Topic: Should Giga be tagged as a scammer? - page 4. (Read 17433 times)

That's the point though. He isn't going to give the money back. He's going to make you go through a lawyer.

I propose he cannot do the buyback without selling current hardware at major loss and ruin his plans.
The reason for stalling as long as possible is so he can possess asic gear. The income from that, in a short time would allow a buy back or a new terramining crap plan to get fresh btc coming in or simply continue to pay peanuts while he laughs to the bank.

Demand money back before asics arrive. That is how you get even.

Until the mods grow a spine and tag him.

Not only would it be reasonable, but it is obligatory to allow customers to cancel the deal and refund amounts paid less dividends to date. Anything else is scamming.

But we all know this is not gonna happen and this will be dragged on for the next couple of months.

Yeah - I had a look around online earlier at various sources relating to KYC in the US.  Seems the general principle is identical to in the UK and other countries:

1.  If you require KYC you MUST make that plain BEFORE entering into a contract.
2.  If you use a third=party to handle sales you CAN delegate KYC requirements to them BUT if you do so you MUST make sure they comply with the KTC policy that applies to you.
3.  If a potential client refuses to provide KYC your options are either a) Refund them any funds paid to you or b) Raise an SAR with relevant authorities.  There's no option c) of threaten to hold their funds but don't raise an SAR.
4.  If you require KYC information then you MUST have a written policy in respect of it and a named compliance officer.  If KYC requirements are delegated to a third-party then THEY must have a written policy and compliance officer.

It's also not clear on what basis giga is claiming he needs KYC information.  From what I can see, similar to in the UK, businesses that must obtain KYC information need to be registered wuth a supervisory/regulatory authority.  I see no statement from giga or his lawyer as to where they're registered as business meeting the conditions such that they need to obtain KYC information.  Are they, for example, registered as a Financial Services provider?  Any such registration should be disclosed to customers.

The above is important as - if he's claiming legal necessity for his actions then rather obviously:

1.  He needs to meet the relevant legal requirements on his end,
2.  If his failure to proper understand HIS position has led to the problem then any burden of cost in rectifying HIS mistake (in not making plain at the start the need for KYC information - a requirement where such information is needed) should fall on him.

There also appears to be a bait and switch on two specific factors:

1.  Giga is now claiming all deals were with an LLC.  But no disclosure was made that commitments on his end were restricted by limited liability when entering the deal.  Any limited liability needs to be disclosed in advance - it can't later be claimed.

2.  The contracts/bonds were transferrable/tradable.  Now, apparently, they aren't.  That's a very clear reduction in their value - with, as far as I can see, no agreement to such a change ever made by investors.  You can't start changing a contract unilaterally just because it's inconvenient for you to honour it as agreed.  If he's saying he can't honour the original agreement for legal reasons then it would be reasonable to allow him to cancel the deal - refunding amounts paid less dividends paid to date.

lol did nobody notice that gigavps just admitted that he is pretending it's against the law when it's really not?




This is the only logical and reasonable way to do it. Nullify contracts of customers that do not want to proceed with the new rules, i.e. refund their investments (minus already paid dividends).

Any other way means we have another scammer onboard. (What is actually funny is that scammers are now scamming other scammers on this forum.)

What you keep conveniently ignoring is that for those who only hold a few shares the cost of compiling the information will often exceed the value of those shares.  That's because in many countries the cost of an apostilled document is fixed and fairly high (there's only one authority that can apostille per country - for obvious reasons - so no room for competition on the price as it's a monopoly).

If I lend you 3 BTC then ask for an apostilled claim before repaying and an apostille costs you 4 BTC what are your realistic options?  That's the position a lot of your smaller investors are now in.

Your claim that you can't allow transfer of ownership now as GLBSE were previously doing it is a misinterpretation.  If you sold transferrable contracts (or bonds - as some would say you had previously characterised them) previously then the regulatory requirements on you remain largely the same irrespective of who handles the transfer of ownership.

Does anyone here actually KNOW the US law in terms of KYC/AML?  In the UK if a customer refuses to provide KYC information then the seller has to either provide a total refund OR (if they believe there's an AML-related reason for the refusal) make an SAR (Suspicious Activity Report) to the relevant authorities (who that is depends on the company's supervisory body).  In this instance it's plain that in many cases the refusal to provide the required information is purely an economic one - that doing so costs more than the benefits of doing so - so IF this were in the UK Giga would need to cancel the contract in its entirety where there was refusal to provide the information.

I'd suggest first port of call for anyone getting screwed like this (being asked to incur costs greater than the contractual benefit) would be whatever fair-trading / consumer protection bodies there are in the US.  Complaint would be that he entered into a contract with you then is asking that you pay more than the benefit to you of the contract before he'll honour his obligations - and that he sold the contracts as being transferrable and is now also forbidding transfer which is the only other way you could recoup ANY of the investment you're otherwise losing.

For someone who makes a lot of excuses, I could see how you could have interpreted it at such.


Payments are my responsibility now. I did not ask for it, it was GLBSE's job. Now that it is my job, it will done right. It is not worth the risk to follow in GLBSE's footsteps.


Because they were not doing what they were supposed to. And when they started to figure out just how fucked they were, they closed the site without warning or notice.


To continue to do things the same as GLBSE with only lead to the same conclusion as GLBSE. That is unacceptable.


This is not what I want. Please compile the information as requested and send it to Quentin. You'll get paid and we will be able to continue with Gigamining/Teramining.

It just seems like a very convenient excuse. You apply the law when it suits you, and not in the best interests of your bondholders. You said it yourself above; When GLBSE had the responsibility everything was easy peasy. Fine then, go list on BTCT-CO. I suppose there is some legal reason that you cannot do this of course, akin to not allowing anyone to transfer beneficial ownership despite KYC guidelines. I'm not going to hire a solicitor to write a transfer letter so I suppose you just got 10 GIGAMINING bonds richer. That feels like a scam. The technical term is "bait and switch" I believe.

Wow, can you imagine what would happen if I pulled a stunt like demanding KYC for my own shareholders? That wouldn't go over so well.

If I allowed transfer of ownership, I would need to file and register with all sorts of three letter agencies. Before, it was GLBSE's responsibility to do this. Now, it is mine. It is cost prohibitive to allow this due to both legal and federal fees incurred to do so.


Please start reading whats been written on the issue. The most important parts are provided at the link below.

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/--127437


On this point, you are 100% correct.

I could just walk away from my own obligations too, like this. But this isn't my point. My point here is new evidence.

Giga now seems to be prohibiting transfers between parties despite KYC ("know your customer") guidelines which state that a customer is merely a beneficial owner of whatever it is he's selling, and further state that a customer/beneficial owner can also be the beneficiary of a transfer of ownership.

I'm sorry to say my stance on this is no longer theoretical -- if GigaVPS does not allow me to transfer my GIGAMINING bonds he appears to be breaking the law by removing my right to transfer beneficial ownership.

I could be wrong (IANAL) but my issue has become I have no intention of dragging a lawyer into this, so I feel that GigaVPS is pretending it's against the law when it's really not.

Of course. If I were way more bastard than I am I would pull the same trick here (not IRL or someone would shoot me in the knees).

Kluge, it is obvious that Giga is using this whole "legal" stance to invalidate as many shares as possible so that he doesn't have to repay shareholders. Now he's even stated the shares are non-transferable so users unable to jump through his hoops can't get anything for them.

How is that not a scam?

This whole, "I broke the law issuing the bonds, but I'm abiding by the law repaying them" stance is a scam.

I don't think it's unreasonable for an issuer to be very skeptical of a payout list provided by someone who shut down an exchange without warning, in violation of company by-laws (or "by-morals" if you wanna gripe about it not being legal) with the blatant-"fuck you" intent to start a new "legal" company immediately after, removed users' ability to download their trade history, refused to include people who upset him on a payout list, has financial troubles, took an unreasonable amount of time to release asset info, and has been pretty unresponsive to emails.

At least one BTC address (for a fairly large-quantity unit-holder) in the list Nefario sent me for BDK.BND was wrong (the claimant said he emailed Nef to change it, but it wasn't). By acting skeptically and individually telling everyone the relevant info Nef sent me, that person didn't lose a bunch of BTC to an unknown address.

Taking it a step further, Giga gets to take out plenty of birds with one stone. Users will have plenty of time to review information before Giga starts payments, the new entity's legal status will allow new opportunities (and less risk), and having a more secure claims process would prevent possible unsavory doings by the list provider. For how large Gigamining became and how worried we were about the SEC watching us like hawks (though I now personally have zero faith in their ability to do anything), it would've been insane to have Gigamining on one of the recent pop-up exchanges, while just keeping Gigamining unlisted and paying manual dividends (ignoring the giant pain in the ass that'd be) probably would've pissed people off just as much as what he's doing.

The shareholders list provided by Nefario is CORRECT!

There should be NO reason not to pay shareholders.

It's Theymos who decides ultimately:

A bit of democracy would be appreciated here.

Confused as to why this scammer tag hasn't been handed out yet.  Are people waiting to recover some funds before tagging him?

He took no risk all machines were paid in advance by a margin of at least twice  if not three times the costs of the equipment being bought, his profit was locked in at the start. If you don't consider a free to him upgrade to the ASICs that he has attempted to charge people for scamming them then I guess you are right. Giving scamming pieces of shit the scammer tag allows people to see just what they are all about that is the entire point of the tag.


He was attempting to do a bypass of the GLBSE issuing process to not pay the fees Nefario got  a little pissed and was not going to list the shares, that is until everybody's favorite starfish patrick among others started complaining how this oh so promising venture was being not listed. Yeah worked out well you would think after that rocky start with people going on about how unreliable the GLBSE was there would have been backup plan in place for $100-200k+ in assets but when your not risking your money what is it to you if you have no way to give back. With this deal he already had his in the pocket anything not given back is extra bonus scam..

Some where i read that gigavps issued shares BEFORE releasing in glbse & he didn't asked/took any legal papers for it.

Please, if some one quote it, will help.

I don't think GigaVPS deserves a scammer tag.
He has done the best out of a bad situation, instead of shutting down his business or backing away from his contract he has tried to keep following it while not taking any more risks. He has done this by going the legal way in his country and you can't blame him for trying to make the best out off this situation.
I also don't understand what giving him a scammer tag will help?
He's no longer selling any shares and considering all the drama he never will never try to issue and asset again, the people who could get hurt have gotten hurt.
Giga is trust able and hasn't actively stolen, he's still here and he's still helping his share holders out.
A scammer tag will probably hurt more then it will help at the moment.
//DeaDTerra