Wolftaur. You did indeed. In a back-n-forth you and I had about it (at least.) You were %100 right and I was %100 wrong. Cost me a few BTC and a very red face.
Bruce fooled the shit out of me. In fact, thinking back on it, I believe I am the dumb-ass who suggested that he take charge of doling out the remains of the mybitcoin loot. Thank God nobody listened to me on that one (I hope...I went on vacation for 9 days and didn't really follow things around that time.)
Live and learn. But can someone please tell me that Bruce was indeed a relatively good con-artist and I am not a _complete_ retard for thinking he was genuine? Please? Anyone?
Look around. He still has people defending him. This sort of thing does happen a lot in con games.
There's a guy sitting in prison in my home state for exploiting a lot of elderly people and taking money and stealing valuables from their houses. It took him almost ten years to be caught and convicted, and a lot of the problem was that the victims wouldn't press charges, because "he did do some nice things." My next door neighbor was one of the victims.
This guy met her at a hospital after she had hip surgery, in the parking lot while she was waiting for her daughter to arrive to drive her home. That's what the guy did, actually, he hung out in places like hospital parking lots and church social functions to meet vulnerable people. In this case, he was "nice" and offered her some food he conveniently had with him. He tells her all about how he knows what she's going through because his mother had hip surgery. (This was not true.) He ends up volunteering to help and gives her his phone number.
For several weeks he shows up bringing her groceries, he drives her for a doctor's appointment, he mows her lawn. He stole over $15,000 worth of jewelry, her credit cards, the emergency cash (several thousand dollars!) in the house, some antique furniture... and she still defended him because he had done a few "nice" things for her.
No matter what else Bruce did, he raised awareness of Bitcoin. It's quite easy to look at that and think the only reason he would do that is because he's a "good guy", and frankly, if it turns out to have been a scam (and there's a reason they call this type of thing a "confidence game", which is just "con" for short) a lot of people will not want to admit they were wrong, and continue defending the criminal.
(BTW, I _still_ feel that having a demonstrated chunk of funds going to charity from anonymous members of the Bitcoin community is a damn good idea. The rest of those in that brainstorming session will have some work to do to wash their hands of The Bruce and convince me that they never were part of the same nets of rats.)
I agree completely! And I was extremely thrilled to see someone else pick up the torch and turn his existing product into a charity-friendly one and waive the fees. I hope that gets some real traction -- and in fact, I'm talking to a local friend who is a director at a local charity to see if I can interest him. I loved the Bitcoin for charity idea... I just wanted the charity to not be Bruce's retirement fund.
