The very nature of this industry leaves the door wide open for customers to be taken advantage of in all kinds of ways.  At the very least, customers have been short changed by the majority of these services, including preorders on mining equipment.  The bar is set so low that someone could have easily come along when PB Mining did, create a nice looking website and attract plenty of customers.  Customers who did not demand the kind of transparency and trustworthiness that you would expect and require in more established businesses such as in banking and the stock market.  Customers who were easily hypnotized by the novelty and hype of something that is relatively new, and seemed to hold a lot of promise.