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Even if you could show that its the first time they ever cared about the forum or ban evaders, it still could be explained by happenstance and Im not going to neg rep them for it.
^^You don't find it anything wrong if one member is an alt of a user who has been banned from this forum?
Not in terms of trust not. Its for mods/admins to decide how to handle this. I actually know at least one user that came back after a perma ban and did solid contributions to the forum. AFAICT it was at least known to one global mod. I dont want to derail this any further as I currently have little time to keep up with all PMs and read up on the needed threads. All Im saying is: it wouldnt be the first time that admins are lenient with someone perma-banned in the past. It all depends how they behave I guess.
I have a question here and anyone wanting to clarify this would be much appreciated. I have read this entire matter over and over before to take a clear stance. To my opinion, Lauda was and is someone with a good level of contribution to this forum, but it is my opinion.
I agree.
There are a few questionable points, and there are some that are not (again IMO):
1.- Was it an "extortion" attempt or a "sting operation" attempt?
I dont see a difference between the two, in terms of wrongness. Esp. considering extortion and 'gathering information'. See the lengthy post by QS above as to why the information gained is unlikely to be reliable.
As far as I can understand, it was a failed sting operation which is, in many law enforcement jurisdictions, allowed, legal and ethical. Here in Italy where I live, for example, there are even some interesting TV shows recording "sting operations" (failed or succeed depending on the luck) and people simply approve those sting operations eating popcorns while they watch at criminal being caught. See i.e. "Striscia la Notizia" or "Le Iene" movies which are very popular and both broadcasted on national TVs. Here you can see sting operations against any crimes: tax evaders, drug dealers, money laundering and counterfeit, prostitution and so on. I don't think Italy is so far away from other forum member's jurisdictions, isn't it?
Its illegal in germany and it can even lead to lower sentence for the criminal. Police may try to
convince someone to do a crime though under certain circumstances.
It would never happen, indeed, that people would believe or mix up the real criminal with the sting operation team (sorry Zeroxal I'm talking in general as I don't know you, nor I have facts that would bring me to understand you committed any crime, nor I'm interested in). How is it possible to turn the sting operation team into the actual criminals if they fail?
I dont think of Lauda nor TMAN as criminals, but they still did something wrong. In fact its a level of wrong that deserves a punishment, hence the rating. Based on the good intention Im willing to change it to neutral after some time has passed. Without me knowing Lauda good enough to understand why they did it there would be little discussion at all, as anyone else in their situation could use their 'get out of jail'-pgp message or not if successful.
Again: was it an extortion attempt or a sting operation attempt? (Have I asked it enough already?)
I know, though, there are some countries sting operations are not legal, not allowed. Reading from Wikipedia Sweden should be one of them.
The only exception a sting operation would become a crime is the case the "victim" would not have committed any crime without being solicited: I am not a drug dealer, but if you offer me 10M dollars I might become...
I am open to any discussion about this point, and I'm not trying to defend Lauda at any cost. Also: I'm putting all my efforts to ignore the fact that out of the latest ten threads open in the last week on this matter, ten were open by Qs (feel free to correct me if these stats are wrong). I'd just appreciate a transparent, fair and honest discussion over this point, without personal grunges.
Shorena is the one that apparently took a stance on this so, an answer from him would be an appreciated priority: "Part of a failed/faked extortion in order to gather information about a possible scammer."
What is exactly in your opinion a "failed/faked extortion in order to gather information about a possible scammer":
1.- An extortion
2.- An attempt to spot a possible scammer
I am confused by this rating because people like me rely on you DT members to ponder about our stance on many matters on this forum: if you think it was an extortion in the attempt to gather money from Zeroxal, please provide me evidence of this and I will change my rating on Lauda too. If it was an attempt to spot a possible scammer, why you consider that a neg rep worth?
I dont think Lauda wanted money, no. It was still an extortion though. I could probably improve the wording of the rating, but I also dont want to change it to keep track of the time. If you are unsure about a DT rating, follow the reference and see if it makes sense to you. These lead here and its the thread I will discuss this in, for exactly that reason.
Whether or not zeroxal is a scammer is yet to be seen, I have not seen any convincing evidence yet. They did run a ponzi, yes, but they also used escrow and covered all loses. My stance vs. ponzis is probably well known, but I think its a stretch to leave a neg for this. All the 'hacker' accusations to me sounds like a teenager, beeing a teenager. DDoS your own school, sure thats illegal, but Im not going to make a big fuss about it. Similar to the tax evasion, thats nothing I condone, but I also have no way to tell whether its actually true or whether they are just asking a hypothetical question. We probably get one thread a month about how to use bitcoin to evade paying taxes in germany. Most just mock the questioner. Whenever I ask for more convincing evidence I get no answers, so unless this changes I cant leave a neg for zeroxal. From what I read, zeroxal showed proof to several people that they didnt evade taxes and their dox is known to the same people. If they had anything solid, they could just contact police.