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Brown’s home also was raided by federal authorities in 2009 in a case related to the theft of data from an insurance company, but he was never charged in the matter.

What did the cat have anything to do with it?

New Adopters can be solved with preloaded blocks in the install like I have for download here http://knightmb.dyndns.org/files/bitcoin/

I got a weird email from knight during the crisis from the following email: knightmb@knightmb.dyndns.org what i interpreted as warning me he had access to all PM's.

There is also "Items Seized" document with receipt involving his PayPal address: knightmb@endless-sphere.com.

The partners are likely pissed. They may have stolen the USB drive and staged the hoax in order to finger KnightMB.

Wow...way to go buddy. 4 million was just not enough was it? He even pleads ignorance....

http://www.thedaily.com/article/2012/11/09/110912-news-romney-tax-raid/

why is that shot of the cat such bad quality?

http://downloads.thedaily.com/ui-images/2012/11/09/110912-news-romney-tax-raid-3-ss-662w-at-1x.jpg

Because the photographers over at BFL didn't take them.  ;D

Conspiracy theory:

No one would be dumb enough to include photos on the USB stick. Therefore we need a conspiracy.

We know that KnightMB acquired his 371k BTC by buying out partners in a BTC startup. He bought that 371k BTC for less than $5000.
The partners are likely pissed. They may have stolen the USB drive and staged the hoax in order to finger KnightMB.

Lottery winner syndrome.  80% of people receiving windfalls are likely to quickly squander them, and within a few years be right back where they started.  Making money is half the battle, the other half is diversifying and protecting wealth, which requires intelligence and hard work.  I'd bet KnightMB sold out his BTC during the price lows of 2011 and/or put a good chunk in Pirate's fund and other scams, thus explaining the desperation that must've driven him to attempt that insane extortion scam.

It doesn't make sense why someone with 3m+ USD worth of bitcoins would attempt to extort one of the world's most powerful people out of another million. While he is under secret service protection and intense media scrutiny, no less.

why is that shot of the cat such bad quality?

I wonder if the fact that BTC were donated to both the "release" and the "suppress" address ups the ante in terms of charges.  It would be kind of funny if there's some horrible additional offence with which he can be charged because people did send him funds even if the amount was tiny.  I'm guessing that those funds are technically "proceeds of crime".

Oh god.  I'm just reading the search and seizure warrant and they're trying to get him for racketeering offences in addition to the 3 types of fraud.

http://cdn.memegenerator.net/instances/400x/30001846.jpg

enjoy: http://memegenerator.net/Catmb

So a pile of clothes and a kee kat led the cops to this dude. Cat people be warned.

Damn dudes...
Lets take a vote
Coins are lost.
KnightMB still has them.
KnightMB lost them early.
USA Gov has the coins unknowingly
USA Gov has the coins knowingly

Personally, I would prefer to have the coins Lost rather than the USA Gov getting 371k bitcoins.
But at the same time, 371,000/21m is a Huge amount to just "lose" and there wouldnt be any record of it, The whole world could still think "21millions coins out there", But by that time Two Million of them could get lost

So a pile of clothes and a kee kat led the cops to this dude. Cat people be warned.

Michael Brown, 34, told The Daily that ...

“They have a flash drive that I believe belonged to me four years ago. In my line of work, I use these flash drives all the time. They get lost or they get taken.”

I looked around, seems to be two stories. One that says the group "Anonymous" has released them and another that some group got them from his tax office. I think the latter is true and the former was a news hoax. I did read a topic over at the bitcoin.org forum about this as well. They seem to think the FBI will track them down right away.

I highly doubt that cat alone led to KnightMB.

He is either stupid or innocent.

My understanding is that it can be difficult to completely erase data from flash drives - I'm guessing there were other fragments of data on there which were more specific and that's why he can't outright deny having ever possessed the flash drive.

There is no national database of cats.

At 6:10 A.M. before daylight on September 14, 2012 while my wife and I were sleeping in our small Franklin, TN home...

Registered through: GoDaddy.com, LLC (http://www.godaddy.com)
Domain Name: MBDONATIONFUND.COM
Created on: 23-Sep-12
Expires on: 23-Sep-13
Last Updated on: 23-Sep-12

Registrant:
Michael Brown
107 Cadet Circle
Franklin, Tennessee 37064
United States

Administrative Contact:
Brown, Michael donation@mbdonationfund.com
107 Cadet Circle
Franklin, Tennessee 37064
United States
+1.6155551212 Fax -- +1.6155551213

Technical Contact:
Brown, Michael donation@mbdonationfund.com
107 Cadet Circle
Franklin, Tennessee 37064
United States
+1.6155551212 Fax -- +1.6155551213

Domain servers in listed order:
NS21.DOMAINCONTROL.COM
NS22.DOMAINCONTROL.COM

About this page

Our systems have detected unusual traffic from your computer network. This page checks to see if it's really you sending the requests, and not a robot. Why did this happen?

IP address: (edit)
Time: 2012-11-11T23:26:08Z
URL: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&tbo=d&sclient=psy-ab&q=%22%22michael+*+brown%22&oq=%22%22michael+*+brown%22&gs_l=serp.3..0i30j0i10i30j0i30l2j0i10i30j0i30l5.3031.15264.1.15509.21.19.2.0.0.0.180.2162.8j11.19.0.les%3B..0.0...1c.1.m2OWSGZE6wY&psj=1&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_cp.r_qf.&bpcl=38093640&biw=1280&bih=685&ech=1&psi=FzKgUN-mBKqVygGgqIGQBA.1352676345178.3&emsg=NCSR&noj=1&ei=5TKgUL_MJMOayQHbo4DAAg

Something is not adding up with all this. First, I can't believe MB's allowed to post information while an investigation is being conducted. Secondly, He registered the following 9 days after being questioned.

Furthermore, take a look at the EXIF of the photos on his site. Something doesn't add up there either. I was going to add more this post but was stopped by Google (see below the fold).

Source: http://who.godaddy.com/whois.aspx?k=RHD16SymJAqRP35/5oJAhaSvbaZL6sAO&domain=mbdonationfund.com&prog_id=GoDaddy


This is the very first time I've ever encountered something like the following while using Google:


Please don't tell me that theymos is now a mod at Google and I've been banned from using their services.  ;D

EDIT: I just edited out the IP address, for I thought it was only for Sandwich, IL, but luckily I checked for I think (seriously don't know) that it was truly personal. When I searched for it, it asked for log in info.

I'm having a blonde moment here Phin, so help me out.  Are you saying that when you typed Michael * Brown into Google you got that message, because I can't replicate it either with or without the *.

I can't think of any reason why he wouldn't be allowed to post while an investigation is under way.  He hasn't been charged with anything and even if he had been I doubt he'd be gagged by any court.

I'm not surprised that he decided to solicit donations after the search and seizure.  I think it's tacky as hell and that he's hoping to exploit anti-government sentiment, but begging for donations on the internet seems pretty common these days.

When I check the EXIF data it shows the images as having been taken on January 1, 2011 at around 1pm US Pacific time but there's no way of knowing whether the time and date on the camera were set accurately.

Any interviewer worth their salt would have mentioned that unless they were instructed not to. What if a million dollars in gold were requested? Silver? Diamonds? Unmarked twenties? KitKats? Either one of these would have been mentioned. But a million dollars in Bitcoin, a pseudo-currency, doesn't merit a mention? Odd!

I'm not an expert on body language, but overall he does come across as innocent during the interview, but with a couple minor twists when answering in the negative.

He filmed the last time he was raided by the SS. I wonder if he has new footage.

I don't understand how a guy that once had 371,000 BTC at his disposal and runs an "internet provider business" (???) has like 15 harddrives ranging from 20GB to 160GB and only one larger one with 400GB. He's and IT pro for gods sake, so this is an indication he really doesn't have access to any kind of reasonable funds to even run his business. It seems he stopped buying equipment around the time his kids were born, which would make sense.

[...]
He filmed it allright, but the secret service took the harddrive of the h264 recorder. It's on the list of items seized.

That's what makes no sense.  Even if he gave most of the BTC away as he claimed, why the hell didn't he upgrade his hardware and shit?  The evidence that he's the same guy who claimed to have 371,000 BTC is pretty compelling, but did he ever actually have them much less give them away?  Did his gloating about the manner in which he acquired them put him in a position where he was forced to return them before he could spend them?  For that matter, why didn't he upgrade his hardware when he sold the Endless Sphere forums?

[...]

Q: Why the financial issues?
A: The Secret Service came in a few months ago and a lot of important and expensive stuff has been missing since. It is difficult for any business to survive if all of its operating equipment is taken and not returned. Ask a local plumber what would happen if someone took his truck and all the tools used for the trade.

he says he has been robbed before:

http://mbdonationfund.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=52&Itemid=59

There is a lesson here to be learned: Always stream your security video to a secure and distant place.

The FAQ isn't dated so it's difficult to know when he's talking about.  Where are the receipts for the stuff the SS supposedly took before?

There is a lesson here to be learned: Always stream your security video to a secure and distant place.

Ask a local plumber what would happen if someone took his truck and all the tools used for the trade.

If he is talking about Schutzstaffel then the date might be from mid 1930-ties to first half of 1940-ties  ::)
There is much to do for security against such enemy as US government. UPS and encrypted connection to server in distant country is only few of things to be done right.For plumber it would be easy to buy new tools and such and start working again. For someone working in IT the time needed to recover after attack from cops can take months even if all equipment is bought new right after the attack. It is no surprise he is asking for donations.

<snip>

You get hired by a company called "bitcoincorp" and your job is to break into a building where a company called "Knightmb corp" is located.
 "Knightmb corp" has possession of a thumb drive that contains a wallet with %50 of the worlds bitcoins in it which you need to secure before govpal finds and uses to take over their last remaining competitor.

<snip>

Most likely he offered collocation or hosting services that is the most difficult to recover after physical attack. Or sold internet access to neighbors.

We probably know only partial information. There might be some other stupid mistakes that have led cops to him. Most likely KnightMB is the guy who did this tax return hoax. I feel sorry for him because he made some stupid mistake.

like joe23 ;-)

Yes. And the biggest mistake of joe23 was a fast confession  But it was by the rules of the game. In real life if ever facing cops or even NSA is never confess of anything. The evidence can be very limited and indirect anyway. "I don't remember" and "I don't understand" is the best answers to give when questioned.

Did Atlas turn this guy in to get the reward?

Yes. And the biggest mistake of joe23 was a fast confession :D But it was by the rules of the game. In real life if ever facing cops or even NSA is never confess of anything. The evidence can be very limited and indirect anyway. "I don't remember" and "I don't understand" is the best answers to give when questioned.

You don't need to look to Atlas.  The people over on Endless-sphere were extremely pissed off when they discovered he'd acquired the 371,000 BTC and were talking about reporting him to government agencies.  They almost certainly made his former employers aware that they'd been screwed over, too.  It's possible, and perhaps even likely, that people who already had a grudge against KnightMB contacted the SS to suggest him as a likely suspect when news of the Romney tax return thing broke.  

It is possible that someone from this message-board reported him.  Not everyone thought that the way he acquired his 371,000 BTC was "clever".

Someone reporting him as a suspect based on what? Noone had this suspicion. He admits he once owned that particular usb stick!

People on the Endless-sphere forum did think that it might be KnightMB because he's located in Franklin and had previously acquired BTC under dubious circumstances.  They posted that in one of their locked forums on 6 September and the raid happened on 14 September. I have no doubt whatsoever that the SS chased down any and all tip-offs they received even if they seemed tenuous at first glance.

This guy had a way of pissing people off.  It's possible that he pissed off someone who just happened to be in possession of a USB drive he'd discarded and they just waited for an opportunity to use it to set him up, but it seems more likely that when this story broke people he'd pissed off previously decided to contact investigators and say "you might want to take a look at this guy, he had 371,000 BTC and now he says he's broke".  Making such a tip-off didn't require people to actually believe that he'd sent the ransom demands - it only required a desire to make his life difficult (which is what the Endless-sphere posters were hoping to do when they talked about reporting him to the IRS).

If a flash drive of mine turned up somewhere, my first thought wouldn't be that someone had gone through my garbage to get it.  It would be either that I'd left it somewhere by accident or that I'd loaded stuff onto it for someone and given it to them.  In order for someone to set KnightMB up with that flashdrive, they had to know of his association with Bitcoins.

Oh yeah, I thought about considering being caught that way as "not by the rules" and just ignoring it... would've loved so much to continue and learn more. But can you imagine the discussion that would've happened when I would've had my identity revealed later on? That would've damaged my reputation badly ;>. I'm not Matthew, hehe. (although 14 BTC is not 90,000 BTC either)

In case of real trouble playing dumb is a good suggestion. Reputation with the cops doesn't matter, confessions you accidentally give them do.

It's possible, and perhaps even likely, that people who already had a grudge against KnightMB contacted the SS to suggest him as a likely suspect when news of the Romney tax return thing broke.

The agents also were clumsy in their removal of his equipment, Brown said.

"They left me with the impression of a bunch of apes with screwdrivers punching away at stuff."

From the surprisingly entertaining USA Today article:

I don't get it. I was of the impression we were talking about the USB stick that was sent to PWC. If the pissed off people had come into posession of knightmbs stick, they would've still had to put the tax returns on it and send it to PWC and setup the whole extortion, effectively comitting the crime. It sounds like you don't believe that but rather that the people decided to set him up "when the [extortion] story" broke.

I'm definitely having trouble believing that someone obtained his USB stick and decided to set him up, much less that they went out of their way to obtain one of his USB sticks with the specific intention of setting him up.

I have no trouble whatsoever, though, in believing that when news stories about the extortion attempt broke and people who had an already existing grudge against KnightMB read of the Franklin and BTC connection they decided to connect the authorities and say "look into this guy" - not necessarily because they believed he had anything to do with it, but because they knew that a Secret Service investigation into an extortion attempt against a presidential candidate would make his life difficult.  That the USB drive actually did turn out to have belonged to KnightMB wasn't something anyone needed to have known or even suspected if the intention was purely to fuck up his shit. 

Maybe there was something else entirely that directed the suspicion of the SS towards KnightMB - I just wouldn't be surprised if they got tip-offs naming his as a possible suspect given that he'd screwed people over in the past and the recent past at that.  If you want to fuck up someone's shit out of spite, report them to a government agency for something you know will be investigated.  Whether or not they've actually done it doesn't matter if the investigation itself would make their life difficult.

ok, that story can make sense. However it would make knightmb having owned the stick before a pure coincidence. It would be more satisfying if there was a connection.

ok, that story can make sense. However it would make knightmb having owned the stick before a pure coincidence. It would be more satisfying if there was a connection.

In 2009 the same agency came to his house looking for evidence tying him to the alleged theft of thousands of Social Security numbers held by an insurance company. He was never charged, and Brown said he met with federal agents four times to answer questions; he even agreed to a polygraph, he said.

Obviously those of you engaging in endless speculation as to what could prompt the SS to investigate him missed this article:

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2012/11/12/romney-tax-returns-hacker/1699075/

Obviously those of you engaging in endless speculation as to what could prompt the SS to investigate him missed this article:

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2012/11/12/romney-tax-returns-hacker/1699075/

Did Atlas turn this guy in to get the reward?

It has been touched upon at least thrice along with a link to the video showing that raid.

From the Secret Services perspective, MB posting about the Romney stuff on his Timekoin site, coupled with being a Bitcoiner, was probably more than enough for them to look at this guy. Add his support for Obama, and his postings against Romney, not to mention his pics of his cats on Facebook, and even the dumbest SS agent can put together probable cause and have a judge sign off on the warrant.

And, he's now involved in not one, but two alternative currencies.

I'll give the dude the benefit of the doubt, but his track record was more than enough for him to be looked at.

~Bruno K~

Holy hell, man.  How do you stumble across stuff like this?  Surely you didn't remember it.

Well... A USB stick containing the Romney ransom note was delivered to PriceWaterhouseCoopers in Tennessee.

Quite incredibly, KnightMB admits to having had the same exact USB stick in his possession.

From: http://www.thedaily.com/article/2012/11/09/110912-news-romney-tax-raid/



(Emphasis mine.) Notice how he doesn't say "a flash drive that they believe belonged to me."
By failing to shut up, he manages to incriminate himself in an interview with a newspaper.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/3b/Paris_Tuileries_Garden_Facepalm_statue.jpg/300px-Paris_Tuileries_Garden_Facepalm_statue.jpg

Lesson of the day: When implicated in a crime (such as blackmailing a presidential candidate),
don't go to the paper and and tell them that the instrument of the crime belongs to you.

I'm not saying that him owning the USB stick is a coincidence - obviously it isn't if he's the one who sent the extortion demands.  What I'm saying is that it's not unusual to receive tip-offs which are based on little more than "sounds like something person X might do" or for people to make reports to government agencies out of pure spite.  Many such tips will go absolutely nowhere, but sometimes they lead to actual evidence that the person being reported was involved in the crime even if the person making the report didn't really believe they were responsible but just wanted to cause them grief. 

Maybe someone thought this is exactly the kind of thing KnightMB would do because of his prior sketchy behaviour or maybe they just saw an opportunity to make his life difficult.  Maybe the SS received no tip-offs regarding KnightMB at all and it was something else entirely which made them look in his direction.

If he's eventually charged, there's a good chance that we'll find out more background information about what led to him being investigated.

The initial investors never got the concept really. When I first started, when 1 BTC was basically $0.0001, the idea was to generate/buy as many as possible, then use it for payments. So if someone wanted a credit card that could buy $100 worth of stuff, they would insert X number of bitcoins to get that value loaded on the card. To keep the bank current, the credit card would be backed by Bitcoins at the bank basically. They initially though that 1 BTC would never get above maybe $0.20 per BTC, at least that's what I go from them. So they invested about $12k to either generated or buy bitcoins for the first part of 2010.

My part was to simply compile some versions of bitcoin that could run on the Amazon cloud service. They rented a ton of CPU time and basically generated BTC non-stop for a while. At the same time, I was buying from members here (they probably remember me buying a ton from them) and then funnel everything into one massive wallet file. After funds ran out, so did the Amazon CPU time and me bugging members to buy what they had generated from the start.

Then things sat in limbo for a while, long while. The project went bust and the people I was working with really still had no idea how BTC worked really. Soon, the project turned into zombie status and the initial investors (remember these aren't technical people in the least) though it was worthless or maybe just a fade that was dieing a quick death. Who am I to argue? That's when I offered a buy out back in Feb of this year and they took it finally.

I think after a few more stories make it in the news about the BTC value, they will kick themselves for sure.

Either way, I'm keeping my BTC in several secure places and the wallet files I'll make sure never touch my PC for security reasons. I look at it as a retirement fund, when I finally get tired of working the 9 to 5 grind, I can tell my boss to shove it with a smile  ;D

Well, here goes a long spiel.

Probably the last that anyone had heard from me before a few days ago was dated September, 2011 according to my profile stats. So it has been a long time of me just lurking around from time to time.

I can't remember exactly when, but some story broke on the Internet about my bitcoin collection and shortly afterwards things got crazy.

The first thing that happened was my inbox here at the forum exploded with people asking for a loan of anywhere from 10k to 100k bitcoins to start the next big market place. I had a few people message me here that they had been burned by a hacker or some website that had their wallet information and asked for anywhere from 100 to 1k bitcoins as a way to help them recover their loss. I always wanted to help people, but there is no well to tell if these were sincere request or just someone out to make a quick bitcoin scam. Some of those I did help people I did help just to be nice, but word must have gotten around quick.

I had to step back from the forums for a while as it was a good place for people to chase me down. All the questions of what I would do with it or how did I get it, was I the one that hacked XYZ website and that's why I have so many, etc. Somewhere in this topic I think, is a another long explanation of how I came into possession of it all. Long story short, I was in bitcoin early when the network was small and basically used a lot of Amazon processing power to load up a ton of bitcoin miners all at once in their clusters (Amazon) using a custom compiled version of the CentOS bitcoind source files. Amazon had a big price difference between running a lot of windows sessions and running a lot of Linux sessions. Turns out, the Linux sessions were running kind of an old version of CentOS as well as I couldn't even get the compiled binaries to run.

Well, a lot of money was spent to generate that chunk of bitcoins, but not so I could posses it all, there were plans to use it as a backing for re-loadable credit cards like service that had bitcoin powering it in the background. Needless to say, that project fell out due to (at least in hindsight) very inept investors. The project floundered and then finally as a way to get out, they (investors) wanted to see what they could sell everything for. It had cost a lot of real money to produce that pile of bitcoins, so I ended up buying it for dirt cheap (at least in terms that bitcoins really had no value to them). Maybe after the 7 year NDS I signed expires, the world will know who it was, but for now I can't name anyone or business.

Once the market value was shooting up to space, the pile of bitcoins was worth a small fortune in theory at least.

A lot of bitcoins were spread around the community to help people at first, but it kind of got out of hand.
Ultimately, a large portion ended up being donated to wikileaks.org, so I'm certainly not the person sitting up top a large pile of bitcoins anymore. The rest went to paying off small debts and the very last of it was just recently donated to wikileaks.org again. I never had any intention of trying to crash the bitcoin market with a large sell-off as many theorized I would do. So sleep safe that there is one less person like me in the bitcoin kingdom.  ;D

So, no matter what legend has built up, nothing amazing or exciting has happened to the bitcoins I once had. No buying a Country or purchasing Islands of the sort. Just trying to help out where I could instead. The only thing I have left is old screenshots and empty wallet files now.

A large portion of my past time has actually been invested in the creation of an alternate digital currency for the last few years because I always thought there was a better way to do it. So that's where I spend all my time now, at timekoin.org (http://timekoin.org)

I was great to catch up with everyone though, hopefully the story wasn't too boring. Maybe not as exciting as some had hoped.

Obviously those of you engaging in endless speculation as to what could prompt the SS to investigate him missed this article:

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2012/11/12/romney-tax-returns-hacker/1699075/

The guy definitely has a sketchy history, only some of which is Bitcoin related.

Michael seem like an admirable guy, and wish I could have spend some time with him talking Bitcoin, informing him beforehand that there wouldn't need to be any discussion on the issue this thread is about.

How anticlimactic. :(