I have an outraged and very upset Donald Norman in my inbox. We had some very nice social back and forth while he got around to asking for the screenshots. All of them mind. I wasn't to miss out a single one. It was most important I handed him all the evidence. When I sent screenshots of the support tickets he was all hurt, and bewildered, and stuff.
Yeah, and like the Bitcoinica customers - I know
that feeling.
I shall spare his blushes, by posting only my reply, which is here instead of being sent to him as quite a few people need to hear this. He is quite upset I am calling Patrick a 'scammer and a thief' in this thread, he says.
Well, I'm tending more towards Big Sulking Baby actually, and 'dog killer'.
My reply..
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First of all Donald, you should be aware that this is the second time this has happened.
Last time it took me three months to get back in my account.
This is why, when, quite unexpectedly, I could not log in to download my bitcoins, I was FRANTIC!
Three months again? Can't be done. And the only reason I got back in inside three months last time was because I said I would tell people's mums if I didn't get back in.
You must remember that I had no idea at all about what had been going on with Bitcoinica. I don't sit staring at my bitcoins like a lovestruck puppy. I only knew that my login or password had been changed on what was, as far as I knew, just a trading account. There was no error message either beyond 'login failed' so I thought I had been the victim of an ID theft.
As you can see, I let support (who I soon found out was a person called Patrick Strateman) know how urgent it was. As you can see by him
closing the duplicate ticket that had a fuller explanation about the dog on it - Patrick SAW how urgent it was. If, as you are claiming Donald, Patrick managed to close the duplicate ticket and
still not know about the dog..
HOW ON EARTH DID HE KNOW IT WAS A DUPLICATE TICKET UNLESS HE READ WHAT WAS WRITTEN ON IT?
I emailed Patrick at the support address and at his gmail address. Zilch. I told Patrick's Mom how urgent it was and got zip. I told Amir how urgent it was and he contacted Patrick's mom and still Diddly-Squat. I told Patrick's lawyer how urgent it was and Patrick didn't even open the bloody email.
Patrick sat on his Royal Behind. If that isn't a fuck you I don't know what is, and we all know he has form for it.
Yes. You are correct. I am sure he will be, or was, very surprised indeed to see how angry I am. That is what happens to people who go round thinking the rest of the planet should cover their avoidant posteriors for them. They are often surprised.
Not my fault.
I am tired of being treated like your lack of forethought is my fault. It is not my fault,
it is not any of your customers' faults, and if you think you can go round locking people away from their own goods and chattels because you failed to see through Zhou
'ooh it seems the nasty widdle hacker deleted the cloud backup' 'ooh it seems we must have bought expensive bitcoins'Tong you can think again.
[
Edited Nov to add - and now I think
Patrick 'Steve_bobs' Strateman might have been in on the hacks from the moment he realised Bitcoinica wasn't as profitable as Zhou Tong had promised, despite plainly hating him. This is why law enforcement was never called in.]
It isn't like the hack happened yesterday or last week. This is October, and you have had offers of help to sort it out on this very forum. Indeed I have a pretty good idea it wasn't a real hack at all and the coins were only taken to cover up the destruction of the customer records. Ask yourself why that might have been necessary. I'll tell you now I think it was it due to the delay in getting a certified copy of Strateman's passport and thus signing the contract. Someone saw you coming and expected to be well away by the time you found out about it.
Again, not my fault.
Donald, it is a universal principle in civilized society that you do not deprive people of their property unless a judge says you can. Patrick deprived me of mine when he locked me out of my account. He would have had any reasonable person's permission to do that for security purposes, but those permissions become null and void shortly after he gets or should have gotten the ID he requests. I told him it would be arriving that same day, which it did - and in any case he could have emailed me at any point in the past few weeks or months or years and said "Hey, I'd like some photo ID please" and he would have got it. He didn't have to lock me out of my account and leave me to find out for myself during a dire emergency then sit on his backside whistling Dixie.
And yes, I looked you up. Hunted you down, whatever. No need to be scared about it. I shall not tell anyone what I found or, more to the point, what I didn't find - but I FIND things Donald. How do you think I do it? I don't do it by pussyfooting around and certainly not when there is a life at stake. If Intersango was fit for the purpose, I wouldn't have had to find you, would I? And then you wouldn't be whining about how I went about doing it, would you?
You expect me to contact you via the usual routes? And how in heaven's name am I supposed to know what those are when I never heard of you before? You are not a rock star and I am not your groupie. For the record, I am a customer of a company you used to be a director of who has a dog that will die and a daughter who will be heartbroken if his Highness there doesn't honor the agreement he made with me.
Now please get over the feeling the rest of creation is supposed to even know who you are, let alone bail you all out. Send your customers their own bitcoins, and you will be surprised how fast everyone loses interest. If you feel you can't send them out yet, then get them into cold storage today. Then get help from trusted members of this forum with the processing. Who is going to sue someone with no money if 1) you have no money 2) your customers have 90% of what they were suing you for in the first place?
And this might come as news to you Donald, but Intersango's inability to organise a proverbial piss-up in a brewery is, oddly enough, not best solved by the customer 'applying for a loan' somewhere.