@Synchronice,
Other mixers may be very willing to work with "bad money" and not think twice or have connection to states like NK (even if unconfirmed). So that's why and how they succeed. Judging by the number of refunds we issued with the help of minerjones it was basically only the signature participants who had funds on whirlwind.
Casinos are easier, they just need to be seen and players will eventually come. I'm not even sure that the pool of users on bitcointalk who are in need of or actively use mixers is particularly high.
No mixer partners with blockchain analyzes companies to filter incoming transactions, so, that means, mixers accept every money and there will be bad money at some point. So, we can't speak whether whirlwind had to work with bad money or not, that's the whole purpose of mixer, to protect privacy.
But now all of these makes me question, how effective are signature campaigns for mixers? We can confirm that signature campaigns worked for chipmixer damn well. Whirlwind also had ex chipmixer participants and a lot of great users. Logically, they should have succeed because there are other signature campaigns, some of them with good and some of them with not so good users, in terms of quality posts, and these campaigns still manage to run successfully for up to a year or more. If signature campaigns aren't effective, then what's the point of paying thousands of dollars every week? With such a big budget, one could buy ad space and articles on many very popular websites.
It makes perfect sense to escrow money to gain trust and once you catch a good sum, then just leave the business. I would even say that this is safer option than to run a mixer honestly for a long time.
By the way, used bitcointalk's search option and seems this is not the first case when someone does this:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2165755.0Bitmixcoin escrowed some money to gain trust, then ran signature campaign to promote their business and gain popularity, then one day they scammed everyone.
I don't know if I am too hard with whirlwind but you know, negativity comes first in this world where everyone lies.