Topic: Scammer tag: PatrickHarnett - page 10. (Read 39315 times)

Who are you again?

O wait, some random idiot with delusions of self importance?

For the record: PatrickHarnett made no attempt to either negotiate or even contact us about his default, and he has made no effort towards repayment. In fact, he's not as much as represented himself here. Which means that you're in the best case lying about your conversation with theymos.


Augustocroppo is nothing but an idiot. Idiocy is indeed about jealousy, inability and not much else. Libertarianism really has nothing to do with it, if he "were" a fireman he'd still be Augustocrappo the Idiot.

Would you care to explain how the above quote relates to this thread?

LOL. Funny how libertarians are so comfortable writing in the style of Big Brother. Perhaps libertarianism is mostly about jealousy and there is not much else to it.

I had a short conversation with Theymos regarding this thread. From what was clarified to me, it is unlikely that Patrick will receive a scammer tag while he keeps trying to repay or to renegotiate his obligations. Since JoelKatz has already established that the mutual agreement was based on common mistake, and Mircea Popescu's spokesperson has already indicated that there is not a signed contract, the furthering discussion of this matter is useless.

Mircea Popescu is free to come to this forum and renegotiate his mutual agreement with Patrick.

Regarding the Kraken fund issue, I advise Patrick's investor to open another thread and provide evidence which indicates that he was trying to defraud or to deceive his investors.

This is a false statement you have for the first time introduced on November the 5th:


and since repeated it 43 (that's forty three) times without any actual substantiation (if we don't count "everybody knows") and with no actual change.

The statement, illogical and untenable such as it is, was demolished by pretty much everyone who bothered to consider the matter, among which:












Basically, a cut and dry case of a shill trying to scream louder than everyone and thus enact his lie as some semblance of truth.

He agreed to that for Kraken Fund and that it well looks like a scam. He's disagreeing for the Starfish deposits that risk was not shared. The statement about the backing by personal funds was made for the Kraken Fund only.

Joel, you are actively stopping this debate from moving forward.

In my mind, what we need to know is quite simple:

Should Patrick not recover any coins from his Kraken Pirate investments, will he back contributed capital as he stated?

You admitted a bank would rarely be at common fault, yet you know just as much by depositing at a bank that the deposits will be lent afterwards and you're just as much led to believe its loaning behavior is sound. Yet depositors are not sharing the risk. Your analogies/examples always show an example where the investment is disclosed, while Patrick Harnett acted as a bank, being the financial service provider selecting who to loan to. Those benefiting from those loans made the actual investments (and lied to Patrick). The depositor is yet not at fault for the bank mismanagement.

The depositors were not investing in the bank itself such as would be the case if they became shareholders. (In which point they would be equally liable to a loss from the unsound business such as in your example.) They merely deposited with Patrick Harnett providing a financial service:

Depositor > Patrick (bank) > Lendee > Investment or Personal Purchase

I claim your proposed scenario cannot apply on behalf that it was not an investment but a deposit. Patrick was providing a financial service and was not directly making an investment or disclosing the lendees and the specific reason they are taking a loan just like a bank. The wording strongly suggest that he works as a bank and that he takes the responsibility to loaning cash to sound requests and doing proper investigation. Now the bank needs to default, Patrick voided part of the deposits but did not default himself personally, despite that he was acting as the bank entity (which has to default), directly and personally pocketing any profit.

I'm pretty sure you're trolling now. You have exhausted my ability to presume good faith. I give up on trying to reason with you.

In all the years I've been posting on Internet forums and blogs, only two people have ever exhausted my presumption of good faith. So congratulations.

That claim was based on his false belief that his business model was fundamentally sound and that he was diversified against Pirate exposure. It's certainly enforceable against those who have no culpability in that mistake. But it's not fully enforceable against people who shared that mistaken belief and jointly acted to cause the harm. Both Patrick and his investors made the same mistake and it caused precisely the same loss in precisely the same way.

To give a somewhat silly analogy, say some people believe that if you give money to the poor, God will repay you tenfold. If someone borrows money to give to the poor expecting to pay it back from God's bounty, they are totally stuck if the bounty fails to materialize. It's all on them. But if they jointly develop a loan scheme with someone else who shares this belief, and borrow from them in the mutual expectation that the bounty will materialize, it would clearly be inequitable to hold the borrower 100% responsible for the amount borrowed because the mistaken belief that caused the loss was shared by both sides equally. This is so even if one person says, "I'm sure I can pay you back from my money", so long as that assurance flows directly from the shared, mistaken belief.

That's precisely what happened here. Both sides were equally culpable in their mistaken belief that Patrick's business model was sound and that his loan portfolio was largely free of correlated risk. Everything they said to each other reinforced and flowed from that shared mistake belief. The damages flowed directly from that mistaken belief.

Accepting money is not what's at issue. Nice try, I suppose this sort of slimy, intellectually dishonest behavior usually works for you.


Right. Except not really.

I explained where the 40% and 50% come from at least twice now. As for "values coming out of Patrick", I don't know what you're talking about. If Patrick is attempting to copy my argument, it's not because I've asked him to or he's asked me to.

I have never accepted money from anyone to express an opinion of any kind. (Though not for lack of trying. If you want to pay me to shill, I'll take your money. I just won't lie and say I didn't.)

I dislike Patrick. I've never coordinated any activity with him nor, at least as far as I can recall right now, have I ever had any communication with him (or, so far as I know, anyone connected with him) whatsoever other than public posts to this forum. (Other than one private forum message to, I think, ripper234, in which I advised him that I thought Patrick's business was likely a scam.)

There is absolutely no possible reason I would lie or be dishonest about this. Patrick will likely get a scammer tag anyway, and this has no effect on any actual court of law. The only difference is that I put some blame on you. It's hard to imagine anyone would pay me to do that.

In your example, indeed it's an investment contract with no clause in the case money is lost. It could be seen as a joint venture and the share of the loss could be expected. It was never agreed it was loan, but that he'd use the money for gambling and share the profits.

But in this situation, I disagree that it could be regarded as such. He took deposits, acted as a bank taking deposits and extending loan, stating repeatedly that his business was sound, diversified, and that he could bear defaults. The mere fact people asked about how he operated does not suddenly make it a joint venture or imply that risk will be shared. Otherwise, applying this logic, if I asked a bank about their business practices before depositing into an interest bearing account, the bank could make a bad investment and then default on my deposit without default as a whole because my particular funds went on a bad investment and risk is somehow shared.

By depositing with Patrick Harnett, just like at a bank, you do not assume taking risk in any particular venue or to sharing risk with the various investments & loans the bank will make. They simply entrust their money to a financial service provider who will then make decisions for them. They are not making any specific investment or assuming the risks. One key characteristics is that capital is pooled from all the depositors' funds to be then redistributed to business ventures. The depositors do not take any risk other than the bank defaulting as a whole and Patrick Harnett operated under himself, not a separate entity, but did not default himself.

He acted as if it was a joint investment venture and defaulted only on the capital of depositors, not personally, despite operating as a bank under his own name for his own personal profit, acting as a financial service provider and not directly disclosing how he invested the capital.

If he operated under an independent entity (which earn it's own profit, pays its own taxes, etc.), then defaulting purely as a bank on the deposited capital would have been acceptable, however he was acting as the bank and he was directly and personally receiving any profit yet didn't claim personal bankruptcy.

The wording and claims Patrick Harnett made (at least for the Starfish lending/deposits business) were very misleading as to the nature and how he would manage scenarios regarding his offer.

If you don't agree with the above, well let's agree to disagree on whether to classify Patrick Harnett's business as a joint venture such as your example or as a bank (financial service provider) such as in my example. Because it does not seem we disagree on how to handle the case in either scenario, but on what kind of scenario we are actually dealing with. (Note that I did not deposit anything with Starfish. But I did have a deposit in his other operation (fund), but the mere fact it was a fund would place me under your joint venture example where risk is shared. However he added the claim that "Contributed capital is backed by my personal funds." and defaulted on it without personally going bankrupt. One could have assumed he was borrowing investment capital by backing it with his personal assets, which turns it into a loan more than an actual fund/investment vehicle, but he did not back it as promised when the situation required so. Which you seem to have agreed to already.)

Except you are NOT taking an "unpopular" position. You are taking a logically inconsistent and provably (and proven) untenable position.

Originally I thought you were just mentally ill, but the "coincidence" of the 40% and the 50% arbitrary values coming out of you with the 40% and 50% arbitrary values coming out of Patrick as well as a mounting pile of circumstantial evidence paint quite the opposite picture:

You have absolutely no integrity, you are just shilling. And you should be ashamed of yourself.

You might at the very least have disclosed your relationship instead of lying about no relationship.

In context, I don't think it was possible to understand what he said that way. This was preceded by:

Aug 10 08:07:21   I run a slightly complicated business, but most of the deposit accounts I run are BS&T free

I think both sides clearly understood that Patrick's "deposit accounts" were in fact loans. If there was any confusion about that, that would be a separate issue.

In fact, I can't see how that could be misunderstood. If he had 10,000 BTC on deposit, he would have 10,000 BTC sitting around, but he'd also owe 10,000 BTC. So how would that help cover a default? He has to have been referring to his loan portfolio. (If he had said it was a "reserve", you'd have a point.)

Quote from: JoelKatz on November 13, 2012, 05:23:27 AM

The issue in this case is that both Patrick and those who loaned him money made precisely the same mistake,

Nobody else but Patrick is "on trial" here though.