Quote from: jjshabadoo on February 20, 2013, 09:41:07 PM

I am baffled as to why he would run with the coins considering the massive uptick in price?

If he indeed did not convert them to USD, it seems he would easily have funds to pay back everyone and still profit from some basic arbitrage.

I see people want their 20,30,etc. BTC, but he could make a case easily to state he offered the product pricing in "USD" and merely "accepted" bitcoins as a payment option at current conversion rates at time of sale.

This would satisfy any court in the world and it seems he could settle all and still make out.

I don't know if this helps anyone's pain, but I did get a credit card refund and since I'm currently getting a divorce and stuck with my own debts, that refund has made a pretty crappy situation much easier than losing nearly $27,000.

For the record, I initiated my refund last November.

So...at least you're not getting a divorce with young children to think about.

Bets of luck to everyone here, I hope you guys get your money back.

Most likely an action for restitution will be applicable here:

The basic purpose of restitution is to achieve fairness and prevent the Unjust Enrichment of a party. Restitution is used in contractual situations where one party has conferred a benefit on another party but cannot collect payment because the contract is defective or no contract exists. (compensatory damages)

The goal of restitution is to restore the non-breaching party to his or her pre-contract position or to "restore them" to their position. The court would normally not be interested in speculative gains or opportunity costs associated with the holding of funds, but would rather attempt to restore the non-breaching party for the the amount in value at the time the contract was entered.

The most likely valuation of the contract breach would be the value of bitcoins when the contract was entered into. If the non-breaching party sent in 100 bitcoins in, at the then present value of $7 per bitcoin, they would be entitled to $700 worth of bitcoins in return plus any incidental damages( costs incurred from legal fees or other reasonable sources needed to recover from the breached contract) and Consequential damages - lost wages, etc

If this person did indeed hold all the bitcoins, he could have easily converted them usd and covered all of the breached contracts and still had extra. Now the court may find issue with him benefiting from a willful breach so they may assign consequential damages or even special damages in that area but all of that is speculative based on the court and subject to a factual debate.