Thanks to the one and only Phinn for bringing the proof up here.

Pretty standard troll account and thread, Jr. Member "gumcruise" wastes a bunch of people's time waving around a 0.5 BTC reward. Pretty clear looking at the replies to the threads and quotes.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1235516.0

Eventually he edits the OP and thread title to "The #1 Bitcoin Conspiracy Barn" making it pretty obvious he wasted everyone's time.

Actually, he seems to have tried to cheekily made a bit of extra commission too by using an amazon affiliate link in the book he linked to, which backfires.

For quick reference, an amazon affiliate link requires an affiliate tag (basically an ID) to credit. The amazon website states how this is shown as follows: "For example, you must include your Associates ID or “tag” (appearing as XXXXX-20, or such other format as we may designate) as a parameter in the URL of each link you place on your site to the Amazon Site.". Keyword is that it is called a "tag" and ends in -20.

On July 6, 2015 user "deliciousowl" made a post linking to a book on amazon which used tag=hocayoli-20 as the affiliate identifier.

In our false giveaway thread by gumcruise, the post linking to a book on amazon also uses tag=hocayoli-20. If you think it's a coincidence, try searching "hocayoli" or "hocayoli-20" on Google. It's most definitely the same affiliate.

"deliciousowl" also happened to post on the false giveaway thread in a trollish manner, though this doesn't prove anything on its own, rather seems like a strange coincidence.



gumcruise: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=412667
deliciousowl: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=242584

More juice:

Turns out he paid the 0.5 BTC prize to BitcoinStriker who is a proven alt of the scammer "Tymer" and also an alt of "HueSinger".