Topic: Mattew N. Wright still passing off a scam in the past as just a "prank" - page 3. (Read 3400 times)

Obviously. What's hilarious is that the guy keeps saying on and on that it was a "prank", just to "teach people a lesson".

Then he apologizes with hiper-long posts about how immature he was, etc... But does not want to admit that he would have taken the money if he had won, that the bet was completely serious (man, just look at the terms and how much effort he put on it), and that he just chickened out when he realized he was going to lose.

In my opinion the only lesson learnt by everybody is that MNW is completely untrustworthy, a child with which is better to never do business unless you want to be burnt.

It was a "prank" only because he lost the bet.

Had he won, it would have been a legitimate bet.  

Matthew - I remember the thread well.

I remember thinking that you were doing a daring thing and at that time I honestly thought you were going to make good your bet. I would have bet money that you would.

At no time was there any indication that you were 'making a point' otherwise you'd not have been so forthright and bold in your statements.

Your intent was doubly clarified by many posters saying you'd never pay up and that you'd use a technicality to get out of paying.

My personal opinion is that the bet went against you and you panicked. It's just my personal opinion but what isn't opinion is that your integrity took a huge knock.

It's unclear whether you should have been given a scammer tag or not as the opposite case can't be proven; that you'd have been happy to take other people's Bitcoins if the bet had gone the other way. From your actual actions people could claim that that you would have (lack of integrity) and thus it was proof enough that you would have but that's just conjecture.

So yeah, back to the original point of the OP. When I read the same post earlier today it irked me too. Possibly because I felt like you were trying to re-write what happened but whatever it was it just didn't feel right. (I can't quite fully explain it so perhaps someone else can do a better job.)

It was obviously not a prank. I he'd won, he would have taken the money for sure. Just check his original post, he was very serious.

The fact that the scammer still tries to justify his default with "I was trying to prove a point about using escrow", etc. it's just a demonstration that he is not sorry about what he did - at all.

You're joking right?
Sadly no you're not, you just focused on 1 part of my posting and used that to try and attack the concept wholesale starting with an ad hominem attack on me.

Ok so let's start from the top and examine why this is in fact, NOT a contract.

Contracts 101. 
Any agreement whether verbal, or written is considered a valid contract binding on both parties unless it fails certain criteria.

It must actually be constructed as a contract.
For something to be constructed as a contract it must have 3 things. 
Offer, consideration and acceptance.

Both offer and acceptance are only considered valid if it can reasonably be determined that a meeting of the minds has occurred.
For an offer to even be a valid offer there has to be a demonstrated intent.  This intent must be one that a reasonable person would believe to be serious.
This is where it begins to fail as a contract because a reasonable person would not believe that he was serious based upon a post in a random forum on the internet.
Therefore it fails.

But let's say this wasn't a random forum on the internet, it still doesn't pass the reasonable person test because a reasonable person would understand that if the offer is to do something illegal it is automatically invalid.  Gambling is pretty much illegal in most places including the USA.  I say the jurisdiction is USA because it is not otherwise specified and the whois information for the domain bitcointalk.org is not valid information, thus the jurisdiction would likely fall to the region of the gTLD and .org is USA.
Therefore it fails again.

But let's say it had met all the previous criteria, then what?
Some types of offer are prima facia invalid regardless of the legality of the action.  One of these contract types is a contract to gamble. 
The only jurisdiction where a contract to gamble is held as legal is Nevada (at least in the USA), however there are some fairly serious stipulations involved and none of those were met, because in Nevada a contract to gamble is considered an aleatory contract and thus one of the parties must be a regulated entity.
Therefore it fails again.

But what if bitcointalk.org were in fact a properly registered and regulated entity?
If we treat this as a contract to gamble i.e. an aleatory contract that is not itself invalid, then it still constitutes an aleatory contract and money actually needs to be on the table, a promissory note is sufficient but a verbal or written "ok" is not.  Since bitcoin does not really have a concept of a promissory note there would have needed to have been escrow.
Therefore it fails again.

My WHOLE point rests upon the assertion that no reasonable person could be held to this offer because no reasonable person could believe intent from the circumstances of the situation.  I have shown at least 4 places where this admittedly stupid mistake fails to meet the standards of a contract.  Your assertion that it was valid sans escrow is technically correct when taken in complete isolation of all other facts, but misses the point of it not being a contract. 

Now if he had accepted funds and not returned them it would be a different story, my theory is founded upon the fact that no one sent him money for this or that if they did they were returned ALL of the money they sent.  Thus for all intents and purposes no consideration changed hands.
Therefore it fails again.

Ok, now your turn.

p.s.  I am not a lawyer and this is not legal advice, just armchair analysis.

You should have taken the next part of whatever law course you flunked out on (or, more likely, read a few more Google results).

A consideration can be a promise to do/pay something (and it can be conditional) - it doesn't have to actually be transferred or escrowed to be a consideration.  The purpose of the requirement for a consideration is NOT to say that contracts aren't binding until something has changed hands - but rather that there must be an agreed intent for a transfer of some value.

If I make a contract with you to exchange X for Y then your horribly flawed contention is that until one of us has sent there's no consideration and so there's no contract.  That's just totally wrong.

Truer words have never been spoken. If you look at the link in my signature, you'll see that Theymos once gave me a scammer tag for standing up for myself as a newbie too. For two years now I've known the scammer tag is not much more than just Theymos' opinion.

As for "untrustworthy", that was my suggestion to him instead of "scammer" as a compromise since I can see how many people I may have hurt from my prank/faux bet/lie/unconsidered contract/whatever you want to call it. This is me basically taking my licks and I don't mind paying a lot of scammers so that the extremely small handful of honest betters who were actually affected negatively get some compensation and not think of me too poorly for my shortsighted actions.

If after a few more months Theymos still thinks I deserve any kind of tags, then I'd cry foul. Right now I'm happy keeping it to give trolls some avenue of entertaining themselves. I know who I am, everyone who matters does too. (hint: this forum admin's opinion doesn't matter in my life)

I sent an email to Theymos asking him to reconsider the tag in your case.
Try to accept responsibility going forward (I'm not saying you haven't just that you need to) and realize that people will take you seriously if for no other reason than you have a very high posting count.

Uhh sorry to jump in here because I guess it's none of my business, but I don't see why you have a scammer tag.
You didn't take any money, therefore it wasn't a scam.

You made a comment that frankly is a textbook case from first year law as what specifically "does not constitute a contract".
I am not a lawyer, but I do have significant experience and education in the law.

There is absolutely no reason for you to be paying this. 
It's not a scam, nor does it constitute a legally enforceable contract of any kind.
Even in Nevada this would not constitute a binding contract to gamble.

The reason it fails as a contract is because a contract has historically been comprised of 3 things.
Offer, Consideration and Acceptance.

Yes you made an offer (next time don't run your mouth)
Yes they accepted the offer side (they took a similar risk by accepting)

But the whole thing is missing consideration. 
For this to be binding, you would have had to escrow the funds somehow, and they would have had to escrow the funds as well and all of this would have had to have happened prior to the close of the offering window.

You calling it a prank is wrong though. 
There was a definitely a meeting of the minds, but no actual consideration was tendered by either you or the other side(s).  Thus it is not and never was a contract.  It was just an offer.

Man up, call it what it was, an ill advised offer that you simply cannot back, offer a mea culpa (I seriously doubt anyone here was relying on the funds from this bet to feed their kids).

If you are genuinely trying to pay people back as a way of "making this right", then you are just wasting your time and money.
It's not enforceable, and furthermore no one else would have been held to their side of this bargain either.
I have no weight around here, but if I did I would seriously petition somehow to get your tag removed. 

It dilutes the meaning of the tag to have you carrying it if this is the only reason.

Well if that's the case then I must say Pirate@40 had a much more succesfull "prank."

Sorry to spoil the trolling OP, but I've never scammed anyone. The bet was a prank, but it was one made in extremely poor taste at a period in my life when I was highly stressed from work and not thinking straight (the trolls got to me a bit and I cracked to be honest). Since then I've lost over $100k in assets, work contracts and actual funds (paying people from the prank bet to make things right) and although I'll never be able to forget the poor choice I made considering I have survived only on bitcoins for 2 years by choice and understandably the fallout from my poor taste prank put me into severe financial difficulties, no one was scammed except me (which I'm taking as a stupid tax) when I was required to pay people who had no intention of paying me if they lost.

Looking forward to continuing to make things right and continue to provide services and products related to bitcoin in the future.

Cheers.

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.1497432