Quote from: kmfkewm on August 29, 2012, 04:36 pmIt seems that if he actually was LE that he would not scam people. Why burn an intelligence gathering asset? So I do not know what to think really. His behavior does not strike me as something a scammer would do unless he is utterly incompetent at scamming, I mean why no go out with an everything must go sale or similar? His previous behavior strongly indicated to me that he was possibly LE, but I can not imagine that LE would burn their ability to further gather vendor addresses by scamming with their pseudonym. It may have taken a lot longer to link arrests to people who used vlads service, than it would take for people to stop using his service because he scammed everyone.My thoughts on this issue, for what it's worth, are that Vlad1m1r was investing in pirateat40's scheme using his "investment program" - he was offering 6% per month whereas pirateat40 was paying out 7% per week; as obviously unsustainable as that obviously was, he suckered a lot of people out of a lot of money.So this has recently come crashing down, with pirateat40 running off with 500K BTC, including any BTC belonging to his "investors" that Vlad1m1r put into it. It's my guess that he's using the cash he received in the mail to either pay off any vendors that gave him money for this scheme, or else closed up shop after pirateat40 ran away with his BTC and he decided to salvage what he could by taking any cash-in-the-mail money that he could get his hands on.Quote from: cheesecakefactoryDoes anyone else find it a bit annoying that the high up's such as DPR aren't saying anything on this. You'd think such a big issue would get some kind of response, even just a "Yeah guy's we're pretty pissed off too, you have our sympathies".Why would DPR weigh in here? It's nothing to do with him / her. Why would they have any sympathy for people who Finalize Early and lose their money as a resuly despite the numerous warnings not to do so? This isn't a big issue. It's just another scam in the long history of scams we've experienced here, all of which have been made possible by people willing to give their money to anonymous people over the internet in the hopes that the other party will keep up their end of the bargain, without the protecton of escrow.If anything, this simply proves that the system works. Stop buying your BTC over SR. I've spent over $8000 here and I haven't been scammed once; I also buy my BTC from reputable, traceable traders.Stop going out of escrow. Stop buying BTC over SR. Stop complaining when money is lost despite systems being put in place to prevent that very thing from happening.It's incredibly simple; I honestly don't know how so many manage to get scammed here. Use common sense. Would you give money to an anonymous person on the street after they promise to send you some drugs?! Of course you wouldn't, so don't do it here.