The curious case of user 🏰 TradeFortress 🏰

[🏰 TradeFortress 🏰]

Absolutely idiotic post. This is from a decade ago, so let me try and remember:

mining4fun11: Person was a scammer.

MoneyPakTrader.com: I delivered exactly what he asked for, he tried to scam me for a refund and decided to intentionally fuck up the script I delivered and claim it isn't working, when it was.

starsoccer9: I delivered what he asked for, I think there was some things I wasn't able to get working, so we agreed on a mutually accepted partial refund.

webr3: Ripple whiner. Ripple is a scam, I was just exposing it.

Apparently, years later he tried to pay back some of his victims but in the end he abandoned the idea:

No I didn't, I practically paid back everyone who I could reach before I depleted all the funds.

[1714809853]

1714809853

[🏰 TradeFortress 🏰]

You have to look at TradeFortress' situation from a legal perspective.

In circa 2013, TradeFortress was running a website (Inputs.io) that offered custodial services for its customers, and something happened that resulted in Inputs.io not being able to honor customer deposits. According to TradeFortress at the time, this was because of a hack of a hosting provider they were using, and according to some community members, this was because TradeFortress decided to steal some of the money belonging to Inputs.io customers.

This was because Inputs.io was hacked, not because I decided to steal money belonging to my customers.

Regardless of the underlying root cause, it is very likely that TradeFortress had liability when Inputs.io could not honor customer deposits. This is an important detail.

Subsequent to the alleged hack, TradeFortress prioritized deposit claims of those with larger amounts owed by Inputs.io. IMO, by doing this, he lowered the likelihood of being pursued by customers -- in effect, he did not honor deposit obligations of his smaller customers (the customers who would have the least incentives to aggressively pursue him).

No, I didn't. I did my best to reimburse customers with the remaining balance, both small and big. Later on, thanks to buying Ethereum in the ICO, I was able to reimburse a much greater portion of creditors.

In any litigation, any statements you make can potentially be used against you. So pirate40 for example decided to stop posting on the forum so that anything he wrote could not be used against him in court. pirate40 ended up going to prison anyway, although, by the time his enterprise collapsed, there were no lingering questions if he was running a scam. Other scammers simply stopped using their accounts after their account was no longer able to produce income for them -- some of these scammers may still be here, operating under different names.

After Inputs.io collapsed, many months elapsed, and TradeFortress made statements on the forum that IMO reduced the likelihood of being pursued in court for deposits he did not honor. For example, TradeFortress tried to join a signature campaign, despite allegedly having millions of dollars worth of stolen coin (value at the time). I might point out that obtaining a judgment against someone with no assets will only get you a bill from your attorney.

I'm still here because I didn't do anything wrong. I wouldn't have tried joining a signature campaign if I was sitting on millions of dollars of bitcoins, lol.

Fast forward a year or two, there was a somewhat similar situation with another company, called hashie that was involved in cloud mining.

Based on what happened when hashie imploded, I believe it was a scam, although it is possible what happened was the result of TradeFortress' immaturity. AMhash, then the entity that hashie was reselling cloud mining contracts for, imploded very shortly after hashie imploded -- I think this probably points to TradeFortress potentially having lines of communication with AMhash that went dead before it was publically known that AMhash was imploding and TradeFortress deciding to maximize his profit from his company.

If you believe that hashie was a scam, a reasonable person might belive that Inputs.io was also a scam. In any case, it appears that TradeFortress is not able to cover edge cases of security issues.

Hashie imploded because AMHash, who was the seller of the underlying hash rate, decided to exit scam.

I had no lines of communication with AMHash that indicated it would be a scam. Why would I choose a supplier that I knew to be a scam? I was trying to operate a legit cloud mining platform.

If anyone can recover funds from the Inputs.io hacker, or AMHash, they are welcome to 35% of all recovered proceeds (thousands and hundreds of BTC).


Any other questions?

[suchmoon]

Hashie imploded because AMHash, who was the seller of the underlying hash rate, decided to exit scam.

My immaturity? The fuck?

That's why you trolled everyone on your way out, because very mature LOL

What a fucking clown.

[KingsDen]

Indeed, some were banned and this was the reason for their disappearance. But not all of them.

Can you confirm that the reason for their ban was because of the scam they committed?

Very rarely I saw someone which told him something more or less subtle, about what he did and that he does not belong here anymore.

It's like... everybody forgotten his actions... or closed their eyes.

Why is this happening? Opinions...?

The trust system is not moderated, I believe it's one of the reasons people act as if they have forgotten the scams. I am relatively new in this forum, if someone like me decides to attack or challenge the scammer, he might decide to ruin my trust list by giving me some red tags. As you can see, he is a DT2. So, I think because of trust abuse, that is why some people don't bother involving themselves in trust related matters.

However, there is a clear warning on his trust that will make it almost impossible for him to further engage in trading or services.

[OgNasty]

I did my best to reimburse customers with the remaining balance, both small and big. Later on, thanks to buying Ethereum in the ICO, I was able to reimburse a much greater portion of creditors.

I know many of the people commenting here weren't actually around back then, so let me just say that while it cannot be proved who ran with the coins from the "hack," it seems clear to me that TradeFortress did make an effort to pay people back and if he was trying to sign up for a signature campaign to help him repay more people, it is a shame that those who weren't around back then but choose to harm him anyway with negative trust ratings are actually hurting the ability for full repayment.  This attitude of wanting to leave negative trust to people who make strong efforts on behalf of this community has always dumbfounded me.  It's an attitude that has allowed those who contribute nothing to 'rise to power' in the trust network while those who are responsible for Bitcoin's early success by building use cases are demonized and forced out of the community.  

I know I already posted in this thread once detailing how I was repaid what is now a six figure sum of $ in Bitcoin by TradeFortress, but I can't stress enough how repaying this amount of money to a stranger is not something a scammer would do.  At least in my opinion.  

I wouldn't have tried joining a signature campaign if I was sitting on millions of dollars of bitcoins, lol.

Broke mentality for life!  
(this post brought to you by Stake.com)

[Poker Player]

I'm still here because I didn't do anything wrong. I wouldn't have tried joining a signature campaign if I was sitting on millions of dollars of bitcoins, lol.

Sure, sure, and the other day you wanted to gamble playing heads or tails in amounts of 50 Bitcoins at a time because you were feeling a little sad.
    
Places where you can bet 50 BTC on 50/50 odds?

Either you were lying then or you are lying now, and looking at your trust page I don't believe your explanations.

[GazetaBitcoin]

Absolutely idiotic post

... said the scammer.

I practically paid back everyone who I could reach before I depleted all the funds.

Of course you did. (/s)

Any other questions?

Actually yes. Are you aware that this second post in a row you made is breaking forum rules? I was expecting for such an old member, like you, to know the forum rules.

32. Posting multiple posts in a row (excluding bumps and reserved posts by the thread starter) is not allowed.

Perhaps you did not know that scamming is illegal, but haven't you also known forum rules against multiple posts in a row? Now you'll have that post deleted, as I reported it...

Can you confirm that the reason for their ban was because of the scam they committed?

I can not confirm this and I did not state this. Maybe a mod (or an old user) can help you with this information.

[PrimeNumber7]

Regardless of the underlying root cause, it is very likely that TradeFortress had liability when Inputs.io could not honor customer deposits. This is an important detail.

Subsequent to the alleged hack, TradeFortress prioritized deposit claims of those with larger amounts owed by Inputs.io. IMO, by doing this, he lowered the likelihood of being pursued by customers -- in effect, he did not honor deposit obligations of his smaller customers (the customers who would have the least incentives to aggressively pursue him).

No, I didn't. I did my best to reimburse customers with the remaining balance, both small and big. Later on, thanks to buying Ethereum in the ICO, I was able to reimburse a much greater portion of creditors.

According to your post from 2013, you told someone that you would repay someone with a balance of less than 1BTC "after larger amounts [have been repaid]".

In any litigation, any statements you make can potentially be used against you. So pirate40 for example decided to stop posting on the forum so that anything he wrote could not be used against him in court. pirate40 ended up going to prison anyway, although, by the time his enterprise collapsed, there were no lingering questions if he was running a scam. Other scammers simply stopped using their accounts after their account was no longer able to produce income for them -- some of these scammers may still be here, operating under different names.

After Inputs.io collapsed, many months elapsed, and TradeFortress made statements on the forum that IMO reduced the likelihood of being pursued in court for deposits he did not honor. For example, TradeFortress tried to join a signature campaign, despite allegedly having millions of dollars worth of stolen coin (value at the time). I might point out that obtaining a judgment against someone with no assets will only get you a bill from your attorney.

I'm still here because I didn't do anything wrong. I wouldn't have tried joining a signature campaign if I was sitting on millions of dollars of bitcoins, lol.

IIRC, after bitfinex was hacked in 2016, you had moved ~1,000BTC in order to impress some girl you knew IRL. I believe the value of 1000BTC was worth approximately $600k at the time.

Fast forward a year or two, there was a somewhat similar situation with another company, called hashie that was involved in cloud mining.

Based on what happened when hashie imploded, I believe it was a scam, although it is possible what happened was the result of TradeFortress' immaturity. AMhash, then the entity that hashie was reselling cloud mining contracts for, imploded very shortly after hashie imploded -- I think this probably points to TradeFortress potentially having lines of communication with AMhash that went dead before it was publically known that AMhash was imploding and TradeFortress deciding to maximize his profit from his company.

If you believe that hashie was a scam, a reasonable person might belive that Inputs.io was also a scam. In any case, it appears that TradeFortress is not able to cover edge cases of security issues.

Hashie imploded because AMHash, who was the seller of the underlying hash rate, decided to exit scam.

I had no lines of communication with AMHash that indicated it would be a scam. Why would I choose a supplier that I knew to be a scam? I was trying to operate a legit cloud mining platform.

As suchmoon said, I believe you had trolled your customers with some song.

let me just say that while it cannot be proved who ran with the coins from the "hack,"

As I mentioned in my previous post, I think the question of if the "hack" was real or fake is a moot point. Especially so for the inputs.io case. If people were depositing money to tradefortress' business (inputs.io) with the expectation that the money would be returned on demand, I don't think the fact that x happened is any excuse to not honor that expectation.

[GazetaBitcoin]

~snip~

I am not sure that this will lead anywhere... At least, anywhere toward having the scammer admit his scam He did not do it in the past and, for sure, he will not do it in the present as well. But it's interesting how he is acting inside the forum, making a post here and there, acting all naturally, like an innocent person. This is what is shocking me!

I appreciate what you and others wrote here but all the effort is in vain...

P.S.: and moving 1000BTC for impressing a girl... is that real? And if it's real... who does that? There are so many better ways of impressing girls... I am speechless!

[🏰 TradeFortress 🏰]

According to your post from 2013, you told someone that you would repay someone with a balance of less than 1BTC "after larger amounts [have been repaid]".

That was right after the hack. The handling around them wasn't great, particularly as CL issued loans to people and had to wait until they were repaid. Most of them were never repaid after the collapse.

In any litigation, any statements you make can potentially be used against you. So pirate40 for example decided to stop posting on the forum so that anything he wrote could not be used against him in court. pirate40 ended up going to prison anyway, although, by the time his enterprise collapsed, there were no lingering questions if he was running a scam. Other scammers simply stopped using their accounts after their account was no longer able to produce income for them -- some of these scammers may still be here, operating under different names.

After Inputs.io collapsed, many months elapsed, and TradeFortress made statements on the forum that IMO reduced the likelihood of being pursued in court for deposits he did not honor. For example, TradeFortress tried to join a signature campaign, despite allegedly having millions of dollars worth of stolen coin (value at the time). I might point out that obtaining a judgment against someone with no assets will only get you a bill from your attorney.

I'm still here because I didn't do anything wrong. I wouldn't have tried joining a signature campaign if I was sitting on millions of dollars of bitcoins, lol.

IIRC, after bitfinex was hacked in 2016, you had moved ~1,000BTC in order to impress some girl you knew IRL. I believe the value of 1000BTC was worth approximately $600k at the time.[/quote]

Repayments happened throughout 2016, 2017, 2018, and 2019.

As suchmoon said, I believe you had trolled your customers with some song.

Mental health issues.

~snip~

I am not sure that this will lead anywhere... At least, anywhere toward having the scammer admit his scam He did not do it in the past and, for sure, he will not do it in the present as well. But it's interesting how he is acting inside the forum, making a post here and there, acting all naturally, like an innocent person. This is what is shocking me!

I appreciate what you and others wrote here but all the effort is in vain...

P.S.: and moving 1000BTC for impressing a girl... is that real? And if it's real... who does that? There are so many better ways of impressing girls... I am speechless!

It was more about writing it on the permanent blockchain.

[eddie13]

P.S.: and moving 1000BTC for impressing a girl... is that real? And if it's real... who does that? There are so many better ways of impressing girls... I am speechless!

No.. No, not really, lol..
Maybe it would work better if they saw your “balance” in USD terms, but…
Yeah, unfortunately money is about the best way to get pretty much any girl you want..


I read all of the TF scandal years ago..


I need to refresh..

[suchmoon]

Mental health issues.

Let me guess, narcissistic sociopath?

Sure, sure, and the other day you wanted to gamble playing heads or tails in amounts of 50 Bitcoins at a time because you were feeling a little sad.
    
Places where you can bet 50 BTC on 50/50 odds?

Either you were lying then or you are lying now, and looking at your trust page I don't believe your explanations.

There you go, that's the real TF, a scamtroll.

[PrimeNumber7]

~snip~

I am not sure that this will lead anywhere... At least, anywhere toward having the scammer admit his scam He did not do it in the past and, for sure, he will not do it in the present as well. But it's interesting how he is acting inside the forum, making a post here and there, acting all naturally, like an innocent person. This is what is shocking me!

I appreciate what you and others wrote here but all the effort is in vain...

P.S.: and moving 1000BTC for impressing a girl... is that real? And if it's real... who does that? There are so many better ways of impressing girls... I am speechless!

It was more about writing it on the permanent blockchain.

So you admit that you had 1,000BTC? I would certainly not describe you as being "broke".

~snip~

I am not sure that this will lead anywhere... At least, anywhere toward having the scammer admit his scam He did not do it in the past and, for sure, he will not do it in the present as well. But it's interesting how he is acting inside the forum, making a post here and there, acting all naturally, like an innocent person. This is what is shocking me!

I think a robust debate is good. Even if the other party is not necessarily speaking in good faith.

[GazetaBitcoin]

I think a robust debate is good. Even if the other party is not necessarily speaking in good faith.

I agree. But I was just saying that scratching the past may not lead to have TF state the truth now, if he did not do it back then either...
Perhaps it were better, in this case, if we had some of the users which were scammed back then to state if they were refunded...? But I know, this is almost impossible as most of them are not active anymore.

Yeah, unfortunately money is about the best way to get pretty much any girl you want..

For some reason, this reminded me of this picture

[PaperWallet]

Absolutely idiotic post. This is from a decade ago

Just don't respond to these shitposters. If you were to get shame from somebody, it's certainly not from the OP. He's guilty or he shills the same scams he accuses you of.

The only reason of creating this thread is because you were here before he came so that he can show how good he is and that he has nothing to do with the scams that have been done before.

They want you as a showcase of negative trust to show that the trust score is legit and that scammers are being tagged in some cases. But the people whom you're talking to you just don't know how many scams they've promoted or how many people they've scammed themselves. So there's no case of defending yourself here.

Although I still found this story to be interesting

[GazetaBitcoin]

Just don't respond to these shitposters

Shitposters? Lol!

If you were to get shame from somebody, it's certainly not from the OP.

I was not trying to make TF feel ashamed. I only stated a curious behavior. If he feels ashamed, that his problem, not mine. Subjectively speaking, he should feel so, but that's just my opinion.

He's guilty or he shills the same scams he accuses you of

What am I guilty of? And what scams am I shilling? Can you give me an example, please?

The only reason of creating this thread is because you were here before he came so that he can show how good he is

That's wrong. I started the topic just for this curious behavior of TF, which acts like nothing happened.

and that he has nothing to do with the scams that have been done before

This is true, I have nothing to do with any scam which was ever done.

They want you as a showcase of negative trust

They who?

to show that the trust score is legit and that scammers are being tagged in some cases

Trust score actually is legit and, indeed, scammers are tagged in some cases.

But the people whom you're talking to you just don't know how many scams they've promoted or how many people they've scammed themselves. So there's no case of defending yourself here.

I, personally, know how many scams I promoted and also how many people I scammed myself: 0 (zero).

Although I still found this story to be interesting

Yes, TF's story is interesting, if you're an outsider. But it must feel very bad for those which are the victims...

[PrimeNumber7]

I think a robust debate is good. Even if the other party is not necessarily speaking in good faith.

I agree. But I was just saying that scratching the past may not lead to have TF state the truth now, if he did not do it back then either...
Perhaps it were better, in this case, if we had some of the users which were scammed back then to state if they were refunded...? But I know, this is almost impossible as most of them are not active anymore.

In TF's above post, you will see that he seems to have admitted to having at least 1000BTC of his own money as of 2016. This is not the same as him admitting to stealing money from his customers, but it does show that he did not use all available resources to repay his customers when his site was "hacked".

[GazetaBitcoin]

In TF's above post, you will see that he seems to have admitted to having at least 1000BTC of his own money as of 2016. This is not the same as him admitting to stealing money from his customers, but it does show that he did not use all available resources to repay his customers when his site was "hacked".

Good observation, PrimeNumber7! Perhaps he needed more those coins for impressing Internet chicks than paying back his victims. After all, our main role, here, on Earth, is to perpetuate our specie. Perhaps, TF is very interested in reaching humanity's main goal (which should be a noble act (/s) ) and, for that, he used the coins in impressing such women hoping that he would also be able to perpetuate humanity. The other  people's loss was, probably, less important for him.

After all, what could matter more? Having an offspring or paying back a debt? Let's be reasonable here.

(P.S.: I hope you noticed the "/s" I wrote above.)

[greyhawk]

It's hard to believe it's almost been 10 years... let me try to clear things up from my memory.

TF had a ton of BTC in his wallet AFTER the hack. He did not deny this and claimed that this was his personal funds and nothing to do with inputs.io user deposits. I don't remember how much, I can probably find out if I look hard enough, but I believe it was at least $100,000, if not over $1,000,000. I believe what happened is with the cryptoboom he made millions from altcoin trading this money and this is the money he used to repay everyone. I believe that the only reason he did that was because his IRL identity is somewhat known to people and now that he was a multi-millionaire the best move was to repay people to avoid any potential legal issues.

I also think the hack was made up. He blamed the hosting provider linode for the hack. For people who don't know, there was a few hacks that happened back in 2011-2012 with sites that were hosting on linode that had 2fa bypassed, there was actually a guy called Zhou Tong who owned a site (forget name of site) this happened with, and there were a lot of similarity between TF and him including age location etc. They are not the same person but I reckon that had something to do with TF choosing this cover story. But anyway my point is linode was literally hated by the community and everyone knew not to use them because bitcoins kept getting stolen from sites hosted there. At the time everyone who heard that he was using linode thought he had to be faking, it was just too convenient that he was claiming to be another linode victim. Nobody could have been that stupid to put anything BTC related on linode. He also never preserved any of the logs or any evidence of the hack from back then. Also all of "his" money he had after the hack was heavily washed through bitcoin mixers so could easily have been the same coins.

I believe the hack was made up because his business model was not sustainable and he was losing money for months before this as well as gambling away tons of money and even getting scammed himself, and this was his way out of the situation. He had 3 businesses, coinchat, a website that paid people for chatting, inputs.io a wallet that had no fees for offchain payments, and coinlenders, a lending site. In that time period, peole who got into lending lost big time, he even mentions that in this thread, all those p2p lending platforms ended badly. So it's not exactly clear how he was turning any profit, but he was was regularly throwing around cash, making 100btc+ bets on gambling websites such as justdice etc.

So thats basically my opinion on how things went. He was a very young lonely dude, talented for his age but wayyy too cocky, he launched 3 websites. They got a lot of users, he made a lot of friends and enjoyed the online reputation he had. But the businesses never made any profit. So once his websites bled too much money, he faked the hack and ran away with the rest of the funds, got into altcoin trading and made bank, then decided his best move was to pay back the people he scammed.

I'll also add something I just remembered. TF had a pretty bad gambling problem, I hope he's doing better now. But even before he did anything bitcoin related, he was literally in the news because he had spent something like $50,000 on microtransactions for an online game. No idea how he was able to get that much money because he was a teenager. I remember the games developer literally stalked him after he tried to quit to try and get him addicted to the game again. Something relevant to think about.

Anyway, I'm glad the guy paid most people back, he did the right thing, sounds like he eventually sorted out his life. I didn't have much knowledge of mental issues back then but I definitely do now as I've lost people close to me, and I myself am living with depression etc, so I'm actually relieved to see him posting here and hope the best for the guy.

Theres way more stuff I could talk about, it's slowly coming back to me, at one point years ago I was literally considering writing a book about the whole thing because there is wayyy more to the story lol. But I kinda feel like it wouldn't be anyones benefit to bring up half of the shit, probably best if we stop beating the horse. Just felt the need to correct the record a little bit.

[PrimeNumber7]

In TF's above post, you will see that he seems to have admitted to having at least 1000BTC of his own money as of 2016. This is not the same as him admitting to stealing money from his customers, but it does show that he did not use all available resources to repay his customers when his site was "hacked".

Good observation, PrimeNumber7! Perhaps he needed more those coins for impressing Internet chicks than paying back his victims. After all, our main role, here, on Earth, is to perpetuate our specie. Perhaps, TF is very interested in reaching humanity's main goal (which should be a noble act (/s) ) and, for that, he used the coins in impressing such women hoping that he would also be able to perpetuate humanity. The other  people's loss was, probably, less important for him.

After all, what could matter more? Having an offspring or paying back a debt? Let's be reasonable here.

(P.S.: I hope you noticed the "/s" I wrote above.)

The point I was trying to make was that TF clearly had a lot of coin after the hack (or more likely IMO, "hack"), and this runs contrary to TF's claim that he is/was so broke that he was trying to get minuscule amounts of coin from signature campaigns.

TF had a ton of BTC in his wallet AFTER the hack. He did not deny this and claimed that this was his personal funds and nothing to do with inputs.io user deposits. I don't remember how much, I can probably find out if I look hard enough, but I believe it was at least $100,000, if not over $1,000,000. I believe what happened is with the cryptoboom he made millions from altcoin trading this money and this is the money he used to repay everyone. I believe that the only reason he did that was because his IRL identity is somewhat known to people and now that he was a multi-millionaire the best move was to repay people to avoid any potential legal issues.

Money, including bitcoin is fungible. If TF had personal funds, but also ran a business that took on debts (such as customer deposits), in most cases, if the business had losses, his personal funds would need to be used to cover any business debts.