What happened here was this: PatrickHarnett advertised a depositing scheme, recallable on demand, paying 5% a month. He then unilaterally changed the interest rate to 1% (or below that, in steps, something like that). This in itself is a breach of contract, as he wasn't also simultaneously repaying holders on demand, but we'd have let it slide.
Then, he converted deposits into unrecallable paying ~1% a week. So basically what PatrickHarnett has done was transform an interest bearing recallable deposit into a sort of miner bond, where he pays "some" interest and the principal can never be recovered. This is not acceptable.
Scammer tag, please. Patrick Harnett is Peter Lambert v2.0.
There's no evidence this was a scam. In fact, everything I can see suggests that it was simply a common mistake. As the transcript shows, the agreement was based on the common understanding that he had no or limited Pirate exposure.
This turned out to be incorrect. It's not clear that this is Patrick's fault. This fault is equally on both sides of the agreement. At the time, the only evidence that Patrick had significant Pirate exposure was the common sense realization that it was likely that people were borrowing from him to invest in Pirate and lying to him about it.
Aug 10 08:06:31 listen i actually wanted to talk to you.
Aug 10 08:06:38 hi
Aug 10 08:06:54 hey. your deposits still bs&t free ?
Aug 10 08:07:21 I run a slightly complicated business, but most of the deposit accounts I run are BS&T free
Aug 10 08:07:39 that's what the market wanted
Aug 10 08:07:58 you deem yourself able to repay your depositors in the event bs&t goes bankrupt, and nothing is recovered ?
Aug 10 08:08:00 back in a couple of minutes - grabbing a glass of wine - friday evening here
Aug 10 08:09:57 back
Aug 10 08:10:17 in the event BS&T goes bust, I have more than enough assets to cover that
Aug 10 08:10:41 mainly because the 15,500 coins I hold on deposit are not invest in BS&T
Aug 10 08:10:56 well that works. i'd like to put 500 bitcoins with you
Aug 10 08:11:02 do you mind id'ing with gribble ?
Aug 10 08:11:28 I was only planning on being here a minute so didn't id
Here we see both parties making the same mistake. Both parties had substantially the same information and made substantially the same mistake. Why is this Patrick's fault? Patrick has stated in another thread that he is paying this debt back the same way he is paying back similar debts. He is taking responsibility for his share of the common mistake and his lenders should do the same.