BTCFPGA/bitcoinASIC/CAN-ELECTRIC - no BTC refunds expected, what now?

[BlackLilac Jordan]

The story about CAN-Electric is fake, I emailed them directly and here their reply :

Hi Dear

this is fraud and we as can Electric have nothing to do with this website and their product
and we don't know who is doing this fraud

regards
Ari

So Can-Electric is a fake. Where are we in getting the SCAMMER tag for cablepair? Setting up yet another fake website to draw in a few more BTC for preorders of non-existent, never-to-exist mining products, all the while blowing off a whole slew of people who placed pre-orders... what is this but another scam? And how does this reflect on prior actions? Were all of those real and just this a blatant scam/fraud? Or is this just another in a long line?

Can ANYONE who has received BTC refunds from Tom/BTCFPGA post the FROM wallet address so that related wallets can be investigated?

...EVERY SINGLE CUSTOMER WILL BE REFUNDED. PERIOD... seems clear to me.

He should obviously get the tag for the missing refunds.

What makes no sense to me is why he actually issued a bunch of refunds... that is not part of the scammer MO. At that point it really seemed as if he had tried and failed, and was attempting to make good. Why set up the half-assed "can-electric" site to scrape out a few possible late sales? He could have just sent a few less refunds.

Very bizarre.

[1714191212]

1714191212

[1714191212]

1714191212

[1714191212]

1714191212

[repentance]

What makes no sense to me is why he actually issued a bunch of refunds... that is not part of the scammer MO. At that point it really seemed as if he had tried and failed, and was attempting to make good. Why set up the half-assed "can-electric" site to scrape out a few possible late sales? He could have just sent a few less refunds.

Very bizarre.

Tom's behaviour hasn't exactly been stable lately.  I suspect he's having a lot of trouble accepting the bASIC project is dead.  He likely realises that there's no possibility of re-branding it with him at the helm and believed he could create the impression that someone else is now over-seeing it.  He possibly also thought that he could vindicate himself by rescuing the project without people knowing of his continued involvement and be hailed as a hero when he finally announced he was behind the rescue.

Apparently he did not consider that people would do their own research into any claims made by the new site, which shows considerable arrogance and contempt towards this community and potential customers.

[julz]

What makes no sense to me is why he actually issued a bunch of refunds...

Possibly because if he didn't - people would put through chargebacks anyway and then the banks would levy an additional 'chargeback fee'.

Even if he didn't have quite enough money to cover it - presumably he'd be left with a smaller bank debt if he pre-empted the chargebacks by putting the refunds through.

[BlackLilac Jordan]

What makes no sense to me is why he actually issued a bunch of refunds...

Possibly because if he didn't - people would put through chargebacks anyway and then the banks would levy an additional 'chargeback fee'.

Even if he didn't have quite enough money to cover it - presumably he'd be left with a smaller bank debt if he pre-empted the chargebacks by putting the refunds through.

Very good point. Has he issued any BTC refunds since the collapse?

[server]

What makes no sense to me is why he actually issued a bunch of refunds...

Possibly because if he didn't - people would put through chargebacks anyway and then the banks would levy an additional 'chargeback fee'.

Even if he didn't have quite enough money to cover it - presumably he'd be left with a smaller bank debt if he pre-empted the chargebacks by putting the refunds through.

Very good point. Has he issued any BTC refunds since the collapse?

No, you can see the list overhere: bASIC refund list

[puck2]

FWIW, complaint successfully filed with NYS Division of Consumer Protection. My intent at this point is twofold - to potentially receive some BTC back, and to simultaneously create as large a paper trail as possible in order to save others in the future from this type of shenanigans.

February 12, 2013

BTCFPGA, Llc
P.O. Box 246
Hannibal, NY 13074

File No.: XXXXXXXX-XXXXXX-WEB
Re: XXXX XXXX

Dear Sir/Madam:

The Division of Consumer Protection (DCP) has received a complaint
from the above referenced consumer.

Our Division serves as the state's top watchdog and think tank on a
wide range of issues.  The DCP resolves consumer complaints through
voluntary mediation; conducts outreach and education on various
consumer topics including identity theft prevention and mitigation,
scam prevention and using credit wisely; and, represents consumers
before public utilities and other state and federal agencies.

To help the DCP resolve this complaint as quickly as possible, please
review the enclosed information and provide us with your comments as
well as copies of any correspondence which leads to an acceptable
resolution of this dispute.

Thank you for your attention to this matter.  When contacting us,
please reference the file number noted above.

Sincerely yours,



Kathleen Adams
Consumer Advisor

[rocks]

He should obviously get the tag for the missing refunds.

What makes no sense to me is why he actually issued a bunch of refunds... that is not part of the scammer MO. At that point it really seemed as if he had tried and failed, and was attempting to make good. Why set up the half-assed "can-electric" site to scrape out a few possible late sales? He could have just sent a few less refunds.

Very bizarre.

Having been an early customer and believer in bASIC, then bailing earlier than most and receiving a CC refund with no issues, here are my thoughts.

I now believe bASIC was simply a scam from the beginning. There is  no way to reconcile the statements made in the beginning, with the reality of the actual progress and work done (essentially nothing).

There are 2 customer groups:
1) CC customers - These are people he always planned to refund. As far as I know all/most CC customers have been refunded
2) BTC customers - These are the people he decided to scam. As far as I know ZERO/few BTC customers have been refunded

Logically this makes sense.  CC customers go through banks, and the money has all sorts of legal protections and tracking, Tom could never scam CC money. Instead the CC customers and their refunds provided LEGITIMACY to the operation and provided some cover, which enabled more customers to trust bASIC and send their BTC.

Now the situation is all the people who spent real money in the eyes of the government have been refunded, so there is no crime. Only customers who spent BTC have a claim, and good luck with a lawsuit over BTC payments. If the government does anything it will only be to investigate you for using bitcoin.

That's the key part of Bitcoin's value proposition, Bitcoin's are outside of government control. Once you send the BTC, they are gone and you can never get them back. As a receiver, once you receive them, they can never be taken from you.

This was actually why I was willing to use bASIC in the first place, I had confidence my CC bank would refund me if it was a scam. I understood that was not the case with BTC. I now have a small partial payment with Avalon, but have decided not to send the remaining BTC until I have more confidence, once the BTC are sent they are gone...

[MrTeal]

Having been an early customer and believer in bASIC, then bailing earlier than most and receiving a CC refund with no issues, here are my thoughts.

I now believe bASIC was simply a scam from the beginning. There is  no way to reconcile the statements made in the beginning, with the reality of the actual progress and work done (essentially nothing).

There are 2 customer groups:
1) CC customers - These are people he always planned to refund. As far as I know all CC customers have been refunded
2) BTC customers - These are the people he decided to scam. As far as I know ZERO BTC customers have been refunded

Logically this makes sense.  CC customers go through banks, and the money has all sorts of legal protections and tracking, Tom could never scam CC money. Instead the CC customers and their refunds provided LEGITIMACY to the operation and provided some cover, which enabled more customers to trust bASIC and send their BTC.

Now the situation is all the people who spent real money in the eyes of the government have been refunded, so there is no crime. Only customers who spent BTC have a claim, and good luck getting the SEC to investigation BTC payments. If the SEC does anything it will only be to investigate you for using bitcoin.

That's the key part of Bitcoin's value proposition, Bitcoin's are outside of government control. Once you send the BTC, they are gone and you can never get them back. As a receiver, once you receive them, they can never be taken from you.

This was actually why I was willing to use bASIC in the first place, I had confidence my CC bank would refund me if it was a scam. I understood that was not the case with BTC. I now have a small partial payment with Avalon, but have decided not to send the remaining BTC until I have more confidence, once the BTC are sent they are gone...

Point 2 is wrong, some early BTC refunds were paid out. You can see them going from this address on the 11th of January. There's confirmation of several people who had preorders that their refunds were part of those transactions. Tom had a history of delivering on his previous hardware product and was a long time miner, offering credit cards as a payment method like reduced the number of BTC he would have been able bring in as people who did pay with CCs would have paid with BTC if that was the only option available.

Also, why would the SEC investigate this matter? As far as I know, Tom wasn't offering shares in his company or operating an exchange.

FWIW, I don't think Tom set out to scam people with BTCFPGA. He most likely was running it as a semi-legitimate business hoping to make a good profit on it. It seems he's a bit of a scammy dirtbag though, and when things started to go bad he decided to cut and run rather than deal with it. My guess is that he had much to little financing in place and used preorder money to pay development costs, but it's hard to prove anything without someone actually suing him and going through discovery.

Hopefully someone does.

[Nemesis]

Ha..... Team Tommy will say otherwise.... This is simply a business gone bad folks!

[rocks]

Point 2 is wrong, some early BTC refunds were paid out. You can see them going from this address on the 11th of January.

Fair enough, but I still think my point is valid. Only a few BTC refunds were processed, while most/all of the CC refunds were processed. Why the discrepancy? Also the BTC refunds went out when Tom was still saying the project was on and taking orders. Again I think it is fair to suspect this was to create the illusion of ligitimacy.

And yes the SEC would not be involved, I just meant anything involving a consumer affairs type complaint.

FWIW, I don't think Tom set out to scam people with BTCFPGA. He most likely was running it as a semi-legitimate business hoping to make a good profit on it.

I understand the desire to feel this way, and I did too for awhile.

But reconcile Tom's repeated promises that:
- Samples existed
- The ASICs are in hand, just waiting for board work
- We are about to ship in two days, everything is a go
- I promise to provide updates tomorrow

With the level of work actually done
- No samples
- No ASICS
- Zero board work
- No updates
- Childish hand drawings after TSHTF

It is impossible to reconcile the amount of work done, with Tom's statements through out the process, he was simply lying the whole time.

[puck2]

It is impossible to reconcile the amount of work done, with Tom's statements through out the process, he was simply lying the whole time.

Dave [buzzdave] supposedly saw a unit hashing. Who has a cache of https://www.btcfpga.com/forum/index.php?

[MrTeal]

Point 2 is wrong, some early BTC refunds were paid out. You can see them going from this address on the 11th of January.

Fair enough, but I still think my point is valid. Only a few BTC refunds were processed, while most/all of the CC refunds were processed. Why the discrepancy? Also the BTC refunds went out when Tom was still saying the project was on and taking orders. Again I think it is fair to suspect this was to create the illusion of ligitimacy.

And yes the SEC would not be involved, I just meant anything involving a consumer affairs type complaint.

FWIW, I don't think Tom set out to scam people with BTCFPGA. He most likely was running it as a semi-legitimate business hoping to make a good profit on it.

I understand the desire to feel this way, and I did too for awhile.

But reconcile Tom's repeated promises that:
- Samples existed
- The ASICs are in hand, just waiting for board work
- We are about to ship in two days, everything is a go
- I promise to provide updates tomorrow

With the level of work actually done
- No samples
- No ASICS
- Zero board work
- No updates
- Childish hand drawings after TSHTF

It is impossible to reconcile the amount of work done, with Tom's statements through out the process, he was simply lying the whole time.

No doubt, pretty much everything about this situation makes no sense. It doesn't make any more sense as a scam than it does as a legitimate project. Tom could have made off with way more money by just accepting BTC instead of taking most orders through wire and CC. He could have brought in more by providing proper updates even if fake than by posting drunken rants. He didn't do any of that. Why open yourself to all the possible legal trouble by doing CC orders at all if you're just planning on stealing BTC? He'd having to be both brilliant running a long con on the success of his FPGA business, and completely incompetent as a scammer.

[Phinnaeus Gage]

It is impossible to reconcile the amount of work done, with Tom's statements through out the process, he was simply lying the whole time.

Dave [buzzdave] supposedly saw a unit hashing. Who has a cache of https://www.btcfpga.com/forum/index.php?

I look forward to seeing this as well.

[puck2]

There have been reports of BTCBTCBTC being refunded:

Read all about it here : https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=143496.msg1526551#msg1526551

[miter_myles]

It is impossible to reconcile the amount of work done, with Tom's statements through out the process, he was simply lying the whole time.

Dave [buzzdave] supposedly saw a unit hashing. Who has a cache of https://www.btcfpga.com/forum/index.php?

I look forward to seeing this as well.

I have the forum ripped and saved somewhere about an hour after it was locked down.. I'll see if it's there

[MrTeal]

It is impossible to reconcile the amount of work done, with Tom's statements through out the process, he was simply lying the whole time.

Dave [buzzdave] supposedly saw a unit hashing. Who has a cache of https://www.btcfpga.com/forum/index.php?

I look forward to seeing this as well.

Dave didn't say he saw the actual hashing unit, I believe his words we along the lines of he saw the hashing stats of the prototype unit. What that means I'm not sure, but it could be anything from Tom told him one chip did 11GH/s @ whatever speed, to showing him the worker mining on a pool, to him actually seeing the prototype. Given the wording though it always seemed that he never actually saw a prototype.

[repentance]

No doubt, pretty much everything about this situation makes no sense. It doesn't make any more sense as a scam than it does as a legitimate project. Tom could have made off with way more money by just accepting BTC instead of taking most orders through wire and CC. He could have brought in more by providing proper updates even if fake than by posting drunken rants. He didn't do any of that. Why open yourself to all the possible legal trouble by doing CC orders at all if you're just planning on stealing BTC? He'd having to be both brilliant running a long con on the success of his FPGA business, and completely incompetent as a scammer.

It actually does make sense if you think in terms of Tom being an inherently unstable person who melts down and becomes irrational under stress.  You're not going to get rational behaviour from someone who has gone into meltdown - they're not being driven by logic any more.  There seems to be at least some evidence of Tom acting irrationally in the past, and it's not all that unusual for people with mental health issues (substance related or not) to be perfectly competent until something causes them to start disconnecting from reality.  That's not an excuse - the appropriate thing to do when you realise you're starting to melt down is to hand stuff off to someone else before you totally fuck everything up. 

Given the bitterness in some of Tom's posts, I'm not sure it was as much about the money as it was about the kudos.

The big question is how much of this project was real and how much of it was delusional on Tom's part - how far did it actually progress, if at all, before collapsing.

[XertroV]

Morning all, not sure about anyone else but I received 72 BTC from Tom yesterday.

I had one 54 GH/s unit and one 27 GH/s unit both paid with BTC (150 BTC paid total). Seems like the price was calculated around 24 $/BTC.

[kev7112001]

I guess Tom is mining his ass of with what hardware he has to pay the BTC back

[puck2]

I guess Tom is mining his ass of with what hardware he has to pay the BTC back

Great. I can wait... Maybe BTC value will fall and I'll get more back!