Topic: Scammer tag: PatrickHarnett - page 7. (Read 39244 times)

Right, diversionary tactic #1, "lie and repeat and repeat and repeat maybe it drowns everyone" is a dead horse by now. Diversionary tactic #2 failed, mostly because nobody wants to associate themselves with the poisonous actions of Global Scam Exchange shareholder noagendamarket aka bitcoin.me. Moving right along to Diversionary tactic #3, "lying in contracts is not lying, it's just "default", which is not lying."

I wish you luck. And maybe some sense to go with it.

There is a difference between owing someone and being a scammer. As darkmule pointed out it's rare to have all responsibility absolved, and I don't see justification for it in this case. Scammer in this instance would mean Patrick KNEW he had significant Pirate risk while making the declarations that he felt he was diversified.

I do think the forum needs an "In Default" tag.

Indeed. Something tells me this obvious point will just be ignored and we'll hear a repeat of the Stupid Gospel.

Yes, but when Patrick claims he accepts deposit and that:
- You can withdraw anytime
- You'll be paid x% interest
- I am slightly or free of pirate debt exposure

People are accepting to lend him funds based on the premise that he'll deliver each of those claims. They are not making a statement that any of those claims are inherently true.

Buyer - I want to make a pirate free exposure deposit.
Seller - I am not exposed to pirate.
Buyer - Perfect, here's the deposit.
Seller - I am actually exposed to pirate and cannot deliver the deposit back. We should share the loss since we both thought I was not exposed. (False)

Buyer - I want a washing machine.
Seller - I have a washing machine in this box.
Buyer - Perfect, here's the deposit.
Seller - Sorry, it seems I actually had a dryer packaged in that box and cannot deliver. Since I already shipped, we should share the lost on that cost since we both believed a washing machine was being sent. (False)

When you accept a claim issued by one side of the contract, you don't claim it to be true or guaranteed. You agree that you WANT that claim executed/delivered in exchange of the funds.

To be a common mistake, the depositor would have had to authoritatively guarantee/tell Patrick that HIS operation was free of pirate exposure and that he was able to repay or led Patrick to believe it was also the case. I have yet to see a depositor make that claim. There is a huge difference between accepting one party's claim and conjointly making the same claim.

Yeah. He did the same here, page 3 iirc. A WEEK AGO.

It's what he does.


So you will never ever ask for a loan. That's entirely your problem.

Low risk very high interest pseudononymous loans made using a medium of value impervious to direct clawback looks a lot like trying to build that house on that washed away barrier island.

Except in that thread Badbear (Moderator) is requesting info...

Yes, and I was pointing out that legal or factual impossibility is a much more narrow concept than that.  The fact that you happen to have run out of money due to mismanagement is not impossibility, but merely difficulty.  Impossibility is something like agreeing to build a house on a barrier island that just got washed away by a hurricane, that is, something outright impossible.

Yeah, all this was pointed out to him back somewhere on page 2.

*Ah, here, was page 7. Part III specifically.

Yes, he's announced this earlier so I guess everyone's aware but pretty much nobody sees the point in splitting the discussion up. For obvious good reasons.

Pretty sure JoelKatz is arguing that the mutual idea that bitcoin loans of the sort Patrick was making could be free of significant Pirateat40 risk did create a situation where "the misunderstanding essentially resulted in an agreement that is impossible to carry out."

In a round about way he's referring to all the warnings given in these very forums regarding the dangerous situation created by having such high interest instruments being traded on the wrong-headed presumption that they carried a low default risk.

JoelKatz can correct me if I'm misunderstanding him.

FYI Bitcoin.me has created a separate post regarding Patrick's Kraken Fund and Badbear is looking for citations of where Patrick made disingenuous claims in regards to the fund as well as a information on what Patrick has done to try to meet his Kraken obligations. Imo, that situation seems more straightforward.

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/patrick-harnett-kraken-fund-124152

I believe you are exaggerating the scope of the common or mutual mistake doctrine.  This doctrine only applies when the mistake is so fundamental to the nature of the agreement that either the parties both failed to understand the actual terms of the contract, and hence there was no meeting of the minds, or the misunderstanding essentially resulted in an agreement that is impossible to carry out.

For example, Boba Fett hires Han Solo to do the Kessel Run in less than twelve parsecs, unaware that the parsec is not a unit of time.  Since the agreement is effectively meaningless, it would not be fair to force Han Solo to attempt to do this.  However, even in this case, Han Solo would have to return any money he took as part of the agreement.  He doesn't just get to keep it.

In this case, whatever underlying facts there are are not fundamental.  The agreement itself is quite simple, at least the part that some people are attempting to enforce.  Harnett took money from a number of people, which was supposed to be payable on demand.  There was no mistake about that part of the agreement. 

That there were numerous financial blunders by everyone involved doesn't void the contract, any more than a contract is voided because the price of soybeans went up in the months between when a contract for soybeans was signed and when delivery is due.

I could probably count the number of cases I've seen in the real world where common mistake was found and voided a contract on the fingers of one hand.  After suffering a horrible industrial accident.

I can't think of a single case in which such a mistake completely absolved the one who breached the contract of having to pay back money.  If nothing else, that would be considered unjust enrichment.

or Rain Main

This reminds me of that scene in Good Will Hunting where he's in court trying to argue some technicality to get off.

No because that doesn't have a common mistake and your bank deposit is insured. Also, you have a reasonable expectation that your bank will make only sound loans and no reason to think your bank's business model isn't sound. So it's totally different. (It would be different if, for example, you knew the bank was going to take all the money it borrowed to Vegas.)

However, prior to deposit insurance, it was actually pretty common for banks to reserve the right to delay withdrawals in the event of a run. Usually they specified a greater than normal interest rate in this case and so long as the bank was still fundamentally sound, this didn't usually cause any harm to their customers. If you wanted to withdraw $100, you would go to the bank and obtain a $100 withdrawal coupon which you could then sell for $100. Since the bank was still fundamentally sound, they could issue you a coupon worth more than $100 easily (against future loan returns). This tends to bankrupt the bank (because the coupons pay a higher interest rate than their loans and everyone runs to get the valuable coupons), but it doesn't significantly harm the customers.

Essentially, a bank has to ensure that they enough of a reserve to cover any liquidity crisis they might experience. So long as their loan portfolio remains basically sound, this isn't difficult. Of course, this fails utterly if the loans suffer massive default. This is what caused many banks to collapse after the mortgage meltdown, forcing the government to cover the losses through the FDIC. This is what it seems happened to Patrick.

So is this the same as me going to a bank, giving them $500 to open a savings account which will accrue interest and will also allow me to withdraw some or all of my $500 whenever I want, then at some point the bank says "yeah that $500, you can't withdraw that whenever like we said, but you'll still get interest on it"?

Unfortunately, yes. You can find dozens of lawsuits where someone is injured while trespassing with intent to steal and successfully sues the property owner. The most famous, Bodine v. Enterprise High School, involves someone trying to break into a school who fell through a skylight and successfully sued the school. (Successful in the sense that the school ultimately settled for a six-figure amount.) There was a great case in California where a man accidentally ran over the hand of someone trying to steal his hubcap. There was a successful recovery (around $75,000 or so) in that case.

There are two big differences between those cases and this case. In those cases, there isn't the same mistake made by both parties. And those are tort cases, not contract cases.

A reasonable justice system would, I think, prevent criminals from recovering from their intended victims except in very exceptional circumstances. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trespasser#Duties_to_trespassers (If there was evidence that Patrick was dishonest in his communications with his investors, this common mistake argument would evaporate. It is predicated on roughly equal fault on both sides.)

Wait, so if someone breaks into my house and is accidentally impaled by the set of spears that I by mistake only very loosely fastened to my ceiling with a string that too goes across my floor, then that guy has a claim against me?

If we assume that Patrick is obligated to repay them from his own funds, then Patrick was harmed -- with that assumption, the investment resulted in a loss of Patrick's money. Patrick is a person other than those who loaned him money. You can't use an argument like a bus and get off at your stop -- you have to see if it ends with consistent results and, if not, keep going.

If you start out trying to enforce the contract as agreed and think that means that Patrick is 100% responsible, then Patrick next has a claim against his investors for the harm their mistake caused him. This claim would offset their claim against him for making the same mistake. You end with them needing to split the losses.

However, I think seeing it as common mistake is more sensible because I don't think it's possible to enforce the contract as agreed at all since the agreement was about a loan portfolio that didn't exist in the form the agreement presumed. But you get the same result either way. It depends on how you try to construe the terms of a vague agreement.