If someone says they have funds to personally cover any losses and then doesn't actually cover said losses there's not much left to argue about here.
I agree. Patrick was mistaken and should be held accountable for that mistake:
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 08:10:17 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
There's no evidence this was a lie or misrepresentation. It was simply something that he was incorrect about. Where I disagree with some others in this thread is that I believe the people who loaned Patrick money made precisely the same mistake and are likewise accountable for the harm that mistake caused. Patrick believed he was sufficiently free of Pirate exposure and correlated risk that he would have sufficient loan assets to make repayments if Pirate defaulted. He was wrong. But this was not because of secret knowledge only he had, it was because he thought his basic business model (which was not a secret) was sound when it wasn't.
This logic of yours is NOT what the community needs to hear.
If people are not held accountable for bad decisions and poor judgment that causes harm, we're doomed to repeat Pirate, Patrick, and Hashking over and over again. Those who invested paid folks like Pirate to run their scams and knew, or should have known, that they were paying people to make them the recipients of fraudulent transfers. Patrick was an un-knowing Pirate intermediary and is, in my opinion, much less culpable than the knowing Pirate intermediaries such as PPT operators. Those who loaned him money were equally un-knowing Pirate intermediaries.