14 BTC bounty - gonefishing510 investigation

[nmat]

Hi,

As many of you know, jakedeez and I were scammed by the user gonefishing510, also known as "Andy" (which we already know it is a fake name). We sold him Casascius coins and he never sent the payment. We hired a private eye to gather more information about this guy, but since Andy and his girlfriend don't hold regular jobs it is hard for us to understand who these people are and how they make a living. Whatever their source of income is, it is probably illegal.

So we decided that we will do some surveillance over the course of three or four days in order to learn more about their lives. After we gather all the information, we plan to visit him personally informing that we will deliver it to the police and follow with a lawsuit unless he returns what he owes us.

Unfortunately, this investigation has costs and I would like to ask the community if anyone is willing to help us with them. We are asking for 4 BTC to cover investigation costs. If we recover the stolen coins, we'll return 14BTC to the people who helped us, split proportionally. FYI the total amount he owns me is 35BTC.

This is the original topic: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=404359.0

This is the address to contribute: 1A98E51MdUSBLma3MumcGPZze9ZUQev4oL
If you do want to help, post a reply here or send me a PM. If we don't get anywhere near 4btc I will probably return everything to everyone and cancel the investigation, but we'll see...

Feel free to ask any questions. Thanks for reading.

[jakedeez]

We want to get this guy, but we will need some help.  We've already spend about $1,000 on this.

[acarterczyz]

PM me the address you sent the Casascius coins and I'll look into it. I'm pretty good with digging info up on people.

[smoothie]

I hope you guys are able to get justice out of this and have your possession/payment given to you.

I personally don't think anyone should donate here. Having good money chase bad money likely will net you a loss. But then again I can only speak for myself. When I have issues generally I like to deal with them myself and in this situation I wouldn't be asking for donations. It was basically your own fault for trusting the other party to keep their end of the deal knowing full well that this could happen (meaning there are dishonest people in the world).

One thing to do is chalk it up and never deal without an escrow. That is one approach. Hopefully others will learn from your mistake here.


Good luck.

[jakedeez]

I hope you guys are able to get justice out of this and have your possession/payment given to you.

I personally don't think anyone should donate here. Having good money chase bad money likely will net you a loss. But then again I can only speak for myself. When I have issues generally I like to deal with them myself and in this situation I wouldn't be asking for donations. It was basically your own fault for trusting the other party to keep their end of the deal knowing full well that this could happen (meaning there are dishonest people in the world).

One thing to do is chalk it up and never deal without an escrow. That is one approach. Hopefully others will learn from your mistake here.


Good luck.

I totally agree about the lesson we've learned... but I want to make sure we were clear, we are not asking for a pure donation, but rather to join our recover efforts.  We collect 4 btc to pay the costs, iff we recover 35 btc + $2000 which is what was taken, at a ratio of 15/1 nmat will return 14 BTC to the people who help us fund the effort.  That isn't the first 14 btc btw, but the equivalent of 14/37 or 38% of whatever we recover.

Not to argue with the idea it maybe very difficult to recover, just wanted to point out we are not asking for donations without participation.