Quote from: Bit LC Inc. on September 16, 2012, 03:16:54 PM

I can write the short version of the story:

* I detected a huge increase in hashrate on our pool, and traced it back to GPUMAX (nothing strange there, so far, I've had heard about the service before)
* I checked which account it was mining against (and found that it was a private account by pirate40 (or who ever was/is behind GPUMAX))
* All mining-activity related to that account came directly from the same IP-addresses as GPUMAX used at the time.
* I spoke with pirate40 (I guess?) a year ago or so, in their official IRC channel regarding what was going on, and why he was using his "own" account to mine at our pool, with GPUMAX resources
* He pretty much asked me to fuck off and mind my own business, as he said he didn't do anything "wrong", it was some "load balancing between multiple pools"-feature he said.
* ... which still didn't explain why he was using his own account, and sending the earned funds directly to him self (Or well, his "personal" wallet, i think the IP was showing up on blockchain.info) - Not to anything related to GPUMAX as far as i could see.
* He wrote a few lines privately to me on IRC "trying" to explain "again", but at this time i was so suspicious that i doubted every word he said.
* I asked him a day later, again on exactly what was going on, and he mentioned the same thing about it was a load-balancing between pools - but i didn't really get how exactly his account and his IP became involved in everything - i asked why he was using his "own" account for it - but never got any response.
* I suspected, back then, that he was taking a bit of "extra" hashrate and mined (pool-hopped) to compensate for the 105% earnings (or whatever it was) and to earn some for himself. (Which i honestly still think)
* I issued a firewall ban against all EC2 nodes i could find, associated with GPUMAX, and disabled all related accounts.

Those bans maybe not be effective anymore, things might have changed during the past years, but i know that he disabled https://www.bitlc.net (Bitcoins.lc) on GPUMAX and posted an announcement of it here on the forums.

I never heard from him again.

--
Regards, Jim
Bit LC Inc.
https://www.bitlc.net

Hmm.. interesting. Was he hopping with it, or just mining nonstop? Either way, it strongly supports my theory that gpumax' biggest customer was pirate himself.