Vladimir,

Toslti? Wasn't that one of those involved on that BTC "backup" scam?
Is it Baron the same or you confused nicks?

noagenda,

Suggesting the creation of an arbitrary part? Why not setup a vote on the community to create the job of BTC-judge, either per case or per x time basis?

@TheKoziTwo,

That's data we didn't have, like when the allegedly victim reported to mtgox.
To be so then yes, there's more solitude on the fraud-report.

This however doesn't void the excess of duties from mtgox's part. It's not his role to look for your password for you. You pick u:john/p:john who's to blame?! Mtgox?! And it can happen on my sites too, I use md5(md5(password)) for storage and login, so I don't have a clue of the password a user choose... it's the user's duty to create a good enough password.
Maybe he could setup his site a bit better, as put a captcha to prevent brute-force attempts, hide session vars for validation or limit the attempts per IP address (I prefer the last 2 for a simple reason; good security is the one you don't notice or interfere but it's still there and captchas are somewhat a pain).

@brucewagner

Indeed stealing just requires opportunity too. I agree with most. But there's a place for everything, the market can't stop or be hang because traders disputes.
It was also a courageous idea of mtgox to run it 24/7. Markets need to close for set any dispute before the next opening - no market would or can afford to have a dispute rolling on for 2 months without resolution - , ideally it should operate like FOREX markets, open in Australia, open in Japan, open in UK, closes in Australia, open in NY, closes in Japan, closes in UK, open in Australia, closes in NY... But it's his call.

bruce,

You got it all wrong, we're not playing judge & juri; mtgox is, plus playing also police, investigator and executioner (an all-in-one guy).
We've nobody "behind bars", nobody with "assets frozen" on our expense. We discuss the case and it's consequences. It's different.

Baron sounds too stupid to be a thief too. And it seams to be the only point where's coherent so far; being naive.
And what sort of heist goes on for 3 days without the notice of the owner?

And why wasn't the trade carried out on mtgox if the coins were there? Evade market fares may be a more solid argument for Jed than "I'm doing a part-time as CSI".

I've to say this topic is addictive!
As it looks now many of you think I'm a reservoir dog of some kind... chill out! I don't take things to that personal level, nor my face turns red in front of the screen or my eyes flash.  

Somehow, however, this one becomes the most interesting topic! Paypal, morality, immorality, duties, rights, philosophy, scams, counter-scams... all in 20 hallucinating pages over 45K frozen USD  

«you certainly are prone to fly off the handle.»

Guess you're wrong here! I normally don't.  

Anyway, OK then. Nice effort then. Thus you've already a name for what you're doing, it's Web of Trust (WOT), Credit ratings deals more with liquidity and assets, who may pay back, who doesn't... in part sort of what you intend to do, on most however not.

@brucewagner,

I see Jed is in a good accounting within the community, but that's more a problem than a solution. Basically seams that all it takes is to have Jed on your side and the community will fall along to whatever you want.

Jed on this intervention remembers me those employees who overcome their duty. They seam to be the best employees but always end up to be the worse. So willing to help others, sooner or later they start to be used by other low-moral standard employee to do his job.
He's thinking and believing to be helping, well... flash news! He isn't! He's putting everything he built at stake. And for what? Nothing... might well be the buyer the scammer as might well be the seller. Who knows? Who can tell? Jed is convinced it was the buyer? What if he is wrong? Will put the money out of his pocket for compensations? Or no compensations policies applies?
And what if it happens again? And if you happen to buy something from someone and got frozen? What complaint policies does he have?

He raises way more questions than answers.

To not mention his even more odd behavior. I wonder where in hell does he thinks to have "investigation secrecy" powers! I see here some folks talking against "enforced-coercive" State powers and yet grants and co-ops for those very same sort and nature of powers to be entrusted in an individual! Surreal! Coherence? Nothing?

Looks like Jed already learn a lesson about PayPal a while ago, now it's time to learn another lesson. Just hope this waves out soon enough without damaging the market too much.

Opposing! Or say, 50% opposing!

One idea seams OK, the stock market.
The other gives me the creeps! Credit ratings means credit on Bitcoins, taken credit is nothing but the biggest cancer of the regular economics, that would contaminate bitcoin for good!

Bitcoin, like gold, dues part of its value on the simple fact that can't be produced at will. If you start to make credits, you'll need to print more money than the one already existing; promissories, the "birth" of "Bitnotes". Unlike bitcoins, bitnotes could then be produced at will with any value whatsoever printed on it. A total slippery-slope and basically the importation of the current "huge Ponzi scheme economics" we live on "real market" today (up to break sooner or later) to the BTC world!

Bottom line, I hope mtgox doesn't forget to get himself a nice pair of sunglasses to put that "case solved" look in the end:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GeeyWvo1rNg

sorry for the humor... 

From what I see it just hopped once from mtgox to his spare wallet. Could be sort of, «let me put this 9k on mybitcoin» or so.
Anyway, a 3 day long heist?! The "victim" surely has also some reliability issues with his story. Don't you think?
And this guy to put 45K on a bank where he reportedly assaulted a user... this would be probably the dumbest robbery of History! Better than this just go to a bank with a gun and ask the cashier to transfer 1 million bucks to my own checking account on that same bank!

@brucewagner; by getting your password to access it, no?

Know the kind carp, I've a "friend" who was once my grandmother's tenant, which ran away owning over 6 month of rent, and when sees me come with big handshake, start to crap-talk about his imaginary 5000 EUR/mo+ jobs and so on, like if was owning absolutely nothing or made nothing wrong at all.

Doing my communitarian job for the day then:

1) Someone reported his account to be stolen to mt gox with 9000 BTC on it.
2) Those 9K BTC somehow appear on Baron's wallet (his own client)
3) Baron have an account with mt gox funded with 45K LRUSD
4) mt gox blocked Baron's account based on that theft allegation. (BC address in Baron's mtgox profile matches a BC address from which he made a sample payment to the wallet that collected those 9K)

In a simple analysis, yes. Not in the complete profile perhaps, I don't know the "victim" to profile him. Would need to contrast one on the other. But this guy typifies more for victim than scammer.

I started to study scams since a friend, female, went down on a Romance Scam (yup... I got amazed too, but found out females are more likely to be targets on this sort of scam than males - and they call us sex-addicts   ) some years ago. From there to study all the variants, Romance are a 419 variation, profiles of scammers (normally they like to look like victims of something, makes it easier for the target to drop defenses) and so on.

Talking of which, I wrote this article about a variant of 419 Scam going on with PayPal back in 2009: http://vigaros.awardspace.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=17&Itemid=9 (it's in portuguese, you can use Google to translate). I read mtgox lost some money with paypal scammers; was it this scam?

BTW: I study scams as hobby not to become a scammer myself, but because I believe the only effective defense against scams is information.  

Doesn't take to be Einstein to know one. But there're lots of statistical resources, by household, by genre, by hobbies and interests...

Nevertheless the "typical" ain't changed since the antiquity; at first we've to split them by kind of scam, taken there're thousands of them; financial, romance, belief, control, power...
This is a financial/reception(?) scam.
A good victim would need to be greedy, preferentially not quite well informed about what he is investing in - but knowing to get revenue. So to say; the dumber and greedier, the better, no offense.

Of what?! Just go look for his posts around.

Just made a small 50 BTC test, waiting for block 110457  

EDIT: Yep, got it right after 110457 was found too.

Nope Atlas, on the contrary, put things to place. It's not a role of the market to set up moral, moral levels, religions, beliefs... the only reason for the market to react is if the market itself is under attack. Not settle "robbers & victims", not decide who has more moral over the other, who is following the right or wrong philosophy or religion, not to have "last minute Horatio Caines" rolling up crime scene investigations... to sum it up: The market must be just it; the market.

The difference to BTC resumes to decentralization, so it's immune to assets being frozen by demand of any government, taken no government has control for either BTC or its market.

I'm sorry for the way I may sound; I'm just being pragmatic. 

In the case itself, reanalyzing, Baron matches almost at 100% the profile of a typical scam victim. Greedy but not that smart, knows money but lacks the technical details, difficulty on express himself, nervous... easily get everyone against him - as you can see from the forum. Or the guy is "that good" that manages to almost perfectly match the profile of a scam victim being a scammer himself.
Scammers normally tend to be expert social-engineers, well speaking, good at deception and deceiving...
Maybe you're looking at the wrong scammer on your CSI job.

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PS: The system is beta, PLEASE don't go postal betting hundreds or thousands of BTC

Indeed not quite a good choice of words... 

You probably want to mean "illegal at your country or at website's jurisdiction", not "anywhere on the World", because it simply means: «It's forbidden to sell anything here» 

But the market, by your views, should then stop to deal with Libya and Saudi Arabia because the ones dealing are robbers, shouldn't it?

caveden,

In a market with the liquidity of FOREX or Bitcoin, assets can't be frozen. It's too risky. Whatever happens settle after, not during, otherwise I would see who will take in hands the responsibility of stopping the market.
Let's see, 45k weren't on business, on a market with the size of BTC means BTC worth less because of one frozen investor and the marketplace owner who decided to froze for do a bit of freelance police's work. Such actions have global effect, not just over Baron. As collateral effect it damages the trust on bitcoin.

I know, sounds somewhat immoral and unfair, so it seams immoral and unfair that Gaddafi's family take all the wealth of Libya or the Royal Family on Saudi Arabia... but this is how markets work. The priority is always to keep the market moving, because if it stops the outcome is more disastrous then trample a few moral rules.