Going after Trendon Shavers, Pirateat40, BTCST

[Willowbitcoin]

Goat,

Your doing the right thing. Do not worry about the hecklers.

Best of luck to you. I watch on with interest.

[Luno]

You are brilliant. If this pans out to be a part of a bigger outside scam, the community in general, will look less like a hornets nest of crocks to outsiders, possible like a currency for gullible idealists. Unflattering sure, but far better than the current status. This lesson have shown to all of us that risking your own money in questionable investments is not only damaging to you, but to the whole community.

Good work, go for it.

[jbreher]

Jeebers Cripes. Quite the inverted signal-to-noise ratio around here. How tangential can 9 pages of 'replies' be?

Goat - I think a coordinated effort would likely be a good thing. I could see myself ponying up for some of the cost. But first I would like to understand what the assumed costs and benefits may be.

- What are the various possible outcomes of such an effort?
- Can this be approached in a stepwise fashion?
- What wold be the expected cost of each step?
- If this action resulted eventually in some restitution, how would proceeds be allocated?

[LoupGaroux]

...
I would like to say a few quick things, my stuff I have had to sell was to cover things like my insured PPT bonds. The ones I guaranteed. I did not and will not go into default like many of the other PPT operators. Some of then I think will get the scammers tag because they lied about where their money was going. That is part of the reason why they are not here IMO.

Goat- it sucks to have to sell stuff to honor your obligations, but those are the realities of owning a business and offering investment opportunities. Some days you win, and some days you have to make your word be worth something, suck it up and pay out. That's the other side of the coin from when you are raking in the profits. The Scammer tag is not for participating, the Scammer tag will be for those who willfully promoted the scheme (which was the scam) were intimately involved in the scam, and do nothing to make good with the victims of the scam.

About opening the books, they have been opened. We have seen what was going on with many PPT operators because most of the work was done in the block chain. We still are missing some stuff and this is the sort of thing we will be looking for very soon.

Good. The more transparency you can offer the better. How about a full data dump on all of the secret IRC discussions, a breakdown on what was discussed and when, and access to the private contact info you have for pirate? The datamining experts here will find things like that valuable in their search for the guilty parties.

There will be a thread in a few hours for collection, and that will not be managed by me. I will not even have access to what is collected.

Why? What possible use does anybody investigating this have for donations? If there is an action plan developed and a fund to hire professional to investigate- that would be one thing, but just to say- "we need donations" is offensive. And the root cause of why I and others are doubting your sincerity is solving this problem.

I do not think I did anything wrong with my PPT because I was clear I would be giving my money to Pirate. I also explained that there were real risks investing with pirate and one should not invest more than they could lose.

Then may I suggest you think again. You were a vocal cheerleader, and enthusiastic early adopter, an insider in every respect, and you made a very public case for what a wonderful place it was to invest. You then proceeded to make significant profits for yourself on channeling the funds to pirate. An explanation in fine print does not make this okay, you have a fiduciary responsibility to those who entrusted you with their money. I realize that this is a pretend world, with a pretend currency, but the real world rules of responsibility for financial transactions apply. To put a none too subtle note on it, you are a very public accessory to a crime. You have channeled a significant amount of wealth through your mechanism of investment to an crime that is well into the felony range in pretty much any jurisdiction world-wide. You don't make that go away with a lame caveat emptor. You bust your ass trying to do the right thing, you dig deep until you bleed to make good to those who trusted you, long before the Court orders you to, and you don't ever ask for a donation to assist in this matter in any way. And you might consider staying out of the limelight. The investigation and subsequent prosecution (on whatever level) of this matter is not something that you should be the face of.

I also have explained how and my my bonds P were sold in the TygrrBondP thread found on the forum. Not reason to explain again. If you have a question please post it in the correct thread.

Thank you.

And I have been a very interested observer as you have learned how to put together your ventures. Your learning process has been very public. You just need to think about tightening up on the details now that investment mogul has turned to as-yet uncharged con-conspirator. You are standing at that crossroads where you have to decide who you are- a scummy little sycophant who is trying to bluff his way out of responsibility with empty words, or a man of honor who will do the right thing, and own his mistake, be honest about it, and work to make it better. And perhaps, a small note of humility and contrition?

[Monster Tent]

I cant believe these people are honestly asking for more fucking money. Even if satoshi himself came down from the heavens and hired chuck norris to go after blackbeard its still wrong.

[Turbor]

I filed a report with IC3 about a week ago. Do the same if you want to see some action. All this talk is cheap.

[EskimoBob]

Goat is doing his damnest to whitewash his history as a complicit I-know-Pirate's-business-model shill by appointing himself public prosecutor. Good luck with that, Goat, but it's a collosal mistake for anyone else to subsidize one of the leading co-conspirators to this scam.

Finally somebody says it. If you hadn't, I probably would have.

After reading this thread, I am now convinced that all of them will get away, the pirate and all of his cronies, his feeder fund (PPT) operators.

If I were a feeder fund operator, what would I do? If I were not eloquent, I would probably disappear. If I were a psychopathic manipulator, as a scammer usually is, I would state that I am pursuing the pirate on behalf of my investors and would try extremely hard to create the impression that I am a victim, rather than the perpetrator I really am. Never forget that scammers are usually psychopathic controllers who masterfully make you believe what they want you to believe.

You don't believe this? Then you are beyond help. You think that somebody who is able to establish and run a feeder fund for a huge scam operation is unable to recognize the nature of the whole business, in spite of ample and very elaborate explanations and warnings? There are very naive "investors", but there are no very naive feeder fund operators.

I would rather assume that the clique is still communicating and they are covering each other's asses.

So what would I do if I were pirateat40? I would leisurely launder my last bitcoins and disappear into a faraway country for a long and nice holiday. From there I would watch how a bunch of clueless "investors" is being led around by the nose by my comrades, perhaps just by the ones on that notorious photo showing the elusive club of people hand-picked by me, the pirate. If, after a few years, I would consider all clear, I might even return and, if it's still all clear after another year, start the next scam. With all the experience I would have gathered, that would be very smooth sailing.

And a word directly to Goat and any other feeder fund operator who now wants to look like Jesus, the savior. If you want to disprove what I think and write, let some trusted person here select an auditor for you, open your books to that auditor, and show what you have done.

But actually I am now very pessimistic and may even stop reading these hopeless threads. My unhappy prediction is that the pirate will go free.

+10

[OneEyed]

There is a group of us who are gathering evidence and collecting names for legal action against Trendon Shavers, Pirateat40, BTCST.

We have collected a large amount of information and are working with the Bitcoin Police. We will be consulting a lawyer and potentially law enforcement.

As long as you do not contact law enforcement, nothing prevents Trendon Shavers (assuming he is pirateat40) from disappearing, as he has the right to get out of touch at any moment. Do not forget that a suspect in an investigation may be forbidden to leave the country. It does not mean that he would not be able to flee anyway, but that would make it an additional offense, for which he might be convicted even if he gets away with the bitcoins theft.

[Shadow383]

Many people come on here and yell ponzi but sadly they do not have proof and the evidence does not support this.

How exactly does the evidence not support that?

[Shadow383]

1.5-3% per day isn't unusual for an online ponzi scheme (zeek managed to get to ~$600m and last over a year offering rates like that).
What interests me though is you saying he paid out more than he got in - what details do you have for that?

[Puppet]

The first thing we would like to do is find out exactly what pirate was doing.

Thats easy. He took your coins and ran.
Whatever Pirate did with your coins, "invest", sell, gamble, coke or hookers doesnt matter one yota. Why dont you focus on verifying his ID and filing a formal complaint?

[repentance]

The first thing we would like to do is find out exactly what pirate was doing. Many people come on here and yell ponzi but sadly they do not have proof and the evidence does not support this.

Now maybe investing into a ponzi was what pirate was really doing. If that was the case then we need to try and collect it back. If he was investing in zeek we need to make a claim.

Maybe pirate was not running a ponzi or investing in a ponzi but just took the money and ran. Maybe the people on the forum here that keep claiming ponzi without evidence are paid by pirate to make us think it was a ponzi while he runs with the whole amount.

The speculation is endless and we want evidence so we know what he was doing. Once we know what he was doing we can try to find out where the funds are. If we can find the funds then we need to go after Pirate. It is pretty clear that pirate lied and did commit fraud. He is also operating in bad faith assuming this is not a scam.

Government investigators of fraud, scams and other financial crimes are far better resourced to find out exactly what pirate was doing than anyone this community could employ.  You already have enough to report him to those authorities and for them to begin trying to trace the funds (you have no access to the other side of these transactions - the USD trail - while those investigators do).

There is nothing to stop you from collecting information with regard to taking civil action against pirate (and it's even known that he is due to appear in court in relation to other matters in November so he could be served there), but you don't need a lawyer in order to get the US Attorney's Office (they appear to be who normally investigates ponzis) moving.  There seem to be multiple bodies to whom suspected ponzis can be reported and there's no harm in reporting this to all of them.  It's their job to investigate whether pirate's scheme was a ponzi or some other kind of investment fraud - you don't need to present them with a complete case file in order to make a report.

[markm]

Many people seemed to give him a lot of money once everyone started telling ponzi.

That kind of makes sense, since once you know it is a ponzi you can figure a way to try to profit from it, such as by sending in lots more lambs to the slaughter, whereas when you didn't know what it was it was maybe harder to see why (or even how) he would ever give you any of your money back...

-MarkM-

[markm]

Many people seemed to give him a lot of money once everyone started telling ponzi.

That kind of makes sense, since once you know it is a ponzi you can figure a way to try to profit from it, such as by sending in lots more lambs to the slaughter, whereas when you didn't know what it was it was maybe harder to see why (or even how) he would ever give you any of your money back...

-MarkM-

Part of this IMO is that once people yelled ponzi people wanted safe investments and bought insrued operators wanted to send in more lambs to the slaugher so sold "insured" pirate stuff. However it turns out most of the insurance money was also sent to pirate :/

Fixed That For You

-MarkM-

[kentrolla]

the first step should be to file a complaint imo.  The sooner the better. Let them do their job.

[EskimoBob]

Why is it even important, is it ponzi or not?
He took money in form of bitcoins and has not returned it with promised with or without interest payments.FULL STOP!
He has failed on 3 deadlines and refuses to communicate with PPT issuers, PPT holders and one who deposited coins directly. 

What he did or did not with the stolen coin (it became stolen when he failed to return it upon request) is irrelevant in this case.

Lets stick to the facts and only facts. Everything else is as valuable as bird farting.



 

[Shadow383]

the first step should be to file a complaint imo.  The sooner the better. Let them do their job.

I'm in Thailand and I do not have the money to hire a lawyer to file a complain on my behalf. We are doing this as a group and this is the way they wanted to do it.

I do agree that sooner is better and will pass that idea along. However many people stress that they want a lawyer who understands what is going on to talk to the FBI. I agree with this honestly.

However I think people who are involved in this can and should directly call the FBI or what not and then let BA know. Then we have something to work on.

The more people that make claims can only help us I would guess.

Thanks

There must be an appropriate lawyer in the Bitcoin community somewhere - get an announcement made and start a bounty so Bullshit&Trust investors can pay towards it.

[farfiman]

Let's get Julianna Margulies
At least she knows what bitcoin is already

[repentance]

I agree we do not need to know what happened before we file a complain and we might not ever know. However collect evidence just seemed like the right first step. Part of this step is who is owed what and to see if the want to file a complaint as well. Sadly many large PPT operators at this time seem to not want to join us. Some slowly are talking with us however.

Thanks.

I'd strongly advise filing complaints with whatever information you already have and adding any extra information you have as it comes in.  The longer it takes before those who can access all sorts of information about Trendon Shavers which this community cannot start investigating, the more opportunity he has to muddy the trail.

I also believe that it if it was legitimate to ask Bitcoin Magazine to distance itself from Matthew, it is equally legitimate to ask the other members of GPUMax to distance themselves from Trendon and to make a public statement regarding his current role in relation to that entity and whether or not GPUMax itself had any exposure to BS&T (we know that they shared a wallet, but we have no idea to what extent the businesses may have crossed over in other ways).

I doubt very much that no-one closely associated with Trendon knew what he was doing.  It's likely some were complicit in his fraud.

[JMAHH]

[offtopic]

verbal diarrhea

More concisely: "logorrhea".

[/offtopic]

As long as they don't ask us to invest in the investigation, I'll support it.