Master-P SCAMMER. I lost complete faith in this forum now.

[DannyHamilton]

- snip -
All the things that have been happening with escrows require that the most trusted ones keep providing their services and/or that new, trusted people start providing escrow services. Having you exiting your escrowing services is pretty bad, IMO.

If people took the time to think about how valuable the service is that well run and trustworthy escrow provides, and then compensated the escrow provider appropriately for the value provided then people like Blazed and myself wouldn't have stopped.

Unfortunately when everything goes smoothly, like it does 99% of the time, nobody even thinks about how much the security and peace of mind were really worth.  They tip nothing at all or less than $2 worth of bitcoins.

When I held escrows, all escrow-ed funds were held on single use paper wallets that were generated on a permanently offline computer and that were stored in a secure location.  I wrote up custom escrow agreements that laid out exactly how the transaction was expected to progress as well as laying out exactly what would happen in a variety of common situations.  If I was going to be unavailable for release at any time, all parties involved were informed ahead of time. I made sure that all parties were provided with multiple ways to contact me if bitcointalk became unavailable (phone number, email address, and frequently a U.S.P.S. mailing address). All of this time and effort for between 0 BTC and 0.01 BTC most of the time.  I could earn more running a lemonade stand on a cold day in the middle of nowhere.

In the beginning I did it because I wanted to make it easier for users of the forum that didn't have any way of trusting each other to be able to engage in transactions.  I was motivated largely because there weren't many merchants or exchanges available, and if bitcoin was going to be useful, then this forum was going to be where that usefulness was proven.  Since then there are several well trusted exchanges and many large public merchants that accept bitcoin as payment.  Additionally there were several new escrow providers that I found to be sloppy and uncommunicative, yet users were flocking to them for some reason.  At that point it just didn't make sense anymore to spend time and effort for a service that clearly wasn't desired.

[dooglus]

I don't really see how OgNasty could make a scam, there is so much potential by being one of the most trusted member of the forum. It means whenever he wants to create something, every one will invest/try it. I don't see how a scam could repay for such a trust.

I think it's pretty much the opposite. In absolute terms you will generally make more running an exit scam than operating legitimately, for far less effort. When I was running Just-Dice, I was taking 10% commission on profits, which is a healthy amount. The site profited by around 20k, so I was able to take around 2k in commission. When I shut the site down the bankroll was in the region of 50k. That's 50k that I could have just kept rather than returning. By returning it, I turned down the chance of "earning" 25 times more than I had earned in the previous year of hard work. I will likely never earn that much again, so the argument that "trusted people won't scam because they earn more by being honest" doesn't work. You make more stealing than you do being honest. Which, I guess, is why we see so many people stealing.

Hmmm... looks like a really long con for 20+ BTC. Bought an account more than a year ago, built up trust (possibly with puppets), although the exit scam doesn't seem to have been very successful. This could have
easily gone into triple digits if Master-P had a bit more patience and foresight. Me, cynic? Nah...

It's conceivable that he went into the escrow business with a view to running it legitimately, and only decided to scam when it turned out not to be worth running honestly. (Or, maybe the fairy tale about hackers is true; who knows!)

At that point it just didn't make sense anymore to spend time and effort for a service that clearly wasn't desired.

I'm half considering setting up an automated escrow service for signature campaign managers to use to escrow to safeguard payments to campaign members. But seeing you and Blazed both write about how it's all too much hassle, I'm having second thoughts.

Do you think people would use a service like that if there was a small percentage fee to cover expenses?

[unamis76]

- snip -
All the things that have been happening with escrows require that the most trusted ones keep providing their services and/or that new, trusted people start providing escrow services. Having you exiting your escrowing services is pretty bad, IMO.

If people took the time to think about how valuable the service is that well run and trustworthy escrow provides, and then compensated the escrow provider appropriately for the value provided then people like Blazed and myself wouldn't have stopped.

Unfortunately when everything goes smoothly, like it does 99% of the time, nobody even thinks about how much the security and peace of mind were really worth.  They tip nothing at all or less than $2 worth of bitcoins.

When I held escrows, all escrow-ed funds were held on single use paper wallets that were generated on a permanently offline computer and that were stored in a secure location.  I wrote up custom escrow agreements that laid out exactly how the transaction was expected to progress as well as laying out exactly what would happen in a variety of common situations.  If I was going to be unavailable for release at any time, all parties involved were informed ahead of time. I made sure that all parties were provided with multiple ways to contact me if bitcointalk became unavailable (phone number, email address, and frequently a U.S.P.S. mailing address). All of this time and effort for between 0 BTC and 0.01 BTC most of the time.  I could earn more running a lemonade stand on a cold day in the middle of nowhere.

In the beginning I did it because I wanted to make it easier for users of the forum that didn't have any way of trusting each other to be able to engage in transactions.  I was motivated largely because there weren't many merchants or exchanges available, and if bitcoin was going to be useful, then this forum was going to be where that usefulness was proven.  Since then there are several well trusted exchanges and many large public merchants that accept bitcoin as payment.  Additionally there were several new escrow providers that I found to be sloppy and uncommunicative, yet users were flocking to them for some reason.  At that point it just didn't make sense anymore to spend time and effort for a service that clearly wasn't desired.

This is actually something I've very recently started thinking about and this Master-P issue made me think about it again... Escrow services are extremely undervalued (and underpaid). They're taken for granted by forum members (me included) or they're not used at all (most of those times resulting in scamming). I haven't had many trades here, only needed to use escrow once and I realized it didn't even occur to me at the time of the trade to tip the escrow.

I already knew escrowing wasn't easy and required having a very secure way to store other people's funds and that some escrows on this forum take their work seriously. Unfortunately the people for who they store funds don't take their escrow's work seriously, and think it's only storing a few coins on an address for a few days and then forwarding them after request. That being said, its understandable why trusted people eventually close down their escrow services.

I only have to say that I hope people take this as an example and start seeing escrows in a different way and start being aware of their responsibilities. I surely am seeing everyone offering escrow services differently. We should definitely value people who make our trading activities/lives safer.

Maybe all escrows should start requesting a minimum fee for their services.

To finish off, I do hope people that start offering escrow services take this as an example and make sure customers funds are secure. There are many ways to do it and many tutorials on how to store coins safely offline. And there are also ways to safely backup offline wallets (and having multiple or fragmented backups is essential, as was shown here)

I'm half considering setting up an automated escrow service for signature campaign managers to use to escrow to safeguard payments to campaign members. But seeing you and Blazed both write about how it's all too much hassle, I'm having second thoughts.

Do you think people would use a service like that if there was a small percentage fee to cover expenses?

Such a service would definitely have a use case and I don't doubt people would be willing to pay for it.

[The Sceptical Chymist]

So has Master-P checked in lately?  Has the community reached a consensus as to whether he pulled a scam or not?  Has anyone else received any funds?  I realize he said he'd pay some people back on Friday, but we're drawing close.

[Tabata11]

He is a scammer... I lost $2,000 on Christmas eve :/

[mixan]

So has Master-P checked in lately?  Has the community reached a consensus as to whether he pulled a scam or not?  Has anyone else received any funds?  I realize he said he'd pay some people back on Friday, but we're drawing close.

Glen Gabmow has been notified and will be ready to chime in anytime now.
Things are about to get interesting and this should be put to rest soon so the new year celebration doesn't get massacred with this rubbish any longer.
The bell tolls at midnight. Justice is a coming  

[The Sceptical Chymist]

So has Master-P checked in lately?  Has the community reached a consensus as to whether he pulled a scam or not?  Has anyone else received any funds?  I realize he said he'd pay some people back on Friday, but we're drawing close.

Glen Gabmow has been notified and will be ready to chime in anytime now.
Things are about to get interesting and this should be put to rest soon so the new year celebration doesn't get massacred with this rubbish any longer.
The bell tolls at midnight. Justice is a coming  

You know, I've been called a drama queen but I do think this is toxic to the community and I hate to see trusted folks go to the dark side--which it looks like Master-P did in this case. 

What does Gleb G have to weigh in on?  Does he have the dox?

[KingZee]

Glen Gabmow has been notified and will be ready to chime in anytime now.
Things are about to get interesting and this should be put to rest soon so the new year celebration doesn't get massacred with this rubbish any longer.
The bell tolls at midnight. Justice is a coming  

He started refunding the funds to some of us who got scammed.

Justice?? What is Gleb Gamow going to do? Dox him and then what? Refund us himself?

I love how people just want blood and have zero concern on if the funds actually return to the people who lost them.

[The Sceptical Chymist]

Glen Gabmow has been notified and will be ready to chime in anytime now.
Things are about to get interesting and this should be put to rest soon so the new year celebration doesn't get massacred with this rubbish any longer.
The bell tolls at midnight. Justice is a coming  

He started refunding the funds to some of us who got scammed.

Justice?? What is Gleb Gamow going to do? Dox him and then what? Refund us himself?

Right, but as Quickseller has pointed out, what Master-P has paid back is a fairly small fraction of what is owed and this doesn't mean he's not scamming.  He could be stalling for whatever reason, and don't you think he should have gone to the authorities?  Maybe that goes against what bitcoin stands for, but it looks like the folks who got burned are going to have to do it, which they can do with the dox.

[Tabata11]

Glen Gabmow has been notified and will be ready to chime in anytime now.
Things are about to get interesting and this should be put to rest soon so the new year celebration doesn't get massacred with this rubbish any longer.
The bell tolls at midnight. Justice is a coming  

He started refunding the funds to some of us who got scammed.

Justice?? What is Gleb Gamow going to do? Dox him and then what? Refund us himself?

I love how people just want blood and have zero concern on if the funds actually return to the people who lost them.

Just like Maidak did... And ran away

[KingZee]

Right, but as Quickseller has pointed out, what Master-P has paid back is a fairly small fraction of what is owed and this doesn't mean he's not scamming.  He could be stalling for whatever reason, and don't you think he should have gone to the authorities?  Maybe that goes against what bitcoin stands for, but it looks like the folks who got burned are going to have to do it, which they can do with the dox.

I've already discussed this with the one holding master-p's dox. We will see if master-p is going to set up a rational schedule to refund everyone in due time. I'm not stupid to not see that there's something wrong, but unless you have some solid proof, your line :

-- He could be stalling for whatever reason --

has no basis or thinkable reason. If you can come up with one then by all means, convince me. And please, if you are going to reply to me, say something valid, or else I won't bother replying.

[The Sceptical Chymist]

Right, but as Quickseller has pointed out, what Master-P has paid back is a fairly small fraction of what is owed and this doesn't mean he's not scamming.  He could be stalling for whatever reason, and don't you think he should have gone to the authorities?  Maybe that goes against what bitcoin stands for, but it looks like the folks who got burned are going to have to do it, which they can do with the dox.

I've already discussed this with the one holding master-p's dox. We will see if master-p is going to set up a rational schedule to refund everyone in due time. I'm not stupid to not see that there's something wrong, but unless you have some solid proof, your line :

-- He could be stalling for whatever reason --

has no basis or thinkable reason. If you can come up with one then by all means, convince me. And please, if you are going to reply to me, say something valid, or else I won't bother replying.

It doesn't matter to me whether you reply or not.  The stalling comment I made is in addition to the nice pile of evidence that peonminer dumped yesterday.  Yes it's speculation that he's stalling, but there's damn good reason for doing so.  Your statement in bold just isn't true.

And where is Master-P today?  Why hasn't he submitted a police report, which he should have done after getting ripped off for a huge amount of money?  Bank robbers often don't even grab that much cash.

[Gleb Gamow]

First question: Do you guys need me to hunt down some addresses for you?

[owlcatz]

First question: Do you guys need me to hunt down some addresses for you?

Man, the rabbit hole is deep on this one. I suggest working your way backwards, ignoring the bullshit and sig spammers.

[tommorisonwebdesign]

First question: Do you guys need me to hunt down some addresses for you?

That would be nice. At this point master-p is 100% scamming.

[Gleb Gamow]

First question: Do you guys need me to hunt down some addresses for you?

Man, the rabbit hole is deep on this one. I suggest working your way backwards, ignoring the bullshit and sig spammers.

Dude, if this fuckin' thread takes me away from my hourly eggnog enemas, I'm gonna be highly pissed. Normally, I don't get involved with scams that don't include ball cupping, so I duly hope such is included within, otherwise I'm gonna be highly pissed. Oops, guess I already said that.

[CuntChocula]

He started refunding the funds to some of us who got scammed.

Justice?? What is Gleb Gamow going to do? Dox him and then what? Refund us himself?

I love how people just want blood and have zero concern on if the funds actually return to the people who lost them.

Criminals are punished for [mostly] practical, utilitarian reasons -- to make crime seem less attractive, to make it understood that criminality is not necessarily the simplest way to profit, and may have nontrivial, undesirable repercussions. Not 'justice,' which is a different thing altogether.

Doxxering Master-P is not being done in hopes of reuniting you with your scheckels -- no more than murderers are punished in hopes of bringing victims back to life. The punishment is meant to be a deterrent -- a sort of a melodrama, if you will, staged for the sake of edifying potential/budding criminals. Not for your sake. Not everything is about you, try thinking of others.

P.S. ofc, public hangings and doxxwnings have other, secondary, benefits, like vengeance and lel. There's also that, won't lie.

[peonminer]

First question: Do you guys need me to hunt down some addresses for you?

Man, the rabbit hole is deep on this one. I suggest working your way backwards, ignoring the bullshit and sig spammers.

Dude, if this fuckin' thread takes me away from my hourly eggnog enemas™, I'm gonna be highly pissed. Normally, I don't get involved with scams that don't include ball cupping, so I duly hope such is included within, otherwise I'm gonna be highly pissed. Oops, guess I already said that.

I don't care how long it takes you, don't miss your hourly eggnog enemas™. The midnight new year's enema is the most important of all. To catch you up a bit, verfied master-p has been caught in a web of lies thicker than Hillary Clinton's horns.

See: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1306301.msg13406788#msg13406788

[Gleb Gamow]

Glen Gabmow has been notified and will be ready to chime in anytime now.
Things are about to get interesting and this should be put to rest soon so the new year celebration doesn't get massacred with this rubbish any longer.
The bell tolls at midnight. Justice is a coming  

He started refunding the funds to some of us who got scammed.

Justice?? What is Gleb Gamow going to do? Dox him and then what? Refund us himself?

I love how people just want blood and have zero concern on if the funds actually return to the people who lost them.

Well, finding him didn't take as long as I thought. Hey, KingZee, so that I don't disrupt Master paying out, you PM me when you desire to know his address.

[The Sceptical Chymist]

First question: Do you guys need me to hunt down some addresses for you?

Man, the rabbit hole is deep on this one. I suggest working your way backwards, ignoring the bullshit and sig spammers.

Not for nothing, but you telling GG to ignore spammers just points to how fucking cliquey this forum is.  For as nice a fellow as he might be, he has over 11,000 posts with an activity of <600 and if that's not spam I don't know what is.  It's just spam that you're cool with, not spam that other people are making money from.  He's probably posted 100 times in that Cryptsy thread alone, the one that's still alive.

And cuntchoc, I'd like to see justice done here and I'd also like to hear what Master-P has to say if he's still around.  There's a almost-infinitesimal but real possibility that he's telling the truth and I like to believe I have hope.  I also ain't gonna lie, the prospect of an electrocution is delicious to me as well.