After reading a lot of posts, i actually suspect zhoutong is the thief who stolen money.
A lot of persons & posts told him to go to a lawyer & stop posting.
He never did it.
Simple reason is if he goes to a lawyer, he has to tell full story & even the lawyer can threaten him in future.
But their is also another important point he has to tell.
The Chinese guy who is a multimillionaire, a some what don, collecting antique items & speculating with it.
If he tells about the Chinese to lawyer then the Chinese must face court & criminal charges.
But anyone think that a relic collector & speculator, multimillionaire, doing underworld illegal things, will use the toughest method of money making which run by mostly computer professionals & geeks called Bitcoin, which cant be understood easily by others & cheat customers?
A true criminal will never use a way to cheat when he don't understand it.
Besides a true criminal always use & cheat people when he knows a lot about the thing he use to cheat.
Basically a successful criminal will never use a way he don't understand & depending on others.
A successful criminal always want to be independent then only he can cheat & never have assets or money in his/her name & also in his family persons names.
This means only one thing their is a real Chinese criminal, which was/is active now & when his name comes in tv or news wont feel happy.
If zhoutang goes to lawyer ,then the Chinese criminal has to face court.
Zhoutong USING the name of a well known criminal & if he tells this to his lawyer then the Chinese guy even try kill zhoutong for using his name in a crime which he never did.
Zhoutong is just fooling & cheating every one by telling daily new & new stories.
Zhoutong saw & heard many Bitcoin hacks & thought he can also steal & put it on an unknown hacker, so no one will find him & he will go free.
But many didn't believe his story, so he now connected a Chinese guy & building story around it.
If he goes to lawyer then he has to face Chinese guy & they wont let him go.
Zhoutong WILL NEVER go to lawyer & also never stop posting.
He is posting daily for only one reason.
If some one not replies or post , then the victims will get angry & try to find him by using detective methods or ip address.......
So, he daily replying & coming online & showing victims that he didn't vanished or absconded.
He know very clearly that until he response in forum, no one will do any harsh things, like finding him, threatening him, threatening parents....etc etc etc...
Also he know clearly that its not that easy to put against him for Bitcoin fraud, coz Bitcoin can't be understood easily by normal people.
So, if some one files case against him,. then the lawyer & police MUST have know what is Bitcoin & how he used it to cheat....
Also when i read all his posts, i don't think he is 17 year old person.
He using English language very well & not typing as a normal 17 year old do , like using smileys, acronyms....slang language, meme....
I think he must be at least 25+ years old to type with out using any normal 17 guys use to chat.
His replies shows a professionalism.
So, in total, zhoutong took money & try to cheat every one, but caught in the middle, now daily replying posts & keep on passing time.
He also MAY give back all the money, coz the money never went to any Chinese guy & if it goes legal then he not only has to face law, but also has to face an angry Chinese criminal gang.
He is just telling stories, so that no one will come & find his real place & real life.
I don't find anything suspicious with his English proficiency. Kids nowadays in South East Asia countries such as Singapore and Malaysia usually have a strong command of the English language due to over-zealous parents preparing to send them overseas for their tertiary study. (especially the Chinese
) In many cases, English have become their first language, and their command of their native languages have waned considerably due to the advent of English-based education. Having studied at Singapore, Zhou Tong's English proficiency is not a wonder at all.
This is a classic framing. There is no reason to suspect otherwise.
When the breach of LastPass and bitcoinica's mtgox account was announced, I found it equally plausible that it was a random thief rather than an insider (ie one of Patrick/steve_bobs, zhoutong/stevejobs, etc.). It's totally possible that someone would have verified that
[email protected] is a LastPass account (this can be verified since LastPass leaks account registration status through the Forgot Password option), and then tried the MtGox API key after the source code leak.
But anyone could have done that, literally anyone (seriously, I kicked myself for having not tried it
myself). But the particular person who did exploit this, also happened to be one of a very few people who also knew the password to zhoutong's
[email protected]. Of all the numerously possible potential thiefs who had equal opportunity to log-in to LastPass, the breach was in fact highly likely, all the info was there. And of all those possibilities,
what is likelihood that the one person who first took advantage also knew zhoutong's private throw-away gmail password, so that they could frame him? The probability is highly suspicious.
I'd agree, there is a point here. I've mulled over the details carefully, but something seems amiss in this case.
The guy could just have used a simple throwaway anonymous email account, but yet used one of his anonymous email accounts (purportedly to be created just for 'sockpuppeting'), and hoping that they could frame him easily? If they wanted to frame him, using this anonymous email account (which had no obvious connection to him) seems like not the brightest thing ever. Also, if they wanted to frame him just to put the limelight off their backs, it would make no sense at all to own up after an hour or so of phone talks, plus they could just make an completely anonymous throwaway email account and have no existing connection to this case at all. Unless it was Zhou Tong being careless and reusing an old sockpuppet email that he thought to have no connections to himself...
I'm not implying anything here in this thread, I'm just voicing out my thoughts here. I'll be grateful if someone could pick out the errors in my train of thought.