The pirate ponzi fiasco

[imsaguy]

And if a user is adjudged innocent, are they still notified that you browsed through them?

That's never happened.

That's somewhat disheartening.

[1713890155]

1713890155

[1713890155]

1713890155

[1713890155]

1713890155

[theymos]

Where the other innocent parties notified?

No. The possibility of privacy concerns in these cases never occurred to me, since the stuff I've read has always been boring trade stuff.

[imsaguy]

No. The possibility of privacy concerns in these cases never occurred to me

FAIL.

[bigasic]

So should you be able to sue your stockbroker if the stock you told him to buy on your behalf tanks when all of the information you needed to assess the risk of that stock has been freely available to you?

You're missing the point. The claim is not that PPT operators breached their agreement with their bondholders. The claim is that PPT operators knowingly paid pirate to make them the recipients of fraudulent transfers. (Those of them on record as saying they knew or suspected Pirate was running a Ponzi scheme.)

The liability is like that of a fence who buys property he suspects is likely stolen and then sells it to someone else who also suspects it's stolen. It's not like thieves say to their fences, "You know this property is stolen, right?" The fence just has to suspect it's likely stolen and not look to closely at the fact that the circumstances strongly suggest it's stolen.

If a "stockbroker" helps a woman find a hitman to kill her husband and brokers the deal, he's as guilty of the murder as the hitman is. Yes, even if he kept his deal with the woman by finding a reliable hitman and paying him.

You stated it much better than I....

[theymos]

In many places it is illegal to do what you are doing with out a warrant and many other places highly illegal to make private messages public.

There are millions of laws. I'm probably breaking dozens right now somehow. I'm not going to let these laws stop me from doing what's best. As I mentioned previously, I'm not sure what the best course of action is with the Pirate case -- I'll decide this later after some public discussion.

[bigasic]

I learned this years ago... If I want to send something that is private and I don't want the whole world to know what I wrote, I always use PGP.. The only way another party can read it is if the intended recipient unencrypted the messages and sent it to another individual..

I'ts very very easy to use pgp. We should never rely on the board or email operators that they will keep everything private.

After thinking about it, Im not so sure that most of the pass throughs deserve a scammer tag. Now, if they had knowledge of the workings and new it to be illegal, then yes, but the investor should do his/her diligence in learning what they are investing in.

Im sure some will probably deserve it while others no. It all comes down to what they were privy to and how they advertised the pass through..

If Pirate offered 2 percent instead of 7, I think that he would have got a lot more "investors".. Just because 2 percent is a lot more believable than 7.. But then again, when you say 7 percent, all you need is to survive the scam for about 10 weeks and you are paid back..

I believe that when a ponzi is detected, they will actually try to collect money from those that made more than their initial investment.. This will be very very difficult to prove, especially with bitcoin.. I would think that a lot of pass through operators are going to get sued. (Granted, I don't know how many of them let their true identity be known.)

Since so much money was lost, I just don't see those that lost a lot to sit on the sidelines and just let it go.. if I lost over a few thousand dollars, I know that i would be hiring an attorney and doing what I can to recover whatever..

I guess we will have to wait and see how many victims will team up and start suing Pirate and his pass throughs..

i do believe that Pirate will try to pass the blame on to his pass throughs to lighten his load..

I guess phase 2 is about begin in the ongoing Pirate drama... My wife calls it "As the Bitcoin turns"...

Maybe that should be a whole new section. that way all of Pirates threads can be found in one place.. lol..

[repentance]

Where the other innocent parties notified?

No. The possibility of privacy concerns in these cases never occurred to me, since the stuff I've read has always been boring trade stuff.

In many places it is illegal to do what you are doing with out a warrant and many other places highly illegal to make private messages public.

Can you tell us about the laws where the people you were spying on are located?

Do you expect to get sued by anyone if you start posting their private communications in public?

That's an ironic comment in a thread where people are suggesting that the pass-through operators themselves may have been acting illegally.

Even where privacy laws do apply, the information they protect is not unlimited and nor is the obligation to protect it.  Maybe you could argue copyright in the PMs you authored, but how would you establish damages otherwise?

People are really selective about the extent to which they care about legalities around here.  Pretty much the only people well-positioned to take legal action over anything remotely connected with Bitcoin are those who've done absolutely everything by the book and reported every cent of income they've made from Bitcoin and not been involved in any Bitcoin enterprises which make their money from illegal activity.  I suspect such people are in the absolute minority.  Whether the PPT operators were complicit in the operation of a ponzi scheme or not, they've almost certainly committed other significant financial offences which would be revealed by any attempt they made to sue anyone.

[myrkul]

Where the other innocent parties notified?

No. The possibility of privacy concerns in these cases never occurred to me, since the stuff I've read has always been boring trade stuff.

In many places it is illegal to do what you are doing with out a warrant and many other places highly illegal to make private messages public.

I find that in these instances, it's helpful to compare the situation to one that may happen in real life.

In that instance, this makes bitcointalk.org rather like a hotel lobby. Along one wall is a row of mailboxes. each of us has a key to one of them. Here's the thing: The backs are open. It's well known that the proprietor has access to the contents of them. How else does he periodically save copies in the safe? And you guys are writing to each other using post cards. You want your mail to be private, use an envelope.

Theymos, I recommend the thread where release of those messages is discussed and (potentially) occurs be entitled "Postcards from Pirate".

[myrkul]

I'll just leave these here...
Linux: http://www.gnupg.org/
Windows: http://gpg4win.org/
Mac: http://gpgtools.org/

[theymos]

This post is sufficient for a court to reject any claims of protections based on USC § 230¹.

The forum isn't based in the US.

[bitlane]

Ah, so you're already reading the pms.  Good to know.  Who else are you snooping through?

I only scanned through them to make sure that the SQL query (to archive them) worked as I intended. The PGP message blocks stood out.

I only read others' PMs without their permission during scam investigations, and I've only read a user's entire inbox a few times.

I for one, have previously BEGGED to have my PMs read by theymos or any other MOD capable.....lol

Remember what gigavps said "honest people leave tracks in the sand" ......and I have never tried to hide.

[bitlane]

This post is sufficient for a court to reject any claims of protections based on USC § 230¹.

The forum isn't based in the US.

Irrelevant.  International criminals can have warrants waiting for them if they ever choose to enter the country, and if you are in a country with an extradition treaty with the US, depending on the severity of those emails, you won't have to choose.

If you're in Canada, you're hosed (seewhatIdidthere?) as US courts will happily entertain criminal and civil cases against Canucks.

US courts don't really care about jurisdiction, especially if there is racketeering or conspiracy involved.

Did you claim your steak dinner under 'capitol gains' on your income tax ?

If so, please forward me the amount, as I need to claim that same amount as a LOSS.

thanks,
bitlane

[repentance]

This post is sufficient for a court to reject any claims of protections based on USC § 230¹.

The forum isn't based in the US.

Irrelevant.  International criminals can have warrants waiting for them if they ever choose to enter the country, and if you are in a country with an extradition treaty with the US, depending on the severity of those emails, you won't have to choose.

If you're in Canada, you're hosed (seewhatIdidthere?) as US courts will happily entertain criminal and civil cases against Canucks.

US courts don't really care about jurisdiction, especially if there is racketeering or conspiracy involved.

So who's going to start off all these racketeering and IRS investigations by reporting pirate's scheme (and possibly GPUMax) to the relevant authorities?  There might be a lot of people who want pirate's dealings put under a microscope, but not at the risk of their own financial affairs being subjected to scrutiny.

[bitlane]

Did you claim your steak dinner under 'capitol gains' on your income tax ?

If so, please forward me the amount, as I need to claim that same amount as a LOSS.

thanks,
bitlane

A) Capital gains
B) My applicable corporate and personal fiscal calendars follow the annual calendar, so my detailed filings are not due until April 2013.
C) De minimus fringe benefit.
D) It was not a taxable investment event as no btc were exchanged, sold, or otherwise transferred.
E) Sucks to be you.

Thankfully my failed attempt at sarcasm wasn't wasted on you when I used the term 'capitol'.

[bitlane]

BTW, the forum has lots of good IP addresses logged for pirateat40 (he never used Tor) and 4077 PMs to/from him. This should help the investigation. I'd prefer to release this stuff privately to police, though I may release it publicly in a few months if no police officers contact me about it.

Does the forum DB archive deleted PMs from a User's Inbox ?

[theymos]

Theymos do you mind my posting (making public) the few PM's we shared on the topic?

Please do. I've been getting annoyed with you constantly saying that I asked you to do it as a favor. I suggested it.

It'd be cool if you or someone else with a BS&T account created a GLBSE asset that's more pure/direct than PPT. You could offer 6.5% weekly interest and keep the remaining interest as a fee.

[ribuck]

Couldn't we just encourage Pirate to have sex with some women in Sweden, then let things run their course?

[Frankie]

I believe that when a ponzi is detected, they will actually try to collect money from those that made more than their initial investment.. This will be very very difficult to prove, especially with bitcoin.. I would think that a lot of pass through operators are going to get sued. (Granted, I don't know how many of them let their true identity be known.)

Several shills bragged about gambling on house money. That's a place to start.

[zyk]

In many places it is illegal to do what you are doing with out a warrant and many other places highly illegal to make private messages public.

There are millions of laws. I'm probably breaking dozens right now somehow. I'm not going to let these laws stop me from doing what's best. As I mentioned previously, I'm not sure what the best course of action is with the Pirate case -- I'll decide this later after some public discussion.

At least every user has to be made aware ( or better asked before ), when you are reading his posts, independent of the justification!!!

If your access is declined, then you should search for public discussion to have a just case which backs the intrusion.

We really need to be attentive now not to loose common sense in our bitcoin community and keep rules equal to all of us !


Thanks for consideration

Zyk

[Frankie]

You are now responsible for maintaining and monitoring criminal or tortious activity on the forum.  This post is sufficient for a court to reject any claims of protections based on USC § 230¹.  Maged and you are in a position to be named codefendants with pirate as accessories and possible other charges due to your stated status as intermediaries.  Given that it can be shown that you acted on this information by participating in the "betting" and the inducements to start pass-throughs, you may want to lawyer up.

Not a smart move.  Keep in mind that deleting your posts or backups at this point will compound your potential trouble.

1. http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/230

It's actually very difficult to waive protection of Sec. 230 of the CDA unless the management actually contributes the content.  For example, even if you intentionally disseminate an email you know to be false and probably libelous, you're OK as long as someone else wrote it (i.e. it was another "information content provider").

Deleting spam and scams would almost certainly not invoke the paradoxical wrath of the good Samaritan duty.  What would expose thymos to liability is not investigating some scams while failing to shut down others (see Gentry v. eBay, Inc., 99 Cal. App. 4th 816, 830 (2002)), but contributing to tortious speech by, for example, writing prose or headings for the scam.  Cf. Hy Cite Corp. v. badbusinessbureau.com, 418 F. Supp. 2d 1142 (D. Ariz. 2005)  Maybe he did that somewhere else, but checking his SQL queries sure doesn't cut it, Mr. internet lawyer.