Re: Butterfly Labs CEO 25 Million USD Mail Fraud — A Concise Summary of Evidence

[tvbcof]

To  be fair, Butterfly labs other then being a bit slow on orders (which happens to normal companies all the time as a result of various reasons) they have fulfilled all their promises so far, right? They produce high quality  machines,  they show up at the conference, they do research and dev (They showed off a prototype ASIC at the conference).

They got stuff (especially design files) to peer review?

example:

  https://github.com/leaflabs

[repentance]

To be honest- at this point BFL is a functioning company with R&D costs like any other. If this new revelation explains anything, I think it more  likely explains why they needed to offer pre-orders: with a history of Mail Fraud it might be impossible for BFL to get outside venture capital, or even borrow money from the bank, thus the community pre-order's bankroll the next iteration of equipment.

Inaba stated that that preorders were not used to fund development and that outside investments (VC, etc) were taken.

It's a condition of Sonny's parole that he has to make available to his parole officer the financial records of any business enterprise with which he's involved.  If they're telling the truth about development not being funded by pre-orders, Sonny's parole officer should be able to confirm that by reviewing BFL's financial records.

[Phinnaeus Gage]

Look, guys, I'm not trying to spread fud here nor derail this thread, for I believe it's all connected, and I may need help. I just found this and I believe I need the brainiacs here to make heads or tails of it. James Ray Houston's name is mentioned several times within, and Sonny Boy was a major player of Laissez Faire City. Hell, I even learned that two guys committed suicide over this project. (long, but full of shit) http://www.offshorealert.com/forums.aspx?g=posts&t=37064

Mailvault is a supposedly secure email system- Mailvault.com-
built by the Laissez Faire City programmers, see the previous posts. There was an IRS revenue agent on the staff of Laissez Faire City during the time this was built. This agent helped troubleshoot systems that the LFC security "experts" just could not figure out. And a bang up job he did too!

Surely no federal tax agent would stoop to a backdoor in a system used to move funds by a large group of tax evaders? By Saint Ayn of the holy Rand, that just would not be possible!, right?

[repentance]

somebody should seriously lock and delete this thread and im not kidding.

Why?  Is he one of those nasty "associates" of yours that you're always talking about?  Maybe you should start looking for connections between Maria and Sonny, Phin.

[MysteryMiner]

As I suspected long time ago You will not get your preordered ASICs! At least not from Corpse-fly Labs. This suspicion did not stopped various people talking and panicking about ASIC mining and proposing to abandon/fail Bitcoin in favour of "ASIC unfriendly" cryptocurrencies or suggesting "ASIC unfriendly" changes in original Bitcoin protocol.

[bittenbob]

PG, please, let this topic go.

somebody should seriously lock and delete this thread and im not kidding.

SilentMaria.

Why exactly? I think this is relevant information for anyone who has or is thinking of placing an ASIC preorder with BFL. Why are you so adamant about people not finding out about their CEOs past?

[malevolent]

Inaba stated that that preorders were not used to fund development and that outside investments (VC, etc) were taken.

Any proof of that? Who provided the venture capital?

[greyhawk]

They produce high quality  machines, 

Have you seen the insides of a FPGA minirig? I did. They're slapped together with velcro, hot glue and 10 cent Chinese unpowered USB hubs. I'm not even joking.

[Philj]

Wouldn't it be funny if they were able to scam everyone out of their upgrade money, then on top of that get many of the people to send functional FPGAs back to them so they can run off with the $$$ and a couple TH/s of mining gear to keep the $$$ flowing in afterwards?      

[fcmatt]

Did they demo an asic at the london conf? Any pics or vids or indy person verifying this?

[Saturn7]

[Phinnaeus Gage]

somebody should seriously lock and delete this thread and im not kidding.

Why?  Is he one of those nasty "associates" of yours that you're always talking about?  Maybe you should start looking for connections between Maria and Sonny, Phin.

Phinn JO to Maria's avatar. Maria is Leo (so I've read). Sonny is known my this guy:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=97486.msg1073032#msg1073032
http://web.archive.org/web/20030222180718/http://lfcfa.com/financials/report.html
http://johanngevers.com/
http://monetas.net/solutions/

LR City, Sonny, Johann, Houston, etc. are all connected.

[BkkCoins]

Wouldn't it be funny if they were able to scam everyone out of their upgrade money, then on top of that get many of the people to send functional FPGAs back to them so they can run off with the $$$ and a couple TH/s of mining gear to keep the $$$ flowing in afterwards?      

This is a good indicator. Once ASICs come out the FPGAs have much less value - so why would they want them back? Well, because if you get them back but ASICs never ship then you have a huge mining rig with excellent value as ASICs haven't yet pushed up the difficulty.

So not only will you be smarting from not getting your ASICs but you'll have to put up with knowing that the bitcoins you're using are being mined by your very own rigs in the fraudsters hands. Which explains why they didn't mind shipping FPGAs in the first place as they knew they actually having you pay for their own super rig.

[tvbcof]

Did they demo an asic at the london conf? Any pics or vids or indy person verifying this?

IIRC, the Mechanical Turk (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Turk) was demo'd for decades.  Ditto countless 'free energy' type devices though they tended to have a shorter life expectancy for various reasons.  The conference seems to have been attended by a fair number of legitimately skilled persons.  (Any hardware guys?)   It'll be interesting to know their observations if they have any to share.

[Rassah]

They produce high quality  machines, 

Have you seen the insides of a FPGA minirig? I did. They're slapped together with velcro, hot glue and 10 cent Chinese unpowered USB hubs. I'm not even joking.

I'm not sure how this is a bad thing. They saved money on USB hubs, didn't waste time drilling them, and didn't bother investing in custom built hardware, thus saving lost of money, AND they came up with a way to make all the components easily replaceable if something breaks. What's the problem?

[repentance]

Did they demo an asic at the london conf? Any pics or vids or indy person verifying this?

IIRC, the Mechanical Turk (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Turk) was demo'd for decades.  Ditto countless 'free energy' type devices though they tended to have a shorter life expectancy for various reasons.  The conference seems to have been attended by a fair number of legitimately skilled persons.  (Any hardware guys?)   It'll be interesting to know their observations if they have any to share.

I think there were a couple of auctions for a prototype single as well as a mini-rig and a drawing for a jalapeno.  Unfortunately, one working demo model or prototype doesn't prove the existence of hundreds of machines which are built to the same specifications and which will work as promised day in day out.

[Phinnaeus Gage]

http://news.spamcop.net/pipermail/spamcop-list/2003-September/056931.html

Panama?!? This stinks ... and the trace continues:

Registrant:
 Laissez Faire City
 Lomas de Ayarco Sur
 Curridabat, San Jose 00000
 CR

 Domain name: MAILVAULT.COM

 Administrative Contact:
    Hostmaster, LFC  domains at lfcfa.org
    Lomas de Ayarco Sur
    Curridabat, San Jose 00000
    CR
    506-272-0000
 Technical Contact:
    Hostmaster, LFC  domains at lfcfa.org
    Lomas de Ayarco Sur
    Curridabat, San Jose 00000
    CR
    506-272-0000


 Registrar of Record: TUCOWS, INC.
 Record last updated on 22-Apr-2003.
 Record expires on 10-Dec-2004.
 Record Created on 11-Dec-1997.

 Domain servers in listed order:
    DNS1.VGUILD.COM   64.69.65.222
    NS1.THIRDHOST.COM   65.113.114.194


Registration info for VGUILD.COM is stinking, too.
On of their DNS servers are in the PHANTOMSERVER.COM domain.

THIRDHOST.COM stinks, too, and is registrered through
dotster.com, all the others were through Tucows/OpenSRS.
Contact email address is at MAILVAULT.COM. IPs are 65.113.114.194+195 at
ProHosting.

PHANTOMSERVER.COM smells not much better and is registered
through directnic.com. Email is again at MAILVAULT.COM.

Back to LFCFA.ORG, mail contact for MAILVAULT.COM:

Registrant:
 Johann Gevers
 1017 Second St Apt 101
 Santa Monica, CA 90403-3620
 US

 Domain name: LFCFA.ORG

 Administrative Contact:
    Gevers, Johann  johann at gevers.net
    1017 Second St Apt 101
    Santa Monica, CA 90403-3620
    US
    (209) 254-9856
 Technical Contact:
    Gevers, Johann  johann at gevers.net
    1017 Second St Apt 101
    Santa Monica, CA 90403-3620
    US
    (209) 254-9856


 Registrar of Record: TUCOWS, INC.
 Record last updated on 18-Jun-2003.
 Record expires on 31-Jul-2004.
 Record Created on 31-Jul-2002.

 Domain servers in listed order:
    NS19.ZONEEDIT.COM
    NS18.ZONEEDIT.COM

GEVERS.NET seems to have the same data and is registered
through godaddy.com (and jomax.net is godaddy). Can someone
verify the data for this domain? Or does it ring a bell?
IIRC I've already seen it somewhere here around :-/.

www.LFCFA.ORG redirects to www.LFCFA.COM (same WHOIS,
except for DNS by METROPIPE.NET), which gives an
interesting reading, introducing LFCGATE.COM and HUSH.COM.

METROPIPE.NET is bogus, *.METROPIPE.NET resolves to 213.84.134.134,
which is hosted at XS4ALL.

LFCGATE.COM bogus in CR, registered through dotster.com,
DNS by THIRDHOST.COM, contact email at MAILVAULT.COM.

audit at hush.com: HUSH.COM itself looks halfway acceptable,
except for being offshore and a similar, but bogus DNS
of HUSHMAIL.COM and IPs 65.39.178.0 - 65.39.178.255.

I don't know what's being conveyed about hushmail.com, but we know who its founder is.

[szuetam]

but: i am only good at getting scammed, not at detecting scams. so: who knows...

Just a digression.

I really like that quote.

Hmm if my logic is ok then if you use 100% occasions to get scammed then you are quite good scam detector.
It would be sufficiency condition for no-scam-business to get not get involved by you when opportunity given.

But I really like that quote.

[szuetam]

This reminds me of that Woody Allen movie where they open a cookie shop next to a bank to set up cover while they tried to tunnel into the vault. Meanwhile the cookie shop takes off as a successful business and they are stuck in a quandary as to whether they should rob the bank or not...

What title it is?
I want to watch it.

Besides, by your logic if we actually run away with the idea that this is a really elaborate con- why wouldn't they just use ASIC's as a setup for a even BIGGER scam, like ASICS v.2, or use ASIC v.2 for the even bigger scam ASIC v.3? Certainly after multiple iterations of putting out confirmed, verified, working, high-quality equipment the amount of trust the community would have in them would be through the roof. Just imaging the pre-order volume for ASIC v.5!

Answer is simple.
There is hundreds of people here even on this forum who knows that ASIC is expensive but possible, but there isn't any other possible path to get sth. faster or with higher performance with nowadays technology than ASIC (only path I can imagine is math/algorithmic breaking cryptography used).
Please correct me if I'm wrong

[Portnoy]

This reminds me of that Woody Allen movie where they open a cookie shop next to a bank to set up cover while they tried to tunnel into the vault. Meanwhile the cookie shop takes off as a successful business and they are stuck in a quandary as to whether they should rob the bank or not...

What title it is?
I want to watch it.

I don't know about any Woody Allen movie like that but it sounds a lot like Larceny, Inc. (1942)
with Edward G. Robinson and lot of other talent. 

"Three ex-cons buy a luggage shop to tunnel into the bank vault next door. But despite all they can do, the shop prospers..."

I do recommend it.

Maybe Woody Allen did a remake of this.