Salty -
I guess if we are trying to get rid of the philosophy of ponzis, and get straight to the question, does Dooglus owe anyone money?
That depends on the jurisdiction of a court in which litigation is potentially taken against dooglus, as well as the tort laws in such jurisdiction, however I would err on the side of "
yes".
The allegation in the OP is that dooglus (helped) create a product that was designed to ultimately steal from others. This means that anytime any ponzi operator had previously used his script to steal money from others, that he would likely be considered to be an accomplice to such theft. According to
this, there is no distinction between an accomplice and the person who actually commits the tort, although it is likely that the accomplice would not be liable for 100% of the damages.
A Gun Manufacturer can
potentially (Page 2, last paragraph), be held liable if they
knowingly sell a gun to someone they know will subsequently use said gun to commit a crime of violence (or a drug trafficking crime).
A bartender can be potentially held liable if s/he knowingly (or should have known) servers a drink to a drunk person, and said drunk person subsequently kills someone while driving while still drunk.
Both of the above examples are very similar to dooglus creating a product whose only potential use is to eventually scam people.
I moved it to Reputation anyway, because reviewing it all again, it looks like a real longshot to be calling Dooglus a scammer by possible involvement with a non specific thing. It isn't unreasonable for people to question Dooglus' person or reputation for something like this I suppose. Not that moderators are here to arbitrate scam reports, but unless I'm mistaken, it doesn't really look like this is a scam report, rather a warning that in your opinion Dooglus has been involved in a moral gray area. I get what you are trying to say by association, but a lot of this is opinion. First on the topic of ponzis, some people think they are a scam, others do not. Not that my personal opinion matters here, but I'm using my opinion as an example. Ponzi's are not a scam by default, just because the people playing the game end up losing in the end, that doesn't mean that there isn't a calculated risk that players can take with the hope to make money. In my opinion, ponzis with express written rules (like all thousand ponzis I've seen pop up) are not scams in themselves, nor when they close down, as long as they do so in a way that abides by what they have stated to the public. I don't think of ponzis any differently than dice sites. That said, assuming that the ponzis that used Dooglus' source were in fact scams I'm still not really convinced that he would be liable by association. Not only was his association to fix bugs, but he's not really directly liable. If godaddy makes someone a website and they do something illicit with it, godaddy isn't at fault. To modify your gun manufacturer comparison, in this example Dooglus isn't the guy who manufactured the gun, hes the guy who fixed the crooked barrel that the manufacturer produced.
The biggest point I want to stress here, is my opinion asside, even looking from both my perspective and counter my perspective, via mine there is no scam accusation, and via counter, the scam accusation is incredibly shakey at best. From both perspectives, I'd say what is really in question here is a moral question as to how people view Dooglus' actions, which would belong in reputation rather than scam accusation. If what I've said is wrong and I've misinterpreted what you are going for, please feel free to move the thread back to scam accusations. I'm solely trying to help you put your thread in the correct board.
Frankly I don't care about the outcome for either of you, I have no stake in any of this, short of making sure the thread is in the location it belongs.