Topic: [TO THEYMOS AND MODS] BFL scammer tag? (Read 4177 times)

You're just saying this because your avatar is an off-white sockpuppet.

Again I catch you lying MR-POO'ER

Its a shame you are not mature enough to argue a topic (any topic it seems) without degrading yourself by lying and throwing around racial slurs.

For those that are curious, dont take my word for it - MR-POO'ER frequently falls back on lies and slander when confronted:
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.2281223

Dont mistake unlimited arrogance for intelligence, this is just a racist troll that hits google for his/her/its info and when unable to defend their position anymore resorts to lies or abandoning threads.

Nah, you're just a racist.

Big Fucking Liars is my phrase, I coined it first

It's not about the settlement for me. It's about the outcome. If it will shut down the scam once and for all and put all the desperate miners waiting for their machines out of their misery then lets get it down and move on with our lives.

Perhaps, but you have a point. Small claims are easier to prosecute and more potentially damaging in aggregate to the offender. Class action is a measure to protect THE RESPONDENT, not the litigants. Other people who, much like you, also aren't lawyers have much much less of a clue.

A large firm taking on a class action could make a lot of money while the plaintiffs, other than a select couple leading the class, make very little. The lawyers get the fame and the money. The victims get... coupons, rebates, a small token sum when the case is inevitably settled?

For any person who feels like pursuing legal action consulting a lawyer on their own would probably be in their best interest. I have a suspicion that small claims for many people could lead to a better financial outcome than a class action.

Clearly you are not from the states? Either that or I would assume (yes making an ass out of you and me) that you are based in New York City.
You see there is only one thing Americans value more than money, it's called Fame. This is why major firms take on cases of mass serial murderers pro bono or as a public defender because even though they will be receiving a fraction of what they typically would make they will be receiving the media attention and publicity that only millions if dollars in advertising could buy.
Why wouldn't a prominent law firm with the staff and resources to take this on not? They will get mass media attention. They will be helping a prominent community that if ever needed again could probably hire and pay for their services. They would receive hundreds of thousands in "free" publicity. They will be the go to firm for future legal support when dealing with Bitcoin related items (which could very well put their firm at the forefront of the future). Plus they would be entitled to 33% of any settlement.

In a number jurisdictions in the United States small claims court judgments frequently award triple damages and will accept cases where damages are up to several thousand (varies state by state and sometimes county to county, also the price of a couple small miners or maybe one or two of whatever they are calling the thing under the minirig now). A number of small claims judgments would be much more damaging to a firm than a single massive class action suit.

Much like mining there would probably be a substantial first mover advantage for those seeking small claims judgments first, taking their judgments while there is still something to take.

Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer

I think you are completely missing the point. What's missing to make a bunch of small claims into a successful class action suit is a) calculated; b) organized; c) a bunch of powerful attorneys; d) a basis for all this.

Simply renaming the collection of small claims into "a class action suit" does not accomplish any of these any more than the re-re-relabelling of US unemployment or homelessness finds people jobs or homes.


This sort of "I'm sure nothing that's popular costs anything" nonsense shows plainly you have no idea how things work. For your own benefit (ie to get your brain out of the swamp), compile a list of all the people famous during the '90s, put on one column a "famous index", percentile of fame total as evaluated by you and on the other column their total net worth as a percentile of the total net worth of the world. Or, if you prefer ten zeroes after the point instead of twelve, go with a percentile of the decade's worldwide GDP.

You've not quite built communism yet. The currency of the land still isn't "fame". Why exactly do you think the media can't even afford to pay the sort of clueless interns currently involved?

(Since we're doing research tasks to benefit your education, find twenty successful class action suits, calculate the average litigation costs over the set, divide it by "thousands" and report the multiplier. That's how many times you have to say "sorry I'm lazy and stupid, will do more research on my own in the future".)

This would be a grand slam in my book. Put it to an end, before others lose out.

It's not an obsession. Individual lawsuits would be tedious, 90% of them would not be able to surpass "small claims" status and would not have the desired impact and/or implication of the greater picture. The fact that hundreds if not thousands are being swindled out of there money. A calculated, organized, hit like a class action lawsuit represented by powerful attorneys would finally put this nightmare to an end.

I am sure the cost would be minimal as this is a popular subject right now and the media attention alone would be worth thousands to a firm. I also believe that BFL does have some significant assets even if they are hidden I'm sure a group of savy tech people like this one could track down a good portion of those assets.

How is it not free?


Not sure who this tvsat guy is, but he sounds cool.

Are you sure?


Not my statement. But tvsats.

What's with this Internet obsession with "class action lawsuits"? Other than the obvious "expensive litigation you don't need to pay for upfront and somebody else is managing".


Must lurk moar.

I like this forum as well, which is why I don't want to see it SUED OUT OF EXISTENCE. If they continue to accept money from them knowingly after they have clearly been shown to be operating fraudulently, they can indeed be held complicit. The whole "oh we didn't know" honey moon is over. Take old yeller out back and shoot him before he bites you and gives you rabies.

I think that they do not have enough money to service all current outstanding preorders without taking any new preorder customer money.

That is where the PONZI lay.

Let's backtrack a little bit: we all use this forum FOR FREE, so a bit of ad revenue likely keeps the place running (and provides a small incentive for the hours of toil known as moderating).

You can visit millions of sites that advertise all sorts of scammy crap or even give you malware. If you're at all technically inclined, you can block ads. People who believe what they read in a banner ad can't be all that smart... I don't believe a site owner can be held personally accountable for ads they run. Given that the ad relationship is likely direct (rather than via an ad network), the mods COULD turn the heat up on BFL a bit. From theymos's response, it looks like he has done exactly this.

I first mentioned the BFL ad revenue conflict of interest, and I do feel that this issue was addressed. That said, if I had ever sent money to BFL, I would've demanded a refund months ago...

I will not be surprised when the media picks up on yet another "bitcoin" lawsuit. A class action lawsuit worth millions of dollars and hundreds of Plaintiff's ranging from corporate execs, lawyers, entrepreneur's, etc. will make headlines. Especially involving BTC. If there is ever a community that can make your life a living hell, this would be the one. I would hate to be BFL and not start shipping large quantities of singles in the next few weeks. 

You can dismiss it as "dumb" all you like, but there is very clearly legal liability being created by the forum continuing to host paid advertisement for what is legally defined as fraud in the United States. The FTC has very specific restrictions for pre-orders and BFL does not meet them. This forum is putting itself in legal jeopardy by continuing to knowingly assist them in fraud in exchange for a portion of the illicitly gained funds.

As far as "refunds" you know very well they are offering a fraction of the original value of the Bitcoins, to be paid in USD - not what was actually tendered (that is not a refund that is theft). You guys are losing serious credibility in this community by continuing to defend fraud, and you will regret it. Unfortunately the entire community might have to pay for your complicity.


Some related reading:
http://kslegislature.org/li_2012/b2011_12/statute/050_000_0000_chapter/050_006_0000_article/050_006_0027_section/050_006_0027_k/

http://business.ftc.gov/documents/alt051-selling-internet-prompt-delivery-rules

http://jolt.law.harvard.edu/articles/pdf/v08/08HarvJLTech001.pdf

"Newbridge Network Securities Litigation, 225 part of the plaintiffs'
complaint related to the defendants' alleged misrepresentations and
omissions about problems with product quality. Regarding the scienter
issue, the court held that where multiple individual defendants are sued,
"the complaint must apprise each defendant of his or her participation in
the fraud."226 Plaintiffs met that burden because their complaint specified
the statements alleged to be misleading, adequately detailed when, where,
and by whom they were made, and identified facts indicating conscious
behavior by the individual defendants. 227"

So you honestly believe they haven't used up every bit of that preorder money on research, development, advertising, employee payroll, etc. etc. If you think they just put that in a nice interest bearing savings account you need to lay off the Kool-Aid

People CAN get their money back as long as new customers are still placing pre-orders. Once EVERYONE realizes that BFL is a big scam and they all stop ordering then their will be zero refunds because all of the funds will be gone. That is classic Ponzi Scheme, use the new money to pay the old money but sooner or later all the money dries up and you go to federal prison. Just sayin.

Don't be dumb, if people want their money back from BFL all they have to do is ask for a refund. The complaints (as far as I can tell) are that they are taking too long to get the orders out, and they don't meet expectations, not that people can't get their money back.

The conflict of interest here is disgusting. I am calling on the forum to pay back defrauded customers out of Bitcointalk advertising funds, up to and including the total amount paid by BFL. Considering they are profits from illicit activities (fraud), that their primary customer base was forum users here, the fact that Bitcointalk refuses to act to mitigate this damage makes me conclude that is is an equitable response given the additional fact that they are currently ACTIVELY COMPLICIT IN FRAUD. Have you ever considered that the forum might share legal liability in this? Chew on that for a couple of minutes.

Yup

I think some sort of warning to people is just. I nearly fell into the trap of investing my money into them, but luckily I did a bit of research beforehand.

Whilst I can't say they're direct scammers, their business is definitely not fully transparent and this should undoubtedly be pointed out. You have my support despite the fact I don't see anything happening as a result of this topic.

Yup I see little difference in what MNW did and what BFL/JOSH did.

They made promises they did not meet nor care to meet. Even Josh said himself that paying those bets are not priority right now. Which is bullshit.

Nah, it was a donation to charity. People did buy BFL devices because of their bet through. Not much different from MNW's bet which caused people to buy PPT bonds to hedge against it.

Wait, so there was no counterparty?

Why not? There have been numerous threads detailing the lost bet.


7 months later and still no donation. Why doesn't Inaba have a scammer tag?

Thanks I look forward to your views on the bet(s) made by both Josh and BFL. 

It's unlikely that BFL will ever get scammer tags for the ASICs because it's not at all clear what a preorder actually entails. I doubt that the preorder agreement (if there is one) specifies exact deadlines or specifications. I think that they'd avoid a scammer tag if they delivered some somewhat-decent mining device or gave USD-denominated refunds within a year.

The bet is another matter. I haven't looked into it yet.

I said previously that I would consider not accepting their advertising if they didn't make much progress within a few weeks. They have made progress. Several people received devices.

So how do you propose BFL settle their public 1000 BTC bet to be paid to a charity (not to mention Josh's 1000 BTC bet) that they would hit their power/speed requirements when they shipped, which they did not?

So far they have not made an effort in good faith to honor this. And this isn't even developing hardware...it is owning up to the mouthing off that BFL and Josh have done to hype their product.

That alone should deserve a scammer tag. It has been almost 2 months since they first announced their first "shipment".

It is hard to make hardware. As long as some progress is being made, there is no reason to give them a scammer tag.

Yes they delivered enough units that I can only count on my finger and toes.

Most of which were sent to PR people and NOT customers.

They may have a half-baked product but all of the lies that have been perpetrated and promises broken over the last 11 months is unnerving even to me as a unbiased 3rd party in the scheme of things.

I would not have made the thread and worded my responses as such if I was not concerned that BFL is being given a free pass to scam and this introduces DOUBLE STANDARDs on this forum.

And to be honest, I do not think of you or Theymos or the other mods as such.

We all know...actions speak louder...

That goes for the mods and owner(s) of this forum. Just the truth.

I haven't followed the whole BFL scandal much, but didn't they deliver test units to some people?

 I'm beginning to see the truth of this. Very unfortunate and transparent. Money talks indeed.

 I had hoped management of these forums would act as good shepherds of this community.

 One of the pitfalls of having - seemingly and ironically so - a Laissez-faire style of moderation.

Very true. I noticed after I made and posted that bitcoin censored picture, about gavin making that decision to censor transactions, I seen that I was being ignored @ a rate of [ignores 7-12] from zero. Ignored for telling the truth.


This is how I see it. This is the reason why I block the ads here, I didn't want to say anything about it in the adblockplus meta thread as it would have been I think offtopic, I don't want to see scammer ads on my browser as much as equaling, accepting it and saying its ok which I am not ok with it. If bfl ads were removed, I will stop blocking ads here. It is very interesting to see different ads for certain opportunity's but the bfl one just takes it over the edge with me. And because of this statement, and above this quote, telling the truth, I will probably get ignored twice as much as I am now of being ignored.

Because we don't give scammer tags based on popular vote to our highest paying advertiser.

FTFY

The interesting thing about what I have said concerning BFL is completely unbiased.

I have no stake in any ASIC hardware, and may never will. I dont plan to order from any of the new vendors, current or future as I believe holding bitcoins > mining bitcoins.

That being said, although I am viewed as a troll on this forum, I do also out the truth on many topics.

People ignore me because of that. That is fine. But my point is, people should not discount what is blatantly obvious in front of their faces and that includes BFL getting a scammer tag for renigging on many different promises over the past 12 months.

That alone should get them a DUMBASS Scammer Tag or something special of that sort.

Theymos said that in early April.

Hopefully we don't repeat that in the next month as I will likely post about it again.

And true it shouldn't be based on popular vote, but you can not discount the community at large on this forum from being able to gauge what WE as a majority believe is true or not.

Actions speak louder, BFL's actions speak of scam. Pirate delayed on his payments and was given a scammer tag.

BFL promised a 1000 BTC charity donation if they didn't meet their power specs/hash speeds when they shipped. Which they did not. Yet they have not paid their bet. Even Josh has admitted that they do not view the bet (although was done in good faith on this forum publicly) as high priority.

My point being is I do not see ANY difference between the two scenarios described above, yet BFL gets away with whatever the fuck they want.

Just sayin...

Because we don't give scammer tags based on popular vote. If we don't hear any more updates after the next few months, then we'll talk.

That's an understatement.  I just saw that poll now, 77% for 22% against.

This.

You have much reading and catching up to do.

Aren't someone already shipping out asic machines? um, forget the name [1]. I dunno, would they go up? I know bfl asic share holders will be screwed, like myself.

Edit:

[1]Avalon asics.

I just want to know, what makes them scammers? they Have shipped the 1st batch, if you follow their blogs/tweets/etc. you Will see the problems they have dealt with? no, lets call them all scammers because you don't talk to them and you haven't got your product yet.

you try selling out a costly mistake of 10K dud chips from misaligned Photo-lithographic mask. these guys are not Intel or AMD you know.

am i on their side? no, they could of marketed the whole thing a lot better then this, they should of accounted for these issues.

one thing i do look at is more then one side of the issue. BFL has an angry mob at their doors, i don't join the crowd, i look for why they are there.

No need to wonder about that one

I wonder what will happen to ASICMINER share price when this blows open?

About the same as has happened to the Bitcoin price now that MtGox got killed: nothing at all. Smart money is already out and stupid money doesn't ever matter.

I wonder what will happen to the price of BTC when the doors on this scam are blown wide open

Did you see, they changed the name and price, jal to something, and from $174 to $276 or something, then they removed everybodys shipping from first class to a lower tier and asking an additional amount of money "175USD" for shipping. Then they ship out, "Experiment units" to people, with youtube vids, try to pull more customers in.

Edit:

I'm not all that smart, but this is common sense to me, what BFL is/are doing.

Fuck BFL, I ordered a Jalapeno in August via PayPal and now when I log in to BFL's site they know nothing about my order and they haven't responded to my emails.

SCAMMERS

I was trying to put together BFL to something like above that is in bold. Good job, that's what it means.

You mean "Big Fucking Liars"?

They should probably just label them as BFL.

They should at least label them as 'Untrustworthy'.

You don't honestly think BFL will get a scammer tag, at least not until every last hope of partial compensation is gone?
Come on!  If you suddenly realized you were invested in a ponzi scheme, and (let's suspend disbelief for a bit) were ruled by pure self-interest, not letting nebulous abstractions like "truth" and "justice" interfere with your decisions, you'd be a fool to yell "scam!"*
*Not really, but only when you start muddying the waters with long-term repercussions -- people tend to limit their scope to the venture at hand.

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/poll-should-butterfly-labs-bfl-get-a-scammer-tag-155730

The community poll shows that most believe BFL and related BFL employees should be given a scammer tag on this forum.

I'm curious why this has not manifested itself.

Any other party that has delayed this long would have gotten a scammer tag long ago.