>You mentioned Officer Gomez at Ingleside, and if someone is assigned to your case you will update.

When.

>Do you think we should write to Officer Gomez now, or wait a bit till an office is assigned?

Still wait.

>I assume this Officer Gomez is in charge of the area around which Patrick lives, correct?

One of the officers, yes.

>Why you think filing the case in hometown helps?

Because it is part of the proceedure in North America.

>Did you consider filing the case in U.K. where the business is registered?

Already filed, but nothing much will happen to anyone in the UK. The police there are not educated. Its a few weeks training and off you go. The UK, in fact, is a very good place to be setting up frauds or indeed, committing any kind of crime - and if you want to be even more certain of getting away with it you join the police first.

>And do you think of confronting Patrick personally, so he has to answer a question or two? Since it is a matter of life and death a confornation is worth it. He may not say much, but sometimes you know things by checking what is not there.  Many are not living in the U.S. like you to have the convenience of visiting him.

Yeah, the problem with this is it then introduces a grey area in court about how reasonable the accusers are. This is a greedy murderous thief who has gambled away Buddy's life. He is going down for the rest of his and I don't want to do anything to endanger that.

Talking of danger, there will be several people who would like to see Strateman strung up from the nearest lamppost, probably several more than that if they suspect him of the Mt Gox theft - and he has been known to sit in the support channels of his rivals looking for vulnerabilities, plus there was no love lost there, plus as I recall they were hanging on to 'his' stolen millions. Whether he did it or not he makes a good patsy.

So this is not someone who can simply walk to the store for a pint of milk. He or his mother can quite reasonably assume anyone approaching them mentioning bitcoins is going to start pulling out fingernails and we already know Strateman is capable of killing. Plus what do they reasonably have to lose? They are already looking at life in prison. I wouldn't recommend approaching these murderous little fucks as much for your own safety as anything else.

So, I already filed LOCALLY, in Georgia in November. That case was forwarded, as per American police procedure, to Officer Gomez at Ingleside in San Francisco, California (a different state than Georgia). In a short while a specialist fraud investigator will be on the case. At this point it would be handy if there were police reports already filed LOCALLY, ready to be forwarded, about more than one of their scams so we can use the organized crime process and recover whatever we are able to.

Once Strateman realised I was expecting more than 50 bitcoins he refused to communicate further. Emails to his lawyer are read, and passed on, but he ignores these too. I'm not going to have better luck confronting him in the street and the chances of me resisting the urge to plaster the little shit all over the pavement, thereby destroying the case, are minimal.

He is the one going to be in a tiny cell, with no computer, staring through the bars on the window all day, if he is lucky enough to have a window, while being chased through his dreams by a little golden dog every night, for the rest of his life. Not me.

Unless I get my bitcoins. Right now.

I think an arrest will happen long before a damages award.

Still no bitcoins and the police are now involved. See the link in my sig for updates. If you are missing bitcoins from any of Strateman's and Taaki's ventures, Intersango, Bitcoinica etc. now is a good time to file your police report in whatever country or state you are in if you have not done it already, and I will do my best to get your property returned to you under California's seizure laws. You do not have to be American, and this will not cost any significant amount of money so far as I can tell, unless you want to travel to San Francisco and give evidence in court, in person. Also we have been on the phone to the police in SF quite a lot, but I don't know if everyone will need to phone quite so much now everything is underway.

I am going to be doing all this anyway, so I thought it might be a good idea to pool our efforts. I understand not everyone has the resources to sue, and the law already has provision for stolen property to be returned to the rightful owner anyway.

Within the next few weeks I will give out contact details of the officer in charge in the US. At that time, you may get your local police to fax or email your local complaint, and you will be able to forward it yourself as well, to be on the safe side.

If your local police are not very professional or educated, you might prefer to write in or email. Make sure you get some reference number to prove you put in a complaint, and keep a copy of your complaint safe as this is what the investigating officer in the US will be seeing.

Checking in again to say the first message in this thread has been updated, now would be a good time to file police reports in your own country or state (don't worry Brits... You can do it by post or email).

Get a copy, get a crime number or other reference and a contact name at your police station. Save these. You will need them in a month.

Here is a copy of a message I just sent by PM to a UK resident who was asking me if it was worthwhile to report this to the police in the UK.

I thought it might be helpful. We are closing in, and I predict an arrest by late summer.

..........

Hi!

Yes, report it and get a crime number. You might prefer to report it by letter or email to Scotland Yard than explain virtual currency to your average PC. It doesn't matter whether or not the police understand in the UK what is going on or not, just get your letter in now.

In about a month you can request Scotland Yard forward the complaint to a particular officer in California whose contact details I will provide.

Then email it in yourself anyway.

You should be pleased to know that cops in the US are a lot more professional than those in the UK. They do tend to be a little overwhelmed though. There is an officer in charge of the Carole and Patrick Strateman case right now, but a specialist investigator will getting involved in about 3 weeks.


Icicle


And I forgot to mention - emphasize the PROPERTY aspect. This way California's seizure laws can be used to return your coins to you.

Patrick Strateman and his mother decided to kill my little girl's dog.

They know all about how I need the bitcoins for his heart operation, stole them and kept them. I don't want them dead. I want them to explain to my daughter why adding a few more thousands to their stolen millions was more important than her dog's life. Look her right in the eye.

These are the killers. They will be going to jail.

Just checking in to say things are moving along.

Hope we can get Taaki arrested too.

My request was october 2013, around the 23rd. There is no request ID because the request was made via a support ticket. I have been locked out of my account, reason: no photo ID on record. I sent a high resolution passport scan in that same day. All tickets have gone unanswered since, I am still locked out of my account and still have no bitcoins.

The matter is in the hands of the fraud department at Ingleside Police Station in San Francisco.

You have had a response within the past month?

I am still locked out of my account. Have been since October. The police are dealing with it and my dog sleeps all day.

It would appear his mother is up to her ears in this.

Amir, nice to see you. Now don't you have access to a backup database of Intersango if anything happens to your friend Patrick?

Does insanity count?

And Patrick is SO like that. The pair of you are. You think we don't know where the 'crowd-funding' is coming from for your new ventures next year?

Strateman stole my bitcoins, you helped him. You are keeping your head down and protecting Strateman because you don't yet have your payout. But there isn't going to be any payout. After they've done with him, the Americans will be requesting your presence next.

If I were you, I'd hand over my bitcoins then I'd run and hide down a deep dark hole knowing I can find you anyway. If I could find Norman hiding out in Vienna and Belgrade I can find you, and if you think that doesn't include East London squats, dude, I've gigged in most of them.

Right now, all you've got is Special Branch up your ass you dog murdering bastard. It is going to get so very very much worse, after extradition.

Dank, he is hanging in there, now the other dog has had an embolism and the oxygen starvation has killed off a lot of his spinal cord, between sorting that out and dealing with the police here, I have my hands full! The police thing is almost on autopilot now, but the medical stuff is what is taking up my time. It is probably best if I don't post much about what is going on anyway, for legal reasons, but everyone who has had their coins stolen can rest assured I'm on it, and won't be off it again until an optimal solution has been obtained.

What I am wondering - no reason but medical curiosity really, is how psychopaths find each other like this to collaborate in their evil schemes. Is there a club where they get together? Some secret handshake? Most of the serious villains I've known have simply grown up in the family business, but Strateman, Norman and Taaki?? What unholy alignment of planets gathered those three under the same roof/IRC channel at the same time?

Kiddy fiddlers have forums and websites and before that, underground printed mail-shots. How did these three each know, upon meeting, they had met another psychopath?

And yes Amir, you are a psychopath. The most classic of the three. The charm is studied. It is an important part of the act. Keep it up honeypie, it'll help no end where you're going.

So will the KY I'll send you.

I'm new to blockchain forensics, but how about looking for transactions of that amount where the blockchain is first notified of the transaction from an IP address in Cork?

And commiserations.

Well, my bitcoins will be back.

Yeah, Amir is the most likeable person I'm ever going to have arrested. I mean, I read what he says and I think 'right on man!' Then I remember what his refusal to stand up to Strateman is costing one little dog.

That is the problem with popular, highly sociable people. No quality control.

Oh I see what you mean. I'm not advocating violence of course, but someone owed their share of that missing $50,000,000 might decide to take a little direct action of their own and not be too diplomatic about it. I don't want to be getting the blame for that, so the bounty is off. Which is a shame, because if someone had been able to politely persuade him to hand back what isn't his, and save a young dog, they would have earned it.

Which leads us back to jail time. Perhaps, if he hands over a few passwords, he'll get less of it? Mitigating behavior is taken into account in sentencing I think. Or it is where I come from and our two systems are similar. A forfeiture order would do it as well, but then of course he would be sat in jail for who knows how long on contempt of court before handing over the passwords. Quite a pickle :/

It takes so long! If Buddy is even alive by then his heart will be so damaged the operation will be pointless.

I wonder how fast this could come to trial? I'll ask the fraud guy from the police.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=217635.msg2341595#msg2341595

Over three bitcoins.

Guys and girls,

I'm doing everything I can think of here, asking him, telling him, contacting his colleagues, relatives, his lawyer, and asking them too. The FBI, and talking to the police again today.

A policewoman yesterday said "you need to throw his ass in jail, girl!" That was encouraging

Yet I might not have thought of everything, and I don't have much time to get this done.

I am thinking of putting a bounty on the safe return of my bitcoins to a wallet address I specify. Anyone have any thoughts on this?

Me too, despite clicking on no phishing urls before my account got hacked.

At least one phishing PM was sent out from my account to a member called 'Warsawbit'.

While my account was in its hacked state a long PM sent to me mentioning Patrick Strateman (Intersango / Bitcoinica) vanished!  

It was sent by someone called LordMaura (something like that anyway - the last bit was a place in north India). He had signed up just that day, his time zone was about right for the UK and his message was full of stuff I already know, pointing me to a thread I had already posted in.

That PM, which seems to be the sole reason for him signing up, then vanished like the morning mist, and my email had been changed to a mailinator one. Did that happen to anyone else?

I have my chief suspects. You will never guess where I had originally used the password I reused when signing up here.

So I'm sorry, but this hack might have been sort of my fault.

Hacking attempt on my account. A successful one.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=331881.msg3582412#msg3582412

Haha! I see where you are going with this.

Hey, Strateman said somewhere that 'if something happened to him' a couple of other people had access to the wallet backup, or something like that. Might have been talking about Bitcoinica.

Does 'something' include going bonkers?

Walks? Ajax.. The little so-an-so escaped for the 15th time at Halloween! The whole family is getting fitter with these 'walks' -or as I prefer to think of them 'forced marches' - around the neighborhood

One time it was 6 am in the middle of the sort of thunderstorm you only see in Georgia. I was barefoot, half-dressed, soaked and freezing and everyone else had given up and gone home while I'm still tracking him through woods and shit with critters in it I've never even seen before, and snakes, then through every back yard (way for the crazy English lady to meet her neighbors for the first time) while Herbert (his Bad Dog name) was having quite the adventure.

You should see this dog move. He flies!

Those days are over though before I'm the one dropping dead of heart failure. He has an electronic tracker now. You creep up, grab him, job done and back to bed.

TV, I think, what you are sensing here is my own sense of disbelief too. I don't even believe it and I am 49 years old and seen some very strange things in my time. I'm the one it happened to and I wake up with that creepy feeling. Also I'm changing my mind. I thought it was control-freakery behind this, but now I'm tending towards my bitcoins having been stolen long before I tried to retrieve them. He hasn't said anything because what can he say?

He didn't expect an English woman who bought coins in 2011 to try getting them back all of a sudden in 2013? Maybe that's it. He didn't think they would be missed. That's my current best guess. He has a dog himself and refuses to travel abroad because of it.

Now I know psychopaths can display a mawkish sentimentality towards kittens etc. that fills the gap where real empathy should be, but still. A dog lover who won't leave his own dog but will kill mine? Something is wrong with this picture, I quite agree.

Something has happened. Something he can't talk about. If he hasn't pinched the coins there's an Unknown Unknown going on.

Strateman, if there is something I need to know and you can't tell me - there are email services that send self-destructing read-once emails. Whatever you want to tell me will never be told to another living soul and if I think the reason is plausible and a good one, this thread will vanish. You may also send such a communication via a third party.


Tulak,

Buddy looks fine to me again. He is sleeping at my feet right now.

[Anyone doing healing visualizations on Buddy, skip the rest of this message!]

The vet gave him pills to slow his heart and I monitor his heartrate a few times a day. It is getting worn out though and it is already human-sized.

Imagine a circle of garden hose with a pump circulating the water. Now imagine someone treads on the hose just as it exits the pump. It is a strain on the pump and there is variously too much and too little water in different places. You can reduce the pressure using vasodilators (increasing the diameters of the pipe away from the pump) but these can lead to a sudden fatal drop in volume at the pump itself. It needs the water as there is fuel in it.

The drugs will extend his lifespan, by slowing the pump, but the lack of flow and increased pressure on the chambers in his heart cause enlargement. Enlargement means you can pump more volume, but after a while the elasticity of the cells is lost due to the constant strain they have been under for months and months so that contractions are weaker. This is the change from 'compensated' to 'decompensated' heart failure. It is the decompensated (inelastic) stage that kills. I should imagine you can detect decompensation via comparing systolic and diastolic pressure readings, but I haven't had the vet do that yet as there isn't anything we can do about it anyway except get him an angioplasty.

I don't know how much time he has left. These dogs simply keel over dead unexpectedly. Untreated, by age two I think. Sometimes you can revive them, sometimes not. He has been revived once.  I do know if the operation is to be performed, it should be done before he is two years old and he is about at two years now. I think if it is not performed, the accumulated damage renders it pointless anyway. I have heard of these dogs living several years on medication and the world record holder (so far as I know of) lived five years longer than other dogs, but Buddy has such a severe constriction you can take his heart-rate just by sitting next to him, it is so loud, and sounds like a washing machine. It is a grade six murmur. The scale doesn't go any higher.

He is a lively little thing though. In fact, I am going to go hunt for some doggy tranquilizers. It should give him extra time.