PirateAt40 / Trendon Shavers

[Bitsky]

Since it has been rather quiet around this whole mess for some time now I would like to take the chance and ask what the current status is.

Are/Were there any lawsuits? Or other attempts to get something back?

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[franky1]

nope. from what has been read. alot of people invested at the time on avage $1000 each. so then wasting another $1k on flights or a couple $k on investigators, court fee's etc is not in their interest.

some people were not socially outbound enough to want their names made public or form a class action suit.

then came whispers of the SEC being interested already, made those few people that would have put money into a court case, decide that it was no longer required to spend their own cash and leave it in the hopes the SEC will do something.

the short of it..

no one bothered. alot of doxing and remote harassment with trendon and his family. but no one went to him to slap him across the face with a wet fish face to face.

lesson to learn. if its gonna cost you alot of money slap the person you are dealing with, with a wet fish face to face if they break the deals contract. then think hard and deeply about doing the deal.

[dancingnancy]

basically learned that you can still get away with murder in the btc community and no one is going to do anything about it.  the same thing is going on with mt. gox and them holding the bitcoinica funds hostage (from the sounds of it).  the only lesson you need to know about bitcoin is always keep it in your own wallet.

[Wardrick]

I would probably just spam his doing around his community, exposing him for the scum bag he is.

[grubles]

He was logged into bitcointalk March 23rd.

[00null]

He was logged into bitcointalk March 23rd.

Now we could ask theymos about the IP, but I guess he wouldn't tell us...

[franky1]

He was logged into bitcointalk March 23rd.

Now we could ask theymos about the IP, but I guess he wouldn't tell us...

you could ask for his IP, but in the end everyone knows his address, name, family, how much the mortgage of his house is, his previous court appearances. so knowing his IP is meaningless now.

what needed are those that actually got defrauded by him to pull their finger out and use the information legally. else there's no point going on about it and just leave it as a lesson learnt.

[Bitsky]

nope. from what has been read. alot of people invested at the time on avage $1000 each. so then wasting another $1k on flights or a couple $k on investigators, court fee's etc is not in their interest.

Yeah, but since that time, the value has increased by how much? Seven times? Eight times? Your $1000 loss is suddenly a $8000 loss, and it's increasing.

Those who invested directly with Trendon could go after him, but others (hello BitcoinMax) don't have much of a chance when the PPT operators protect Pirate.

I'm sure that someone who would visit Trendon (with a wet fish maybe?) could earn quite an amount. Most here would agree to pay a percentage of any retrieved coins. Rumors talk about around 500,000 coins that were invested. If investors offer to pay "only" 10% that would be 50,000 coins. With the current exchange rate of ~$90, a person could earn $4,500,000 for a face-to-face visit.

[crazy_rabbit]

It is insane how much Pirate's scam is worth at this point.

[BrightAnarchist]

The SEC is moving forward with the case, albeit slowly. Pirate will be going to prison. But these things take time.

Enjoy,

[malevolent]

The SEC is moving forward with the case, albeit slowly. Pirate will be going to prison. But these things take time.

Enjoy,

How sure are you about that?
 I haven't lost money to him (refrained myself from sending money to him despite the temptations ) but I'd love to see a bitcoin scammer finally go to prison.

[BrightAnarchist]

The SEC is moving forward with the case, albeit slowly. Pirate will be going to prison. But these things take time.

Enjoy,

How sure are you about that?
 I haven't lost money to him (refrained myself from sending money to him despite the temptations ) but I'd love to see a bitcoin scammer finally go to prison.

They already have a set of people who will be official witnesses. For what I don't know yet, but that sounds like they plan to move it to a court case as the next phase.

Legal system is not like bitcoin. It's very, very slow. Also a lot of people are not witnessing because the SEC has been so secretive about their intentions (not to mention it opens yourself up to all government agencies), so right now effectively the SEC is protecting Pirate since their involvement prohibits other lawyers from collecting: the SEC gets "first dibs" always. THAT is the reason you haven't seen anything serious happen yet on the legal front yet, not because people are sitting on their hands.

[farfiman]

nope. from what has been read. alot of people invested at the time on avage $1000 each. so then wasting another $1k on flights or a couple $k on investigators, court fee's etc is not in their interest.

Yeah, but since that time, the value has increased by how much? Seven times? Eight times? Your $1000 loss is suddenly a $8000 loss, and it's increasing.

Those who invested directly with Trendon could go after him, but others (hello BitcoinMax) don't have much of a chance when the PPT operators protect Pirate.

I'm sure that someone who would visit Trendon (with a wet fish maybe?) could earn quite an amount. Most here would agree to pay a percentage of any retrieved coins. Rumors talk about around 500,000 coins that were invested. If investors offer to pay "only" 10% that would be 50,000 coins. With the current exchange rate of ~$90, a person could earn $4,500,000 for a face-to-face visit.

He doesn't have 500,000 coins so the calculation is all off.  Most would settle for the Dollar value of the coins at the time he went under.

[whitenight639]

as a newbie, can u tell me what Pirates scam involved, how it worked?


It sounds strange the SEC would be involved in a smaller scam like this, do they often go after smaller people?

[Bitsky]

The SEC is moving forward with the case, albeit slowly. Pirate will be going to prison. But these things take time.

Hopefully. What's going to happen with any coins that will be found? Is there a chance that they will be returned?

He doesn't have 500,000 coins so the calculation is all off.  Most would settle for the Dollar value of the coins at the time he went under.

That's why I said rumors. Nobody had a chance to look into Pirate's wallet and PPT operators too were no help at all in this matter.
So even if he has "just" 100,000 coins, a trip for retrieving them could earn someone $900,000.

as a newbie, can u tell me what Pirates scam involved, how it worked?

Just like any other Ponzi. He just did it on a quite professional level (even met with investors) and had a great #otc rating what helped a lot too.

[kgo]

as a newbie, can u tell me what Pirates scam involved, how it worked?

He had a secret method that was guaranteed to pay out 7% a week on your investment, or 3300% a year if you reinvested dividends.

[grubles]

The more visibility there is to his wrongdoings, the better. There's no chance he can weasel his way out of his problems.

[CoinDiver]

So even if he has "just" 100,000 coins, a trip for retrieving them could earn someone $900,000.

$9/btc?

[kingcrimson]

as a newbie, can u tell me what Pirates scam involved, how it worked?

He had a secret method that was guaranteed to pay out 7% a week on your investment, or 3300% a year if you reinvested dividends.

so I assume the people who said it was too good to be true were told they were morons and to shut up

[Dansker]

as a newbie, can u tell me what Pirates scam involved, how it worked?

He had a secret method that was guaranteed to pay out 7% a week on your investment, or 3300% a year if you reinvested dividends.

so I assume the people who said it was too good to be true were told they were morons and to shut up

Of course!

[thebaron]

I doubt they will actually be able to prove anything in court. Unless there's really direct evidence to prove that he was cashing out someone's Bitcoins.

They have a better chance of working with the IRS to prove tax evasion, IMHO.

[Bitsky]

$9/btc?

If investors offer to pay "only" 10%

so I assume the people who said it was too good to be true were told they were morons and to shut up

People said that Bitcoin would never work and only idiots would pay real money for some bytes which geeks calculate in their basements.

[malevolent]

New updates:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/210845161/SEC-vs-pirateat40-1
http://www.scribd.com/doc/210845205/SEC-vs-pirateat40-2

[leopard2]

Out of curiosity what is the size of that scam vs. the Gox scam? 

[Frankie]

New updates:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/210845161/SEC-vs-pirateat40-1
http://www.scribd.com/doc/210845205/SEC-vs-pirateat40-2

He claims that he lent 202,000 bitcoins to a mysterious "Big One," but has no proof of such a loan occurring (Shavers depo p. 232).  He claims his mystery borrowers paid him every week, and tries to claim several places he never paid current investors from new deposits, not a Ponzi, etc. He claims he repaid 100,000 BTC from his personal funds after Oct. 3, 2012, but can't prove that either. (p. 260.) Whatevs, loser.

As for the question about comparison with Mt.Gox, the government alleges that he received "at least 732,050 bitcoins in principal investments." That's much higher than I thought; the common figure was 500,000 in fictional account balances (with much less actual capital due to the absurd interest rates).

[Nagle]

Out of curiosity what is the size of that scam vs. the Gox scam? 

The SEC calculates about $40 million, based on the average price of Bitcoins over the period of interest.

[00null]

New updates:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/210845161/SEC-vs-pirateat40-1
http://www.scribd.com/doc/210845205/SEC-vs-pirateat40-2

Interesting read. Did anyone notice that he received multiple wires from some Daniel Thomas Williams from Florida (p298-299)? This sounds very much like the "famous" Tom Williams of mybitcoin fame which was suspected to be from Florida.

[Keyser Soze]

Q) "And you say that Bitcoins Savings & Trust investment activitses was in the business, I should say, of lending bitcoin to anonymous borrowers you met online; is that right?"
A) "Correct"

What a genius thought-through business model.

Anyone want to lend me 10000 BTC at 1%/year so I can lend that out to random anonymous people on the internets at 2%? Because nothing could possible to wrong with that bussiness model, could it?

I personally don't buy this "I lent out 200k BTC to mysterious Big One and he did not pay me back and that's where the coins went yo" story at all. It's just too far-fetched.

Not to mention he has no records of the transaction (or other lending transactions) occurring. It seems he is really grasping at straws to not look like a ponzi.

[ArticMine]

New updates:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/210845161/SEC-vs-pirateat40-1
http://www.scribd.com/doc/210845205/SEC-vs-pirateat40-2

He claims that he lent 202,000 bitcoins to a mysterious "Big One," but has no proof of such a loan occurring (Shavers depo p. 232).  He claims his mystery borrowers paid him every week, and tries to claim several places he never paid current investors from new deposits, not a Ponzi, etc. He claims he repaid 100,000 BTC from his personal funds after Oct. 3, 2012, but can't prove that either. (p. 260.) Whatevs, loser.

As for the question about comparison with Mt.Gox, the government alleges that he received "at least 732,050 bitcoins in principal investments." That's much higher than I thought; the common figure was 500,000 in fictional account balances (with much less actual capital due to the absurd interest rates).

Of course for the ultimate in Bticoin conspiracy theories Mark Karpeles of MTGox could be the mysterious "Big One" here. What I found really interesting is that:
1) The BTC sales from Mark Karpeles' account ended in early August 2012 just before the collapse of Bitcoin Savings & Trust.
2) The total amount of sales from Mark Karpeles' account amounted to approximately 200000 BTC
My source for the above is http://mark-karpeles.com/ before it was taken down.

For example consider that Pirate started to get really nervous in late July 2012 and cut off Karpeles from further financing. Karpeles retaliated by defaulting on the entire amount.

[Nubarius]

New updates:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/210845161/SEC-vs-pirateat40-1
http://www.scribd.com/doc/210845205/SEC-vs-pirateat40-2

Quite an engrossing read. Thanks for sharing!

[daibasen]

I had a little chuckle when the interviewer referred to the infamous exchange as "Mt Cox".