Sorry to insist Theymos, but I would like to really understand the logic.

Are you saying that you may create a sockpuppet to support your business ventures and artificially raise price in your auctions "accidentally"? Like it was an accident in the road, something you did not plan and "just happened"?

THEN:

First time you shill bid, it's ok. Second time, not so well. Garr255 did it at least 3 times in 3 separate auctions.

So maybe you are implying that the first time you get caught shill bidding is OK, as it might be "accidental". Second time you get caught, is not forgivable any more.

I don't want to be a pain in the ass, I just want to know clearly what's the position of the forum so I can act accordingly.

Well, it's true, we had confirmation from the forum admin.

So, +1 to the sticky.

I have to disagree and I'd consider shill bidding a scam, but I acknowledge this can be discussed and I may be proven wrong. But, an untrustworthy tag has no discussion IMO, Garr255 proved clearly to be untrustworthy, unless of course Theymos decide that *HE* trusts Garr255 no matter he lied in fron to the whole community, so he decides not to apply any untrustworthy tag for him. At the end of the day is his forum, who is "officialy" trustworthy or untrustworthy depends on him, not on us, we can just make our own conclusion and act accordingly.

I wouldn't blame KnC for advertising Cloudhashing. At the end of the day, re-selling their products by x5 to x7 is not "illegal", I call this a SCAM because they mislead ignorant people with impossible fairy-tale projections that won't happen, and that's very bad IMO because they profit tricking uninformed folks.

I guess Cloudhashing wouldn't be condemned by a judge, Bitcoin is really scammer's paradise at this stage... The truth is there's really no definitive way to project mining returns, so you can just throw up any number and get away with it, as Cloudhashing is doing. And at the end of the day if Cloudhashing relly buys 100 Jupiters and request to KnC to advertise them, I think it's normal they do...

That said, I'm glad KnC is not advertising cloudhashing any more. That seems to me a very good demonstration of principles and business ethics, like saying: OK, here you have my product, do whatever you want with it, but I won't support a venture that tricks people to invest by using FALSE and IMPOSSIBLE projections on return.

I really don't get why you are so sure that the withdrawals coming through super quickly are the exception, and not the other way around. People tends to complain when have a problem, while tend to stay quiet when they have not.

What I know is that I've very recently requested three "big" (5 figures each) SEPA withdrawals and the money arrived to my account in max. 3 days. I don't know why I should be the exception and the 10-15 (ok, let's say 20) people complaining of delayed SEPA transfers are the norm. I'd say MtGox has many thousands of clients (+60,000? More?), and if the norm was extremely long delays for EVERYBODY requesting SEPA transfers we would be having a real shit storm of complaints.

I may be mistaken, but that's how I see it.

I don't know why you are even asking, he was very clear, I will quote it for you:

OK, cool. So it's totally OK to have bidding sockpuppets on these forums. You still deserve the trust of the mods and admins if you have sockpuppets that pose as independent third parties that artificially inflate trust on your business ventures or raise the price of you auctions.

Just FYI, sockpuppeting is considered a serious issue when money of third parties is involved, just check wikipedia and you will see there were convictions and serious consecuences for many individuals engaged in sockpuppeting: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sockpuppet_(Internet)

The fact that the forum allows sockpuppeting to artificially build trust when business transactions are involved or to inflate auction prices seems totally wrong to me, as it's a clear demonstration of untrustworthy behaviour in my book, I have to admit I'm utterly disappointed but it's your forum, so you make the rules and we either accept them or we leave. Duly noted.

Garr, I'm sorry, but didn't you know you were being dishonest while using you sockpuppet to pump up your auctions? So you are disappointed because "you proved" of being dishonest by being caught?

Frankly, I respect your apology, but what you are writing right now is not helping you at all.

Making a sockpuppet account to pump an auction is extremely easy. You register it, you connect through a VPN or Tor, and mods can't do sh*t about it. The only thing stopping people to do that is principles, honor and honesty. When you think about that kind of situation, you can feel in two ways: a) happy for being "so smart" to be able to scam people some money, or b) feel bad for cheating people. I think you really felt great using Werner, as you used it continuosly and without any remorse until you got caught.... You even used it to troll Josh and praise yourself just a few moments before being caught:


Frankly Garr, I gave up having faith on your honor and principles when you publicly humiliated yourself to get your miners. And now I gave up on your honesty too.

Of course people can change: you are extremely young, and I guess you will learn a lot from this. But the real lesson is that things have real consequences.

Garr255: I respect your apology, it's indeed a first step towards redeeming yourself.

Nevertheless, in my opinion Garr255 still deserves a scammer tag. Otherwise, it seems that everybody can just create bidding sockpuppet accounts, and if they get caught, they can just apologize and give the money back, and their reputation will still be intact. That's so wrong towards all the community and especially for many that received a scammer tag... Tom from bASIC is also paying back, right? And Matthew too. But still, they cheated on the community, and they got their scammer tag because of this.

I think this is a public forum, and public interest should be protected. We need a clear set of rules. Is shill bidding a scam? If it is (it surely is in my book), when somebody is caught needs to be tagged as a scammer, because you need to protect public interest. If the scammer is friend of the mods and a long time member of the community and he gets "spared" because of this, then it's not more about public interest, it's about of a group of close friends protecting each other's interests.

If then the scammer apologizes and makes the scammed people whole, that's a point in his favor, but doesn't erase past facts. For example, I've decided that I'm trusting both Matt and Tom, despite of their tags, because I believe they did a mistake and are trying to make the people they cheated whole. But those scammer tags were indeed fairly placed, as a tag on Garr255 would also be fair.

Just my 0.02BTC

Yeah, now i see.

So your logic is: you get caught stealing, you give back the money, no harm done and thus no punishment.

That's a joke. If Werner was his sock puppet account, applying a scammer tag on Garr is the only way to protect users in future auctions created by Garr, or in any business transaction with him. If he gives back the money to starsoccer9 and that's it, what stops him to create more sockpuppets and continue to bid shill more auctions? If no tag is applied, he will still be seen by all users as the trustworthy member that holds money for the forum, etc. In fact, giving the type of character he is depicting of himself, one ready to publicly humiliate himself and give up basic principles to get his miners, while subtly implying he is being forced and blackmailed when the Skype logs contradict this, I would fear that in case  he goes unpunished because of paying back, he would find a way to scam more so he can make up for his" loss".

In any case, I think Garr created a big problem for himself. He has a company (cognitive) that will probably be shaken by the outcome of this.

If Werner was indeed his sockpuppet, I guess Garr will end up learning a very real and important lesson: you cannot be" a little bit" scammer, you are either a scammer or you are not, full stop.  And shill bidding is being a scammer.

In these forums we conduct quite a lot of business transactions. There is a thriving economy. And mods have limited power, because a scammer could create many sockpuppets and connect through proxies or Tor and that is difficult to catch. Thus, we all have to take our own decisions about who we are going to trust, and if that trust is broken by someone everybody needs to see it straight away.

Maged, may I ask if Garr is your friend? You seem to be overprotecting him.

Why you insist on the fact "you need a victim"? The victim already spoke, he said he feels he was scammed, but as he paid 63BTC for a miner he's fearful of making too much noise and be scammed of those 63BTC too. Isn't that enough?

One of many posts:


Then, I cannot believe someone is suggesting for Garr to pay back so we can "forget" about this. Paying back after being caught does not cancel the offense, and this is serious. As Bruno pointed out if Werner is Garr sockppets something really fucked up is going on the mind of that kid, he write a post about how trustworthy he is and immediately after he logs with the Werner account to pump the price of his auction up. That's sick.

I really don't see how the final outcome of this could not be a scammer tag or a ban for either Josh or Garr.

Yes, we had nice volume. With a quick look at the charts you will see that aprox. 50% of the amount that vanished was bought - and the other 50% was not

Yeah, no need for a real office to scam people's money.

LOL

I have to support what the OP is saying.

I've very recently initiated 3 withdrawals, 5 figures each, SEPA transfers, and I received all of them in 2/3 days.

The withdrawals went from "confirmed" to "processed" in minutes, and the money took 2 days in 2 occasions, and 3 days in 1 occasion.

I really don't get all these reports about delayed SEPAs and International wires, at least for me they work like a charm.

Money goes in, money cannot go out.

Seems legit.

No, not sold - well, some of them YES, but obviously not so many. I think they were not only taken off the book, a lot of it may have left Gox for good... This kind of news (International wires to USA stop for 2 weeks) scares a lot a certain kind of people (pussies?), and they panic and just take their coins off Gox. Same thing happened when the dwolla thing.

I have to say these are very profitable moments, in the sense that its very easy to predict what panickers will do. I remember when we had the blockchain fork, oh gosh I bought so many coins during that crash... Really, this kind of news and the panickers reaction are a Bitcoin trader best friends

I have to say loud and clear that you will always be a hero member for me. LOL, that sounds gay, what I mean is that you are probably the most helpful guy around regarding newbie's questions. I remember my first posts in the newbie subforum, you always helped A LOT.

I think that kind of attitude (as per DannyHamilton) should also be rewarded, but I guess it's difficult to have an automatic process for that.

Seriously: I'd have no problem in sending money at Gox RIGHT NOW. I'm european, I made recently 3 consecutive 5 figures withdrawals that arrived in 2/3 days, and the best opportunities present themselves when others are panicking. I have to say that Gox never Goxxed me and always sent me my money in record time. Withdrawals that I execute take MINUTES to go from confirmed to processed, and then as I said 2/3 to receive my money. And the last withdrawal was requested 10 days ago, so no fear on my side.

If I was US based the story might be different, but being EU based I really don't give a sh*t about the recent Dwolla or International Wire Transfer problem.