actually plausable as his excuse seems a little bit on-the-edge and iffy.

If the claim by Stunna is true, we shouldn't be worried about the fact EAL abused the giveaway at all. Whatever. The losses were tiny and it wasn't really a major "scam". Really, the main focus would need to be shifted to the lie and attempted cover-up. That's shady.

Note EAL might be telling the truth with his former statement (seems a little unlikely however). But in reality with the latter statement, an ISP having monopoly power will not result in people have duplicate IP addresses. That makes no sense at all, and should be impossible.

Well someone will very rarely scam just one time. In my experience if someone scams once they will try to continue to scam. I also have been told that the accounts in question also tend to claim other giveaways in a similar manner. Don't you think that others should be warned if someone is scamming for small amounts (that very much add up after doing it multiple times)?

Do you think someone who has these kinds of ethics should be trusted to determine which posts can remain and which ones are deleted? I understand there to be a good amount of sensitive information in the staff sub as well.

Lets assume the opposite for a second. Consider you would be accused of the above, that everyone or many users from your country/city/etc. are you and scam giveaways. What would your defense be?


It makes perfect sense if many people use the same VPN. I wonder what Stunna would do if lets say 10 people that live in the same student dorm sharing an IP would claim from a giveaway. Would the assumption be the same? Probably, because for some reason we expect that the same IP is the same person, but in reality many people share an IP address, many without knowing so. Be that in a student dorm or simply an ISP that has less IP4 addresses than customers.

He can use tracking cookies and useragent string to try and differentiate between different browsers.

Yet the argument is "share the same IP", which makes me think that PD has nothing of the suggested solutions in place. At least not for now.

Does EAL claim to live in a student dorm or the like, though? If he does, then yes, all devices connected to his router will have the same external IP address...but if not, I don't think it is possible for two customers to an ISP with different routers to have the same IP address.

Edit: I am actually wrong here. It is. It's just unlikely and the system has a lot of flaws.

Then why create a thread called "EAL should be considered for demotion" if you felt it didn't effect his ability to moderate?

You really don't feel that way.

What happened is you seen none of the powers that be gave a flying shit about your claims.

You're trying to keep from looking like you got it shoved right back in your face.

So why don't you own up to your "trivial matter" here.

You PWND yourself on EAL's behalf.



~BCX~

In general it wouldn't effect his ability to moderate, but if someone were to offer EAL 0.1BTC to lock/move a thread they didn't like would you trust that EAL would decline? What you're missing is the fact that EAL was a staff member I trusted on this forum and he abused my trust on two occasions and will continue to retain a staff position.

At the end of the day this comes down to whether or not you think trustworthiness is an important factor for forum staff, it's clear to me that he abused the forum giveaway and then told a very weak lie to cover it up.

I've left him neutral feedback noting the situation and will lock this thread as this honestly isn't worth further argument. I'm not trying to ruin his livelihood (staff get paid AFAIK), all I wanted was an apology rather than a lie.