Thought this might cheer anyone involved in this up:

http://www.pof.com/viewprofile.aspx?profile_id=59326199

I also recommend you go to Amazon and destroy his book's rating by leaving 1 star.  Not like he's probably selling any of them anyway, and I bet there's a lot of plagiarism going on inside that thing.

http://www.amazon.com/Depression-2015-The-Greatest/dp/B00D7I8KPE/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top

Well I sent my refund information to this guy by Express Mail.  It bounced from the UPS store that he uses as his address back to the post office.  He has not picked it up.  Incidentally the two are literally right next to each other so he didn't have to make any extra effort to get the package.  His website is now shutdown, as is his email address.  Obviously he has no intention of sending refunds.

I'm restarting the process with my personal lawyer, and they've found a lawyer in California they will work with since they're not licensed there.  I also have talked to the assistant for one of the attorney generals my family is friends with, and I should hear back from her with information about a more direct contact path to the California Attorney General.  In the meantime I will submit the information I currently have about "Rowan Salter"

"Rowan Salter"'s real name is Aaron Arnott.  His twitter now lists his location as Tyler, TX.  Incidentally there is a person with ties there that is named Aaron Arnett.  I currently have someone researching as to whether this is a new alias of his.

Here is Mr. Arnott:
http://i.imgur.com/FNSPty3.jpg

Aaron Arnott has been married at least 4 times.

Aaron Arnott has filed for bankruptcy 3 times, as recently as 2012

Aaron Arnott has had or currently has almost $400,000 worth of federal/state tax liens filed against him

Aaront Arnott was involved in a civil suit with a judgement of over $750,000

For some reason Aaron Arnott is licensed to sell cemetery plots.  (WTF?)

He has over a half dozen businesses registered in his name, and as far as I can tell they've all failed.

Since it is now my mission to destroy this guy's name so he can't continue to scam people, I have purchased some domains.  These include:

http://aaronarnott.com
http://rowansalter.com

I also own other variations of his name.  I will make sure that anyone that searches for the name "Rowan Salter" or Aaron Arnott will find the information above, his address and most recent contact information.  In closing, none of us should be expecting a refund, and I'll update you with the plan of action once my lawyer in California gets back to me.

In the meantime, people involved with this should follow the link below and file a report:

http://www.ic3.gov/default.aspx

I forgot to note that in the meantime, people involved with this should follow the link below and file a report:

http://www.ic3.gov/default.aspx

Well I sent my refund information to this guy by Express Mail.  It bounced from the UPS store that he uses as his address back to the post office.  He has not picked it up.  Incidentally the two are literally right next to each other so he didn't have to make any extra effort to get the package.  His website is now shutdown, as is his email address.  Obviously he has no intention of sending refunds.

I'm restarting the process with my personal lawyer, and they've found a lawyer in California they will work with since they're not licensed there.  I also have talked to the assistant for one of the attorney generals my family is friends with, and I should hear back from her with information about a more direct contact path to the California Attorney General.  In the meantime I will submit the information I currently have about "Rowan Salter"

"Rowan Salter"'s real name is Aaron Arnott.  His twitter now lists his location as Tyler, TX.  Incidentally there is a person with ties there that is named Aaron Arnett.  I currently have someone researching as to whether this is a new alias of his.

Here is Mr. Arnott:
http://i.imgur.com/FNSPty3.jpg

Aaron Arnott has been married at least 4 times.

Aaron Arnott has filed for bankruptcy 3 times, as recently as 2012

Aaron Arnott has had or currently has almost $400,000 worth of federal/state tax liens filed against him

Aaront Arnott was involved in a civil suit with a judgement of over $750,000

For some reason Aaron Arnott is licensed to sell cemetery plots.  (WTF?)

He has over a half dozen businesses registered in his name, and as far as I can tell they've all failed.

Since it is now my mission to destroy this guy's name so he can't continue to scam people, I have purchased some domains.  These include:

aaronarnott.com
leasebitscam.com
rowansalterfraud.com

I also own other variations of his name.  I will make sure that anyone that searches for the name "Rowan Salter" or Aaron Arnott will find the information above, his address and most recent contact information.  In closing, none of us should be expecting a refund, and I'll update you with the plan of action once my lawyer in California gets back to me.

It seems Leasebit has decided to do the right thing and shutdown and offer refunds.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=328182.msg3657722#msg3657722

I'm assuming they meant 11/18.  It's commendable that they are (hopefully) going to refund people's money.  I have a few things to say.

First, there's no mention on the website or lease that they are selling the leases to another company.  I was never informed of that, which all customers obviously should have been.  In my communication with Rowan, he indicated Leasebit were the ones setting up the miners.  I have to assume he started telling people there was a secondary company handling it because we were all asking for pictures of our miners and he couldn't produce them.

Secondly, my miners are consecutively numbered in the 800s, and I have talked to people who's miners are in the high 8,000s.  I don't know how they decide what number to give the miners, but assuming they are doing it sequentially, it's obvious there was no chance this was ever going to happen.  ~9000 1.25THash/s miners would equal more than twice the current hash rate of the entire bitcoin network.  It would also require ~27,000 individual ASIC chips.  There's no way they had access to anywhere near that number.  Also, if they really had ~9000 leases, they would have collected over $1.25 million dollars. All of that seems extremely improbable, if not impossible.

Third, if these miners actually existed in the first place he should offer leaseholders a portion of the bitcoins they mined.  My miners should have produced over 100 bitcoins at this point.  He obviously won't/can't do that because the miners never actually existed in the first place.

I have not received this letter yet, but I'll be asking for a refund.  It's my opinion that he didn't expect anyone to actually follow through with going after him legally/criminally, and he came to his senses and realized this is something that he would never be able to get away with.  Once I receive my refund, I'll remove all of my negative postings about this guy. 

I started a new thread in the Mining forum for more exposure:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=339650.0

There is a strong possibility that Leasebit.com is a scam, and the owner (alias) “Rowan Salter” is going to commit fraud against a good number of people.  At this point no fraud has been committed against anyone I have been in contact with, but his refusal to return emails, and information about his past is not looking good for anyone involved.  The current availability of ASIC chips all but guarantee his claims as false, and his business to be a scam.

Here are some threads on the topic:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=328182.0
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=301651.0

I have significant financial, legal and political resources, so I’m going to take charge of beginning the process of gathering leaseholder’s information in order to prepare for further action if we are indeed being defrauded.  We should know for sure within the next month when leaseholders do not receive their first payment of bitcoins on December 15th.

I have spoken to some of my connections and have been put in touch with a staff member of the California Attorney General.  He’s now aware of the situation, and the has instructed me to begin gathering the information of as many potential victims as possible.  Obviously they are not officially involved yet, but my contact has promised me they will move quickly with a criminal investigation if leaseholders are not compensated in the next few months.  Thankfully, he was quite informed about bitcoins, so there wasn’t much explanation necessary for him to understand the situation.

If you are a leaseholder of a Leasebit lease and would like to be involved, please email me your name, email address, phone number and lease number to (edit: this is the correct email) report@leasebitscam.com.  For the moment that’s all the information I’ll be collecting.  If we are not paid on December 15th, I’ll ask those involved for more information.

As for civil litigation, I am in contact with my personal law firm, and they are researching their recommendation for firms in the State of California that would be a good match for a case such as this.  Unfortunately collecting any inevitable judgments will be difficult due to information we have about his finances and past legal matters.  Luckily fraud is nondischargeable in a bankruptcy, so he’ll be on the hook for payment for the rest of his life.

I would like to stress that as fas as I know, no provable fraud has actually been committed yet.  Hopefully a miracle happens, and this guy comes through.  This is extremely unlikely though, hence the preemptive action I'm taking here.  I'm not active on any other bitcoin forums, but if someone wants to post a link to this thread to spread the word, it would be appreciated.

He has already confirmed he is NOT using HashFast chips, but his claim still exists on his website.  HashFast should make an attempt to get him to remove those claims, to avoid any potential damage to their reputation.

https://twitter.com/LeaseBit/status/391206244905521152

Thanks for the help, but I have a very substantial amount of information about him already.  Again, I still won't call this a scam yet, until the actual fraud is proven.  There are a ton of addresses associated with his real name.  There are couple of possibilities as to where he's actually living right now, and hopefully I'll know for sure in the next week or two.  I have someone hired to confirm his real mailing address.  Hopefully "Rowan" won't use his decade of experience working as the CIA's Director of Korean Field Operations to evade him.  (Yes, he actually claims this.)

His claim about being in the Navy I've verified as untrue, at least under his current or previous name/aliases.  Fun fact - he's licensed to sell cemetery plots.  Maybe this was useful back in his CIA days, to help make bodies disappear?

"Rowan Salter" really needs to understand that if this is a scam, he's going to be charged criminally and not just taken to court civilly.  I am personal friends with the General Counsel of one of the largest states, and my family is friends with the Attorney General of that state as well as its neighbor.  My father is also good friends with the Governor of that state, and a good number of the Senators and Congressman due to his business.  He's the CEO and largest individual shareholder of a private company that if public would be around 150 on the Fortune 500 list.  The bank "Rowan" deposited my check into just happens to supply the company with a credit line in excess of $1 billion dollars.  He is a partner in one of the largest private equity groups, and certainly the one that is most politically connected.  He has been involved in policy decisions in the Whitehouse, and he visits every few months.  The law firm I would consult to get a civil suit going has successfully defended him against a $1 billion dollar lawsuit.

I'm not bragging or anything like that, and I'm sure throwing around numbers in the billion dollar range comes off as unbelievable, especially considering the number of internet bullshitters out there.  At this point "Rowan" probably knows which customer I am from my past posts.  He can look my family and I up, and see everything I've just said is true.  I'm more than happy to verify all of those claims with concrete proof if anyone PMs me.  I'm a grown man, and I have nothing to do with my parents financially, but I have full access to their resources and connections. 

Since I know "Rowan" is monitoring this thread, I just want him to understand that I can have an immediate direct line of communication with the Attorney General of California and basically anyone else I would need to get in contact with.  This isn't something that would drag along - the investigation would be started much quicker than I imagine is normal.  If "Rowan" is scamming us, it would be very wise of him to shut his site down, and cut his losses.  Each individual lease would be another count of mail fraud.

If this winds up being a scam, it’s really a terrible one for the owner "Rowan Salter".  I’m not saying it is a scam, because as of now there hasn’t been any proof of fraud.  I’m still hoping it’s not, and I’m going to give him the benefit of the doubt for his own sake.  It gets tough though when he posts in this thread pretending to be someone else (Aussieboy), and tries to vouch for himself.  “Recognized as a modern Jules Verne He was signed by AIRBOOKS LLC in December of 2008 to write Depression 2015.”  Airbooks LLC  is his own company, which amazingly has the same address and mailbox number as Leasebit LLC.  This address is a UPS store that receives his mail.
 
The business idea itself is sound.  However, I had and still have little to no confidence that he has access to the ASIC chips he would need.  He certainly doesn’t have access to the “Golden Nonce” chips that his website still claims he uses - but he has already admitted this after being called out by HashFast.  He obviously hasn’t supplied anyone with pictures or any proof whatsoever that these miners exist.
 
I went into this knowing there was a high chance that it would be a scam.  I researched the guy beforehand, and the only reason I went ahead with it is because I have significant financial, legal and political resources available to me, and because I enjoy destroying scammers (if he turns out to be one). If anyone is interested in that I can elaborate.  Due to the information I found about him I absolutely would not have signed a lease if I didn’t have those resources.  I will keep his information private for now, since there is no proof he's committed fraud against me yet.
 
Again, I have no proof yet of this being fraud, and this is not an accusation.  However, if it does wind up being fraud and I don’t receive any bitcoins in the next two months, this guy is not going to have a bright future ahead of him.  That’s not a joke, exaggeration or a threat; it’s just the truth.  If this is a scam, the only way he could get away with it is if he lived overseas.  He doesn’t.  Not only would he be sued for the entire future value of my leases, I can guarantee he would be charged criminally.  If it is a scam, he will have committed mail fraud, as well as other crimes.  Mail fraud is a serious federal offense, which carries serious penalties and jail time.

If this is a scam, this guy it's nuts for thinking he can get away with it.  Part of me hopes it is, because that's when the fun really begins.

I sent you a PM.  Are you able to receive them?

Requesting to be whitelisted.  I have information that can be helpful to members as far as a possible scam is concerned.  See my post here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=328182

Already have, but it's also archived at the Internet Archive.

http://archive.org/web/

I started a thread over in the Newbies section if anyone is interested:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=328182.0

I'm tracking the supposed hash rate and difficulty to see how many coins it should be mining per day.  It was supposedly online as of 11/4, so the 5 miners together should have mined over 6 bitcoins per day (6.25THash/Day).  Do I have any proof of any of this?  No.  All I do know is that I'll supposedly be getting bitcoins delivered to me on December 15th since it will absolutely hit the surety amount by then.  If I don't receive them, I'll pay one more payment for the month of January. If I don't receive anything on January 15th, then I won't be making any more payments, since they broke the lease terms.  I will then begin the process of taking legal action against them.

Honestly, it's very likely that this is a scam.  I had a lawyer look over the lease before I even signed it, and there are a few unenforceable provisions in it, specifically related to waivers and arbitration.  At the minimum they are easily bypassed.  He has also made public comments about aspects of his business that are not contained in the lease, and he would be held responsible for them .  The real kicker is that this lease is supposedly between myself and "Leasebit, LLC".  On the lease contract it states that "Leasebit, LLC" is a Delaware Limited Liability Company.  There is no entity "Leasebit, LLC" registered in Delaware, California or any state for that matter.  There is also no EIN registered.  This actually makes any lawsuit easier because I can go after him directly.  "Rowan Salter" uses a variety of different names to do business.  My lawyers have already located a home address and are aware of a few of his different aliases.

I knew most of that information before I signed the paperwork.

We also know the bank the funds were deposited into, and are currently trying to figure out the account number.  They are fairly sure the checks were deposited using one of those applications on your phone that allows you to take pictures of the check.  They're also confident that there is no business account at that bank with the name "Leasebit, LLC", which makes sense since you can't open a business account without any documentation.

Whatever the outcome of all of this is, it's going to be an interesting ride.  I've taken action against a few different companies for fraud, and won all of them.  I'm still receiving money from one of the judgements.  This would be much more cut and dry than any of those cases though, so I'll be making money even if this is a scam.

If you had one go online on 11/5 with 1.25THash/s, it would be producing 1.23 bitcoins per day.  With the price of bitcoins right now at $440, it would take 20 days to pay off the $8940.00 at the current difficulty.  It's been at this difficulty now for 12 days and will probably be 15 days total.  You would have the surety paid off a month earlier than your calculations.  Right?  Am I making an incorrect calculation?

Also, they are required to upgrade the miner with at least 3 new chips every quarter.  That actually benefits them because they're taking a 15% cut of the mined coins.

I was mistaken about one thing.  They actually did deposit my money.  I'm not sure how I missed that, but they deposited my checks on 10/21.  I actually feel better knowing they did.  At current prices, the "surety" payment will be paid within a week.  I should (hopefully) receive my first payment on December 15th for around 90 bitcoins.  We shall see.