Topic: [Ethical Dilemma] What would you do? (Read 920 times)

@Quickseller & co: While I respect Kant's views on many things, his view on morality is very wrong. It can and will cause much more evil which could be easily avoided (e.g. "thou shall not kill" applied in driverless cars would lead to letting your car run over 10 people instead of say 1). Not to say that there aren't situations where you should not harm someone/something in any way just because it may cause greater good/lesser evil. Labelling the whole subset of a certain type of actions as equally bad and always wrong is also incorrect. Say stealing to enrich yourself vs. stealing food to keep your children alive (assuming there is no other way). In say the later, the moral choice is stealing. Saying nonsense such as "stealing is always wrong" implies that morality is objective, which is a load of bullshit. Morality is solely a subjective concept that we invented. Anyhow, moving on.
@HCP & co: The law system pretty much everywhere at the moment is very corrupt (due to legality of lobbying and whatnot), and laws regarding stuff like theft are just nonsensical ('create a no-theft backdoor which can only be used by a small set of entities'). This is why I explicitly wrote ethical dilemma, as discussing legality is a waste of time; this is whilst ignoring many factors e.g. this is crypto, criminals are not going to sue you etc.

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As usual, the situation's complexity makes it impossible to make a satisfiable and quick decision. I'm just going to list a few factors that played a role without discussing them:
1) It is impossible to know whether the payment comes from a previous scam or not.
2) It is impossible to know whether the contact is a proxy, part of the team or a 3rd party (anything they say at this point can be considered dishonest).
3) Luckily, nobody got harmed from this incident (so far).

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With all that being said, a decision has been made: The refund is going to be partial. The amount proposed was agreed to by the project. The user has also explicitly stated several times that they are no longer responsible for whatever happens on the forum regarding this (e.g. scam accusations, negative ratings, etc.). I'm locking this thread now, as it has reached some consensus. A full disclosure on who the parties are, who found important information and when this happened will be revealed soon (probably in the form of a scam accusation due to the fake team).

I thank everyone for their valuable input on this matter, regardless of whether I disagree with what you said or not.

Let's be serious. Whats the point of a sales man? To sale stuffs arround, how can sell a product? If a person needs it. If he still needs to sell to more people he has to convince you to use a product you don't need.

So, it's on the job description lol

Facts :
you have received money from a project. You did you due diligence and the project was ok.
You do the work, and technically are entitled to payment for the work done.
Then you find out that the project is a scam. you halt your work and you are in a limbo situation


Thinking out loud :
Keeping the extra money for yourself could be considered as being part of the Scam (what if the money from 'project' came from a "victim')
Keeping a share based on the work done before you came aware of the scam situation is fine by me IF you then do a post to warn users about this project.
Especially if you explain that you refused to keep the funds.
If it is not you, someone else would have done the work.

I like Suchmoon analogy :

If you don't sell the ski mask, someone else will.
As a seller, i would maybe take a picture of the credit card and contact the local police office to tell then what i noticed and provide my  cctv footage. 


But the tricky part, is that if you return the funds, they can use them to pay someone else to do some work and organise a new scam.
And finally if you give the money to some kind a charity you are at risk of someone coming later and claiming that those funds (project's fund) were actually  stolen from them (aka a Victim)  by the scammers and that it should have been returned to them.

Well, there is no prefect solution.
If the total sum was less than $1000 i would do as following :
If it was me, i'll keep my share, ditch the remaining to a charity.
But i would also be ready to give back the usd value donated to a charity if a victim finds me and ask for his funds.
Odds are that a bull market might come back and that a small % of the money kept as payment for the work will pay more than the money donated to the charity (usd equivalent).

But his is not an assumption?

oh my gosh this was so stupid..

You can make assumptions on everyone just because you feel you can, well you can do them but don't say them like your assumptions have to accepted by everyone.

A sales man will always lie to you to sell his product.



So much agree with you here

Yes, and in IRL, it is a (hopefully impartial) judge and court of law that decides if a crime has been committed, who the guilty parties are and what the punishment will be, if any... not an individual caught up in the situation making "vigilante" decisions.

Making judgements that the team are scammers that deserve to be punished and then doling out "justice" by keeping the extra funds or donating to charity or burning it is taking the "law" into your own hands.

Well if they are scammers, I would be assuming they didn't originally earnt the money honestly. Scammers will be scammers. Again this is just how I see things.


If you wear a 2k$ suit while you break in to my car, I am not going to assume you paid for that suit.

Yeah, fair point. However, I don't think in this case there is any suggestion or suspicion the money was originally stolen - certainly not in the description Lauda gave - only that the project was likely going to scam in the future.

Taking stolen money as a payment is also punished by law in most countries.

@Quickseller
Just to add
IRL, when someone creates damages to the society and is sued, the judge sentences the person to "vacation time in prison" and/or a fine. This fine often represents the amount to compensate the society.

Of course, online and in a case like this, it is difficult or even impossible to send the person to prison. For a fine also, you can say. Except that the funds held could be considered as the compensation for the society. (the crypto community). The judge is this thread

The money could be shared among the people who have been victims if any. And/or donated to something related to our crypto(community). Don't know how/where but it could be spent on education for example.
Or if it isn't something possible then, charities always need money, you can do a lot with a little.

Keep a proportion to cover that work that was done and return the rest.

It doesn't matter that the money came from scammers - stealing is stealing, regardless of the owner of the funds or how they acquired them. The fact that they money paid may have been used to scam people in the future does not give you a right to it. Keep whatever payment is fair to cover the work done so far, and return the rest.

I don't think the community has the authority to impose this penalty here. I could imagine this happening if the funds in question were proceeds of a scam and there were known victims claiming those funds but even that is a big can of worms.

You're right. That's why I included that it was a terrible analogy. I'm not sure where to go on this one, and I'm just throwing out half-baked thoughts with the hopes they will be productive.


I'm not sure that's a better analogy
It would be even more like a bank robber trying to buy a gun and the plans for the robbery fall out of their pocket onto the counter in the view of the store-owner and then the store owner refusing to continue the transaction in any capacity. I imagine the store would turn over these funds, assuming they were already in possession of them, to the authority (community > charity , in this case).


I'm not disagreeing with a refund, it very well may be the most ethical thing to do. The question of how any of these options will affect the most people should be considered, though.

Well yes, but sometimes new coins team are afraid because of the fud comming on if they are bad managers with the project and just destroy their names.

well thats normal somehow, but personally i wouldnt invest in a startup if the owners would never failed another project.

In that case a team should stay anonymous and explain WHY they prefer to remain anonymous. Creating a fake team with stock images is shady as hell and will likely result in an exit scam.

Well , personally i dont get the rush of everyone making a team public. I would like to work with hidden guys but to be sure they're gonna develope something.

Speaking of how many scams are arround i kind of get it, anyhow i don't like the centralysation arround developers teams in crypto.

How can there be a real intent of the team if they are fake?

Even if the team was fake, if there was no real intent of the team to scam you should refund to the team.

Either burn it or donate it to charity. Keeping the funds might results into you becoming an accessary in case of a criminal investigation. Another option might be refunding it to people who fell for the scam but it would be a pain in the butt to make sure everyone gets an equal slice.

I voted send everything to a burn address: it will clean up the max possible of your ethical conscience. Your responsibility to not investigate with an ethical sight BEFORE to accept the job: any part of money you are going to keep/send/transfer/refund, will only leave inside yourself a conscious,unsolved,partial,guilty sentiment to have been (unaware) part of a scam.
I'm very curious what will be your final decision tho.
Love u kitty