Its Official Pirate Has Defaulted!!

[myrkul]

You (and others collectively) gave a semi-annoymous person $5M in irreversible and very difficult to trace currency based on absolutely nothing other than his "word" he would repay it.  Period.  To say the investors shouldn't be called stupid is just pure denial.   Not many people will ruined their rep for $100 scam, a far larger number are willing to do so when idiots hand them $5M dollar on a silver plater with a note that says "rob me, I'm stupid".

This. You almost can't blame the guy. Money troubles IRL, and someone hands him 5 million bucks...

The temptation is huge.

[burnside]

Instead of worrying about how to go after people like pirate, how about worrying about how stupid people are to fall for such a thing in the first place?

If you give your money to someone you never met, who won't even tell you how he is investing it, but claims unrealistic returns, than frankly, you deserve to lose your money.

+1 This post pretty much sums up the solution to the whole pirate drama.

Not sure how you get around the "give your money to someone you never met" part though in the 99% of internet transactions where BTC is actually useful?  If you can trust a web vendor to sell you a TV in BTC, you should be able to trust a banker (pirate) who has a network of other bankers (goat, giga, patrick, hashking, etc) using their services, not to mention the tons of representative "assets" on the main BTC exchange GLBSE.  The pro-pirate posts on the forums outnumbered the con posts 10 to 1, and the cons were always ripped apart.  This was not simply "give your money to someone you never met" in the general sense.  Everyone trusted pirate because the long-time high post count "bankers" here that should have been "in the know" did.

I don't think you can call the general population stupid on this one.  I think that designation should be reserved for the pros that should have known better.  Many of which will come out ahead, despite the default.

You really can't see the difference?  Someone is running a scam selling TV which don't exist, how much can he get away with $100, maybe $500 before someone reports him?  So the level of trust should be $100 to $500.   If you can trust Mr. TV with $500 you can trust him to deliver the TV.  If you can't you should use escrow.

However this is an entire whole different level of scam.

Usually I have a lot of respect for your posts.  Not so sure here.  First of all, for most people it WAS a $10 to $500 level of trust they gave.  Most likely in the form of a few bonds held on GLBSE.  Those people believed in the system because the people that should have done due diligence believed.  For everyone else that directly handed pirate $1k+, yeah, stupid.  (pretty sure that's the point I was trying to make.)

You (and a hundreds? thousand? of other suckers) sent someone $5M in return for nothing but the promise of that he would return >$5M in the future.

Don't you think the level of due diligence and verification should be a "little bit" higher when dealing with that kind of money?  Do it again and I guarantee you it will end equally bad.  Smart people don't hand other anonymous people millions of dollars with no verification and expect good things to happen

No single person sent him $5M... Each individual person trusted "just a little bit" because other people here trusted "a lot".

Also calling Pirate a "banker" is just about the stupidest thing I have heard today.   What bank charter is he operating under?  Oh yeah none.  He isn't a banker.  He is a 35 year old scumbag who had his house foreclosed, doesn't pay his bills, and had a half dozen lawsuits file against him in his short adult life.   I mean lets be at least slightly objective here.

IMHO calling him a banker fits perfectly.  To the general public a banker is a person who takes your money in deposit so they can fuck you out of it in a million different ways.

You (and others collectively) gave a semi-annoymous person $5M in irreversible and very difficult to trace currency based on absolutely nothing other than his "word" he would repay it.  Period. To say the investors suckers shouldn't be called stupid is just pure denial.   The bolded sentence above is STUPID.  STUPID STUPID STUPID STUPID STUPID.  There is no possible scenario where the above bolded sentence is anything but ASININELY STUPID.  

Not many people will ruined their rep for $100 scam, a far larger number are willing to do so $5M esecially when the marks hand it to them on a silver plater with a note that says "rob me, I'm stupid".
Sorry for the harsh reality lesson but your line of thinking is just going to enable "Pirate 2.0" and we will have to hear another round of whining about how it wasn't stupid.

My argument is that the fault lies higher up the chain with the people ACTUALLY DEALING DIRECTLY WITH PIRATE.  You can't expect a small-time investor to treat every $50 investment like it's a $5M investment.  However, if you are about to give a guy 40k BTC (aka $400,000, a number I read elsewhere here that was Goat's deposit) ... Then yeah.  STUPID for not doing the research.

Do you use escrow for -every- BTC transaction?  Do you know -every- little detail about everyone holding your BTC investments? Calling everyone who lost money stupid... just seems ignorant to me. 

[Gabi]

Instead of worrying about how to go after people like pirate, how about worrying about how stupid people are to fall for such a thing in the first place?

If you give your money to someone you never met, who won't even tell you how he is investing it, but claims unrealistic returns, than frankly, you deserve to lose your money.

+1 This post pretty much sums up the solution to the whole pirate drama.

+1

[Phinnaeus Gage]

Instead of worrying about how to go after people like pirate, how about worrying about how stupid people are to fall for such a thing in the first place?

If you give your money to someone you never met, who won't even tell you how he is investing it, but claims unrealistic returns, than frankly, you deserve to lose your money.

+1 This post pretty much sums up the solution to the whole pirate drama.

Not sure how you get around the "give your money to someone you never met" part though in the 99% of internet transactions where BTC is actually useful?  If you can trust a web vendor to sell you a TV in BTC, you should be able to trust a banker (pirate) who has a network of other bankers (goat, giga, patrick, hashking, etc) using their services, not to mention the tons of representative "assets" on the main BTC exchange GLBSE.  The pro-pirate posts on the forums outnumbered the con posts 10 to 1, and the cons were always ripped apart.  This was not simply "give your money to someone you never met" in the general sense.  Everyone trusted pirate because the long-time high post count "bankers" here that should have been "in the know" did.

I don't think you can call the general population stupid on this one.  I think that designation should be reserved for the pros that should have known better.  Many of which will come out ahead, despite the default.

Err... for me, personally, trust takes years to earn. I still refuse to use any online wallet or exchange. I don't trust anyone on these forums and probably never will.

On the other hand, I've done lots of business over the years with newegg.com, and if they started accepting Bitcoins today, I would happily make a purchase.

So, two scenarios (that I can think of) will result in trusted Bitcoin businesses. Either already trusted businesses will start accepting Bitcoin, or new Bitcoin businesses will have to build trust over the years, proving they are reliable. The second one is a bit of a chicken and egg scenario, but there are obviously far more trusting people than me willing to be the guinea pigs! 

On the internet, most nobody knows me from Adam, whereas in Sandwich, Illinois, most people know me or, at the very least, of me. That said, when I started the ball rollin' for Bitcoin100, I could have easily taken control of the funds, but thoutht it important to remove myself as the keeper-of-the-coins. I probably could use the klout I've built up to date, albeit a light shade of orange, and build some kind of scheming site, but can't, because I probably would be able to be found wherever I go if hiding is part of the business plan. These guys coming here and doing the scamming seem to have been building their fake social networks for over a year now, some for the sole purpose of duping Bitcoiners, and others for what ever the next big thing is, and Bitcoin just happened to fit the bill. Those same scammers are probably still building social network connections for later use, whether they'll involved Bitcoin or not.

~Bruno~

[Bitcoin Oz]

I think trusted community people who let someone hide behind them and enabled these scams should be ashamed of themselves.

[thebaron]

I think trusted community people who let someone hide behind them and enabled these scams should be ashamed of themselves.

They can always claim ignorance, though. However stupid that may make them.

However, I wouldn't believe anyone that said they thought there wasn't a *huge* risk sending an anonymous person anonymous payments who is promising such a high interest rate.

[Bitcoin Oz]

I think trusted community people who let someone hide behind them and enabled these scams should be ashamed of themselves.

They can always claim ignorance, though. However stupid that may make them.

However, I wouldn't believe anyone that said they thought there wasn't a *huge* risk sending an anonymous person anonymous payments who is promising such a high interest rate.

Trendon Shavers isnt anonymous. Neither was Jonathan Ryan Owens and he recently stole thousands of bitcoins while hiding behind other community members to make himself look legit. This is why we cant have nice things.

[thebaron]

I think trusted community people who let someone hide behind them and enabled these scams should be ashamed of themselves.

They can always claim ignorance, though. However stupid that may make them.

However, I wouldn't believe anyone that said they thought there wasn't a *huge* risk sending an anonymous person anonymous payments who is promising such a high interest rate.

Trendon Shavers isnt anonymous. Neither was Jonathan Ryan Owens and he recently stole thousands of bitcoins while hiding behind other community members to make himself look legit. This is why we cant have nice things.

Pirate may not be so anonymous now, but his name wasn't discovered until recently. For most of the fund's existence, it wasn't known (to my knowledge).

[repentance]

Pirate may not be so anonymous now, but his name wasn't discovered until recently. For most of the fund's existence, it wasn't known (to my knowledge).

People were identifying him as Trendon Shavers and posting about his connections to other businesses and his arrest warrant at least as far back as May.

[Phinnaeus Gage]

Pirate may not be so anonymous now, but his name wasn't discovered until recently. For most of the fund's existence, it wasn't known (to my knowledge).

People were identifying him as Trendon Shavers and posting about his connections to other businesses and his arrest warrant at least as far back as May.

I'm not good at this, but here are two pics that TShavers sent to WFAA: http://www.wfaa.com/younews?profile=tshavers&c=y

Perhaps somebody(s) here can glean info from the meta (or is it mega) data tags of the images. Maybe even some GPS data that I know some cameras capture.

~Bruno~

[notme]

I think trusted community people who let someone hide behind them and enabled these scams should be ashamed of themselves.

They can always claim ignorance, though. However stupid that may make them.

However, I wouldn't believe anyone that said they thought there wasn't a *huge* risk sending an anonymous person anonymous payments who is promising such a high interest rate.

Trendon Shavers isnt anonymous. Neither was Jonathan Ryan Owens and he recently stole thousands of bitcoins while hiding behind other community members to make himself look legit. This is why we cant have nice things.

Pirate may not be so anonymous now, but his name wasn't discovered until recently. For most of the fund's existence, it wasn't known (to my knowledge).

Cool story, except I knew his name, birth date, and city of residence before the his BTCST thread made it past the first page.  Those who didn't know didn't bother to look.

[Phinnaeus Gage]

The Lending Partners was touched on lightly before, but... http://www.whoismind.com/whois/tlpoffice.com.html

Registrant:
The Lending Partners
5085 West Park Blvd
Suite 200
Plano, Texas 75093
United States

Domain Name: TLPOFFICE.COM
Created on: 20-Dec-05
Expires on: 20-Dec-12
Last Updated on: 01-Dec-11

Administrative Contact:
Sproat, Betsy (tshavers@thelendingpartners.info) <<on the site, this is an image>>
The Lending Partners
5085 West Park Blvd
Suite 200
Plano, Texas 75093
United States
(972) 665-1905

Technical Contact:
Sproat, Betsy (tshavers@thelendingpartners.info) <<on the site, this is an image>>
The Lending Partners
5085 West Park Blvd
Suite 200
Plano, Texas 75093
United States
(972) 665-1905

And from there: http://www.whoismind.com/whois/thelendingpartners.info.html

Domain ID:D6322473-LRMS
Domain Name:THELENDINGPARTNERS.INFO
Created On:09-Sep-2004 20:00:36 UTC
Last Updated On:01-Aug-2011 19:11:00 UTC
Expiration Date:09-Sep-2012 20:00:36 UTC
Sponsoring Registrar:GoDaddy.com LLC (R171-LRMS)
Status:CLIENT DELETE PROHIBITED
Status:CLIENT RENEW PROHIBITED
Status:CLIENT TRANSFER PROHIBITED
Status:CLIENT UPDATE PROHIBITED
Registrant ID:CR4718519
Registrant Name:Betsy Sproat
Registrant Organization:Lending Partners
Registrant Street1:5085 W. Park Blvd. #200
Registrant Street2:
Registrant Street3:
Registrant City:Plano
Registrant State/Province:TX
Registrant Postal Code:75093
Registrant Country:US
Registrant Phone:+1.9726651900
Registrant Phone Ext.:
Registrant FAX:
Registrant FAX Ext.:
Registrant Email:  (jasonleary@lendingptrs.com)  <<on the site, this is an image>>
Admin ID:CR4718523
Admin Name:Betsy Sproat
Admin Organization:Lending Partners
Admin Street1:5085 W. Park Blvd. #200
Admin Street2:
Admin Street3:
Admin City:Plano
Admin State/Province:TX
Admin Postal Code:75093
Admin Country:US
Admin Phone:+1.9726651900
Admin Phone Ext.:
Admin FAX:
Admin FAX Ext.:
Admin Email:  (jasonleary@lendingptrs.com)  <<on the site, this is an image>>
Billing ID:CR4718525
Billing Name:Betsy Sproat
Billing Organization:Lending Partners
Billing Street1:5085 W. Park Blvd. #200
Billing Street2:
Billing Street3:
Billing City:Plano
Billing State/Province:TX
Billing Postal Code:75093
Billing Country:US
Billing Phone:+1.9726651900
Billing Phone Ext.:
Billing FAX:
Billing FAX Ext.:
Billing Email: (jasonleary@lendingptrs.com)  <<on the site, this is an image>>
Tech ID:CR4718521
Tech Name:Betsy Sproat
Tech Organization:Lending Partners
Tech Street1:5085 W. Park Blvd. #200
Tech Street2:
Tech Street3:
Tech City:Plano
Tech State/Province:TX
Tech Postal Code:75093
Tech Country:US
Tech Phone:+1.9726651900
Tech Phone Ext.:
Tech FAX:
Tech FAX Ext.:
Tech Email: (jasonleary@lendingptrs.com)  <<on the site, this is an image>>
Name Server:NS51.DOMAINCONTROL.COM
Name Server:NS52.DOMAINCONTROL.COM

[bitcoiners]

Cool story, except I knew his name, birth date, and city of residence before the his BTCST thread made it past the first page.  Those who didn't know didn't bother to look.

One question.  Have you been paid?  No?  Yeah, I thought not.

[thebaron]

http://www.apartmentratings.com/rate/TX-Plano-Waters-Edge-Apartments-443308.html

[Phinnaeus Gage]

http://www.apartmentratings.com/rate/TX-Plano-Waters-Edge-Apartments-443308.html

Having trouble following this one, Baron. Help me out here.

~Bruno~

[sadpandatech]

http://www.apartmentratings.com/rate/TX-Plano-Waters-Edge-Apartments-443308.html

Having trouble following this one, Baron. Help me out here.

~Bruno~

me too. DO you link to there because of the complaint about leaker water heaters? If so, it would seem that would be before the Stonebridge address...

[sadpandatech]

The Lending Partners was touched on lightly before, but... http://www.whoismind.com/whois/tlpoffice.com.html

How he links there, verified;

His GpuMAX partner Nakaska worked there as stated in his resume.
Trendon and wife used their services to draw up their mortgage for them back in, 06?

Unverified links;

Trendon may have worked there around the same time Nakaska did; Evidenced from him replying to a msg on TLP's Merchnatcircle page
and titling himself as Director. But not stating director of what. the reply email he listed is a default corporate one for TLP's HR/Marketing office.

[thebaron]

http://www.apartmentratings.com/rate/TX-Plano-Waters-Edge-Apartments-443308.html

Having trouble following this one, Baron. Help me out here.

~Bruno~

http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!msg/apps/LvMzgMPx8Jc/LQ1BTanEvPc

[sadpandatech]

http://www.apartmentratings.com/rate/TX-Plano-Waters-Edge-Apartments-443308.html

Having trouble following this one, Baron. Help me out here.

~Bruno~

http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!msg/apps/LvMzgMPx8Jc/LQ1BTanEvPc

ohhhh... is usaservices not the older trendon shavers from TX?

nice find either way, will check it out..

nice. And funny DFA is just up the road from usaservices. small towns.   Pretty sure its the other trendon, but will check.

[Bitcoin Oz]

http://www.apartmentratings.com/rate/TX-Plano-Waters-Edge-Apartments-443308.html

Having trouble following this one, Baron. Help me out here.

~Bruno~

http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!msg/apps/LvMzgMPx8Jc/LQ1BTanEvPc

ohhhh... is usaservices not the older trendon shavers from TX?

nice find either way, will check it out..

nice. And funny DFA is just up the road from usaservices. small towns.   Pretty sure its the other trendon, but will check.

Nice.....