Topic: Statement about the suspect of recent Bitcoinica hack - page 28. (Read 136139 times)

See my response in an earlier page about this.

I'm glad somebody else is looking into this. I opted to not touch this with a ten-foot pole. I'm sadly taken aback as to where all this leads, let alone stems from. It has forced me to be very careful as to what I post.

~Bruno~

It's clear aurumxchange likely isn't. If an investigation is actually because of money laundering, it should never have been posted publicly.

I understand.  You can't launder money.  OK, like every country has a law basically pertaining to this.  So what though, seriously?
So, whenever you find something SUSPICIOUS, you feel the need to publicly transcribe this information all over the internet?  I am not saying that his money cannot be scrutinized, but why does that give you the right to relay this information over the internet to the public?

I am not saying what ZT was right or wrong.  Because I honestly have no idea who is telling the truth at this point.  

Hey,

Sorry if I seemed agressive as well, the amount of trolling that goes on here, it's hard to differentiate.

1- Your 100% correct. Patrick has been gathering all the details so he can answer questions like his next course of action, legal standing, wallet ownership, ect.
Him and I have a call in exactly 3 minutes from now to discuss it, and he will make a forum/blog post about it in a little bit.

2- Of course we are looking out for our profit margins. However, everything we do is for the greater of Bitcoin. In order for our businesses to succeed Bitcoin needs to succeed and we use our Businesses as front line fighters for Bitcoin. If we have a legal team, than we will use it for the greater good of Bitcoin. MtGox, AurumXChange, Bitinstant and other companies pay salaries to put food on the table of it's team members and their families. This is survival for us.

-Charlie

Has to cash out all his pirate bonds first!

This is how I see it.  He figures the longer he can stall, the more people will forget and less likely he will be held accountable for theft.

Hi Charlie, I'm not lashing out at anyone except for perhaps Zhou. I think it is much better that Patrick posts here himself rather than me asking for a private response then posting it here. Others could accuse me of making it up or even mis-quoting. The words are much better from the legally-qualified horses mouth.

Roberto, while I appreciate the sentiment and believe that you have acted admirably, what you describe is an inevitable and repetitive consequence of operating a bitcoin exchange. Your profit margin is the reason that you are involved with bitcoin and thus bear responsibility to persue the criminals who use you. It has no doubt been a stressful time, but it was your choice to enter the market and take on that responsibility. Please don't take this as an insult, because it isn't. I'm just stating the fact of the matter. Gotta take the rough with the smooth.

This is what I don't get. If "Chen" admitted guilt and agreed to pay up, why does there even need to be seperate transactions? Surely one transaction equalling the total amount is all that's required? Is this yet another delaying tactic by Zhou or a means of keeping the dogs at bay ("dont kill me now, I can get the rest of the money")?


BB.

+1 After having experienced the continued inaction of Bitcoinica - Seeing these services work together and achieve results is a breath of fresh air. Kudos!

Say what you will but if Roberto and Mark hadn't done this, we would be no further towards recovering funds. So far Zhou has managed to transfer 15k BTC out of 20k BTC and 140k USD promised.

If anything you should be thanking AurumXchange and MTGox for getting to the bottom of this.

what will actually happen if he doesn't react to these money laundering accusations? (since his plan is to take the amount frozen just from Chens funds) Will it be frozen forever?

I trust you guys, but are acting extremely unprofessional.  I will personally never use your service in fear of you publicly going after users in this format.  From an outsiders perspective you really look terrible.  I'm serious.  ZT looks bad, but so do you.

You have stated ZT is the prime suspect?  In what?  Is there even a fucking police report?  He is the prime suspect according to you, AFAIK.  

Basically, you are just holding his money because you want to.  You have stated he has broken your TOS.  I am sure you have violated your own TOS when you have posted personal information about your users all over the web.

This is turning into a big fucking joke.

Get the fucking money to the lawyers so us bitcoinica users can get our money back.  That's it.  

in my opinion not really important. having legal education he knows what he gets himself into. he acts on recommendation of big-players in the bitcoin scene - so I dont worry. btw. BTC-funds you can monitor in the address provided.

... contrary to that I am deeply thankful that he offers this service to the community!

Let us focus on the relevant tasks to end this nightmare the following in order:
1. Recovery of ALL funds through Zhou
2. Get the bitcoinica team up running again
3. Receive refunds
4. Thank Patrick Murk, prosecute the hacker, thank OR prosecute the Bitcoinica team (its up to you: ACT!)

let's stay with 1. and 2. for the moment, since all other theoretical discussions are of 0 value.

Dude, instead of lashing out and requesting information in bold lettering. Have you even emailed or called Patrick to ask him?

I was just at their offices in Seattle last week, and their team of 4+ lawyers hold Bitinstant and a few others as their clients.

Please, do yourself a favor and reach out. Once you do, you can post the information on the forums.

Here is his info:


-Charlie

Sorry, I still don't get under what authority is Patrick Murck allowed to receive, possess and transfer stolen goods? There must be some sort of judicial process which results in the granting of a warrant to do so? Please Patrick Murck, lets have all the facts and proof.

Zhou is clearly on his way to prison, which is a shame and a triumph at the same time. No doubt there are others who are culpable too.


BB.

Dear Zhou (since you still read this),

this shows clearly what I feared. So my conclusion is:

If you retain one single cent of the funds recovered from "Chen" as long as the AurumXchange-issue is not solved you CLEARLY scam the Bitcoinica-Users for that amount.

To remind you: so far you promised to be able to recover further 140.000 USD. I think a time horizon for that to come through would be a sign of good will.

He's a lawyer, just can't practice law in WA.

tl;dr: The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

I'm quite sure you launched Bitcoinica with the intention for it to provide value to the community. As initially suggested by Patrick/Intersango and others, your claims about trade volume were very suspicious. It's likely you simply exaggerated them, not unusual when being proud of what you've created.

Whether the Linode theft (where other accounts as well were swiped) just provided an excuse for some profit on the side or not I don't know, but I'm quite sure the only real money to have come out of running Bitcoinica were from user deposits. I have no personal opinion of whether it operated as a pure bucket shop or not, but others have documented the lack of visible MtGox movement even when Bitcoinica should've been hedging.

When, based on how you presented the success of Bitcoinica in public, you were approached with investment offers I believe you were simply unable to admit that it wasn't as successful as you claimed. I believe you went along way too far with whatever happened, and that the Rackspace "hack" was the simplest way out when Tihan started questioning the books. Additionally, it provided yet more profit which you might've needed to be able to keep up appearances with your friends and family.

After the very visible and complete failure by the Intersango people to handle the resulting mess I believe you made yet another profitable "hack" on the service. It wasn't as well planned nor executed as the previous, maybe it was simply opportunistic after having realized the release of the source code provided the excuse needed.

I've posted links to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudologia_fantastica and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance since I do believe they apply. I think you're currently unable to admit to yourself and people close to you where things went wrong, and you're still hoping to be able to exit this unscathed.

(I consider the above to be the simplest explanation possible that still fits all the known facts. I'm wary about the exact involvement by Amir, Patrick and Donald though - and since Tihan and Zhou supposedly have met in person it would be interesting to know exactly whom else have actually met either of them.*)

But then, the only reason I really care is that if people's only takeaway from having joined the Bitcoin community is that they get constantly scammed this will never fly. I thus believe Bitcoin fraud needs to be handled by the proper legal authorities. We're way past Mybitcoin's "as long as I give 49% back you guys won't hurt me, right?" - which btw looks suspiciously close to what you're currently trying to do as well.

*) Edit: Tihan's identity is verified by an upstanding member of the community, and thus Zhou's should be as well.

Well then, I stand corrected!   

Thats because he is a member of the Washington DC bar

http://www.dcbar.org/find_a_member/index.cfm

-Charlie