Bitcoin Forum

I don't usually like to get involved in personal drama like this, and I know stuff related to the Bruce situation is being directed to Off-Topic, but the disgusting Mybitcoin scandal is most definitely on-topic, and it is looking increasingly likely that we have found at least one of the person(s) responsible. Here's why:

The First Clue

http://mortgagefraudblog.com/perp-walk/item/10674-illinois_foreclosure_rescue_company_fined_and_shut_down


Somebody called Bruce Wagner is a fraudster, responsible for - at least - a huge foreclosure scam. On its own, this proves nothing and could well be a coincidence, but is the first step in our lengthy trail of evidence.

Edit 2: Not only was Bruce involved in the original Ohio fraud lawsuit (http://www.scribd.com/doc/63630294/Bruce-Wagner-Bold-Funding-Fraud-Judgement) regarding the aforementioned foreclosure scam, but he's also in default of a $514,400 lawsuit (http://www.scribd.com/doc/63631152/Bruce-Wagner-Edward-Gel-NY-Supreme-Court-Summons) in New York regarding assault and fraud - there is no record (http://iapps.courts.state.ny.us/iscroll/SQLData.jsp?IndexNo=101308-2008#) of him ever having paid up.

The Connection

Edit: Bruce Wagner has since confessed (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=40404.0) to being the same Bruce Wagner as owned Bold Funding, but here's how he was caught:

Whois data from the domain of scam company "Bold Funding." Note the address: 9 E Huron St., Chicago


Next, an online business card from that same physical address. Note the domain name: brucewagner.com

http://www.imarketlive.com/USA/biz/bruce-wagner-omnimedia-inc-MTE2NDIwNDU.html
https://www.nanaimogold.com/images/bruce_omni.PNG

Finally, the LinkedIn profile of the Bitcoin Show presenter Bruce Wagner, the Bruce Wagner we're interested in.

http://www.linkedin.com/in/brucewagner
https://www.nanaimogold.com/images/bruce_linkedin.PNG

He owns the same domain name and company name as the fraudster. There's our connection - both Bruce Wagners are the same. The host of the Bitcoin Show is a convicted fraudster. This is the most visually striking chain of evidence, but other links, such as a correlating date of birth from criminal records, are in the process of being uncovered.

The Shill

So far, we've only proved that Wagner's a dodgy character - however, he could have reformed, and even if he hasn't we've nothing to prove he was anything other than a high-profile victim of a Bitcoin scandal. And we still wouldn't - were it not for the fact that one of Bruce's shills was a little unimaginative in his choice of pseudonym. Here's some of his posts, claiming to be a satisfied customer of Bruce's old company, Bold Funding:

https://i.imgur.com/E9Y9B.png
https://i.imgur.com/RNOvx.png
https://i.imgur.com/RNOvx.png
https://i.imgur.com/vMwDa.png
https://i.imgur.com/I4l7I.png

Tod Williams. Doesn't that name sound familiar? It will to victims of the MyBitcoin fiasco - Tom Williams was the man at the helm of MyBitcoin when it went down with half of its clients' money, including, allegedly, 25,000BTC of cash belonging to it's biggest advocate -Bruce Wagner.

From this, we've established two key facts: the first being that Bruce Wagner is a convicted con artist and the second that one of his shills called himself Tod Willlams. In isolation, neither of these conclusively link him to the scam But together, along with our knowledge about Bruce's activities before the collapse, they leave us with very little doubt of what the score is. The specifics aren't exactly clear, but it looks as if Tom/Tod Williams was a shill for Bruce's original foreclosure scam, and when he came to run one of his own - MyBitcoin - Bruce returned the favour using his popular and trusted Bitcoin show. But that might not be all...

Accomplice or Mastermind?

Followers of Bruce's online posting may have noticed he has a distinctive typing style, one which, amongst other things, makes heavy...use...of...ellipses. Though it's pure speculation, these followers have noted a distinct similarity between the style of Bruce Wagner and Tod Williams, the shill in his earlier foreclosure scam. This has led them to believe - again though, I stress that this is purely educated guesswork - that Tod Williams was in fact a pseudonym for Bruce himself, and that Tom Williams, by implication, was a reuse of this same pseudonym, slightly altered. It would certainly be foolish of him to be so careless in leaving connections to his previous life in this manner but, as we've seen, it wouldn't be the first time he's made a mistake like this. This would imply that Bruce wasn't just an accomplice in someone else's scam, but the mastermind behind the whole operation.

The Facts

We know that Bruce Wagner defrauded hundreds of thousands of dollars out of innocent homeowners. We know that he was an avid supporter of MyBitcoin, and claimed to have entrusted, and subsequently lost, huge amounts of money with the company. We're fairly sure he was in fact somehow involved, and may have even been in charge of, the whole operation, which is looking likely to be a fraud.


However, one thing's for sure: Bruce Wagner's got a lot of explaining to do.

This has been my theory for awhile. I know people here will not allow Bruce's name to be brought up in any negative light, but he is your best-case starting point for an investigation into what ACTUALLY happened with the coins

Well, it is kind of... interesting that the user "bbit" here, who uses a.... posting style that highly resembles Bruce, and who posted here (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=34770.0) indicating that he was.... part of the OnlyOneTV show, was the person posting press releases (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=34770.0) on behalf of mybitcoin.  Strange...

//Subscribing for further discussion.

Very Interesting.

Wow.  Go internet detectives.  Amazing.  Someone check this shit for accuracy, I'm too lazy.  But, wow.  Lemmie click an emoticon button real quick  :o

As someone who lost BTC's with mybitcoin, I'd really like this thread to stay in the Bitcoin Discussion thread. This is very relevant to BTC's.

I've been reading the evidence as it has unfolded on SomethingAwful, and my instinct is that we have all been taken for a ride by an experienced confidence trickster.

While there have been a lot of posts regarding Bruce's sexual preferences relating to Pattaya, while that evidence is damning, none of the evidence is conclusive proof that he is a paedophile.

But his mortgage fraud, his spamming email company and his defaulting on rent, linked with his abject denial that child prostitution even exists in Thailand, well, let's just say that Bruce is the LAST person to be a spokesperson for Bitcoin. At least we know how he can afford an expensive apartment and studio in NY though.

I hope that the sponsors of his show are made aware of the recent revelations.

Maybe someone who actually lost money in the MyBitCoin.com fiasco should fill this (https://tips.fbi.gov/) out? Just go ahead and copy this thread's URL into the information box.

I'm not going to go cry to the group I'm very eagerly trying to get away from.

nope, just because I enjoyed Onlyonetv doesn't mean I'm Bruce. The mybitcoin press release was  copy and paste into the forum.

Also, Bruce was heavily promoting MyBitcoin on his show. While he claimed that friends and family lost bitcoins when MBC ceased operations, we only have HIS word for that. He was also heavily involved in the BitCoin 'Police', and was able to steer the investigation in whatever direction he wanted. We also only have HIS word that a report was filed with the FBI.

It seems like a classic scam to me.

If I lived in the US, I would be filing an immediate report with the police. I hope US bitcoin users who lost money do file reports.

Face-palm

Bruce Wagner has confessed (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=40404.0) to running Bold Funding Inc, the company which ran the foreclosure scam.

29 posts and I've never heard of you before on this forum and all of sudden you care so much about this issue to be posting everywhere about Bruce Wagner? There are dozen of you. You all from SA?

I've been on the forum for a few days. No I did not come from SA, but I have since registered an SA account this evening as I told you in a previous thread.

I joined this forum mainly due to the revelations regarding Bruce. Believe it or not, I care about bitcoins, and I don't want to see a huge PR mess exploding in our faces to the likes of "Internet crypto currency often associated with paedophiles and scammers is promoted by a convicted fraudster and possible paedophile".

If you check my post history, I also post in non Bruce threads ;)

[E2A] Why won't you explain your connections with OnlyOneTV? And could you please explain why you are attacking anyone who has anything negative to say about bruce, while at the same time ignoring the multitude of clear evidence that is laid out for all to see?

Could anyone find that thread created, someone saying, everybody should use mybitcoin as for a secure way to keep BTC?

I recall, it was a high count post on the thread creator. I thought of this for some time, ironically, I believe a week or two passed after this thread was created, mybitcoin went down.

I tried finding the thread but couldn't.

But someone was strongly pushing highly recommending people to put there stash into mybitcoin, a few weeks later it goes down.

lol...I'm not at all and it does matter. Like SA has any credibility its a troll forum! are you kidding me?

Apparently unless you post daily and bbit knows of you personally, you're a troll from somethingawful.com.

Although I dont trust Bruce at all having seen his recent posts, I think the Tod/Tom Williams thing is quite a stretch, as was the pedo stuff. Even if he was Tod, a similar name in use 6 years later is hardly a smoking gun.

You need to consider the circumstantial evidence. A proven fraudster tries to convince people to put their money into an obvious scam, and then it mysteriously vanishes (and suddenly the fraudster can afford a holiday to Tokyo despite having no obvious day job.) I'm having trouble understanding why a man who is obviously fairly proficient in the art of fraud would put any money into something so obviously dodgy unless he actually didn't and was only claiming to have done as part of his shtick.

odd.

The "Bruce Wagner = Tod Williams = Tom Williams" seems tenuous at best.  Curious to see where this goes, though.

Is it just me, or does "Tod Williams uses Tom Williams as alias to create scam to recover money lost to Bruce, so he can buy himself a new house to replace the one Bruce made sure he lost, and make Bruce look like one dumb mother fucker in the process" sound like a lame Hollywood script? :)

Persoanlly, I'm waiting for the news about Bruce Wagner hacking MtGox to come out before passing final judgement. If he didn't do it last time, then he's probably doing it as we speak in japan. He might be "social engineering" MagicalTux to get the data he needs...

On a (slightly) more serious note: If this is real, then Bruce is much less intelligent than I thought he was.

Strange how mybitcoin.com just went offline.


404 error page shows it is hosted at Arvixe


Wait, I've seen that somewhere...
Of course, this is where OnlyOneTv is hosted!


Bruce, you are a magnet to unfortunate coincidences.

I think the we unraveled the mystery guys! SELL SELL SELL!!! Perhaps Bruce took control of thymos's account to move this post!

Does anyone think Bruce is satoshi?

No. The first time I watched the bitcoin show, I was chatting in the associated IRC channel. I ended up being asked in private by them to explain to them what the hashing was about. They thought up until then that the process was to brute-force the encryption key for the "reward" in the block.

It has also emerged that Bruce was not only involved in the Ohio fraud lawsuit (http://www.scribd.com/doc/63630294/Bruce-Wagner-Bold-Funding-Fraud-Judgement) regarding the aforementioned foreclosure scam, but there's also this summons to the New York Supreme Court (http://www.scribd.com/doc/63631152/Bruce-Wagner-Edward-Gel-NY-Supreme-Court-Summons) demanding Bruce appear to answer accusations of assault and fraud - he did not, thus defaulting on the $514,400 lawsuit. There is no record (http://iapps.courts.state.ny.us/iscroll/SQLData.jsp?IndexNo=101308-2008#) of him ever having paid up.

Bruce is not smart enough to be Satoshi

Satoshi isn't smart enough to be Satoshi...

Clearly not. Why would the master ruin his own creation?
Unless this is just the tip of the iceberg?
Wait.. Are you guys all Bruce? Am I the only non-Bruce poster in this whole story?? ;)

There really is matter for a good book here.
That completely beats the plot of Azimov's fundation series!

That would be interesting though to know just how Bruce came to know about Bitcoin and how he got involved.
At the time he joined, there were not that many Bitcoiners.
Was he introduced by someone?
Did he come out of nowhere?

I've pondered the same dilemma.

All this proves to me is that someone is deliberately trying to make it look like mybitcoin.com is hosted at the some place as onlyonetv.com:


Someone changed mybitcoin.com to return a redirect response to the ip address where onlyonetv.com is hosted.  I didn't want to get involved in this thread, but felt this needed to be pointed out.

I agree. Traceroutes:


10  as6453-pe01.350ecermak.il.ibone.comcast.net (75.149.228.250)  47.944 ms  49.534 ms  49.439 ms
11  if-9-2131.tcore1.ct8-chicago.as6453.net (206.82.141.170)  48.942 ms  67.788 ms  49.517 ms
12  vlan553.icore1.ct8-chicago.as6453.net (206.82.141.90)  47.954 ms
    vlan554.icore1.ct8-chicago.as6453.net (206.82.141.150)  49.599 ms
    vlan553.icore1.ct8-chicago.as6453.net (206.82.141.90)  48.612 ms
13  nyk-bb1-link.telia.net (80.91.248.193)  71.004 ms  70.361 ms
    nyk-bb2-link.telia.net (213.155.131.242)  72.189 ms
14  ldn-bb2-link.telia.net (213.248.65.93)  139.773 ms  140.496 ms  141.884 ms
15  adm-bb2-link.telia.net (80.91.253.146)  152.392 ms  151.287 ms  181.876 ms
16  adm-b4-link.telia.net (213.155.130.219)  152.629 ms  169.254 ms  159.640 ms
17  leaseweb-ic-129604-adm-b4.c.telia.net (213.248.91.222)  147.229 ms  158.539 ms  147.109 ms
18  te5-4.sr1.sbp.leaseweb.net (62.212.80.45)  149.640 ms  147.511 ms  152.144 ms
19  * * *
20  * * *
[^C at sinkhole]

And

 8  pos-0-5-0-0-pe01.1950stemmons.tx.ibone.comcast.net (68.86.85.26)  39.947 ms  39.111 ms  39.964 ms
 9  208.175.175.97 (208.175.175.97)  38.200 ms  38.468 ms  40.974 ms
10  dpr1-ge-2-0-0.dallasequinix.savvis.net (204.70.204.146)  36.954 ms  37.560 ms  38.237 ms
11  cr2-tengige0-7-5-0.dallas.savvis.net (204.70.196.29)  38.728 ms  38.863 ms  37.956 ms
12  cr2-tengig-0-15-0-0.newyork.savvis.net (204.70.196.118)  81.230 ms  77.316 ms  76.189 ms
13  er1-te-2-0-0.newyork.savvis.net (204.70.197.9)  76.943 ms  75.843 ms  77.936 ms
14  216.89.82.118 (216.89.82.118)  79.441 ms  79.414 ms  81.667 ms
15  208.116.63.206 (208.116.63.206)  78.681 ms  80.528 ms  78.443 ms
16  208.116.63.70 (208.116.63.70)  80.934 ms  81.029 ms  81.435 ms
17  208.116.63.85 (208.116.63.85)  80.437 ms  80.031 ms  78.693 ms
18  50.61.240.200 (50.61.240.200)  79.187 ms  81.212 ms  78.441 ms
[end]

Completely different regions, route paths, and disposition of probe packets near target.

Why would someone do that? And than who could have done it?

Well, that's mighty interesting.  Makes the "we were hacked" claims even more suspicious.

One could only assume why, to try and make connections that arn't there...

The one thing it does mean for sure is the person(s) reponsible for Mybitcoin are still here and following the recent accusations.....

Only someone in control of the mybitcoin server could have done that.

As to why?

If Bruce is COMPLETELY innocent of any wrongdoing in mybitcoin, and the mybitcoin guy just used Bruce as an easy pawn...

If Bruce is COMPLETELY innocent in the mybitcoin stuff and the mybitcoin guy just by dumb luck managed to have someone busted for fraud be the one promoting him...

He's probably going "OH YES THANK YOU GOD THANK YOU JESUS" and doing everything he can to convince us that Bruce _IS_ the mybitcoin operator so we won't try to track down "Tom Williams" any more.

It's also entirely possible Bruce is involved after all and just made the dumbest typo or 'shit, wrong window' mistake of his life.

Don't worry, its just the new policy.

if topic_title || topic_contents contains "Bruce Wagner" -> Move to random(Meta,Off-Topic).

Just like most other large scale scams, there are almost certainly multiple persons behind the MyBitcoin scam. It was so well prepared ahead of time (1+ year of effort), so well organized, etc.

For example the Bitcoin Police did a pretty good job of linking MyBitcoin to Dalin Owen: http://bitcoin.crimeunit.net/wiki/index.php/MyBitcoin_Summary

• Dalin clearly has the technical skills to develop the technology running a site like MyBitcoin, especially given the technical security measures that were deployed behind it, his background in online security & anonymity, his confessed association with Privacy Sharks (http://www.dalinowen.com/), etc.
  
• Bruce would have the entrepreneurial mind and creativity to invent MyBitcoin, plan the operation, manage it, promote it via his show, etc, especially given his confession of running Bold Funding Inc (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=40404.0) and public court records demonstrating he defrauded his customers.
  

Therefore one could imagine Dalin and Bruce (and perhaps others) being the guys running MyBitcoin, with Tod/Tom Williams being an alias used by either Dalin or Bruce over multiple years in different situations (the brain is a poor source of entropy, people inventing fake names re-use the same ones, etc).

(There is so much drama and so many stories happening in the Bitcoin community, wow.)

That's a stretch, unless Theymos was convicted of fraud in a mortgage assistance scam too. :)

All this drama, and the price has only dropped .40  ???

Sharing personal information, possible defamation of character, etc. etc. It's hard to find solid facts on the internet :( If they straight out deleted it; I'd cry conspiracy.

I don't know about the rest of the mods, but I'm a new mod and just moving/locking/deleting as appropriate when it's a complete troll post.

This is just weak!

Would one of you guys file a fucking police report so he can get locked up if any of this crap is real and bitcoin can move on. Or shut the fuck up and stop spreading FUD. Atm this forum is like a soap opera on bad acid.

Oh and mods and admin pick your balls up off the damned floor set a timeframe or what ever for getting this bowl of crud sorted one way or another if not met then just just zap any threads on this shite to kingdom come there are other places for this kind of.....

Yes, and Bruce has had several.

I pulled my sponsorship (bluecanarynightlight.com) pretty quickly after seeing what a mess the Bitcoin Show was. I regret every bit-penny I paid for those ads. I hope the community will accept my apologies for being in any way involved.

OK, let's see what hard data we can find.

Bold Funding, Inc.
Nevada corporation search (http://nvsos.gov/sosentitysearch/CorpDetails.aspx?lx8nvq=miY3gPQTRABI6kXTVjnPuQ%253d%253d&nt7=0)
Status: "Permanently Revoked".  President: "BRUCE WAGNER" Address "2248 MERIDIAN BLVD STE H   MINDEN, NV".  

The address is actually "Sutton Law Center" (http://sutlaw.com/), an "Incorporate in Nevada" firm specializing in "asset protection". "Corporate Direct forms and maintains your entity, and you subscribe to the Corporate Formality Services, we guarantee that you will not be exposed to personal liability from an attempt to pierce the corporate veil. If you are planning to form an entity to create asset protection, subscribing to the Corporate Formality Services will give you the added confidence that your protection team is working for you."

Updating...

An image of the court judgement against Bruce Wagner and Bold Funding (http://www.scribd.com/doc/63630294/Bruce-Wagner-Bold-Funding-Fraud-Judgement) is available.
"... Defendant Bold Funding and Defendant Bruce Wagner did not possess a license to engage in the business of a mortgage broker, mortgage servicing company, or a mortgage company in Illinois. ... Defendant Bold Funding and Defendant Bruce Wagner received thousands of dollars from homeowners for the purpose of providing funding for them, but the Defendants did not provide such services and then retained these monies for their own use."

After reading all this shit the last few days I think this is on spot:


And not only does this imply that this mybitcoin guy is on this forum, it is also likely that he is one of those that constantly bring up new threads about Bruce, because this "Tom Williams" seems o be the main profiteer of having Bruce as an easy pawn.

Maybe some mod should send the IP addresses of those thread starters to #bitcoin-police.

Maybe, but this isn't a courtroom, and your diatribe not evidence of much.  If he was a con artist, he was a crappy one, and still is.  What con artist would still be using an identity that could easily tie back to such prior events?  Particularly within a community that it is so very easy to obscure one's own identity.  What gain would there have been for Bruce to invest into Mybitcoin.com just to scuttle it?  Certainly he would have known that the blockchain would eventually trace back to himself and that the scandal would have devalued the currency.

Mods can't do this, only global administrators.

It's evidence that Bruce Wagner has admitted to being a man who's defrauded vulnerable homeowners out of hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Who says Bruce "invested" in anything?

It's like conning 101 man, you pretend to put a lot of your own capital into an investment and invite friends along for the ride, meanwhile you have control over the whole thing and run off with the other investments when it is time to disappear.

Now we need hard data establishing that the Bruce Wagner of Bold Funding is the Bruce Wagner of The Bitcoin Show.

You mean like all the hard data that has been gathered over the course of the day that even forced Bruce Wagner to admit that he is the same person, but claim it was just mismanagement not fraud?

Uh, you know Bruce Wagner admitted to it on these very forums, right?
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=40404.0 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=40404.0)

Did you think he just volunteered this information?

http://my.afterdawn.com/punlman/ (http://my.afterdawn.com/punlman/)
https://i.imgur.com/dVcoG.png

http://forum.spamcop.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=100 (http://forum.spamcop.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=100) / http://forum.spamcop.net/forums/index.php?showuser=100 (http://forum.spamcop.net/forums/index.php?showuser=100)
https://i.imgur.com/mkuT7.png https://i.imgur.com/n7U5o.png

It's no "unfortunate coincidence" 50.61.240.200 is the IP address for onlyonetv.com

Strangely enough, when you try and curl mybitcoin.com NOW, you get a blank response.  :P

The fact Bruce started his own thread admitting that he was isn't hard enough?

wow. just wow.



Case closed.
Lock em up.



Penalty should be death. We don't need this shit on Earth.

This isn't even a huge deal, does anyone here think it would be too much to ask for Bruce to release the public encryption key for his Wallet so we can all see that he was refunded all the money he lost from Mybitcoin.com, seems simple enough right?

So why wont he do it?

I have been impressed with the ability of our little collective to track down and piece together pieces of the mybitcoin.com puzzle.  I don't claim that I have anything profound to add, but just in case it may be helpful in the future, I am presenting an email thread I had with Bruce Wagner regarding mybitcoin.com.

On July 5th I started a thread, "Mybitcoin is a scam!" (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=26224.0)  At around that time I sent Bruce Wagner an email asking him to stop promoting Mybitcoin on his bitcoinme site:
https://i.imgur.com/QmmD1.png

I received this reply:
https://i.imgur.com/qHBYb.png

A few days later I sent another request asking him to take mybitcoin off his site:
https://i.imgur.com/YAl51.png

And I received this reply:
https://i.imgur.com/BpRqs.png

...and then this reply:
https://i.imgur.com/Y9gpR.png

About three weeks later I noticed his site had changed not at all and I sent this:
https://i.imgur.com/2nBAc.png

And I received this reply:
https://i.imgur.com/qPaon.png

Then, On August 2nd when mybitcoin.com went dark I received this.  Unfortunately, I actually read it a couple of days later because I hadn't been checking my email account. I never chatted with Bruce.
https://i.imgur.com/7uJ2C.png

end!

Unfortunately that wouldn't even accomplish anything. I have something like a hundred bitcoin addresses that have transactions associated with them... If you suspected me of such wrongdoing I could just hand out 50 of the addresses for you to look for in the block chain. It'd be pretty damn hard to link in the other fifty especially if I had told you I had fifty... And, hell. I told you I have two hundred. Maybe I have many, many more...

Or I could just go look at the block chain, try to find some reasonably idle addresses with transactions that suit my claim, and give you those addresses. Odds are even if the owner was in this forum... I mean, seriously, are you gonna recognize the address you got one block generation from six months ago? Or the temporary address you used with Mt.Gox three months ago?

It's _POSSIBLE_ that if he gave out such information it could be used to uncover something incriminating, but it's not nearly as simple as it might seem at first. Especially since all he has to do is ... Well, give you every address but the one he got his share of the coins sent to, if he is behind it. And even if he is behind it, there's probably more than one wallet.dat involved now...

I cut out the actual text because it's a good wall of images and I'm hesitant to duplicate it immediately below the original just to add two lines of response.

I'm not going to consider this proof that Bruce is involved even though it raises an absolute ton of red flags about whether there really was collusion between the two entities.

I am going to say that I can see a good lawyer making this stick as a willful negligence case. Especially because at this point I find the notion of Bruce keeping the more than 25,000 coins he claimed he lost in there after hearing these warnings from you and others (there were many flying around around then, as you may recall) stored in mybitcoin if he's going to "address it" to be ... well, if Bruce is smart enough to log into a forum I can't believe he's too dimwitted to take his coins out just to be on the safe side especially if he's going to actually "address it" on his show and make the sponsor with 25,000 of his coins look bad.

After all, mybitcoin was a sponsor, so Bruce had a financial motive to sweep any evidence of wrongdoing on their part under the rug even if he wasn't involved... and if nothing else I think this email chain means that at minimum that's what Bruce was doing. Sweep, sweep, sweep. Yes, please give me my ad fees now.

The kind who uses that simple fact over and over for an excuse as to why he couldn't possibly be scamming.

Bernie Madoff never used a fake name, either. Guess he was on the up and up as well.

Hi Angus, you forgot to cover up this one here :P

https://i.imgur.com/qPaon.png

Thats probably because the guys behind the MyBitcoin fraud read the forums (probably post under different nicks) and know that the trick to incriminate Bruce Wagner for the MyBitcoin fraud has failed: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=40417.msg492861#msg492861

Uh, I meant to do that.

Going back to the Bruce Wagner / Bold Funding case, here's what the court had to say:

C. In the course of trade or commerce in Cook County,Illinois, in 2004, Defendant Bold Funding and Defendant Bruce Wagner engaged in the following deceptive acts in violation of the Consumer Fraud Act:

(i) As part of a fraudulent plan or scheme, the Defendants falsely represented, or directed others to falsely represent, that Defendant Bold Funding would locate and secure private funding, for a fee, for homeowners in foreclosure; when in fact, Defendant Bold Funding did not intend to provide such services and did not provide such services. This activity is a violation of paragraph 505/2 of the Consumer Fraud Act [8 ] 5 ILCS 505/2J.

(ii) The Defendants falsely represented, or directed others to falsely represent, that Defendant Bold Funding had failed to secure private funding for homeowners on only one (1) or two (2) previous occasions; when in fact, Defendant Bold Funding had not secured private funding for most, if not all, of its customers. This misrepresentation is a violation of paragraph 50512 of the Consumer Fraud Act ISI5 LCS 505/2J.

(iii) The Defendants falsely represented, or directed others to falsely represen, that Defendant Bold Funding was a private real estate investors' group; when in fact, Defendant Bold Funding did not invest, directly or indirectly, in real estate. This misrepresentation is a violation of paragraph 50512 of the Consumer Fraud Act [815 LCS s0s/2|.

(iv) The Defendants falsely represented, or directed others to falsely represent, that Defendant Bold Funding had been a member of the Better Business Bureau for twelve (12) years; when in fact, Defendant Bold Funding joined the Better Business Bureau for the first time in 2004. This misrepresentation is a violation of paragraph 505/2 of the Consumer Fraud Act [815 ILCS 505/2J.

(v) The Defendants falsely represented, or directed others to falsely represent, that Defendant Bold Funding had staff attorneys who assisted homeowners in foreclosure; when in fact, Defendant Bold Funding did not have any attorneys on staff who assisted homeowners in foreclosure. This misrepresentation is a violation of paragraph 50512 of the Consumer Fraud Act [815 ILCS 505/2J.

(vi) The Defendants falsely represented, or directed others to falsely represent, that Defendant Bold Funding had helped homeowner save their homes for the past twelve (12) years; when in fact, Defendant Bold Funding did not save homes from foreclosure and Defendant Bold Funding had only existed since 2004. This misrepresentation is a violation of paragraph 505/2 of the Consumer Fraud Act [8]5 ILCS 505/2J.

(vii) The Defendants falsely represented, or directed others to falsely represent, that Defendant Bold Funding had seventy-four (74) regional offices; when in fact, Defendant Bold Funding maintained and staffed only one (1) office. This misrepresentation is a violation of paragraphs 0sl2 of the Consumer Fraud Act [815 ILCS 505/2J.

There's no question about it.  He's a crook.  No amount of explanation or spin control will help.

(Thanks to whomever OCRd the original document. (http://"ttp://mortgagefraud.squarespace.com/storage/bold%20funding%20final%20judgement.pdf)  Now we have the full text.)

Utterly damning! Good work people.  Now I just want Bruce to go away. I hope these documents and threads are translated into spanish and any advertisers on Bruce's show are educated on why they shouldn't be.

I would like the final twist of all this is Bruce Wagner is in fact Atlas.   Some may remember they were on a podcast at the same time before, but it was a silhouette I think.

Amazingly sad stuff, faith in Bitcoin drops not based on the technology at all, but the user base, it is sad.  What sucks more is I don't know how much could have been done to prevent being scammed in such a huge way.

Honestly, someone should have been digging into Bruce's past the instant he endorsed a site that says "Hey, your coins are safe in MY wallet but not in yours" ... The fact that Bruce is a repeat criminal with the sole life goal of stealing as much as he can from others was there to find, all we had to do was look.

It might be worth setting up some form of verification service so that any bitcoin business in the future has to _PROVE_ a valid address to be on a trusted list. Sure, someone can scam even if you know who they are and where they live, but...

As Bruce can already tell you, when your victims know where you live you can be hauled into court.

Why?  Because he posted the legal opinion of a lawyer put to paper?  Or because you trust that he is honest while Bruce is not?  Have you people learned nothing?  Just because someone says so, doesn't mean that it's so.  This is no more true with Bruce than anything that Nagle, or myself for that matter, might post on this forum.  It's not damning, it's not even supported with a reference. 

Just because someone on this forum hasn't been yet shown to be a liar, doesn't imply that they deserve your trust.

Read the document. He posted what the judge put to paper, not some plaintiff lawyer put to paper.

That was the conclusion of the judge after seeing all evidence presented, including Bruce's statements.

The judge is a lawyer.  You presume that the judge was correct and impartial.  I'm trying to point out that isn't something that should be assumed.  The judge is, more likely, acting under the color of law.  Real estate lawyers don't like it when new guys muscle into their turf, particularly when they find some way to do it without jumping through the legal hoops (i.e. licensing) that they have erected to prevent it.  Lawyers stick together, and don't like it when their brothers are upset.  I've seen this crap in action personally, and I am inclined to give BW the benefit of the doubt based upon the plausibility of his explaination on the events.  Sure, he couldn't produce a single person who had been aided, most likely because his contract with any investors required confidentiality.  Something that the lawyers filing suit would have well known, considering that many (most?) of such land contract investors are persons with an excess of cash reserves who need discrete investment vehicles.  Said more plainly, particularly considering the locale, any investors that BW had would most likely had shady forms of income, and needed a means of washing the dirt of that cash.  Land contracts are infamous for such things, because the mortgage company being paid off does not have any incentive to report suspicious events, the homeowner gets another chance at the American Dream (tm) and even if the investor ends up in prison, no prosecutor is going to go after the house, because they want to keep their jobs. (if they aren't elected, they work for someone who is, and evicting law abiding citizens from their home because they rent from a scumbag is bad press).  And most of the time, civil forfiture laws can't realisticly even take the land contract, because they probably belong to some out of state corporation and not the scumbag in question; funtionally making the seizure of the asset (the contract, not the home) an out of state legal action.  Something that prosecutors aren't likely to do, because they don't like to work hard for small odds of success any more than anyone else does.

And if you had a confidentiality agreement like that with someone like that, would you risk breaking it by actually inviting a homeowner to testify on your behalf?  It's not like the homeowner agreed to keep quiet, and the lawyers are certain to ask the homeowner about the investor.

Ok, well, if Bruce didn't do anything wrong, he can show us his license, right? He was, after all, required by the law to have a license. Without the license he couldn't have executed those investment contracts, so if he really was helping people, he has a license and can prove to us he has the license.

Of course, without the license he actually can't legally do what he claimed to be able to do for homeowners. So what it boils down to is you can claim all you want that we can't trust a judge, and we have to assume that Bruce's lawyer wouldn't appeal if the judge was wrong, and that Bruce just somehow "accidentally" took money and more money and more money from more and more incoming clients, until he was "overloaded"... I mean, seriously, this isn't like typing in a few numbers. This isn't something that "creeps up on you." Unless maybe you get hit by a car and are in the hospital, but that's not what Bruce claimed.

So, if he's on the up-and-up, have him produce his license or proof that he had one.

That's a false logic.  A license is required to perform real estate contracts, legal contractors are presumed to honest, thus any contract that lacks the written permission of the state must be dishonest.  Sorry, but a license doesn't mean your honest and the lack of one doesn't mean your dishonest.  In this case, it means your stupid, but malice still isn't the most likely cause of this breakdown.


Actually, he could.  That's the 'loophole' in a land contract, performed properly.  Still a good idea to use a licensed real estate lawyer to handle the details, but land contracts are legal for anyone in any state.  As I noted before, a land contract is simply a rent to own lease agreement wherein the object being rented is one's own house bought in a short sale prior to forclosure, instead of a tv or a computer from Renta-center.  It is, essentially, a long term lease agreement.  Real estate lawyers can't really make such contracts illegal.  BW's failure was accepting a deposit from potential clients.  If cash wasn't involved, the dogs wouldn't have had anything to hit him with.  If he had shelled out the fees that licensed agents expect, they would have left him alone.


I'm saying you can't trust anyone.  Saying that some judge is trustworthy, because he is a judge, is an appeal to authority, a logical fallacy. 


Bruce was broke, remember?  What would he have paid his lawyer with?  They don't work for free, justice belongs to the highest bidder, sometimes. 


I'll admit, that part does sound a bit fishy, coming from Bruce himself. 


Again, a license doesn't imply honesty.

No, a license doesn't mean someone is honest. However, states can still require them for virtually anything. My neighbor's driver's license doesn't mean he's a good driver, and we have his totaled car parked in front of his house as proof. He still can be tossed in jail or fined if he drives without one. The guy who fixed the electrical wiring for the same neighbor is a pretty damn good electrician but he got 30 days in jail for working on electrical wiring without a license.

The state can require a licensed realtor be the broker of any transfer of property ownership. You can argue all you want that it's unfair for the state to require that but the reality is (and I checked) the Illinois county clerks won't accept a transfer of owner for a deed that doesn't have a valid real estate license associated. As such, Bruce's investors could not have bought the house in a short sale. Bruce had no realtor's license. An external realtor would have had to have been required, but by your own argument, if one was involved, the coalition gets their cut and Bruce wouldn't have been in trouble.

So the over $100,000 that was listed from just the clients represented in this suit just magically evaporated into thin air when the plaintiffs got representation?

I'll expand on this a little more, actually. If Bruce just got overwhelmed, as he claims, then there were people who got helped, whos fees he was entitled to keep. Let's be extremely conservative, and say he helped 1 in 10 clients. Surely that would cover his operating costs, like the rent on his office space -- many people were paying $3,000 or so as a fee, after all. So why not just refund everyone he dropped the ball on? He obviously didn't, because that's a long-ass list of names in the court papers...

Honestly, it was specifically that part that had me convinced the whole thing was indeed a fraud. It isn't as if I don't understand that "plea bargaining because of the circumstantial evidence really sucking for my chances" applies to civil trials as well, for starters. Some companies really do settle out of court not because they're guilty but because the costs of proving innocence are higher than what they're being prodded for. Lawsuit-as-extortion is practically a whole fucking industry at this point.

But this is an industry I actually have experience with: I worked for a realtor for five years, and I worked for a debt management company for three years. So that's five years dealing with nothing but property and three years dealing with nothing but people struggling with debt. In both places, of course, we deal with "Ok, well, a home is being sold to an investor on a short sale with a pre-existing lease contract which covers the payment of rent and balance of equity, plus redistributed interest, at which point the current owner gets the home back" stuff when it arises.

In every legitimate case I've seen of this type of business the business goes out of their way to have a list of interested investors at any given time. They don't go seek an investor when they get a client's $2,000 fee, they have a bunch lined up at any given time. If the list gets too short they stop taking customers until they've gotten more investors. Bruce obviously wasn't doing it this way, but it should be pretty obvious to anyone who, well, Bruce's exact words, "We were taught by someone in Michigan who was very successful at it" that you need the investors first. Investors will say what sorts of amounts they'll cover, on what sorts of repayment schedules. For example, you might be willing to cover $50,000 as a maximum, and you want full payment within 10 years, and you want $15,000 as profit over that time. The short sale specialists will keep investors sorted by financial parameters. Any home coming in they look for a match. You don't take someone's money and then go look for investors. You don't take someone's money when you have no investors.

So Bruce says, "What happened though... in short is.... We were a victum of our own success.  At the same time that we had just begun a radio advertising campaign... mortgage foreclosures hit an all time high." Well, the fees for his "successes" should have paid the office rent and everyone he took as a client despite not having time to do any work on them should have been returned.

"Of course, we needed to charge a deposit in order to pay for the weeks worth of processing paperwork that was needed in order to deterine their deed, their mortgages, determine their equity, get appraisals on the property." WEEKS? That right there is a complete load of crap. The last place I worked got people home equity lines of credit all the time. It never took more than a couple of calendar days to get everything the mortgage broker we used demanded. And let me tell you, starting in mid-2007, they did demand everything as far as the paperwork goes. For HELOCs, we had one employee doing them, and he was getting all that stuff done for about eight to ten customers a day at our peak. The realtor I worked for for five years never needed more than a few days either, and it wasn't like she spent all day on it.

And finally, there's this gem: "We had every single applicant sign a contract -- and with their signature notorized -- stating that they understood clearly that there was no guarantee that we would be able to match them with a suitable investor." I called up my last boss when I first saw that. Chatted with him a few minutes about this. His response was, "Wait, you mean they expected the fee up front, instead of after the investor agreed?!?!" He's been handling people drowning in debt for 15 years and he had never heard of a legitimate company doing it that way.

MoonShadow, I can appreciate the tack you take here, both in common-sense terms and because I'm a balls-out anarchist. No, neither the judge or prosecutor's words ought to be taken at face value. No, having state permission isn't necessarily the mark of a fair dealer.

I believe, though, that if you look at the documentation uncovered, there are really only a small number of possibilities:

1: The Bold Funding allegations were completely true;
2: The Bold Funding allegations were partly true and partly untrue; or
3: The Bold Funding allegations were completely untrue.

This, I believe, leads to:

A: Bruce did a lot of fraud; or
B: Bruce (believed he) was being railroaded by the system.

This has to be held up against the numerous publicly-posted online complaints by people claiming to have been scammed by Bold Funding, the fact that Bruce and Ed left the jurisdiction and the fact that Bruce didn't appeal the (default!) judgment. His statements on the matter do not even approach a plausible explanation.

None of this adds up to any kind of "honest mistake" or "victims of our own success" defense. And that's even before some interested goons take a trip to the Cook County court's records office to bring more of the case file online, and before some interested goons visit the NY Supreme Court's offices in Manhattan for more detail on the $514k Post v. Wagner fraud/assault lawsuit pending there. I'll bet you a Bitcoin that that stuff makes for interesting reading material indeed.

Set alongside Bruce's blatant lies in denial of his posting the "three-pronged attack" in selecting "boys" for sex in Thailand and his self-serving sockpuppetry shilling for himself as an escort, my own judgment is very clear: I want nothing to do with the guy, and recommend he be shunned.

Why is this thread listed under marketplace? I found it by a mistake. That moderator scares me on so many levels.

There are alternatives https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=40270.msg493140#msg493140

I think he's hilarious. The other day a marijuana dealer came in here and I was starting to string him along inquiring about terracotta pots, when that moderator popped in actually believing I was trying to score some weed. 

I didn't move this thread, nor have I deleted or moved any threads on this topic.  I locked the pot thread because permitting such things to continue invites legal liability to the ownership of this forum.  This is one reason that this forum is no longer part of bitcoin.org.

No, I knew what you were doing.  I said that you were stupid.  The other guys for trying to deal in contraband on a public forum, and you for getting your identity involved at all.

Yeah, I'm starting to see it more your way.  Off-book land contracts tend to be shady deals anyway, and those who set up such things are either family of the homeowner or a criminal looking to launder some cash.  People who are willing to deal with such people tend to be criminal in their own right.

Don't worry. I'm moderator of the steroids forum of Europe's biggest board on strength training for some years now. I know how far to go to stay in the clear in these cases.  ;)

I was told Marketplace was the most suitable place for this thread but I've always said it should be in Bitcoin Discussion, so if you moved it back I'd be very pleased.

Done.

Greatest Bitcoin comic ever.     This is like political cartoon level stuff here.  Someone sell this image to Gawker or some other sensationalist blogs for their next Bitcoin piece.

bitcoin millionaire!

This post made me really sad.

It's cool, daddy-o. Nothing but up, uP UP from here!

Core community members discuss secret information concerning identity of MyBitcoin operators:

http://agoristradio.com/?p=480 (@17 min)

Pfft, those dudes ain't core. Hiro's been asking for for long months now to get into the core, nothing doing.

Now this quote makes sense. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4FZldY-ZBBE&feature=player_detailpage#t=752s)

So why did this get moved back to Siberia?

Hiro: [he then goes on to describe that Mybitcoin has a "nice, big, fat bitcoin wallet"--nothing more on the moral probity of his buddies.]

This statement is very, very unsatisfying for a couple of reasons. First, he dismisses any link between Bruce Wagner and Mybitcoin, which is his opinion and nothing more.  But second, who are Hiro's buddies at Mybitcoin?  I want names and I want them to go through the scrutiny that our little group has shown itself capable of.  We'll decide what kind of philosophical and moral values they have. It is time to start piecing together Hiro's past and just who these "guys at Mybitcoin" might be.

Sadly, thats about where I am at with it. I am still at the mindset of someone getting bailed on and left 'holding the bag' with this thing. Am very curious to see some more details on Hiro and friends though.

I don't like to be a marketing rep for Hiro's program, but here is a recent email exchange:

On 09/06/2011 09:15 AM, Angus Boyd wrote:
> Hello Hiro,
> you gave a podcast of great interest to a lot of people when you talked
> about your long-term friends at mybitcoin.  Who are these friends of
> yours?  A lot of people were wronged in that situation and they are
> quite understandably seeking answers. The bitcoin community has proven
> very resourceful at sorting out who is innocent and who is guilty, and
> pretty fair in how they deal with each.
>
> I hope you respond to this message with useful information. 

Hello Angus. Stay tuned to future CoinBase episodes where I will talk
more of the subject.