The people involved in this forum earn money by running scam ads designed to defraud newcomers to Bitcoin. Michael Marquardt (Theymos) gets the money and apparently pays some of the moderators. However, they have several $million due to the appreciation of Bitcoin and the donations made from the early days. I believe he stated that the funds are being saved in case they have legal expenses due to all the stuff they do which is highly questionable from a legal standpoint.
Why should it be up to the forum to determine which ads are for scams and which ones are legit? I can guarantee you that there was not
conclusive evidence of most scams that were executed on here prior to the scam being brought to light. There is also likely some evidence of legit businesses of being scams prior to them earning a reputation.
I get the feeling that you want the forum to have a higher standard as to what they will accept as advertisers so the price to advertise will go down so you can advertise your own business
It is a matter of degree of what knowledge the web site has. If you run a bunch of ads and one turns out to be a scam a web site would not be liable if they did not have knowledge beforehand. If the web site knew the ads were designed to scam people and they went ahead and worked with the advertiser and ran the ads anyway then they are liable. Often there is grey area which is why normal businesses set some sort of standard.
I don't generally buy advertising (with a few exceptions) and I would never send these guys any funds. I also would not want to be associated with the ads running here. In fact I won't run ads for any of the Bitcoin advertising services I have seen on web sites I operate because all the ones I had tried display highly questionable ads. I recently tried one and the first ad that showed up was some kind of "Litecoin pharmacy" and I immediately stopped serving the ads.
Do you have any actual evidence of this? You have implied and outright accused theymos several times of knowingly accepted money from people who were planning to scam however you have shown zero evidence that he knew of their intentions, nor have you shown any proof that
conclusive evidence was even available prior to the scam taking place.
EDIT: if your accusations are true then it would be important for the community to know the truth about his dealings so the community can act accordingly. If you are unwilling (unable) to provide proof then you are just spreading FUD and lies around
The FTC is collecting the proof as part of their enforcement action. The information and complaints are all on this forum and on reddit. What do you want to sit here and provide hundreds links because you want to pretend you don't know what happened? Anyone following this forum over that time period saw what was happening. It is true at first they would not know at first but after it went on for many months any reasonable business would have taken down the ads. they put up some kind of stupid disclaimer instead. Even if they didn't know at first they now know and they should return the money since they now know much if it was stolen.
This is the same kind of corruption you see with entities like HSBC. It is funny how the people here will make excuses for this forum while making all kinds of accusations of fraud with the traditional banking system. You don't see people here trying to defend HSBC and demanding "proof." This is big problem with Bitcoin. People blindly support businesses because they are involved with Bitcoin. I had similar complaints about Mt. Gox last year and the people like you dismissed it and look what happened.
Possible the proof you want will be collected by FinCEN concerning the fake bank (inputs.io/Coinlenders) that Theymos conspired to promote. Maybe the FTC will expand their action to include all the money s[pent on ads here, maybe the IRS will look into whether taxes were paid on this business, and maybe the SEC will look into the fake companies Theymos prompted with the GLBSE thing.
If some of the authorities, such as FinCEN for theymos
