I believe it is illegal to do this in Texas. We brought a wrongful death lawsuit in Colorado, and that was one avenue we considered to pay the legal fees.
We represented ourselves pro se in the Federal court of appeals out of Denver. We won several points on the appeal, by the way.
With my own past experience, I can't recommend that you pursue a lawsuit.
No offense, but may I ask how much BTC you made on Avalon hardware? Just a ballpark figure?
Others and myself, are on the side of the scales which only gave.
I have a batch #2 Avalon, paid very late on Feb. 18 in the amount of 56.25712356 BTC in WalletBit TXid 5268c88176f24dcaae4e862e9ec1ad696a6915a20f1de9a7fe7042ad9b2f3b9b, and delivered at the very end of Batch #2.
It began hashing July 9th. It has received 48.18638542 BTC as of this writing. In 2 more weeks, it may achieve breakeven.
In an imaginary world that does not exist, I made 5 BTC / day beginning in March when delivery was projected, and I addressed some big issues, such as cancer medicine and Alzheimer's care. Please do not underestimate my disappointment at not having those items. I am vulnerable, and Avalon did not turn out to be a lifeline.
Nonetheless, I look back on the lawsuit that I did file, and I am pessimistic about them. Let's start with this question: how many of the prospective members of this lawsuit are residents of the US and have not registered as an MSB? I think that you must, if you are a miner. If you have not registered, are you trying to get a US court to give you help in carrying out an illegal activity? I don't know the answer to that, but if you want to be a part of this lawsuit, I think that you should.
I also do not know whether intent enters into this. I do not believe that Yifu intended to cheat anyone. I believe that things went wrong and he did not have
the right stuff to fix it. You might want to know whether intent matters in the action that you want to take. If it does, you might want to look for a little more evidence than I have noticed now.
If you get far, you get to court, and you win your case, then what? Yifu has suggested that he does not control the address where the money went. He has suggested that he made a deal where he liquidated some bitcoin for fiat to pay the FAB. What if that is true, and he is currently broke and inexperienced, and not the loser in a judgement. I hear angry voices saying that he is rich and we should bring pitchforks, but I do not see the evidence that he has the money. If someone had the money to buy the bitcoins, do you think that they are inexperienced, weak, and without their own legal counsel? Do you think they have done any wrongdoing? Do you think you can get that money?
The only thing that I think Yifu may have is 1) any chips that are not delivered, 2) the design itself, and 3) any fiat money that can be found and confiscated. The chips will almost certainly be delivered before a lawsuit can be brought. The design itself has already been promised as open source, and may not have any value when the 28nm ASICS roll out. Fiat money, who knows, but I think you should know the answer to that before filing a lawsuit.
You may tie up a significant amount of money and not receive a payout for a long time. Your competitors, including myself, will take our funds and re-invest them into other bitcoin activities. I think we will have more bitcoin than you will.
I am not discounting the anger. I am not discounting the hopes that were raised, the plans that were made and had even more money spent on them. I am just saying that the evidence that I see is weak, the hopes for success in a lawsuit are similar to the hopes that were placed in Avalon back in February and may be even more empty.
Yifu is communicating now as much as he did during the Batch #2 fulfillment period. This cannot be a surprise. These chips are late, but so was Batch #1 and Batch #2. This knowledge was in front of you when you made the purchase. Tell me what answer you will give to the judge when he says "Isn't that curious. Tell me why you thought he would ship on time this time?"
I'm going to quietly work on my own design to use the chips that I ordered. I am not going to seek a lawsuit.