If anyone hasn't heard, the 4th of July giveaway was a massive phishing scam by user "legitnick". He sent PM's to hundreds of forum users who posted in his giveaway thread telling them that they had won, and included a link that was supposed to be a download of a private key for their winnings, but was actually malware that many people ended up downloading and installing.
So I did some digging..
in all of legitnick's "award" PM's, he listed these 5 accounts as other "winners" of his 4th of july contest, and merely added the name of the particular user he was trying to scam to the list:
Obamajuronimo
albert speer
hurro
bachelor
[user he was trying to scam]
[a few other random names]
In the thread below, you will see username "Obama" trying to purchase other user accounts on June 19th. Legitnick also posted in this thread, offering to sell his username to "Obama" for $3.50:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=238432.0Scenario 1) "obama" purchased the highly reputable "legitnick" account for $3.50, and used it for the 4th of july scam.
Scenario 2) legitnick (operated by the same person as "obama") pretended to offer to sell his account to Obama for $3.50 in order to encourage others to sell their accounts as well.
Scenario 1 is most likely. If you look at legitnick's post history around June 19/20 (after he offered to sell his account to obama), you will see that the content of his posts changed drastically after he offered to sell his account to Obama for $3.50. He went from making about 1 post every week or so about mining rigs to making
360 low value posts from June 20 - July 4th to raise his "activity" level. (
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=35697;sa=showPosts;start=340)
Also, in the "obama" thread linked to above, you see username "r3wt" offering to sell 3 accounts that he owns to "Obama", and Obama replies by offering to buy r3wt's main account from him.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=238432.msg2591196#msg2591196Today, r3wt has posted in all the threads regarding the scam (acting ironically "appalled" at such an awful atrocity), so he should be considered a potential sock puppet account operated by the 4th of july scammer.
Moral of the story:
Admins should not allow buying/selling of user accounts. And, "obama did it".
![Cheesy](https://bitcointalk.org/Smileys/default/cheesy.gif)