Topic: Butterfly Labs (BFL) raided today by U.S. Marshalls 9/19/14 - page 2. (Read 20394 times)

I'm afraid that's not going to fly. They refunded you the BTC equivalent of your order in USD, at current exchange rates, as they are required to do.

It's the same as if you paid with any other foreign currency.

Here's what will happen if too many people ask for refunds at once.

I emailed [email protected] requesting my FULL BTC refund today, for them to keep 5/6 of my coins is criminal. We'll see how that goes.

In my case i had 2 orders. I paid 120 BTC and 109.
I canceled my order and gave me back 27 btc( i ask to get my full refund because i paid with btc and told me in Skype that's not going to happen.... when i informed him that terms and conditions are not refering to that told me i'm sorry we are going to write it....) and the other arrived 1 year later and as you can understand was useless....

what do you think i should do???

The FTC was not able to completely shutdown BFL. Other than that, the FTC has already won 4 major victories:

1. Shutdown BFL for long enough that other companies have far superior products available for immediate purchase.
2. BFL cannot take pre-orders ever again.
3. BFL must provide prompt refunds to anyone who asks.
4. FTC's lawsuit against BFL will continue.

BFL's product is uncompetitive. They have no way to fund new products. BFL is finished. Celebrate!

They spent a lot of customer preorder money on legal fees so it's not like nothing happened. I started warning people about preorder scams almost the day BFL opened and they didn't listen. The only preorder in history that has ended up not being a scam is preorder books and Barnes & Noble managed to scam that one too. Gmaxwell and I warned people (not just here but on IRC too) not to give any money to pirate because it was a scam. It didn't help because, I guess, people can't learn lessons from history. When they started complaining to the FTC I also told them that would have limited success because of the nature of FTC investigations. The FTC supports business and helps them recover from mistakes. They're not in the business of crippling Amercian industry.

At this point the money given to BFL is lost. There is no government "white knight" that's going to ride in and give everyone back their lost money (hell, it's been spent on attorneys now so there's nothing to give back). All you can do is go for revenge. If someone can discover a crime committed that comes under the jurisdiction of a punitive agency then you can get revenge. The IRS can be punitive but they're really just about money. As long as they get their cut they will leave you alone. That cut of the cash can come at any time too, even after the fact, as long as you pay penalties and interest. You need to catch them breaking a law that gun toting cops can arrest them for and put them in jail.

BTW: Don't bother with the FCC either because those aren't gun toting cops. All they do is deliver fines which will give even more of the preorder money to the government.

I would gather this only applies to stuff not shipped out.. I would assume that BFL has already shifted most to the cloud hashing or shipped monarchs and none of this applies to those who already got late miners in 65mm or whatever

in other words looks like BFL wins? (or am I missing something)

It to me looks like BFL will wind down as a company ..declare bankruptcy and being a corporation the principal investors will be protected and walk

let me know if i'm missing something but this all looks a lot like the bank crisis of 2007 when no one went to jail

but then again....I'm still waiting for the IRS to wade in (crosses fingers)

Sounds like nothing happened to them because the FTC is a powerless piece of crap agency. You should have directed your complaint to Safeway or Walgreens. You would have seen more effective action taken against BFL.

Here are the news i received by email

http://www.spencerfane.com//SnapshotFiles/fe6ec39c-1858-4244-8390-6b06950c2839/Subscriber.snapshot?clid=dd7f0e88-f2b4-4c82-91fd-07403facf79b&cid=e610c6a3-35d6-4e50-85e1-ffffd2d55145&ce=N%2f5mUKyduycDBpX19gxMSwdgnpW4zqhr


Thank you for your inquiry regarding BF Labs, Inc. d/b/a Butterfly Labs (“Butterfly Labs”). You have previously contacted this receivership and the purpose of this email is to provide you an update with respect to the same.

A preliminary injunction hearing was held on November 24-25, 2014. On December 12, 2014, the Court entered an order denying the FTC’s motion for preliminary injunction, asset freeze, appointment of receiver, and other equitable relief.

On December 23, 2014, the Court entered its order related to procedures for the wind down of the temporary receivership (“Wind Down Procedures Order”). Pursuant to the Wind Down Procedures Order, Butterfly Labs’ management has full control and authority over its business operations.

All inquiries related to operations, products, refunds, and shipping, should be directed to Butterfly Labs. For further information, you may visit the Butterfly Lab’s website at www.butterflylabs.com or email [email protected].
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What will happen now?

Thanks for the info i just send the complaint!

Well you learned your lesson a very hard way sadly.  I do feel sorry for you still.

I watched the monarchs from their announcement.  I was looking for a good miner for home at the time and wanted to rack mount but decided against when i read more into their first ASIC experince.

In that way i got lucky thanks to bitcointalk.

But i missed the boat on mining.  At this point the miners around just draw too much power for my home wiring sadly.

So i lost too in the end

I'm still hurting all over from this  the 2 times bitcoin shot up in value my money was in the wallets of BFL. I'm still working on paying my debts off.

Who would of thought they would take a over a year (again) on the monarchs? I paid no attention to the bad attitude of Josh and the way he does not get along well with with his customers. I figured he's a just a geek with bad HR. I thought they were just incompetent and not scammers on the 30GH & 60GH miners, I had no idea they were using my miners to get more bitcoins.

I think the main reason I ordered a monarch was because there was no bitmain or spoondoolies at the time & the monarch was just as fast as the minirig which was $30000. It seemed like I could break even after a year, I was really into mining and bitcoin was new to me. They said they learned from their mistakes on the previous generation and the Monarch would not be delayed, they were confident when they opened pre-orders, then the delays started "two more weeks" he says. LIES! I even believed the story about the weak metal layer in the chips and stuff. 

You ordered again after the first miner were a year late...

I feel for the people who went for upgrades due to how late the miners were who went to the upgrade.  But damn after a year late you ordered more....

I'm a little late but I was also a victim of BFL fraud... twice. I submitted a complaint to the Federal Trade Commission.

Firstly between Jan-Mar 2013 I ordered 6 30GH miners and 1 60GH miner for grand total of $6089.00. These orders took over 1 year to be delivered and were useless on delivery. Secondly On August 19, 2013 I ordered: two 600 GH/s Bitcoin Miners $4,680.00 each shipping & handling was $90.00 for a grand total of $9,450.00 (this order I paid in Bitcoin total was 96BTC) bitcoin was worth around $100 when I ordered. These miners were never delivered, we were given lies every few days saying they were almost ready. I wated over a year and during this time my 96btc was worth over $100000. When they offered refunds they only gave me back 1/6 of my bitcoins I paid or the USD equivlent at the time. I got 16.5BTC refunded from a 96BTC order, Butterfly Labs also kept the mining hardware for themselves. I was frauded out of $6089.00 and 79.5 bitcoins.

Good to see BFL gonna get fucked here, they deserve it after all the bullshit they've caused me and many others. Luckily I was only invested for a couple hundred fiat wise.

They knew before and that didn't stop many from sending them their hard earned.

Your options:

You can join the class action lawsuit at Wood Law Firm - Info here.
You can still submit a complaint about BFL to the FTC, using this form. The FTC lawsuit is still ongoing, and any additional complaints they receive will strengthen their case.
You can get your own lawyer, as suggested above, but that would probably not be cost-effective.

In any case, you can make sure that everyone on the Internet knows what kind of company BFL is.

You have to consult a lawyer.

thank you for your reply i wasn't awere of that and in fact i think it's good news.

but do you know what happens with all the other that we got ripped off and that is proven.
I received my 1 of two orders 1 year later
and i received refund on the other in usd and not in BTC even though such an information was not written.
I had a skype contac't with Dave and he told back then "i'm not going to refund you in BTC for no reason."
And when i told him you advertised something you can't provide and i paid you in btc so it's your problem you can't deliver not mine
he told me ok we didn't write this on the site but we will write it and we are not going to refund you in btc i felt been ripped off and that is proven not only for me...
so what will happen with all of us we got ripped of by them??

The FTC will continue with its lawsuit. In the meantime, BFL will start to get back to business with 2 main changes. 1, no more pre-orders, and 2, prompt refunds. The Monarch product is no longer competitive, so anyone who has an order and doesn't request a refund is an idiot. BFL will get no new customers, because they are banned from taking pre-orders, and they cannot develop a new product without the pre-order cash.