Time for a trip down memory lane. Does anyone know what ever became of this?
Was this released or did i miss it?
For Immediate Release
Date: March 18, 2015
Contact: John Caceres
Phone: 917.882.0900 / 802.359.7659
Email:
[email protected]Brazen Violation of Trust Leads to
PayCoins & Company Assets Stolen by GAW Employees
Bloomfield, CT – In what has amounted to a violation of fiduciary responsibility by two employees of GAW Miners, a company that operates in the mining of and creation of cryptocurrencies, Jonah Dorman, Interim CEO and Matthew K. Eden, CTO have stolen the company’s PayCoin, a form of cryptocurrency developed by the company. In addition to taking control of a majority of the available coins, the duo has seized other company assets such as customer databases, customer funds and related intellectual property.
The theft of PayCoins began with what seemed like a breach of one of the company’s products, PayBase which is a wallet where a majority of PayCoins where “stored” by both the company itself and users of the online wallet service. While no customer funds were lost, some company PayCoins were stolen on or about February 27, 2015. The funds were withdrawn by an account that had no deposit records and allegedly was done by someone inside the company. This happened on more than occasion in varying amounts that were not large. Additionally, while there were records of the account withdrawals, there was no record of the withdrawals in the PayBase activity logs. As a standard measure of security protocol, the account withdrawal functionality was shut down and users of the both PayBase and ZenCloud, a similar service offered by GAW Miners, were temporarily shut down and customers immediately notified.
As a part of the security measure and to ensure that no customer funds were compromised, the CTO, Mr. Eden, recommended creating new wallets and moving all the PayCoins, both the company’s and customers’ to the newly secured wallets. This move gave Mr. Eden temporary but full control over company’s prime controller wallets. This was to be a temporary measure as no one person is to have total control over a wallet, as a security measure, should that person be terminated by the company, there is ill will or other act causing that person to not be able to manage the wallets for some unforeseen reason.
While this was being managed by Messer. Eden and Dorman, GAW Miners was in the process of working with a company as a part of a consortium, CoinStand, to launch a newly created website where millions of products would be made available online with the only payment device being cryptocurrency, specifically Bitcoins and PayCoins, when launched. As a part of the agreement, GAW was to provide a negotiated amount of PayCoins, at an above market value. The PayCoins would provide working capital that CoinStand could leverage to launch the new service, offering a discount to all PayCoin holders. As the site was preparing to be launched, the final detail was to have the CTO, Mr. Eden, fulfill the agreement by transferring the funds to CoinStand.
It was at that time the Mr. Eden, denied access to the company’s PayCoins and as a result, the launch of CoinStand was delayed. It was also realized that during this time, Mr. Eden systematically eliminated administrative access to the company’s and customers’ PayCoin accounts to all senior executives with exception of Mr. Dorman, who has since denied being Interim CEO of the company, though his email signatures listed him as such and a public announcement made. It is becoming clear that the duo had been a part of the initial withdrawals that were thought to be breaches made by a former employee coming through a “backdoor.”
Upon contacting Mr. Eden, it was confirmed that it was his intention to not release both the company’s and customers’ funds, though an effort was made to reach an amicable solution through his then legal council. Prior to the resignation of Mr. Eden’s lawyer representing the CTO, an attempt was made to have Mr. Eden return customer and company PayCoins to GAW. Those attempts were unsuccessful.
Since those negotiations have come to a standstill, it has become apparent that Mr. Eden and Mr. Dorman intend to use the stolen PayCoins to fund a new company while soliciting loyal GAW employees. This all under the guise of “saving the integrity of PayCoin.”
As a result, this act puts every PayCoin holder at risk as the stolen coins can be used to flood the market and drive down the value of cryptocurrencies, in general, while giving the emerging category a black eye given the nature of the breach and the theft following the much publicized theft of Bitcoins in February 2014.
Through CoinStand and the consortium of cryptocurrency advocates, it was the intention to create the world’s first marketplace for use of cryptocurrencies creating viability for the emerging financial tender, where none existed to date.
As a result of this breach and the violation of fiduciary responsibility by Messrs. Eden and Dorman, both the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the US Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) have been contacted. The purpose of doing so is to bring action against the violators with the intent of putting control of the majority of PayCoins in the hands of their rightful owners and the PayCoin Foundation, a third party, not-for-profit entity that has set up a wallet service via PayCoin.com.