Attention ALL community members here on BitcoinTalk.orgAs of today, November 10th, 2014, GAW/Zen has reportedly sought the assistance of a Los Angeles based law firm to issue cease and desist communications to members of
THIS public forum, not theirs, in what appears to be an attempt to censor those who have legitimate and factual claims against the alleged less-than ethical business processes and moral standing of GAW/Zen, its "CEO", and the various BDA’s they use.
Irrespective of numerous peoples’ opinions published here and elsewhere on the Internet regarding GAW/Zen continually proving their fundamental M.O. is that of an elaborate SCAM in every sense of the word, this law firm has apparently taken it upon itself to either ignore the harm/losses dozens if not hundreds of previous GAW/Zen customers have been forced to endure or feel it is more appropriate to threaten legal action against those exercising their Constitutional rights rather than facilitating a thorough due-diligence investigation of their own client.
Although I too have received a communication simply titled “Cease and Desist Letter” with a .pdf attachment from this law firm to one of my business email addresses, I refuse to open any such attachments or speculate on what the .pdf specifically says, if anything, as I do not know firsthand who the sender is or if the attachment contains anything potentially damaging to my system or network. Regardless, I would like to invite anyone else who is a US citizen and has also received any communication directly from GAW/Zen, any of their DBA’s, or this (or any other) law firm to contact my Mining Advocates Organization with their story at
[email protected] in preparation of the potential establishment of our own legal offensive to ensure this type of conduct by what can be seen as a questionable business, its "CEO", and/or a retained yet misguided law firm is not allowed to overtake the protections guaranteed to us by the United States Constitution and its amended Bill of Rights in addition to Article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR).
Thank you,
Scott Booth
What you need to find is the original statement of that ZenPool will
always be the highest paying pool. Then get times and dates of when they gave out prime codes that gave out 25mh/s primes instead of 1mh/s primes and that's about the time that ZenPool crashed for the first time. Then when they released hashpool and how ZenPool crashed at almost exactly the same time. There seems to be some bait and switching going on right there.
Thanks to those who have contacted me privately and shared their stories thus far...
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Since this forum is still being monitored and documented, I may as well bring others up to speed regarding my justification in believing what I do.
It is publically known, mostly by the longer-term
https://community.gawminers.com,
https://hashtrader.com,
https://hashtalk.org forums members, Mr. Garza and I have a direct contact history that goes back to about May. Before seeing things for how they truly are, Mr. Garza and I were on what could be considered very good-terms. I was a fellow entrepreneur and documented customer with over US$10K invested with GAW/Zen - most of which was comprised of physical hardware at my location (solar powered home-farm) and I even took part in at least one private video chat collaboration session where I, along with "Volder" and a few others, submitted at no cost or expectance of any remuneration strategic marketing advice and other business input to Mr. Garza just after the "Vaultbreaker" campaign went full speed. That was also before the "Hashlet" phase of the business was announced and when things changed drastically. The start of the new forums disguised as an open .org industry community (although not), the odd Hashlet "virtual/digital miners" represented and advertised as physical miners (when first released), excessive moderation/censorship of forum members with legitimate questions, and the quickly degrading ZenCloud backend with the total abandonment of the ZenController Pi OS (and customer base) quickly had me thinking twice about my informal association with and promotion of GAW/Zen. This is also when I began quietly noting specific items that gave me pause as both a business owner myself and customer who was still trying to believe in what GAW/Zen was marketing when they first opened in March. The following red flags could not be ignored:
The operational rules and TOS conditions always being changed on the fly with no notice or reasonable recourse provided to the customer base.
The discovered practice of selling NEW "hosted" physical hardware to customers that never existed and was not available for inspection - such was the case with (4) Bitmain S3's I purchased in early July. Rather used and/or other unknown hardware was utilized and if the customer wanted their 100% paid-for hardware shipped to them, unreasonable amounts of time in excess of (21) business days would be required in order for GAW/Zen to source the hardware (or equivalent) and have it dispatched to the customer as long as they were within the USA. Overseas customers were left with no viable options.
The excessive marketing hype and claims of success even when mass amounts of complaints and issues were/are still being reported.
Ongoing high valued yet unproven "acquisitions" and other private deals with no verifiable backup to the validity of how customer (investor) money was/is being spent - even with existing customer support and other operational issues still not being addressed.
The continual delay of the “Vaultbreaker” release that has now been confirmed was never in actual development in the first place; essentially proving beyond a reasonable doubt GAW/Zen accepted money for goods that never existed and they had reasonable belief would never exist. Rather, the money entrusted to them months ago by the customer base (including me), which they never paid interest to, was used for other undisclosed projects like the “Hashlet” venture, which GAW/Zen then pushed customers to convert their outstanding orders to or continue to wait (for nothing).
The removable of all promised buy-back options or allowing the customer base to sell their own GAW/Zen hosted property on their terms in favor of a previously unannounced 100% GAW/Zen controlled centralized closed market that further places an involuntary GAW/Zen-tax of 5% for both the seller and buyer (10% total) in order to “allow” the ability to exit the “GAW/Zen Buddle” if the customer finds the service not as described or marketed.
Most important and alarming to me:
The freezing and restriction of ALL customer accounts and withdrawals on more than one occasion - effectively holding undisclosed amounts of Bitcoins (BTC) hostage for days and in some cases weeks with no verifiable proof or other legal reason to justify such questionable conduct beyond loose claims of "system exploits" or "manual errors" GAW/Zen states was caused by reseller, customer and/or other external forces that in reality were never proven or investigated by a neutral third party.
I, myself, have been a victim of GAW/Zen holding in excess of $1000 worth of my personal bitcoin earnings for more than (10) business days in late September/early October for no legitimate or implied reason nor response when more than (2) support tickets were raised. During this time, my BTC being held lost value on the open market, I was not able to utilize it for other investments, and I was never offered or received compensation or interest for GAW/Zen having likely used my BTC during this time frame for their own business benefit and/or financial gain.
Once I was able to regained access to my account, again with no explanation as to why it was locked in the first place, I voiced my annoyance and disappointment with what has started to become a trend in the way GAW/Zen does business in their HashTalk.org forums, which quickly resulted in me being “shadow” banned by Mr. Garza himself before being permanently banned by Mr. Garza after I would not conform to his unreasonable censorship demands via private email. Luckily, I was still able liquidate my entire hosted hardware now converted to “virtual/digital” Hashlets account in one-private account transfer to another GAW/Zen supporter (who did not care about the expressed risks) at a NET 0% gain on my initial investment in mid-October; allowing me the freedom to walk away from what I consider a nightmare of a company whose physical actions do not map out to any logical business plan or trustworthy (legal) investment vehicle.
If the above does not at least give anyone, including the law firm reading this post, any insight and understanding as to why I take the position I do regarding Mr. Garza and his numerous DBA’s, then so be it. I know for a fact I am not the only one harmed by GAW/Zen and I know for a fact I am not the only one who has been threatened by Mr. Garza both publicly and privately either directly or prior to being contacted by who appears to be his retained counsel. Having lived and worked all over the world over the past decade, I hold my values and rights as a US citizen and consumer very dear and will not allow myself to be scared or threatened under the color of contrived authority to conform to anyone else’s less than ethical standards. Likewise, since this matter concerns a person and business entity I have already reported to at least one Federal authority over a week ago, I will exercise my rights to fight any tampering with my ability to be a witness in what I see are clear and obvious violations of numerous securities, trade, and wire-fraud.
In summary, I do not wish to engage in a costly legal fight, but in this case, I will not allow myself and/or others in the same situation to be bullied by those I consider to be immoral players masquerading as legitimate businessmen.
Scott-