I notice that Theymos has posted a warning about Ponzis at the top of the Long-term Offers forum.  Can we have this extended to the other forums where people promote or discuss HYIPs or even to the whole board?

dank, can you either close the thread or get a mod to split it?  It's so derailed now that nobody's going to see the occasional post which has anything to do with your business enterprises in amongst all the other crap.

If I recall correctly, Amir's the only director and Patrick and Donald are shareholders.  Wendon also acquired 250 shares in Intersango in exchange for Amir, Donald and Patrick being given a combined interest of 25% in Bitcoinica LP. 

DFA Ltd - the plaintiff in the lawsuit going to trial in November - is an investment holding company.  It looks like they own a shit-ton of property in McKinney.

At least you know where he should be at 9am on 12 November.

Rarity's either a newbie Scientologist or a troll pretending to be a Scientologist.  For the purposes of this particular debate, it's a distinction without difference - it's not relevant to the viability of dank's business model anyway.

You've lost me Phin.  We already know that Zach Nakasa is one of the active officers of GPUMax, we didn't need the Twitter posts to establish that - it's part of the public record.  

I'm not sure whether the true identity of ninjaat40 matters  (although my best guess would be his brother Rylan - the family seems to be well established and would have more reason than anyone else to not want Trendon's activities coming back on them and would know about any change in his spending habits).  Either the people who are really pissed off about pirate's scheme collapsing will report it to the US Attorney's Office (they seem to be the people who investigate and prosecute ponzis) and IRS and they'll ferret out any shady connections, or people will just gnash their teeth over this for a while before eventually moving on.  

To be honest, I doubt that many people who lost money to pirate want his activities properly investigated - which means that what he was really doing and with whom will likely remain a mystery.

Judging by the way he was addressing an empty chair the other night, I wouldn't count on Clint for back-up (it spawned some hella funny photoshops, though).

Rarity's profile gives his location as England.  Guess he tired of American exceptionalism.

You did that all on your own.  And if you can use Narconon as a source, he can sure as shit use erowid.  At least erowid isn't trying to get people to sign up for dangerous, expensive "treatments" which are not evidence based.

It ain't over yet.  GPUMax is still running and people are still begging to be let into it.

Phin, are you suggesting that Goat photoshopped the picture of the Vegas meet-up, because the person in that photo is definitely the person whose image is used on Trendon Shavers' social media and there's enough old images of him online to establish that he's the real life Trendon Shavers rather than a made up or hijacked identity.  Plenty of people operate scams under their true identities.


He operated World Bitcoin Exchange.  He didn't pay people back and dooglus is stuck holding a few remaining Bitcoins which he can't distribute because he has neither the authority nor accurate information to be able to give users a small payout from the only assets not under Andre's control.  Since walking away from WBE, Andre has opened a security business which he hypes as much as he hyped WBE (and High Net Worth Property before that). 

dank, stop biting.  Rarity maintains that George Zimmerman is a fine, upstanding citizen, ffs. 

I'm having trouble believing those comments were the entire conversation and understanding why it's not being disclosed in full.  I wouldn't read much into "the PPT", though - it's a valid abbreviation for Pirate Pass-Throughs.

It's hard to know to what extent pirate's just playing games based on some cherry-picked quotes but his failure to disclose contact details for his lawyers isn't a sign of good faith.
 

Did pirate give his lawyer's details, as he said he would on "Friday"?

You need to calculate risk/reward.  While it's possible that your chances of getting busted are extremely small, you need to look at the impact it would have on your future business plans and what possibilities it would change/exclude.

People can certainly grow empires from an sketchy start - Richard Branson did it with Virgin - but getting caught for the wrong thing at the wrong time can also have profound outcomes (Branson openly admits that had he ever been prosecuted over selling export records domestically, the Virgin empire could have never existed.).

No-one can tell you what risks you should or should not take.  You just need to consider the worst case scenario if they don't pay off and whether you're prepared to live with it - never just assume that the worst case scenario won't happen to you.

I honestly think the business part is the important bit.  While there's a substantial market, you're not going to make a lot of money without achieving market dominance or carving out a large niche.  There are already well established players in that market so you either need to offer products to which they have no access or be more competitive on price (even after factoring in what you're paying your lenders).  You also want to avoid offering products which might get you into shit for things not specifically drug related - some vibrant colours in glass are achieved by the use of radioactive materials, for instance.

The demand for high-end, custom pieces definitely exists.  The question is whether dank is able to access both the people who can produce them and the people looking to purchase them.  It's a bit more complex than "set up a website and they shall come".  

And yeah, he should probably act to minimise his risks and ensure that the accounting is legitimate so that if he does happen to get busted for paraphernalia offences he doesn't leave himself open to taxation and money laundering charges as well.

Is that the whole conversation?  It would be helpful to see it in the context of other comments.

No-one's suggesting that dank isn't risking getting busted - especially if he's going to be selling directly rather than through SR.  His "investors" need to take that risk into account - they'll have no plausible deniability if he does get busted and need to consider whether they'd be open to charges themselves in their particular jurisdiction if that happens. 

We don't know whether dank is even planning on holding stock and shipping directly or using a drop-ship model where he never comes into contact with the merchandise but simply passes on orders.

While I personally think it's silly to risk a criminal record at 18 for little return (it's not likely to become a multi-million dollar enterprise), it's up to dank and his investors to decide whether they consider that risk worthwhile.

Not all scams are ponzis but just because they aren't a ponzi doesn't mean they're not a scam or that they're viable.

I agree that "long-term offers" is an inappropriate label for many of the high-risk programmes being offered and that a more suitable way of segregating the different types of investments being offered needs to be found.