I hear what you are saying, but I do not understand how the trust system now would prevent an anonymous person doing this again? Actually if theymos removed him directly when this went down, then it seems to me the trust system is far weaker now. Does theymos now do kyc on all DT1?
The trust system will never prevent all scams. A bit like the Government does not catch all criminals or may be guilty of illegal or immoral conduct themselves.
Scams change and the bad guys will infiltrate a system. The system is not dependent on Theymos. He can be voted out of DT (unless he uses his special ability to exclude specific people from the entire DT system).
Companies that give a lifetime guarantee go broke. Not everything comes with a consumer warning.
A system will always be a system. No system involving people is perfect. KYC will not prevent anything. It would not have stopped Bernie Madoff from being highly trusted.
The trust system will prevent some
preventable scams. Most likely the majority of the low level scams and a few sophisticated scams.
Speaking of irony and TradeFortress, he used to be one of the most trustworthy users here, theymos even added him to DT1 back when it had only a handful of manually added forum members. He was also very vocal when it came to security and scammers himself later either becoming a victim to a hack or exit scamming (probably a mixture of both). Good that the Trust system has evolved since those times.
He probably - would - still be a trusted person if he hadn't been affected by a hack.
I believe he was extremely young when he was running that business.
Business failures are problematic. They are breach of contract but may be due to an external issue out of their control.
Ultimately the money is still owed by him. He didn't get found, prosecuted or bankrupted.
I tried to interview trade fortress for an article but he didn't proceed with it.