Butterflylabs Huge SCAM

[MooC Tals]

People here will never learn. I have seen this way to many times. It's like me explaining to my friends that my ex-GF will cheat on you as she has done to the guy before me. You all will learn in time and BFL will profit from your good hearts.

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[CAMTRONNNNN]

People here will never learn. I have seen this way to many times. It's like me explaining to my friends that my ex-GF will cheat on you as she has done to the guy before me. You all will learn in time and BFL will profit from your good hearts.

Sad BTCBTCBTCBTCBTCrue

[Gator-hex]

It's (to me) more plausible that they are just incompetent and lack the manpower/skills to produce more units at a faster pace. Again, just my opinion.

Really, once they had the designs ready, why didn't they have the units built in China instead of making themselves? It's like Apple making iPhones themselves, by the time the iPhone 5 was announced they'd still be working on the backlog of iPhone 4 orders.

Funny how Google/Motorola mange to make the Moto-X in Texas
If you want to support US workers you now have a choice!

http://www.theverge.com/2013/9/11/4717796/made-in-america-a-look-inside-motorolas-moto-x-factory

[scambutterflylabs]

quote:

I should have listened to this post before placing an order.  

Thanks for the acknowledgement.

If you're thinking of ordering from these people, trying calling them to see if you can get an actual person on the phone.  Then read a page or so from their forums.  Then if you still think they will deliver on time or provide any customer service, go ahead and order.

Don't say that.

Say instead: Don't order from (read: give money to) BFL, under any circumstance, not now, not ever.


Latest development:

I've been trying to help my friend through this process, and it has hit a problem I haven't seen before. Paypal sided with my friend and said that BFL needed to refund the money.

BFL has marked his order as cancelled in their system. Now Paypal tried to get the money back to send to my friend, but there was no money in the account they were drawing on.

This is the letter that Paypal sent to my friend.

Hello *** ******,

The refund sent by Sonny Vleisides (office@butterflylabs.com) did not clear from the sender's bank. You have not received funds for this payment in your PayPal account.

Please contact Sonny Vleisides regarding this refund.




-----------------------------------
Refund details:
-----------------------------------


Amount: $****** USD
Sender: Sonny Vleisides
Sender's email: office@butterflylabs.com
Transaction ID: ********
Transaction date: Oct 11, 2013

Anyone have any ideas on where to go from here? He kind of feel like this is like issuing a bad check and thinks that there might be some kind of attorney general he could go to.

Butterfly Labs Inc. have claimed that Sonny Vleisides role is that of "VP of Product Development".

I believe that claim to be false or at best misleading. Likely false in everything but name.

I believe Sonny Vleisides is still the acting day-to-day general manager, the head of operations, the decision man, the chief executive.

By any measure other than by title.

See, this trick of appointing "the cleaning lady", or, as the case may be, some person in another country,
to positions of responsibility perhaps in exchange for some disproportionate compensation,
for signing a couple of documents every once in a while, happens to be another red flag.
It's the kind of thing scammers tend to do, and honest people tend to don't.



This email, from Paypal, if accurate, seems to show that that claim is, indeed, false.

I.e. it shows that the claim that Sonny Vleisides is acting VP of Product Development, is materially false.

Which, you know, one could suspect, what with him having no relevant background in electrical engineering or computer science.

As opposed to "a colorful background in offshore libertarianism", to borrow the words of his accomplice Josh Zerlan aka. Inaba aka. BFL_Josh.

Which turns out to mean, in plain english, you tell people lies to get them to send you money, you defraud people with false promises of great wealth and riches.

I congratulate the perpetrators, and extend my condolences to the victims of this... artful operation.

Sonny Vleisides has pulled it off again.

I hope this thread saved someone.


PS:

To the people who paid about a million dollars (at todays valuation) for an ASIC minirig on the night of June 23 2012:

Please try to find out what happened to your money. What fraction was converted into cash. How much of it was retained in BTC.

Do it before they "run out of cash reserves" and shut down / file for bankruptcy / run for the hills, with your money.

Where is it today? How much can be recovered?

You've been swindled, you've been abused, you've been lied to repeatedly.

That just ain't right.

It's time to wake up, get angry and go to court.

[KrLos]

I finally received mine.

Ordered on february 2013. Is in my house in colombia hashing at 30 gh/s. Thats like 0.05 btc daily.

[scambutterflylabs]

quote:

Here is the real rating that I liked.....I think the site is appropriately named
                             "SCAM ADVISOR"

My computer started beeping and flashing the words "WARNING WILL ROBINSON" when I entered butterfly labs....(well sort off lolz)

Notice that the company is incorperated in COSTA RICA ...oh sonny we can see the escape plan

http://www.scamadviser.com/check-website/butterflylabs.com

[CAMTRONNNNN]

I have heard from MikeT who lives very near the BFL Factory, a player on sealswithclubs who is well known as a bitcoin  and well regarded, and is also known for mining bitcoins as well as selling them locally in the BFL Area, that:

"They have a return policy guarantee, that if your BFL gets outdated or that it breaks that they will take it back and return you a newer and better BFL machine.  They have so many on the factory, I know this because I have friends who work on the factory floor, they don't even know what to do with em. I think they might even give me some for free."

Some weeks later he said he had one arrive, that it had "two power cables. that the first day I got it, I plugged it in and it exploded."

I'll ask him some more to confirm the TRUTH about these allegations, whatever they may BFL about.

CAMTRONNNNN

[got2bereal]

It's (to me) more plausible that they are just incompetent

They are very competent crooks. BFL was a scam from the very start.

Depends what you consider a scam.  I think BFL did a poor job delivering these products but it's not a scam.  They did make advertise their product to perform under the most optimistic situation they didn't put a warning saying that performance and ROI would change by the time the products flood the market.

[wtfvanity]

It's (to me) more plausible that they are just incompetent

They are very competent crooks. BFL was a scam from the very start.

Depends what you consider a scam.  I think BFL did a poor job delivering these products but it's not a scam.  They did make advertise their product to perform under the most optimistic situation they didn't put a warning saying that performance and ROI would change by the time the products flood the market.

I love how their website still lets you order products for delivery in 2 months and there is no way they can deliver in 2 months when they still haven't shipped April's orders yet.

Then of course, they are taking preorders for their next gen stuff. I wonder if they can improve on being 12+ months late for this next set.

[Lancelot19]

I myself was VERY excited about those BFL SC things (http://www.butterflylabs.com/products/), but it sounded too good to be true. I was one step before pre-ordering the Mini Rig 'SC' for just $30k, which could deliver 1TH/s (update -> 1.5 TH/s according to the website now!). You know what? Bullshit.

Is butterfly labs mining with those ASICs at the moment? (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=110290.0)
Hell no! Do you see some huge raise in hashing power? No.
Would it be beneficial to mine on their own devices? Hell yes! More than just selling them.

If circumstantial evidence isn't enough, try simple business logic.  The price is set at $149 for a 3500MH/s chip. At current prices, they would make $149 after about 10.8 days of mining!  So why doesn't Butterfly Labs just run them for 10.8 days instead of selling them?  Then they'd have $149 and the chips lol.  I mean seriously, read those last 2 sentences again, people.  You think they're not mining with them?  I can't be the only one that realizes this.  From a business perspective, if you had an investment that would pay off 200% in a month and you sell it off instead, you're a crazy person.

You know the true reason why they are not mining with them? They can't. They don't have them.

But they have already proven legit! They fullfiled the orders and delivered FPGAs!
Sure they have. Gained your trust. And will take them back. And you will pay even more. You will loose your working FPGAs and also money. Huge money.

Trade in terms: Qualifying trade in for upgrades can be either an older generation Mini Rig or 25 older generation Singles. Once your new rig is ready for delivery (currently scheduled for November), you'll be notified to ship your trade in units to us. Upon receipt we'll release your new Mini Rig SC for shipment to you.

They still could have runned before..
They could, but why would they? Establish trust. Then run away.
They could have stolen $1M.

Now they have $30M and the hardware. Many of you fell for it.

Total Orders (By last seen)        7678
   
Orders Tracked         227
Trade-In Orders         66
   
Units Sold   
   
Jalapeno SC            225
Single SC               231
Mini Rig SC               21
   
Extended TH   
   
Jalepeno SC       0.7875
Single SC             9.24
Mini Rig SC               21
   
Grand Total of   31.0275

I still trust them.
Really? What about that the CEO is a fraduster, sentenced to 3 years in prison and is currently released and violating the terms?

September 15, 2010

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA v. SONNY VLEISIDES

...
The defendant is hereby placed on supervised release, effective immediately, for a term of three years under the following terms and conditions:
...
The defendant shall not engage, as whole or partial owner, employee or otherwise, in any business involving loan programs, gambling or gaming activities, telemarketing activities, investment programs or any other business involving the solicitation of funds or cold-calls to customers without the express approval of the Probation Officer prior to engagement in such employment.

As always, I feel terribly sorry for all you guys.

Just goes to show the risks of buying vaporware. Don't put existing money in non-existing products. Simple as that. Ask the people that pre-ordered hashfast, and just got notified of a 3 week delay. No more ROI.

Because of this BFL debacle, many processing companies are cracking down on bitcoin. Paypal and square have banned my accounts despite having no charge backs and no negative feedback. They say its a "high risk" and then force-closed my business account. In my opinion, this isn't bitcoins fault. It is the companies fault for not doing their due diligence and actually checking out BFL before they allowed them to process millions of dollars. Because of their poor business practices, it is now that much harder to purchase hardware for the rest of us.

[Mr. Sway]

Mining on there on devices I have one of there old one takes up more power than what it is worth literally it does. I mean I trust them I got an email today about my new one shipping on November 1st even got a tracking number.

[nikona]

why are they not being caught ?

[tntdgcr]

why are they not being caught ?

how many people do you think want to be out further for formal legal fees ?

[Inaba]

why are they not being caught ?

Because nothing illegal has happened.  There's nothing to "catch."

[scambutterflylabs]

quote:

And... another ~1000 units shipped today.  1/3 of the entirety of KnC's shipment... in one day.

1000 units? Evidence?

Tape out / design for Monarch Chip? Evidence?

Refunds? People are waiting given they have a legal right you should be providing REFUNDS.

Unreliable. Do not buy from BFL.


Seriously I wonder at what point in time does the AG in KS determine what BFL is doing is fraud?

Fraud is commonly understood as dishonesty calculated for advantage. A person who is dishonest may be called a fraud. In the U.S. legal system, fraud is a specific offense with certain features.

Fraud must be proved by showing that the defendant's actions involved five separate elements: (1) a false statement of a material fact,(2) knowledge on the part of the defendant that the statement is untrue, (3) intent on the part of the defendant to deceive the alleged victim, (4) justifiable reliance by the alleged victim on the statement, and (5) injury to the alleged victim as a result. http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/fraud

[scambutterflylabs]

People are finding out it's not as easy to create a brand new product as they would have you believe, that's what's happening.  Even the people using others IP can't bring products to market (Look at Bicknellski's failed ventures) with all of the parts already laid out for them, much less create anything from scratch.

Surprise!  It actually requires skill, commitment and dedication to create a new product and bring it to market.

It's definitely a lot easier than you have made it look as KNC brought a 28nm ASIC miner to market in a little over 4 months.

Oh really?  As one of the few shipping ASIC vendors, I think that makes me qualified to speak on the subject, unlike you.  What have you done to bring a new product to the market from scratch?  Oh that's right... nothing at all.

Yes you are right, you are living proof of the risks people face when making pre-orders as the VAST majority of your customers experienced insane delays and extremely negative ROI if they managed to receive their product. We can now say "be careful you don't get BFL'ed when pre-ordering" and pretty much everybody will know exactly what that means.

Can you point to a vendor that's doing number 3 now?  Are you seriously complaining that because demand is exceeding supply, it is somehow the vendors fault?

As for 4, I have no idea what you are talking about. BFL doesn't have any 110nm products and again, are you seriously complaining about the fact that people are paying money for a given product and the vendor charges what people will pay... but it's "overpriced" even though people are paying it?  If it was overpriced, people wouldn't buy it - that is simple economics.  If you think it's over priced, don't buy it.  The majority of the market disagrees with you, so that makes you the one that is incorrect.  

So basically points 3 and 4 are invalid and you have proven my point.

Yes actually it is the vendors vault when they sell more pre-orders than they could possibly ever ship in their advertised time-frame such as BFL has done. Both Bitsyncom and KNC (and most others really) sold limited numbers in their batches unlike BFL who pretty much took money from anybody willing to get in their line with no idea that your advertised shipping times were complete lies which would slip time and time and time and time and time again.

Huh, Avalon, really?  Last I checked, they had imploded.

Check again. A few weeks ago I purchased 3 Avalon mini's that shipped in less than 72 hours after I ordered them. They are due to ship their gen2 hardware OFF THE SHELF any time now...

There are no orders being shipped that were ordered a year ago, please stop spreading false information.  Our failure rate on hardware is less than 1%, much better than industry average, so again, your argument is invalid.  

Sorry, but if you consider 400 - 1000+ units shipped per day in this industry to be "few devices" you need to have your head examined.

Josh everybody knows you're smart enough to understand that in "this industry", volume means nothing and hashrate means everything. It's like comparing the number of 300MH block eruptors with the number of 500GH Jupiters that have shipped. By repeating this over and over it is only revealing the deception you are constantly hiding behind.

The fact is BFL has been a disaster. Sure not a COMPLETE disaster like bASIC but still a disaster. While waiting for my 60GH Feb BFL pre-order to arrive:
- I've pre-ordered Avalon batch #2 units in Feb which arrived in JUNE for a total of 190GH
- I've pre-ordered raw Avalon chips from Zephir in April which arrived in July, had them sent to Germany where Burnin used a custom board to ship me functioning BitBurner miners in August all from scratch!
- I pre-ordered from a BRAND NEW company KNC back in June which shipped a 525GH miner to me THREE WEEKS AGO!
- I've ordered 3 Avalon Mini's on Oct 15th which shipped within 72 hours which had three times the hashrate for less than my BFL pre-order cost which has still not shipped

What has BFL been doing during these 8+ months since others have produced miners FROM SCRATCH in much less time? It's 100% obvious that BFL sold MANY MANY MANY more orders than they could possible ever ship and all of the lies that have been spewed by you during this past year amount to fraud in my opinion.

/school

[scambutterflylabs]

That would require having something to actually sue for.  Piss poor internet lawyers aside, a real lawyer would tell you that you have no case.

Is that why you stopped accepting PayPal and credit cards after you guys got your asses handed to you in all your disputes and chargebacks?  Because nobody had a legitimate case against you?  It would seem that every professional financial company disagrees with you which is why you have to do business in BTC only now.

[BillyPilgrim]

Do research on the company and employees before you waste your money.

This.  It's amazing how many people don't take five minutes to Google before throwing tons of money at a company.

[charleshoskinson]

Because nothing illegal has happened.  There's nothing to "catch."

Just incompetence. Josh you ever going to ship my Jalapeno? I have to admit, I'm having fun digging you at the conferences. Did you catch my response to Bruno's question at C3?

[darkmule]

I wonder what new disaster has befallen BFL that they sent out their distraction monkey to fling shit again.