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Topic: [Payout Updates] Bitcoinica site is taken offline for security investigation - page 3. (Read 156711 times)

full member
Activity: 182
Merit: 100
Look upon me, BitcoinTalk, for I...am...Rarity!
Quote
Matthew, I will not entertain your personal circus since I do not consider you a serious person, and much less an unbiassed one on this issue. Like I said before, if you believe we acted against the law, please do elevate a complaint, or sue us. If not, please stop the libel, including putting words in other people's mouth without knowing what you are really talking about (read above).

Reporting facts and asking inconvenient questions you want to dodge is not libel just because the journalist in question doesn't want to sue you. 
hero member
Activity: 868
Merit: 1000
Thank you Charlie for clearing this up.

Matthew, I will not entertain your personal circus since I do not consider you a serious person, and much less an unbiassed one on this issue. Like I said before, if you believe we acted against the law, please do elevate a complaint, or sue us. If not, please stop the libel, including putting words in other people's mouth without knowing what you are really talking about (read above).

Recently, your magazine had to retract an article written about our company. It seems you are focused on the fact of ID verification, instead of the hundreds of thousands of dollars missing because of events that, to say the least, are highly suspicious.

Most people in the forum are smart and I will let them draw their own conclusions as to your motivations regarding this matter.

Roberto

Are you able to give us any further information about the transactions in question?  While I realise that privacy/confidentially considerations come into play here, it would be absurd if you were able to publicly state your suspicions to us but unable to publicly disclose to us if you were now satisfied that the transactions in question were legitimate.

To avoid the "retraction being buried on page 13" scenario, are you willing to undertake that if further investigation on your part reveals that Zhou's transactions were entirely legitimate you will publicly make a statement to that effect in a separate thread so that your findings are as visible as your original statement?
legendary
Activity: 1078
Merit: 1000
Charlie 'Van Bitcoin' Shrem
Matt,

Just because they are listed as partner, doesn't mean he owns it or anything.

Partner probably means Roberto is working with them on deposit/withdrawal methods like he does with other exchanges, same like Bitinstant.

Also, you should know that Roberto, Mark and I all agreed that Roberto should bring the information to the forums that he found.
As he said, you can bring him to court if you think it was illegal to do so.


By making this information public, and by begin the question of why his funds were being withheld on a public forum, we are well within our rights, both from a legal and ethical stand point, to make an statement regarding the situation. I will invite anyone to challenge this under the laws of the Commonwealth of Dominica.
Not even Charlie Shrem agrees with you on that.

Quote from: Charlie Shrem
Whether or not we have information on this and Zhou, our lawyers told us its a breach of TOS to release it without Zhou's permission or a letter for the authorities


You misread my statement. Our lawyers told us it was a breach of TOS to release information BitInstant had on Zhou Tong according to US law, not AurumXChange

Man, Im so jealous of you right now, all this controversy is forsure helping you sell some magazines! It makes me kinda wonder if adding fuel to the fire is ethical  Wink Anyways, its not my territory so carry on!

Thanks

Charlie
legendary
Activity: 1358
Merit: 1002
I honestly don't understand why AurumXchange continues to evade my very important questions, questions that would obviously help put this entire argument to bed. I think it's important that we solve this issue. I did a bit more research to see if I could answer these questions on my own for the inexplicable behavior addressed earlier in the thread and happened upon this: http://icbit.se/

Thanks for my daily chuckle.

Quote
Also, ICBIT is not a place for money laundering, so we are not going to enforce any AML measures like ID verification requirement.

Not verifying customers is apparently the latest way to avoid your exchange being used for money laundering.   Roll Eyes

Well, I don't think they have much need for that.
Have you seen the order books there? They're almost empty. They have no ID's to verify Grin
hero member
Activity: 868
Merit: 1000
I honestly don't understand why AurumXchange continues to evade my very important questions, questions that would obviously help put this entire argument to bed. I think it's important that we solve this issue. I did a bit more research to see if I could answer these questions on my own for the inexplicable behavior addressed earlier in the thread and happened upon this: http://icbit.se/

Thanks for my daily chuckle.

Quote
Also, ICBIT is not a place for money laundering, so we are not going to enforce any AML measures like ID verification requirement.

Not verifying customers is apparently the latest way to avoid your exchange being used for money laundering.   Roll Eyes
legendary
Activity: 1358
Merit: 1002
Were they a competitor of Bitcoinica? Never heard of them on that way, hence my confusion.  Undecided
Also, wasn't aurumxchange also a Bitcoinica partner, both of them having a $10k LoC with each other?
hero member
Activity: 588
Merit: 500
Hero VIP ultra official trusted super staff puppet
AurumXchange is listed as a partner of Bitcoinica's competitor for margin trading/futures.

Isn't that kronos.io, the company where you have some kind of major role?


No, I've never heard AurumXChange being mentioned as a partner or even remotely connected to Kronos.io.

So, who is that competitor you're talking about?

I honestly don't understand why AurumXchange continues to evade my very important questions, questions that would obviously help put this entire argument to bed. I think it's important that we solve this issue. I did a bit more research to see if I could answer these questions on my own for the inexplicable behavior addressed earlier in the thread and happened upon this: http://icbit.se/

AurumXchange is listed as a partner of Bitcoinica's competitor for margin trading/futures. I hope this doesn't have anything to do with their interests in attacking Zhou, but even Charlie Shrem told me that it was intended to be a private investigation and not public. Weird.

Roberto, if you could be so kind as to answer the questions below I've already ever so politely asked (twice!), I would be ever so grateful. I have never run an exchange before myself, so I understand there are some things I might not be aware of. I look forward to your explanation! Thanks!

The matter of the fact is, we have never released any personal, sensitive, and/or confidential information regarding Zhou Tong that has not been previously and compulsory disclosed by himself to the public.

* To my surprise, upon further examination of our order system, I found an order from Zhou Tong to sell Liberty Reserve to us for the amount of USD 40,000, requesting a wire to his bank account in Singapore. The amount for the order closely matches the total USD exchanged through us (after fees) using the MtGox USD codes stolen from the Bitcoinica account.

1) Shouldn't the amount of the active order be covered by the customer's privacy agreement?
2) Shouldn't the location of the customer's bank account be covered by the customer's privacy agreement?

1. Here is the information Zhou Tong released BEFORE any statement from us:
- He acknowledge that he performed an exchange with our company for 40K LR:

I have also placed a single $40K AurumXchange order during the same period.

Note that he neither mentions it being frozen nor active, and does not give a specific date, just vaguely refers to having made a transfer.


* This order was placed the next day the hacking attempts occurred.

1) Shouldn't the time of the active order be covered by the customer's privacy agreement?


* Mark replied stating that there was activity on this account, that the account was opened using an IP address belonging to Microsoft Singapore, that Zhou Tong was known to have worked for said company at said location, that the email [email protected] have been verified, and that ALL activity on this account is linked to the MtGox account belonging to Zhou Tong.

1) If there is an active AML investigation, wouldn't providing this information publicly be against the law for both parties?


At this time, it appears that there is an overwhelming amount of evidence linking Zhou Tong personally to the Bitcoinica account hack at MtGox. Our legal department has advised us to freeze the funds for the exchange order mentioned above until further investigation by the authorities and/or legal proceedings are concluded.

Anyone can understand that as an exchange, you wouldn't want stolen funds running through you. What you have repeatedly failed to answer (and I mean -repeatedly-) is whether or not it is true in the operating country of AurumXchange that discussing details of an open investigation (which had been going on for over 10 days, correct?) publicly is in fact illegal and punishable by up to 10 years in prison. If it was not an open investigation, then you'd have to change a lot of what you've been saying.

By making this information public, and by begin the question of why his funds were being withheld on a public forum, we are well within our rights, both from a legal and ethical stand point, to make an statement regarding the situation. I will invite anyone to challenge this under the laws of the Commonwealth of Dominica.
Not even Charlie Shrem agrees with you on that.

So Matthew, Vitali et al, would you be so kind as to point out what specific sensitive information we have disclosed that was not compulsorily offered by Zhou Tong previous to our statement? Could you also indicate how have we broken our own terms and conditions specifically?
I believe I have above, thank you for being so cordial. I still invite you to contact Vitalik Buterin directly if you have any issue with the article he wrote, but in the meantime, most of us will still like an answer to the question that has been repeatedly unanswered.

Our legal department has advised us to freeze the funds for the exchange order mentioned above until further investigation by the authorities and/or legal proceedings are concluded.

Is it not illegal to discuss openly an active AML investigation with the public, including freezing their accounts for the purpose of an AML investigation regardless of what the customer in question has posted on a public forum?
Is it not illegal to hold funds for longer than 7 days if there was no investigation?

At this time, it appears that there is an overwhelming amount of evidence linking Zhou Tong personally to the Bitcoinica account hack at MtGox.

Is it not unlawful as an exchange to publicly insinuate that one of your customers is a thief without empirical conclusive evidence provided by authorities care of an AML investigation?

Thanks for helping to resolve these confusions. Feel free to answer when more information is allowed to be revealed. I am confident we can get to the bottom of these confusions that are causing us to butt heads so long as both parties are willing to answer questions openly and transparently.

Cheers



P.S. For anyone interested in the Bitcoinica debacle, we've interviewed the major parties involved and compared it with publicly available information. You can read the balanced and consolidated results of our findings in Issue #2 of the Bitcoin Magazine, here.
legendary
Activity: 1358
Merit: 1002
AurumXchange is listed as a partner of Bitcoinica's competitor for margin trading/futures.

Isn't that kronos.io, the company where you have some kind of major role?


No, I've never heard AurumXChange being mentioned as a partner or even remotely connected to Kronos.io.

So, who is that competitor you're talking about?
hero member
Activity: 588
Merit: 500
Hero VIP ultra official trusted super staff puppet
AurumXchange is listed as a partner of Bitcoinica's competitor for margin trading/futures.

Isn't that kronos.io, the company where you have some kind of major role?


No, I've never heard AurumXChange being mentioned as a partner or even remotely connected to Kronos.io.
legendary
Activity: 1358
Merit: 1002
AurumXchange is listed as a partner of Bitcoinica's competitor for margin trading/futures.

Isn't that kronos.io, the company where you have some kind of major role?
hero member
Activity: 588
Merit: 500
Hero VIP ultra official trusted super staff puppet
I honestly don't understand why AurumXchange continues to evade my very important questions, questions that would obviously help put this entire argument to bed. I think it's important that we solve this issue. I did a bit more research to see if I could answer these questions on my own for the inexplicable behavior addressed earlier in the thread and happened upon this: http://icbit.se/

AurumXchange is listed as a partner of Bitcoinica's competitor for margin trading/futures. I hope this doesn't have anything to do with their interests in attacking Zhou, but even Charlie Shrem told me that it was intended to be a private investigation and not public. Weird.

Roberto, if you could be so kind as to answer the questions below I've already ever so politely asked (twice!), I would be ever so grateful. I have never run an exchange before myself, so I understand there are some things I might not be aware of. I look forward to your explanation! Thanks!

The matter of the fact is, we have never released any personal, sensitive, and/or confidential information regarding Zhou Tong that has not been previously and compulsory disclosed by himself to the public.

* To my surprise, upon further examination of our order system, I found an order from Zhou Tong to sell Liberty Reserve to us for the amount of USD 40,000, requesting a wire to his bank account in Singapore. The amount for the order closely matches the total USD exchanged through us (after fees) using the MtGox USD codes stolen from the Bitcoinica account.

1) Shouldn't the amount of the active order be covered by the customer's privacy agreement?
2) Shouldn't the location of the customer's bank account be covered by the customer's privacy agreement?

1. Here is the information Zhou Tong released BEFORE any statement from us:
- He acknowledge that he performed an exchange with our company for 40K LR:

I have also placed a single $40K AurumXchange order during the same period.

Note that he neither mentions it being frozen nor active, and does not give a specific date, just vaguely refers to having made a transfer.


* This order was placed the next day the hacking attempts occurred.

1) Shouldn't the time of the active order be covered by the customer's privacy agreement?


* Mark replied stating that there was activity on this account, that the account was opened using an IP address belonging to Microsoft Singapore, that Zhou Tong was known to have worked for said company at said location, that the email [email protected] have been verified, and that ALL activity on this account is linked to the MtGox account belonging to Zhou Tong.

1) If there is an active AML investigation, wouldn't providing this information publicly be against the law for both parties?


At this time, it appears that there is an overwhelming amount of evidence linking Zhou Tong personally to the Bitcoinica account hack at MtGox. Our legal department has advised us to freeze the funds for the exchange order mentioned above until further investigation by the authorities and/or legal proceedings are concluded.

Anyone can understand that as an exchange, you wouldn't want stolen funds running through you. What you have repeatedly failed to answer (and I mean -repeatedly-) is whether or not it is true in the operating country of AurumXchange that discussing details of an open investigation (which had been going on for over 10 days, correct?) publicly is in fact illegal and punishable by up to 10 years in prison. If it was not an open investigation, then you'd have to change a lot of what you've been saying.

By making this information public, and by begin the question of why his funds were being withheld on a public forum, we are well within our rights, both from a legal and ethical stand point, to make an statement regarding the situation. I will invite anyone to challenge this under the laws of the Commonwealth of Dominica.
Not even Charlie Shrem agrees with you on that.

So Matthew, Vitali et al, would you be so kind as to point out what specific sensitive information we have disclosed that was not compulsorily offered by Zhou Tong previous to our statement? Could you also indicate how have we broken our own terms and conditions specifically?
I believe I have above, thank you for being so cordial. I still invite you to contact Vitalik Buterin directly if you have any issue with the article he wrote, but in the meantime, most of us will still like an answer to the question that has been repeatedly unanswered.

Our legal department has advised us to freeze the funds for the exchange order mentioned above until further investigation by the authorities and/or legal proceedings are concluded.

Is it not illegal to discuss openly an active AML investigation with the public, including freezing their accounts for the purpose of an AML investigation regardless of what the customer in question has posted on a public forum?
Is it not illegal to hold funds for longer than 7 days if there was no investigation?

At this time, it appears that there is an overwhelming amount of evidence linking Zhou Tong personally to the Bitcoinica account hack at MtGox.

Is it not unlawful as an exchange to publicly insinuate that one of your customers is a thief without empirical conclusive evidence provided by authorities care of an AML investigation?

Thanks for helping to resolve these confusions. Feel free to answer when more information is allowed to be revealed. I am confident we can get to the bottom of these confusions that are causing us to butt heads so long as both parties are willing to answer questions openly and transparently.

Cheers



P.S. For anyone interested in the Bitcoinica debacle, we've interviewed the major parties involved and compared it with publicly available information. You can read the balanced and consolidated results of our findings in Issue #2 of the Bitcoin Magazine, here.
sr. member
Activity: 336
Merit: 250
Why harp on people who say he's 100% guilty, just as useless as trashing the people who say he is 100% innocent? I'm in the "seems pretty flimsy" camp and Bitcoinica should have been wound up in NZ more than a month ago, haven't heard a good argument for why I should change stances.

And what about the people who are convinced that you were the one that did it and will do as much as they can to damage you, your family and your career off of the forums?

This reasoning is completely out of context since your hypothesis did not occurred in the case of the user Zhou Tong.

So please, you and other users, stop with the emotional arguments.

I disagree that it's a plea to anyone's emotions. I can only speak for myself but you wouldn't hear any arguments from me (emotional or otherwise) if others wouldn't make arguments stating as absolute fact that he's guilty.
hero member
Activity: 700
Merit: 500
What doesn't kill you only makes you sicker!
And what about the people who are convinced that you were the one that did it and will do as much as they can to damage you, your family and your career off of the forums?

This reasoning is completely out of context since your hypothesis did not occurred in the case of the user Zhou Tong.

So please, you and other users, stop with the emotional arguments.

I disagree that it's a plea to anyone's emotions. I can only speak for myself but you wouldn't hear any arguments from me (emotional or otherwise) if others wouldn't make arguments stating as absolute fact that he's guilty.
vip
Activity: 756
Merit: 504

I do not feel embarrassed to be associated with Adolf Hitler historical character.

I do not support fictional Jewish storytelling.

I do not care about threats made in Internet forums.

Then I would not even "respond" for whatever enquires would be made regarding your hypothetical event.


And what about the people who are convinced that you were the one that did it and will do as much as they can to damage you, your family and your career off of the forums?

This reasoning is completely out of context since your hypothesis did not occurred in the case of the user Zhou Tong.

So please, you and other users, stop with the emotional arguments.
hero member
Activity: 700
Merit: 500
What doesn't kill you only makes you sicker!

I do not feel embarrassed to be associated with Adolf Hitler historical character.

I do not support fictional Jewish storytelling.

I do not care about threats made in Internet forums.

Then I would not even "respond" for whatever enquires would be made regarding your hypothetical event.




And what about the people who are convinced that you were the one that did it and will do as much as they can to damage you, your family and your career off of the forums?
vip
Activity: 756
Merit: 504
Users accusing Aurumexchange of TOS break are indirectly supporting the hypothesis that Zhou Tong is the hacker.

If Zhou Tong is the hacker, then Aurumexchange released information of a customer.

If Zhou Tong is NOT the hacker, them Aurumexchange released information of an unknown person.
This makes no sense at all.

Consider this hypothetical: You open an account with some service. I hack your account and use the service to buy 1,000 copies of Mein Kampf which I leave on the doorsteps of Holocaust survivors. There's a public outcry over this event and the purchase is investigated. The service publicly announces that your account was used to buy those 1,000 copies of Mein Kampf, which embarrasses you. You receive death threats, harassment, and so on. When you respond that you didn't buy them and that someone else must have hacked your account, does that let the service off the hook for the privacy violation? After all, it wasn't your transaction.


I do not feel embarrassed to be associated with Adolf Hitler historical character.

I do not support fictional Jewish storytelling.

I do not care about threats made in Internet forums.

Then I would not even "respond" for whatever enquires would be made regarding your hypothetical event.


hero member
Activity: 868
Merit: 1000
Users accusing Aurumexchange of TOS break are indirectly supporting the hypothesis that Zhou Tong is the hacker.

If Zhou Tong is the hacker, then Aurumexchange released information of a customer.

If Zhou Tong is NOT the hacker, them Aurumexchange released information of an unknown person.
This makes no sense at all.

Consider this hypothetical: You open an account with some service. I hack your account and use the service to buy 1,000 copies of Mein Kampf which I leave on the doorsteps of Holocaust survivors. There's a public outcry over this event and the purchase is investigated. The service publicly announces that your account was used to buy those 1,000 copies of Mein Kampf, which embarrasses you. You receive death threats, harassment, and so on. When you respond that you didn't buy them and that someone else must have hacked your account, does that let the service off the hook for the privacy violation? After all, it wasn't your transaction.


That one doesn't quite work because users had noticed Zhou's LR transactions and commented on them just after the hack and Zhou had already said that AurumXchange had frozen his funds for unknown reasons before AurumXchange made their statement.  While I still believe that the AurumXchange statement was ill-advised, both Zhou's LR transactions and the fact that AurumXchange had frozen his account had been discussed in this community prior to that statement.  Zhou is not claiming that his AurumXchange account through which he sold LR for a friend was hacked.

While I believe that AurumXchange/Mt Gox were justified in confirming to the community that the stolen funds had been converted to LR, I think that their public statement should have stopped at "we've identified and frozen accounts suspected of being associated with the Mt Gox theft and referred the matter to the appropriate authorities for further investigation".  The public request for further documentation from Zhou and information about whether or not it had been provided were utterly inappropriate.
legendary
Activity: 1596
Merit: 1012
Democracy is vulnerable to a 51% attack.
Users accusing Aurumexchange of TOS break are indirectly supporting the hypothesis that Zhou Tong is the hacker.

If Zhou Tong is the hacker, then Aurumexchange released information of a customer.

If Zhou Tong is NOT the hacker, them Aurumexchange released information of an unknown person.
This makes no sense at all.

Consider this hypothetical: You open an account with some service. I hack your account and use the service to buy 1,000 copies of Mein Kampf which I leave on the doorsteps of Holocaust survivors. There's a public outcry over this event and the purchase is investigated. The service publicly announces that your account was used to buy those 1,000 copies of Mein Kampf, which embarrasses you. You receive death threats, harassment, and so on. When you respond that you didn't buy them and that someone else must have hacked your account, does that let the service off the hook for the privacy violation? After all, it wasn't your transaction.
legendary
Activity: 1918
Merit: 1570
Bitcoin: An Idea Worth Spending
Users accusing Aurumexchange of TOS break are indirectly supporting the hypothesis that Zhou Tong is the hacker.

If Zhou Tong is the hacker, then Aurumexchange released information of a customer.

If Zhou Tong is NOT the hacker, them Aurumexchange released information of an unknown person.

You forgot one!

If Zhou Tong is NOT real, then Aurumexchange released information of a fictitious character.

~Bruno~
vip
Activity: 756
Merit: 504
Users accusing Aurumexchange of TOS break are indirectly supporting the hypothesis that Zhou Tong is the hacker.

If Zhou Tong is the hacker, then Aurumexchange released information of a customer.

If Zhou Tong is NOT the hacker, them Aurumexchange released information of an unknown person.
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