Mybitcoin.com Press Release #2 - page 2.

repentance

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Quote from: NickW on August 07, 2011, 04:48:04 PM

Has anybody with a http://www.domaintools.com/ account tried the "Hosting History" feature on mybitcoin.com? It apparently can show the history of IP addresses that the website was hosted from. Maybe it was hosted somewhere other than Leasweb in the early days and they have some information about the account holder.

All of that information is on the bitcoin crime unit page.

http://bitcoin.crimeunit.net/wiki/index.php/MyBitcoin

Their move to Leaseweb was a recent one. They used Privacy Shark and its owner Dalin Owen recommended Morning Star Holdings (a Nevis corporation mill) to them. It's doubtful that anyone will disclose any information about the actual owner of Mybitcoin without an order from a Nevis court because these services are set up precisely to offer safe haven from legal actions.

NickW

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Has anybody with a http://www.domaintools.com/ account tried the "Hosting History" feature on mybitcoin.com? It apparently can show the history of IP addresses that the website was hosted from. Maybe it was hosted somewhere other than Leasweb in the early days and they have some information about the account holder.

Littleshop

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In other official postings they said they had 'the majority' of their BTC offline. If that is true, then they should have more then 50% of users funds. Somehow I doubt any serious amount will be returned.

citizen

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Why don't they let people know what % of their holdings they can expect to see returned? I'm glad I didn't have any coins with them, but I know a lot of people did. There is really a trend of unfortunate circumstances arising out of the centralization of something intended to be decentralized. MTGOX, Bitomat, and MyBitcoin

My sympathies to all who lost coins entrusted with these or other live wallet services.

Ulysses

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Quote from: Nicksasa on August 07, 2011, 08:38:25 AM

Bitcoind doesn't accept remote connections unless their ip is specified in the config file.

I mean 8333 port, not RPC.

If they only used block increment for confirmation, then you could send to their bitcoin one transaction, and to the other part of network different transaction with the same coins.

Nicksasa

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Quote from: Ulysses on August 07, 2011, 08:24:39 AM

I think you misunderstood the Mybitcoin's statement about the cause of the hack.

Quote

It appears to be human error combined with a misunderstanding of how Bitcoin secures transactions into the next block. Our programmer was under the assumption that one block was good enough to secure a transaction.

[...]

In hindsight we should have credited deposits after one confirmation so they would show up in the transaction history

If if correctly interpret this statements, then Mybitcoin accepted transaction as verified after the block number was incremented, not after that transaction was included in the block. This opens an easy way to drain their coins without block chain fork, especially if you know their bitcoind IP address.

Bitcoind doesn't accept remote connections unless their ip is specified in the config file.

Ulysses

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I think you misunderstood the Mybitcoin's statement about the cause of the hack.

Quote

It appears to be human error combined with a misunderstanding of how Bitcoin secures transactions into the next block. Our programmer was under the assumption that one block was good enough to secure a transaction.

[...]

In hindsight we should have credited deposits after one confirmation so they would show up in the transaction history

If i correctly interpret this statements, then Mybitcoin accepted transaction as verified after the block number was incremented, not after that transaction was included in the block. This opens an easy way to drain their coins without block chain fork, especially if you know their bitcoind IP address.

Nefario

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Quote from: Vladimir on August 07, 2011, 03:05:06 AM

Anonymity might help him to avoid criminal prosecution (if anonymity is breached and if there were indeed any crimes commited), however it does not help at all with keeping Limited Liability protection. That's what I mean.

BTW. Most people do not have any clue on how difficult it is to stay anonymous on the net, particularly when there are allegations of crime thrown around.

I suspect that this is the reason for his very minimal contact with the community. The more he talks and communicates with the community the higher the risk of his ID being discovered.

There is also how he has paid for his hosting, unless he is paying for his hosting with bitcoin (which is very possible) and he has not bought the coins off an exchange then the credit card can be traced back to him if it's a personal one. There is no such thing as anonymous banking in this world, so that if the credit card is registered with his company he will still have to provide an identity.

It may be difficult and even costly to track him down but it can be done...unless he's a government agent in which case all bets are off as the state (whichever one) would provide protection.

A court order can be obtained in to reveal his identity in the region that his LLC is incorporated.

Nefario.

Vladimir

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Anonymity might help him to avoid criminal prosecution (if anonymity is breached and if there were indeed any crimes commited), however it does not help at all with keeping Limited Liability protection. That's what I mean.

BTW. Most people do not have any clue on how difficult it is to stay anonymous on the net, particularly when there are allegations of crime thrown around.

Nefario

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Quote from: Vladimir on August 07, 2011, 02:42:04 AM

Quote from: giantdragon on August 06, 2011, 06:59:22 AM

Quote

If he's not incorporated, he can be sued for his personal assets and cash by anyone and everyone who lost bitcoins from this. I encourage people to take this route once more of his information is revealed, and if he does not fully reimburse every single person who used the service.

MyBitcoin is Limited Liability Company, i.e. owners don't take any liability for company's debts. In this case maximum you can get suing them is corporation's assets.

Not really true in all cases. Limited liability does not protect in cases when some kind of crime is proven. Whether it is fraud, operating a depositary institution without appropriate license or something else. By hiding identity, operator of mybitcoin does not help himself much in this regard too.

His anonymity is the strongest protection for him to avoid criminal prosecution, enough funds are at stake with mybitcoin.com to warrant the harmed parties to chase him to wherever he happens to be. Once we discover who he is he has no protection, having a disclaimer on the bottom of your site doesn't protect you from criminal charges if you're guilty.

FlipPro

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Quote from: Vladimir on August 07, 2011, 02:42:04 AM

Quote from: giantdragon on August 06, 2011, 06:59:22 AM

Quote

If he's not incorporated, he can be sued for his personal assets and cash by anyone and everyone who lost bitcoins from this. I encourage people to take this route once more of his information is revealed, and if he does not fully reimburse every single person who used the service.

MyBitcoin is Limited Liability Company, i.e. owners don't take any liability for company's debts. In this case maximum you can get suing them is corporation's assets.

Not really true in all cases. Limited liability does not protect in cases when some kind of crime is proven. Whether it is fraud, operating a depositary institution without appropriate license or something else. By hiding identity, operator of mybitcoin does not help himself much in this regard too.

+1 There have been many cases where the operator of the LLC goes to jail/bankrupt because of the obvious misuse of their company name...

Vladimir

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Quote from: giantdragon on August 06, 2011, 06:59:22 AM

Quote

If he's not incorporated, he can be sued for his personal assets and cash by anyone and everyone who lost bitcoins from this. I encourage people to take this route once more of his information is revealed, and if he does not fully reimburse every single person who used the service.

MyBitcoin is Limited Liability Company, i.e. owners don't take any liability for company's debts. In this case maximum you can get suing them is corporation's assets.

Not really true in all cases. Limited liability does not protect in cases when some kind of crime is proven. Whether it is fraud, operating a depositary institution without appropriate license or something else. By hiding identity, operator of mybitcoin does not help himself much in this regard too.

repentance

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Quote from: Nefario on August 06, 2011, 10:00:11 PM

mybitcoin is stalling for time.

They have no contact information available and are not communicating (although they are watching these forums).

They have said there will be a claims process but they've not done anything.

From the information provided, on the technical side their story doesn't add up.

I vote for continuing to attempt to uncover the real identity of Tom Williams. It seems this is the only reason he made a statement at all.

Nefario.

There's some updated information here.

http://bitcoin.crimeunit.net/wiki/index.php/MyBitcoin_Summary

Maged

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Quote from: BioMike on August 07, 2011, 02:01:41 AM

Quote from: Nefario on August 06, 2011, 10:00:11 PM

(although they are watching these forums).

Are they? How are you so sure about that?

The second press release here confirms it. With no way for us to contact them, there is nowhere else they could have received the community feedback used in #2.

Nefario

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Quote from: BioMike on August 07, 2011, 02:01:41 AM

Quote from: Nefario on August 06, 2011, 10:00:11 PM

(although they are watching these forums).

Are they? How are you so sure about that?

Why wouldn't they?

BioMike

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Quote from: Nefario on August 06, 2011, 10:00:11 PM

(although they are watching these forums).

Are they? How are you so sure about that?

Nefario

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mybitcoin is stalling for time.

They have no contact information available and are not communicating (although they are watching these forums).

They have said there will be a claims process but they've not done anything.

From the information provided, on the technical side their story doesn't add up.

I vote for continuing to attempt to uncover the real identity of Tom Williams. It seems this is the only reason he made a statement at all.

Nefario.

repentance

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Quote from: kgo on August 06, 2011, 10:09:23 AM

Quote from: giantdragon on August 06, 2011, 06:59:22 AM

Quote

If he's not incorporated, he can be sued for his personal assets and cash by anyone and everyone who lost bitcoins from this. I encourage people to take this route once more of his information is revealed, and if he does not fully reimburse every single person who used the service.

MyBitcoin is Limited Liability Company, i.e. owners don't take any liability for company's debts. In this case maximum you can get suing them is corporation's assets.

Their website says they're an LLC, but has anyone seen the paperwork? I'm guessing no, since if they had there would probably be a way to track down the owner(s).

Nevis doesn't require the names of the actual owners or beneficiaries to be listed anywhere in the paperwork. Given just how many companies are registered to that same PO box and street address and the fact that Meridian Trust (which acts as agents for shell companies) appears in the whois information for Mybitcoin, I doubt that information about the true owners appears anywhere in the LLC records.

I've done a bit of research over the last few days and there are any number of company agents who'll set up LLCs in Nevis complete with a company agent and an off-shore bank account (which can be in Panama, Belize, Nevis or other safe havens) for under $2000. One of their big selling points is that Nevis courts don't enforce judgements from foreign courts, and that Nevis law prohibits the disclosure of information about the owners/beneficiaries of certain types of legal entities. A Nevis court can probably force a company agent to disclose that information, but I'm guessing that the company agents would fight very hard against any such action in order to keep their reputation as being IRS-proof intact.

jago25_98

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Crypto Geek

First I lost money with ice save when the Icelandic economy went tits up. So I switched to an unregulated US hedge fund. They got shut down by the FSA. So I switched to some gold. Some of that went missing in transit. I claimed on insurance but decided to check out Bitcoin. I saved some with mtgox and mybitcoin and my own client. First mtgox got lost (couldn't remember my balance), then mybitcoin had this problem. Terrible!

This is just a reminder that this is nothing new.

In this case I feel I blame myself for using mybitcoin as a store rather than just for spending. I've lost a lot in one way but... When I signed up it wasn't worth what it is now! Oops!

I stay forever hopeful with bit coin because I've experienced first hand greater losses. It could be a lot worse - I'm glad I'm not starving this time and take it as a lesson - spread those eggs into different baskets!

SgtSpike

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Quote from: giantdragon on August 06, 2011, 06:59:22 AM

Quote

If he's not incorporated, he can be sued for his personal assets and cash by anyone and everyone who lost bitcoins from this. I encourage people to take this route once more of his information is revealed, and if he does not fully reimburse every single person who used the service.

MyBitcoin is Limited Liability Company, i.e. owners don't take any liability for company's debts. In this case maximum you can get suing them is corporation's assets.

Hence the reason I started with "If he's not incorporated..." Wink

I wasn't sure what the registration of the business was.

Topic: Mybitcoin.com Press Release #2 - page 2. (Read 13805 times)