Topic: Pirateat40, Nefario, Zhoutong (Read 1001 times)

What is Ryan Zhou Tong's real name?

Nefario and Pirateat40 are two stories. GLBSE was not set up well, but that was clear if you wanted to see it. He did not take the money and run.

Did Pirateat40 really steal 5 million USD? If so I am amazing there is no legal action, since his identity is known.

I don't think it's right to compare Nefario with those two scumbags.

Pirate/Trendon was an obvious ponzi op from the start (or maybe he just thought zeek rewards would never collapse - who knows?).
Zhoutong stole >40k BTC from his former trading partners, then came up with the most piss-weak excuses on here after being caught.

Nef on the other hand was told by the FSA that he had to close GLBSE or face prosecution and possible jail time. It's only taken him about a week to start paying out, which isn't a long time in the grand scheme of things...

I am also surprised with the people on bitcoin.

BCST is a multi MILLION dollar ponzi scheme that fell apart nothing is really done about it. I guess thats the beauty of promising very convincingly that money will eventually come.

With BTSE, i seem to have recieved some Bitcoins back from them, so thats always a good sign

For those who complain about the costs of a lawsuit:
I dunno about the US legal system, but I have a legal protection insurance which covers all the expenses exceeding small amounts (around $500 I think). So it does not matter how expensive the lawsuit gets. Plus, a defendant who is found guilty but cannot pay can be held liable for about 10 years; should he make any more money than needed for his basic living expenses, it can be collected and goes back to the plaintiff.

What's the point in threatening to sue someone when you chicken out, claiming it's too expensive? Are people really believing that a professional scammer is scared by threats on an Internet forum?

@repentance
IANAL, but a lawsuit would at least involve fraud. It would be a nice way to test Bitcoin in front of a court. A few lawsuits with virtual currencies/items have been successful in the past (eg Shanda, Runescape).
And proof? We have the blockchain. If you directly invested with Pirate, he sent you the his address. For the PPT servics, it's the same and just a hop more.

You would file a lawsuit against Zhou in what jurisdiction?  And your cause of action would be what exactly?

Likewise pirate.  If you had no direct exposure to pirate, then what is your cause of action?  What proof do you have that he owes *you* anything?  Why would you underwrite the cost of legal action against pirate when he's currently under investigation by the SEC and they have far more resources to investigate whether he has any assets as well as to launch legal action?  How many people to whom pirate owes funds directly have "clean hands" from a legal standpoint?

Even filing a lawsuit costs money - pursuing it costs even more and the more complex the case the greater the likelihood that the only people who will see any money are the lawyers on both sides, who are going to want money upfront to even accept the case.

While it's entirely possible that Zhou will eventually be named in the Cartmell lawsuit, there are still questions of jurisdiction to be addressed and the issue of his age to be dealt with. 

Well, it's "easy" in the same way that it's "easy" to climb Mt. Everest - the process is documented in any number of books and movies. So why doesn't everyone do it?

Even though we know how, actually going through the steps is expensive and difficult.

The problem with suing scammers is that by the time you actually win and try to collect, the money is probably gone - so the successful plaintiff will have spent money creating an effectively unenforceable judgment.

Judgments are interesting if you can get one against a person or an entity with a lot of non-liquid assets like real estate - they are not very interesting versus a person with no income, who provably knows how to get paid (if they did have income) in a difficult-to-detect/track fashion, and who has no assets.

My hunch is that none of the three people you mention have any assets to speak of - and certainly no assets that would remain following litigation, which gives them a motive/opportunity to spend their $ defending themselves, and/or transfer value from assets that are easy to collect against into assets that are tough to collect against.

This is why, in the real world, we often depend on things like bonds and insurance to protect ourselves against bad behavior - while lawsuits are possible, they're a very inefficient/unsatisfying way to solve problems, especially versus people with no assets and no income (known in the legal profession as "judgment-proof"). Also, most people aren't willing to act as quickly or as aggressively as they'd need to in order to protect themselves - e.g., seeking an order to freeze funds and appoint a receiver at the first sign of trouble, rather than waiting until the money's clearly been gone for several months, and then reluctantly filing a lawsuit with the cheapest attorney they can find as close to the expiration of the statute of limitations as they can get.

Those may have been his intentions but then he claims to have received counsel advising him otherwise.

 - http://bitcoinmagazine.net/interview-with-glbses-nefario/

Return of BTC funds held by GLBSE have begun.

First of all, I had nothing invested with any of them; I only witnessed all this as a bystander.

The main problem is that there are just rants and threats, but no action.

Every single one of those guys has been threatened with legal action and according to the forum many have contacted their lawyers. The results? Nothing. I haven't heard of any lawsuit that has been filed. So far, it's only been hot air.

Nefario has lied to everybody about quickly moving GLBSE around in case of government issues. When the government knocked, he rolled over and shut GLBSE down, leaving investors without any solutions and explanations.

Similar with Pirateat40: some here invested lots of time to track him down and even contact his family. The famous 12th October has passed and nobody seems to care anymore, despite all the lawyer talk.

For all those guys their identity is known. It would be easy to file a lawsuit and drag them in front of a court, but nobody seems to have the balls for it even though there's lots of big talk on the forum. Instead, everybody just accepts the losses and moves on, waiting for the next scam.

This will only make Bitcoin more interesting for scammers and less interesting for honest people. You can easily walk away with thousands, if not millions.

Feel free to move this to the appropriate section.