There's a lot in the documents related to Sonny's past which is incredibly damning and very much at odds with explanations given by Sonny and BFL employees.  But you can't force people to read those documents and nor are you ever going to convince those who believe there was a "government conspiracy" otherwise.

I find it highly unlikely that President/Director Chris is not entirely aware of Sonny's past transgressions, including all of the evidence presented in the indictment.  Yes, it's possible that other directors (if any) have been lied to, but I wouldn't count on it.  If you're a legitimate company, you need all of your directors to be legitimate.  If you're shady, you need all of your directors to be shady.  Whether BFL is legitimate or shady, I suspect that the directors are well aware of Sonny's past - there's just too much potential for grief if they weren't, especially when seeking outside investment.

Swink wasn't an employee and I wouldn't normally expect a contractor doing printing and mail-out work for a company to do much in the way of checking their client's bona fides much less verifying the accuracy of any information contained in the documents they were printing.  Maybe they did know, but plenty of people and small businesses will never verify information given to them about the entities with which they do business - if it sounds remotely plausible, they'll just accept it at face value, especially if those giving the information appear to be prosperous.

People will know soon enough whether BFL can deliver the first run of ASICs on time and to the standard promised.  Their lead time over competitors is not so great that they can afford a major fuck up on either delivery or performance.  

At the very least it's a liquidity problem.  You were not able to meet your obligations without using a new investor's funds.  You are paying weekly interest on that 4 BTC even though you no longer have it and it's not being invested on your latest depositor's behalf - which means that you now have to find a way to fund the interest on those 4 BTC and eventually return the 4 BTC themselves, so you need to invest your last depositor's remaining BTC at a rate which will cover the missing 4 BTC plus the interest you've promised on them for the life of the loan.

If your system was working properly, the funds from your current investments would be sufficient to pay interest as it falls due and return principal when it's due without having to dip into the funds of new depositors.  If you can't do that and earn a profit for yourself on top of what you owe your depositors, then your scheme is not working properly. 

I think Rassah has pretty much nailed it.  Those who believe leopards don't can't their spots (or at least no in such a short time) are going to believe that Sonny would surround himself with shady people in any new venture and so not take the word of anyone associated with him, so assurances from others involved in BFL are going to be pretty meaningless to them.  Those who have absolute faith in BFL aren't going to be convinced otherwise by arguments about Sonny's past transgressions.

People need to decide their own risk tolerance here.  Nobody gets a prize for persuading someone to "change sides".

That's been suggested to him on multiple occasions, not just in respect of this particular venture but also in respect of his previous ideas. 

A "no" to those questions doesn't mean the company won't pay any bills Sonny wants paid or make money available to him through loans, drawings or other means on request.  There are plenty of ways to get funds out of a small, privately owned business without signing the cheques yourself.

Honestly, the information is out there.  If people choose not to evaluate it in depth, then that's their problem and they don't get to cry foul down the track if BFL doesn't deliver what it promised.  From this point on, no-one can say that they didn't have the opportunity to make informed decisions and there's nothing to be gained from trying to persuade people to make any given choice.


Given the amount of time the scam lasted and the number of people involved in it, there's a good chance that those millions were spent a long time ago.

You had to use 4BTC of a new investment to pay an old loan.  That is a shortfall.

It's a potential investor because the investment is contingent on you raising another $15,000.  You could get an actual $5,000 in your hand by going and getting a credit card, so your investor clearly doesn't have enough faith in you to give you funds here and now - and nor should they because your "profitability" estimates are made up numbers which bear little resemblance to real world costs.

So what bad karma did you put out to attract the shortfall last time?

You have a pledge of $5000 towards this project contingent on you raising $20,000, not actually funds in your hand.  Any kid with a McJob should be able to get a $5,000 credit card which isn't contingent on anything.  People don't "have faith" in you because your numbers don't make any sense and every time someone asks you to come up with actual, hard numbers you just add a couple more thousand dollars to the monthly expenses on your spreadsheet without validating those numbers in any way.

If you've now been in touch will the real estate agent and have accurate information about what's already there as well as the plans and you've checked with the city regarding the codes/regulations you'll be required to meet as an indoor smoking venue, then you're in a position to hire someone to inspect the property you're looking at and get a report on whether it meets those code and if not, what will be required to bring it up to standard.  Without such a report, you can't even determine whether you can afford those premises.  If someone else rents those premises before you have the money to do so or if it would cost too much to bring those premises up to standard, then you need to do all that research again in respect of another property.  So far, you've produced no evidence of doing such research.

It's a bit more complicated than that.  Pure ponzis generally have few or no actual money-making operations - they're not paying their investors from returns on the money taken in but almost purely from the funds of new subscribers.

What dank seems more likely to be doing at the moment is more akin to taking out pay-day loans.  When his income from all sources is insufficient to meet his interest/repayments, he uses a portion of new loans to cover the short-fall.  As with real world pay-day loans, this can become a vicious cycle which will collapse on itself unless dank can dramatically increase his income from all sources without increasing his debt.  The fact that he needs to use any portion of new loans to pay back old ones means that his basic model is unsound - if it wasn't, there'd be no shortfall in the first place.

Any genuine lender is going to tear him apart and tell him to come back when he's got numbers he can actually back up.  dank would rather guess at costs than do the actual research required to find out how much it would cost to install appropriate filtration equipment in the specific property he's looking at (was the $15,000 mentioned to him for a 60,000 cubic feet space?) and the monthly running costs of such a system (this can be calculated with a reasonable degree of accuracy is you have enough details). 

Even how much it costs to run air conditioning purely for comfort depends on the size of the space, the materials from which the building is made, furniture and fittings within the room, the number of occupants, the type of insulation in the building, the outside temperature, and a shitload of other things.  HVAC specialists can give you fairly accurate estimates based on those factors, but dank doesn't have those details even if he knew how to do the calculations himself.

Don't you think the fact that you haven't been able to raise even the lower amount of your initial 2000-4000 BTC target says something about how accurate and reliable potential investors consider your spreadsheets to be?

Personally, I don't think this is the best place for you to seek funding for your venture.  I think you'd be far better off using something like Kickstarter (if you're looking for donations, which you effectively are) or Prosper (if you're looking for actual lenders) because they have a much larger user base which means more people who might be willing to risk $100, $500 or $1000 on your venture.  Especially once you start getting above $50,000 in start up costs, you're going to find it difficult to raise that kind of money through this forum.  Ask yourself why none of the larger lenders on this forum who "invest" the funds of other users are throwing any money your way.  Why aren't they entrusting their user funds to you and your venture?

Want to show us your calculations for how many bowls you'd have to sell per month to create revenue of $10,000, $20,000 and $30,000 per month respectively?

You don't even know your break even point because you don't have accurate numbers for your overheads.  It's absolutely possible to bring in $300,000+ per year and be losing money.  You're not providing anyone with any numbers that credibly support your assertion that your hookah lounge can make (ie, have profits of) up to $360,000 per annum.

Yeah, but you don't get to decide what level of filtration is adequate.  That will be laid down in government regulations.  At this point, you don't know whether there's an existing HVAC system in the property you're looking at and whether it works.  At the very least, you'd need to hire someone qualified to inspect the plumbing, the wiring and the HVAC system before you'd even consider signing a lease on the building because those are expensive things to fix if they're not up to standard.

Even if a new air filtration system is "only" $15,000, it's $15,000 for which you hadn't budgeted in your start-up costs so you need to rework your figures.  You also need to get an accurate idea of how much it will cost to run and add that to your monthly expenses.  Put another way - that expense alone is going to chew up ~20% of the maximum amount you're currently looking to raise.

It also does no-one's credibility any good to dismiss a very long-term, aggressively marketed fraud as "a youthful indiscretion".  You regain trust by owning up to what you did, not by trying to minimise it (it sure as hell wasn't "jurisdictional arbitrage" which got Sonny into trouble).

That said, the information is now out there and people need to make up their own minds.  There's no point in those who choose not to deal with BFL mounting a crusade to try to convince others to boycott BFL.

All you can do is put the information out there.  If people want to believe explanations which are demonstrably bullshit, that's their problem - at least they've had the opportunity to make an informed decision about whether or not to deal with BFL.

Which photos?  They're not maintaining that all of their products are manufacture, assembled and shipped from that address.


EFF declined to accept Bitcoin donations last year.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=20185.0

Yes dank, there are.  It depends on the type of business (some businesses aren't required to have toilets which are open to the public), and the rules will vary by location.  So will the rules regarding food and beverages.  If food - even pre-packaged food - is being consumed on the premises, your city may have specific rules in relation to that.  We don't know the specific rules for your city which relate to indoor smoking venues or businesses where people consume food.  You'll have to check those for yourself.

There are often specific rules about how toilets open to the public must be cleaned (both how often and using what types of products) as quite a few diseases can be spread by the oral-faecal route - ie, someone with diarrhoea uses the toilet and doesn't wash their hands properly.  They then transmit whatever virus they have to the doorknob, which is touched by other people when they leave the toilet.  Both the original offender and those other people are then going to be putting their fingers on the hookah mouthpieces.  Rotavirus or C. diff outbreak ensues.

While your exact local regulations may vary, here's a list stuff a hookah lounge in Nevada got busted for.  I've left out the food service stuff.

- Toilet facilities for employees inadequate, inconvenient, unclean and/or not in good repair. Covered trash cans not provided. Doors not self-closing.
- Unsuitable hand washing facilities, unclean, inaccessible and/or not in good repair, with unapproved soap, towels and/or waste receptacles not provided.
- Facilities for washing and sanitizing equipment and utensils unapproved, inadequate, improperly constructed, maintained and/or operated.
- Unclean wiping cloths, stored in an unapproved sanitizer, and/or unrestricted in use.
- Non-food contact surfaces and/or cooking devices not maintained and/or unclean.
- Improper lighting and/or ventilation, ventilation hoods and/or filters improperly cleaned and/or maintained.
- Plumbing and/or fixtures improperly sized, installed and/or maintained. Plumbing and/or fixtures improperly drained.
- Floors, walls, ceilings, improperly constructed and/or installed. Not in good repair and/or clean

http://www.city-data.com/las-vegas-restaurants/Tangerine-Hookah-Lounge.html#ixzz274tqVn3j

I also had a quick look at hookah lounges and bars for sale.  Even with other income streams attached, I couldn't find one claiming a revenue of more than $180,000.  Their profit was listed as being in the low 80k range, but then you have to take tax into account (and repayment to lenders).

How many toilets and fire exits you're required to have for your specific type of business and where they must be located is something you'll need to check with the city.  A rear entrance won't generally count as a fire exit as fire exits have to meet very specific criteria.  Given that normal smoke alarms are going to be useless in an indoor smoking venue, you'll also need to check what kind of fire alarm system you'll require.

A hardwood floor is good in some ways, but if you've ever been in a high school hall you know that a wooden floor plus a large space means a lot of sound bouncing around.  You'll need to find cheap ways to minimise that.  You'll also need to check whether fire regulations require the floor to be finished in a specific manner given the purpose for which you'll be using the property.

Actually, before you even bother with the real estate agent, it would be worth ringing the city and finding out whether there are any restrictions on the use of the property (there often are).  If there's no way that property would be approved for use as an indoor smoking venue, then there's no point in you obtaining costings specific to that property.

Exactly how have you verified the building costs when you don't even have the plans and you haven't yet checked the fire exit, toilet and ventilation requirements much less had the place inspected to see what work would need to be done to make it compliant with those requirements?  You can't calculate those costs until you have an actual plan ready for your venue because you can't just put toilets and fire exits wherever you want.  Both the number required and where they must be located are subject to local codes/regulations.  You will need sound-deadening in a space that big.  You haven't even told us what the floor is made of.  Simply covering a floor that size can run into tens of thousands of dollars, depending on the type of existing floor and its condition.

Stop just making up numbers and do some actual research on the building and what you're going to need just to make it compliant with regulations for its intended purpose.  If you haven't yet got detailed information from the real estate agent about the plumbing, the wiring and the ventilation and also checked with your local government office about the requirements for operating your specific business and also obtained quotes for getting that work done, then you cannot possibly "verify" your estimates for what building the place out is going to cost.