Everyone knew that would fail. Wasn't the owner identified within 10 minutes of the site opening by Reddit?

>>6344

I don't know, what did Reddit say?

For anyone else who was wondering what this thread was about:
http://blogs.computerworld.com/cybercrime-and-hacking/23217/huge-bitcoin-heist-black-market-drug-shop-sheep-marketplace-poofs-40-million

>>6346

Media got it all wrong, withdrawals where held since 2 weeks ago for some large vendors.

I had a sick feeling it was going down a few months ago though shortly after the fall of SR, because there was 2-3 Vendors kicking off about being scammed by Sheppard bloke. (Aussie vendors).

>>6347
I guess you could say the sellers got... fleeced.

Fucking seriously though, just read this:
>Hello all,
>I am a large vendor on Sheep Marketplace, or I was until recently. I sold hard drugs in reasonably large quantities. I have around $90k locked up in the site. I owe some money to some very nasty people. The drug trade isn't like any other business, and career criminals aren't like normal people. Especially when you get further to the top. I don't want to go into any colourful details, mostly because I am terrified and I don't want to think about it. I will just say that these men are extremely ruthless. Sadly, in order to get top level product, I have to deal with people like this. Due to the way I foolishly structured my business, I now owe them a considerable sum of money. Today I was reminded that it's enough money to put my life in jeopardy. My contacts have not been understanding about this situation with Sheep market. They only sell offline themselves. I am scared. I am praying to god that somehow Sheep is not a scam and I can get the money in time for them. I have until monday evening. They have already threatened me with death. I have no doubt that they have killed before. They see it as a regrettable but necessary part of their business. I am 26 and I don't want to die. I am crying, shaking, and in tears. There is no escape.

Obviously it might not be real, but presumably someone somewhere is going through something like this as a direct result of this scam.

>>6348

This sounds real.

Guy needs to skip town, emigrate, create a new identity etc.. Too many stupid people kill themselves/get killed because they have no idea how big the world is.

>>6349
On that note, if I was Tomáš Jiřikovský I would be absolutely shitting it right now.

>>6350

Who?

>>6351

The basic overview of the findings:
Tomas owns the hosting service for the sheepmarketplace.com VPS server. There
were very few domains hosted there as well, and he controlled several of them.
The site itself seemed to be very closely connected to SMP, using the same
basic technologies and possibly a non-public API
The official excuse does not wash as sheepmarketplace.com was set up not long after
SMP itself
Tomas is the earliest known promoter of SMP (1 February 2013), and recommened SMP &
BMR over Silk Road (11 April 2013)
Tomas is a C++ QT Nette Framework Czech developer who runs Ubuntu, exactly like the
SMP developer
Tomas has complained about the memory demand of `bitcoind` on a VPS server, and discussed
the difficulties of functionality like email from hidden services
Tomas or his girlfriend are active users of Tor, as evidenced by screenshots of their
computer
it’s not clear what Tomas’s current job is 9. but it is clear that as of October, he was working on an e-commerce site which was having problems with buggy accounting of deposits
Tomas posted a .htaccess file which has the same (buggy) functionality as that of SMP
He is an accused Bitcoin scammer

To answer more directly, Tomáš Jiřikovský is the guy who seems to have nicked 96,000 bitcoins. If this is true then he's basically holding ~$100,000,000 worth of drug dealer currency and it's fair to assume the bigger fish involved take a dim view of being defrauded like this. Moreover, whether he's responsible or not, his involvement is plausible enough that he is now an attractive target for extortion.

Whoever it is, they are frantically trying to rinse their hoard, but unsurprisingly the transactions are being watched quite closely:
http://www.reddit.com/r/SheepMarketplace/comments/1rvlft/i_just_chased_him_through_a_bitcoin_tumbler_and/

This is fantastic. It's like something off the telly or out of a book.

If he is quickly and easily traced it would highlight a weakness in the secure nature of these systems.

By the looks of things the currency he held was of the weaker middle men and not the big fish? With his pooled money from the weaker ones he may be able to pull off the scam of the year by grabbing and running or getting himself some muscle. Ooooh, the possibilities!

>>6355
That's a common misunderstanding. Bitcoin does not set out to provide anonymity - bitcoin transactions are public, by design. Tying wallets to individuals is the challenge, and the problem that the scammer has is that the scale of what they've done makes them stand out. Laundering all those bitcoins safely is going to be a life's work - if they attempt to cash out any significant amount they will likely end up compromising their anonymity. In this respect they are a victim of their own success.

>>6357

If it is a life's work it is still worth it financially. There's no job out there with a salary that'll earn you $100,000,000.

>>6357

Seems a bit risky to be involved in a highly illegal business that is so public and traceable.

>>6359

Nah.. It's fine.

This is one of these moments you could have a bit of fun pretending you were the one behind it all or drop tongue in cheek questions in posts about what to do with a few million in bitcoins, but considering the frenzy and the chance of being dead within the week with a lot of very serious and upset people it's not worth it.

Would this guy ever sleep again? Surely not until he had his money buried or clear and was in another country with another name and maybe get that horrendous plastic surgery that Sean Connery got to make him look Japanese.

>>6359
In this instance it's the sheer size of the haul that makes it conspicuous. Laundering bitcoins isn't impossible, it's just time-consuming, fiddly, and has a cost attached. Bitcoin mixers/tumblers are services that take a bunch of people's bitcoins and redistribute them so that it's not known who receives which (the service takes a cut); the problem for the scammer is that trying to quickly launder tens of thousands of bitcoins in this way renders such services ineffectual, because nobody else is playing with that kind of volume. Curiously, the individual behind the scam must have known this but nevertheless put all of their coins through a tumbler called Bitcoin Fog, which leads to the suspicion that they control this service and are in fact using it to launder by way of the 2% cut.

>>6358
Yes. The scammer might just rinse a bitcoin a week for the rest of their life, assuming they don't fuck up in some other way (and that bitcoins retain reasonable value) they could live quite happily.

>>6362

In one of the reddit threads someone mentioned people who sell BTC for cash, that could be quite a lucrative way of making a living fairly untraceably.

>>6363

I wonder if there's any associated risk from handling this "hot" BTC haul?

>>6364

No doubt there is, but you probably wouldn't find that out until it was too late, if you bought them for cash.

>>6365

So no chance of being pozzed up by some angry drug dealers for being involved with them or handling them?

>>6366

>No doubt there is

With the chasers putting the fear into him and his mad effort to shift the money constantly I wonder how much will be lost in wallets he will forget about. Will that money be lost in limbo forever?

>>6368

There's quite a lot of money in "lost wallets", presumably irrecoverable. It'll be doing wonders for inflation.

Probably the most exciting thing to happen on the internet in ages. Didn't cost me a bean, so I'm happy.

Glad I didn't get around to checking this out.
Was close to my first buy on SR but it got shut down.

I guess this is the result when you expect honour among thieves. A deeply flawed system as it relied upon a great deal of honesty and strength of character in someone with such power and access.

I've seen the investigators talking about this saying he's done other scams and was planning others. It seems he was likely already a millionaire before this, which makes me wonder why take such an enormous risk and effort when he was already comfortably well off for life and was likely to be raking it in from a going concern?

>>6373
https://blockchain.info/charts/balance?address=1CbR8da9YPZqXJJKm9ze1GYf67eKAUfXwP
If this is anything to go by then he's been doing rather well for himself for some time.

>>6374

Maybe he did it for the lulz? That might be what is on his tombstone if that mob catches up with him.

>>6373

Part of an organised crime gang and pressured to draw more bank by the bosses?

>>6376
I think "mad bastard who's completely lost touch of how much danger he's in" is probably nearer the mark.

>>6377

Maybe this is the danger when you handle or see such vast sums constantly and it is in an unusual curreny like this. It might seem oddly unreal to him after a certain point. The real life nature and consequences of it might end up slipping his mind.

>>6378
>Maybe this is the danger when you handle or see such vast sums constantly and it is in an unusual curreny like this.
I think the same is true of "normal" money, past a certain point people do tend to lose touch. It leads to things like that wanker Romney offering to bet $10k on some minor political point during a debate. If you've got $100 million behind you then $10k really is nothing.

The same thing happens with risk, I guess - you become desensitised to it. I'm still not able to understand why someone would steal $100 million from very dangerous people when they already had tens of millions going, but I'm sure it seemed like a calculated move to the individual involved.

>>6379

Perhaps this also highlights the danger of allowing your country to be run by this kind of person in government. They will be totally out of touch with almost everyone in the public and their problems, worries and life and so unable to judge the impact or significance to the populace of any changes.

>>6380
Like the kind of person who will order a burger from a gauche restaurant to their office and then post a picture of it online, in order to try and show how down with Johnny Prole they are?

So... is he still alive?

>>6385

Ask the Russian mafia men waterboarding him non-stop if his heart has given up yet.

>>6348

Has the poster of this updated his situation?

>>6387
Yep.

>Hello again,
>I just wanted to give you guys an update on my situation. Things are OK, for now.
>I went to meet with one of my contacts from the syndicate today. He is the boss of the guy who threatened me. I explained the situation to him and showed him many websites online that discussed the situation with Sheep Marketplace. He is satisfied that I am not bullshitting him, and that has bought me a bit of time. He says I shouldn't worry about my life, as long as I am clearly trying to make things right then he is happy. He even apologised for the threat on my life.
>I am going to continue selling product, but only until my debt is paid off. Then I will be getting out of this business and doing more legitimate business. I can't handle another crisis like this again.
>I am glad to be able to report good news to you about this situation.
>Thank you very much to all those who wished me well and offered their help, in particular the people who got in touch to offer me material help and a place to stay. I'm glad that I won't have to take you up on that, but it says some great things about human nature that people would reach out like that.
>And thank you to everyone who commented. Except the two assholes who were laughing at me, and the guy who accused me of trying to create a sob story to get people's money. Fuck you. :)

http://www.reddit.com/r/SheepMarketplace/comments/1rsfi2/i_will_be_killed_if_sheep_turns_out_to_be_a_scam/

http://www.reddit.com/r/SheepMarketplace/comments/1s2upf/the_sheep_market_scam_address_does_not_actually/cdu7ctj
So this was mildly amusing.

Also, the guy who was suspected of being behind Sheep Marketplace got interviewed in a Czech newspaper article but it's not particularly interesting. He was still alive and apparently unhurt as of the 8th, anyway, just in case anyone was wondering.

>>6396

So he has got away with it? The perfect crime after near cornering the BTC market? What a lad.

Bumping my own thread with the hope of more gossip on the subject.

>>6438
The internet being what it is, most people forgot about it almost immediately. I've not found anything interesting about it since >>6396.