Quote from: Quickseller on June 07, 2018, 03:27:18 AM

A disproportionate number of VIPs ran a business on the forum -- they likely donated the 50 BTC as a way of giving back to the community -- and many businesses failed for one reason or another, and failed businesses often have similar characteristics of a scam.

I agree. A failed business is not a "scam". But people who lose money or assets don't see it that way. I agree that most of the VIPs took risks and ran businesses and most of them with a large degree of success.

Quote from: Quickseller on June 07, 2018, 03:27:18 AM

The barriers to entry into most "industries" were very low back then, a lot of community members were more trusting with their coins than they probably should have been, and it took longer than normal for things like poor management and poor security practices to be exposed.

Hindsight is great for detecting security lapses. Management of chaos is difficult. Startups and pioneering technology has unknown risks that become obvious with hindsight.

Quote from: Quickseller on June 07, 2018, 03:27:18 AM

I suspect that some of the VIPs who have only one or two posts likely were involved in some kind of shady dealings and have subsequently deleted their posts to cover their tracks....this may have been the result of outright scams, or it may have been the result of poor management and/or deals that went poorly.

I suspect the ones that only made a couple of posts are alts of other accounts or left the scene after an exchange collapsed.

Quote from: Fiord on June 07, 2018, 06:02:45 AM

As far as I know, it's only proved that pirateat40 was criminal, but he was caught, and did 18 months in prison, so he probably does not have a millions, although maybe he could get rich after that, because to run such a scheme as he did you need to be at least an intelligent guy.

And as for the rest, Mt. Gox, and TradeFortress has not been proven to be scammers, but they are of course to blame that many people have suffered and lost a lot of money.

Karpeles has a previous French conviction "https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1227216-karpeles-english.html"

Karpeles has spent time in prison and is currently still facing charges for unauthorized loans and charged with fraud and embezzlement, and manipulating the Mt. Gox computer system (willy bot) to increase the balance in an account (not related to the missing 650000 bitcoins).
MtGox history

But the case has not yet been tried so not yet proven.

Despite of the massive catastrophic disaster when MtGox collapsed - MtGox was also responsible for some of the success of bitcoin and Karpeles did many good things.

The willy bot - if proven would have been responsible for artificially inflating the price of bitcoin.

Quote from: Foxpup on June 07, 2018, 06:11:38 AM

I suspect they figured that VIP membership would make them appear more legitimate, so as to lure in more victims. That's actually why I never bought VIP membership: I don't want any guilt by association. Undecided

Other than perhaps the exception of a few - I'd disagree. I don't think there was much of an ulterior motive. 50 BTC was about US$250 at the time.