mtgox.com has blocked my account with 45 000 USD in it!

[Anonymous]

We're arguing morality. How productive.

[1714123393]

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[hacim]

There has been a lot of discussion on this thread, quite a bit by a small minority of people. Personally, I think the subjects that are being discussed are interesting, and should be discussed, but having them inside this thread is a bit annoying.

Please people, especially people who have been posting a lot, take the discussions to another thread. I dont want to wade through page after page of moral speculations, legal disagreements about various jurisdictions, political philosophy, libya and syria?!

[BCEmporium]

We're arguing morality. How productive.

Nope Atlas, on the contrary, put things to place. It's not a role of the market to set up moral, moral levels, religions, beliefs... the only reason for the market to react is if the market itself is under attack. Not settle "robbers & victims", not decide who has more moral over the other, who is following the right or wrong philosophy or religion, not to have "last minute Horatio Caines" rolling up crime scene investigations... to sum it up: The market must be just it; the market.

The difference to BTC resumes to decentralization, so it's immune to assets being frozen by demand of any government, taken no government has control for either BTC or its market.

I'm sorry for the way I may sound; I'm just being pragmatic. 

In the case itself, reanalyzing, Baron matches almost at 100% the profile of a typical scam victim. Greedy but not that smart, knows money but lacks the technical details, difficulty on express himself, nervous... easily get everyone against him - as you can see from the forum. Or the guy is "that good" that manages to almost perfectly match the profile of a scam victim being a scammer himself.
Scammers normally tend to be expert social-engineers, well speaking, good at deception and deceiving...
Maybe you're looking at the wrong scammer on your CSI job.

[kiba]

In the case itself, reanalyzing, Baron matches almost at 100% the profile of a typical scam victim. Greedy but not that smart, knows money but lacks the technical details, difficulty on express himself, nervous... easily get everyone against him - as you can see from the forum. Or the guy is "that good" that manages to almost perfectly match the profile of a scam victim being a scammer himself.
Scammers normally tend to be expert social-engineers, well speaking, good at deception and deceiving...
Maybe you're looking at the wrong scammer on your CSI job.

Citation needed.

[BCEmporium]

Citation needed.

Of what?! Just go look for his posts around.

[kiba]

Of what?! Just go look for his posts around.

What is a "typical scam victim".

[BCEmporium]

Of what?! Just go look for his posts around.

What is a "typical scam victim".

Doesn't take to be Einstein to know one. But there're lots of statistical resources, by household, by genre, by hobbies and interests...

Nevertheless the "typical" ain't changed since the antiquity; at first we've to split them by kind of scam, taken there're thousands of them; financial, romance, belief, control, power...
This is a financial/reception(?) scam.
A good victim would need to be greedy, preferentially not quite well informed about what he is investing in - but knowing to get revenue. So to say; the dumber and greedier, the better, no offense.

[kiba]

Doesn't take to be Einstein to know one. But there're lots of statistical resources, by household, by genre, by hobbies and interests...

Nevertheless the "typical" ain't changed since the antiquity; at first we've to split them by kind of scam, taken there're thousands of them; financial, romance, belief, control, power...
This is a financial/reception(?) scam.
A good victim would need to be greedy, preferentially not quite well informed about what he is investing in - but knowing to get revenue. So to say; the dumber and greedier, the better, no offense.

I cannot accept this as a good explanation of human psychology. It's a plausible hypothesis but is it true?

[Bruce Wagner]

Ok.  I've just joined this thread....  because of the SUBJECT of the thread....

Would anyone care to give us late-joiners an "executive summary" of just what exactly, supposedly, transpired, and what the conclusion was....  so that we don't have to read 19 pages of philosophical non-nonsensical debates.... please?

[BCEmporium]

I cannot accept this as a good explanation of human psychology. It's a plausible hypothesis but is it true?

In a simple analysis, yes. Not in the complete profile perhaps, I don't know the "victim" to profile him. Would need to contrast one on the other. But this guy typifies more for victim than scammer.

I started to study scams since a friend, female, went down on a Romance Scam (yup... I got amazed too, but found out females are more likely to be targets on this sort of scam than males - and they call us sex-addicts   ) some years ago. From there to study all the variants, Romance are a 419 variation, profiles of scammers (normally they like to look like victims of something, makes it easier for the target to drop defenses) and so on.

Talking of which, I wrote this article about a variant of 419 Scam going on with PayPal back in 2009: http://vigaros.awardspace.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=17&Itemid=9 (it's in portuguese, you can use Google to translate). I read mtgox lost some money with paypal scammers; was it this scam?

BTW: I study scams as hobby not to become a scammer myself, but because I believe the only effective defense against scams is information.  

[BCEmporium]

Ok.  I've just joined this thread....  because of the SUBJECT of the thread....

Doing my communitarian job for the day then:

1) Someone reported his account to be stolen to mt gox with 9000 BTC on it.
2) Those 9K BTC somehow appear on Baron's wallet (his own client)
3) Baron have an account with mt gox funded with 45K LRUSD
4) mt gox blocked Baron's account based on that theft allegation. (BC address in Baron's mtgox profile matches a BC address from which he made a sample payment to the wallet that collected those 9K)

[BitterTea]

Ok.  I've just joined this thread....  because of the SUBJECT of the thread....

Would anyone care to give us late-joiners an "executive summary" of just what exactly, supposedly, transpired, and what the conclusion was....  so that we don't have to read 19 pages of philosophical non-nonsensical debates.... please?

No conclusion yet, just a cliff hanger.

According to Baron, about a month after an IRC trade of $3000 -> 9000 BTC (he can't remember his or the other person's nick, or the channel they were on), his mtgox account was locked. In his account is $45,000. He provided the address he used to withdraw BTC from mtgox and the address he received the 9000 BTC.

According to mtgox, he received an email from an individual stating that someone accessed his account and withdrew ~9000 BTC over three days ($1000/day max widthdrawal from the exchange, BTC were $0.30 at the time). The user provided mtgox with the address to which the BTC had been withdrawn, which matches one of the addresses Baron provided. Additionally, he said he's been trying to get in contact with Baron since he found out about this situation, without luck.

Did I miss anything important?

[carp]

I cannot accept this as a good explanation of human psychology. It's a plausible hypothesis but is it true?

In a simple analysis, yes. Not in the complete profile perhaps, I don't know the "victim" to profile him. Would need to contrast one on the other. But this guy typifies more for victim than scammer.

I started to study scams since a friend, female, went down on a Romance Scam (yup... I got amazed too, but found out females are more likely to be targets on this sort of scam than males - and they call us sex-addicts   ) some years ago. From there to study all the variants, Romance are a 419 variation, profiles of scammers (normally they like to look like victims of something, makes it easier for the target to drop defenses) and so on

A past roomate of mine was the "real deal". One of those charming guys, who knows everyone. What I realized from him was, he seemed like a really amazing liar. He had lied to everyone about every thing, he could keep it straight. He claimed to be going to school and, while the school never heard of him, he could rattle off his course load to you at any point, and he was right for the school. That sort of liar.

The thing was, it was less that he was a great liar, more that... you WANT to believe him. Its just natural to assume that people are telling you the truth, or at least, an exaggerated version of it, or their side of the story. Nobody expects that people are looking them in the face and fabricating everything.

When he skipped town (owing me 3k for rent and the phone bill, $900 of which was his calls, with the bill in my name), everyone was shocked but... not too shocked. Everyone had something that "wasn't right" about him that they shrugged off.

The strangest part, after my friends and I ran his ass out of town (well out of the apartment... after a lawyer told me to cut my losses and going after him would yield nothing).,... he IM'd me a few weeks later. Starts telling me how its his birthday and how sad he is to not be around his friends.... as if nothing happened. He never admitted a thing, not when we sat him int he chair and told him this was his chance to come clean before he leaves, not weeks later from an unknown location on AIM.

[BCEmporium]

Know the kind carp, I've a "friend" who was once my grandmother's tenant, which ran away owning over 6 month of rent, and when sees me come with big handshake, start to crap-talk about his imaginary 5000 EUR/mo+ jobs and so on, like if was owning absolutely nothing or made nothing wrong at all.

[da2ce7]

To me morality is very simple.  If you use violence, you are immoral (other than self-defense in the 1st and 2nd degree).

[FatherMcGruder]

Would anyone care to give us late-joiners an "executive summary" of just what exactly, supposedly, transpired, and what the conclusion was....  so that we don't have to read 19 pages of philosophical non-nonsensical debates.... please?

Would you like a coffee with that Mr. Wagner?

[Nefario]

Vladimir, I was under the impression that you lived under British law, with England not being a country for quite some time, or have things changed in the lanst day or so? 

[Bimmerhead]

I think I have read nearly every post on this thread, but the two Wagnerian summaries that were just proffered highlighted two things I hadn't reflected on much:

1) the unknown victim who supposedly lost 9000 BTC knew the address to which they were sent (obviously this was in his mtgox summary), and yet the supposed thief took no efforts to launder them but sent them to his own mtgox account directly?

2) the theft took place more than a month ago and was just reported mid-February after the value of bitcoin trebled?  And the "stolen" coins were still in the "thiefs" account???

If this was a theft, this is surely the most incompentent crime in the history of bitcoin.

[Nefario]

I think I have read nearly every post on this thread, but the two Wagnerian summaries that were just proffered highlighted two things I hadn't reflected on much:

1) the unknown victim who supposedly lost 9000 BTC knew the address to which they were sent (obviously this was in his mtgox summary), and yet the supposed thief took no efforts to launder them but sent them to his own mtgox account directly?

2) the theft took place more than a month ago and was just reported mid-February after the value of bitcoin trebled?  And the "stolen" coins were still in the "thiefs" account???

If this was a theft, this is surely the most incompentent crime in the history of bitcoin.

Well bitcoin does have a fairly short history, but this would set the bar fairly high.

[theymos]

1) the unknown victim who supposedly lost 9000 BTC knew the address to which they were sent (obviously this was in his mtgox summary), and yet the supposed thief took no efforts to launder them but sent them to his own mtgox account directly?

The address the coins were sent to was not a MtGox address. Baron was using a Bitcoin client. Maybe he assumed, as many do, that Bitcoin is a magical money-laundering machine. However, a link was found between Baron's standalone client and his MtGox account, which allowed MtGox to freeze his account.