Quote from: LMGTFY on February 25, 2016, 06:06:16 PM

Quote from: suchmoon on February 25, 2016, 05:37:05 PM

Quote from: LMGTFY on February 25, 2016, 04:56:18 PM

I'm sorry, but I'm not following you. Are you saying that there's a law in my jurisdiction that says my local police force won't regard fraud as fraud unless I pay scrypt.cc anything they may have paid me? I'm sure that can't be right, so could you clarify? Ideally, could you point to the relevant legislation/code (doesn't have to be in my jurisdiction, if you point me in the right direction I can probably find locally appropriate legislation).

There are ponzi clawback precedents:

https://bernsteinlaw.com/publications-list/investor-beware-what-everyone-should-know-about-clawback-litigation/

It's not as simple as Stroto claims though.

That's awesome, thank you!

I've got to admit - that actually seems fairly reasonable (with regards to Madoff, and possibly here too). If scrypt.cc is found to be a ponzi, any profits would be "false profits" and surrendered to the bankruptcy trustee. This would be used by the trustee to pay depositors who had been defrauded out of their deposits - the initial principle. Sucks for anyone who made money out of it, but at least they end up with everything they started with, which sucks less than losing money - even if some of that money is paid back by the bankruptcy trustee.

I've not yet found the equivalent in my jurisdiction (UK) but I have to admit I think it would make sense here too.

If you don't report this to the police then any money you've lost is lost for good (and any withdrawals in the future will result in further losses), and the scheme keeps running to the detriment of the wider community. If you do report then you may get some of your money back, and the operation may be shut down and the perpetrator fined or jailed.

In theory it makes sense. in theory. In fact it is a bitcoin and not identified scheme and there is no way the big cut of false profits could ever be surrendered to a trustee, not in the bitcoin network as it is now. That is the main reason why I said what I said. If only a low percentage of users will press charges and they show how much they invested and what they withdrawn, they probably will succeed in taking it down but it can bite in their ass as they have to give up a part of their withdrawns and even further their loss.

One example is the real estate Ponzi of Vaughn, clawback was actively pursued but obviously all participants or investors (whichever you prefer) were well known by name and identity. In scrypt.cc case that is virtually non-existent and everyone can assume that the ones with the most profit will never connect their identity to their scrypt account and by that the false profits to surrender to the trustee will only exist out of the false profits of the ones taking part in the process of pressing law. So you might want to add:

Quote from: LMGTFY on February 25, 2016, 06:06:16 PM

If you do report then you may get some of your money back or have to pay a little more, and the operation may be shut down and the perpetrator fined or jailed.