It is also possible that BitSpend employees have been arrested for "money laundering" charges for appearing as a currency conversion service to the authorities, in a similar situation to what happened with MtGox initially.
If they have been arrested for frivolous money laundering charges, it may take much longer, as their equipment may have been ceased as well(?).
No arrest records for Bitspend employees have been found. User
notforlackoftrying commented the following on
this post to /r/Bitspend on reddit:
Based on a full pastie I just saw with full dox, and almost hoping that all of the above is true and not that they just up and walked away, I decided to do a search of all arrests in Broward County. I found 0... zilch on the last name Whelchel, Welchel, ect. Based on that, Im going with your option 3. I dont think theyd put themselves in harms way on option 2 with kids in their house. Option 1 yields no results. They have NOT been arrested according to Broward County Public Arrest Records:
http://sheriff.org/apps/arrest/results.cfmI then checked Dade County.. same results 0
https://www2.miami-dadeclerk.com/Public-Records/Search.aspxI checked all of Broward County, which is a HUGE chunk of south florida. Then I checked Dade/Monroe. That about covers all of so fl., all the way through to Key West. So, unless Whelchel is an alias, which I dont think so, because Eric J. Whelchel has a previous record, was something insignificant. It is definitely him, same d.o.b., everything. Whelchel IS his legal last name. I even checked federal prisons on a hunch that FiCEN guidelines might have resulted in a federal arrest. Nothing. We now have a few possibilities.
1) They are in hiding thinking they may be subject to arrest in the near future.
2) They are embarrassed and do not want to come forward without having worked out the kinks. There is nothing new to report on because the banks still have frozen funds.
3) They simply walked away, was more than they bargained for. Not enough employees to carry the workload, ect.
4) They had every intention of a scam.