Hey, I dont know how to PM on this website but I made an account on here just to say that since last night I have been reading through all of your posts on the rigged thread and many times have been in tears laughing at your content. You put so much effort into roasting your victims by fully reading and understanding their wild claims which adds another layer of hilarity to how you refute them. There was one in particular where you quoted a guy and said something like "So the fish is in on the rig?" and I still as I type this am laughing about it.

I just want you to know that your writing and long time effort posting in the rigged thread is greatly appreciated and you bring a lot of value to internet forums and culture.

just a shame it takes you 20+ terrible posts in each thread arguing against the obvious before you finally read the thread properly and come around

Maybe, but so what?

Everyone has "good intentions" when it's easy.

The test of a person's character is what they do when things are hard

well if everything said by op is true, given it is all true then you were all bullying him.

I I admit that I am too naive in general.
But there is still a chance everything is true and poor op
was in very bad place and the backer didnt give a crap even harming him more.

Yeah its true. people shouldnt be too naive. I had to learn this before.

you may be naive, but what i am referring to is you jumping both feet into a discussion without having either read or comprehended key parts of the content already in the thread. is it that you don't read it or more of a comprehension thing? you did same thing in postle thread and other threads too iirc

Agreed, Washoe, we all admire your enthusiasm but you're so god dammed eager to post is like you're not even sure what your position and you figure by the time you finish typing you'll have some ideas formed.

Please take some time to chill instead of posting every passing thought. It's tilting the hell out of everyone.

http://pokerscam.rip/form.php?formid=2

I think something to remember here is that just because someone is attempting to bring someone to justice, that doesn’t make it justified. There is a reason we entrust the government with criminal justice. It’s not perfect, but it’s better than mob rule. There are much better, more just ways to go about correcting people’s behavior than conscripting an unregulated racket of mobsters to blackmail people into collecting debts.

There was a time where people were sent to debtors’ colonies and subject to corporal punishment over debts. I’m not saying that’s what this is, I’m just pointing out that there is a limit to how ruthless society should be over collecting people’s debts.

I mean lets say that OP does pay the site 200. Why can’t they ask for another 200 to take the picture down, as interest? What’s to stop them from never taking down that page and just continually asking for more money? With no oversight, the risk of abuse is magnified.

Steal money, blame others.
Try a different approach.

i really do have a lot of trouble following some people’s arguments itt.

op came here to find sympathy for his actions and in order to blame the scammed backers for putting up a site like this.

i dont really think its up for debate whether sites like this breach the law. of course those sites are illegal and the people creating them are well aware of that. there is a possibility that the creators face legal consequences for that.

op did not act as foresighted. he got into a gambling contract, shared all of his personal info with his backers and didn’t think these backers would create such a website if op decided to steal their money. he was not aware of the fact that his actions may have consequences like the ones he was being presented in this case.

are the consequences op faced justified? maybe, but in the end that is irrelevant. if op wants to find justice he can surely go to court with this. however coming to a gambling website and discussing a backing situation where your reputation is more important than any (unenforceable) contract and asking people for sympathy after you stole your backers money is probably always going to end up the way it did in this thread. most people will side with the backers and the ones that dont are usually too lazy to read the thread entirely.

I hope this was meant as some kind of extreme example, or as hyperbole, and not an actual description of what's going on with this site.

I've seen some interesting issues raised in this thread that call the legitimacy of the site into question - this isn't one of them. This is just silly.

I've seen numerous people contend this, and I'm curious just where you see the obvious breach of the law.

If someone rips me off for $1,000, I have irrefutable proof of it, and create a public web page saying as much and outing the person, is this illegal in your view? If it isn't, where have they crossed the line in your view?

I'm not suggesting that the site isn't (or is) illegal; I would just like to understand what specifically people think is illegal about it.

That essentially IS what's going on here.

Not really. This is actually exactly what happens with these types of sites.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/...rtion-charges/

There's a reason why the owners of this website are operating in a location with very little oversight over what they publish on the internet. Anybody with the lack of scruples to open an extortionist mugshot website is a shady character at best and a criminal thug at worst

The pesky innocent until proven guilty legal concept. Unless you have been convicted in a court of law of theft you can't publish x is a thief its defamation of character.

You're not the first one to claim that, but I've yet to see any evidence of it. There's no indication on the site that they'll take information down upon payment, and given that OP supposedly received no response when attempting to pay the money back, their actions (or lack thereof) would seem consistent with that not being the purpose of the site.

I'm not sure what your point here is. It looks like the mugshots site was nothing but an extortion site from day one. Pokerscam might be

1) A site like mugshots, but doing a very poor job of extortion so far.
2) An attempt to get people to pay scammed money back.
3) A site intended to expose scammers and nothing more.

Just because it could become 1 doesn't mean it shouldn't be permitted. It's not like a site needs to be 2 or 3 first before it can become 1. I can open up an extortion site tomorrow; there is no slippery slope here.

Far beyond a shady character, but this paragraph belongs in a thread about an extortionist mugshot site.

It can't be defamation of character if it's true. Although I'm not sure if you're addressing the idea of my own web page about someone that ripped me off, or pokerscams. If the latter, at what point do you think they're breaking the law?

Local government municipalities publish lists of people who are delinquent in paying property taxes. Are they defaming all of those people?

Does it actually label him a thief, or are they saying they are owed a debt and he hasn't paid it back? There is a big difference. I know the OP says they call him a scammer and a thief, I but I don't know whether that's just his takeaway from them publishing his info and saying he hasn't paid back his debt or they actually used those words. I haven't actually gone to the site, nor do I want to.

If you have an agreement with someone in writing and they haven't fulfilled their end of it, you can state that fact without making any judgments on their guilt or innocence regarding violation of the law.

Its not true as they haven't been convicted of theft as far as we know. Looking at this pokerscam site they never claim any of them are thief's though so its a moot point all they say is they are scammers.

Alot of the scammers on that site have their full address published sometimes over $50 and zero proof of any wrong doing. Have seen on several occasions during these sort of discussions posting peoples home address is a big no no in any civilised jurisdiction with possible criminal repercussions.

Tomorrow i could create my own website saying you scammed me for x amount. What would be your first action if that happened? This pokerscam site offers nothing to show anything they say is true just like the fake site i created for you. Do you think they are both lawful?

Whether someone was convicted or not has no relation to whether or not it's true, which is why I should be able to post my own web page about someone who ripped me off. But I guess your point is specific to the pokerscam website.

I think this is the objection I see most often and I wonder how well people know the laws around this - and I don't claim to know much about them either.

I don't know what my first action would be, but in that case it's pretty obvious you'd be running afoul of laws with regard to libel/defamation of character at the very least.

Seems like a rather faulty comparison. We know your site's allegations are made up; we don't know that about pokerscam. In fact, my belief is that whomever is behind pokerscam hasn't made anything up, but is simply posting other people's accusations. Of course, those people could be making things up, and obviously that's a problem.

I don't want anyone to misinterpret what I'm saying; I can see numerous issues with this site. But I also have issues with people who say "obviously this is illegal". Very few have articulated exactly what is illegal, and I think it's because a lot of people think it should be illegal, and assume it is without knowing either way.

assuming EU laws are applicable creating a site like this one violates article 6 of the gdpr. also (at least in germany) this would not be covered by the freedom of speech since a site like this does not provide someones opinion but a (false) fact than can either be verified or falsified.

also note that it is completely irrelevant if whats posted on the scam site is true or false with regard to the gdpr.

Could neither of these apply?

(e) processing is necessary for the performance of a task carried out in the public interest or in the exercise of official authority vested in the controller;

(f) processing is necessary for the purposes of the legitimate interests pursued by the controller or by a third party, except where such interests are overridden by the interests or fundamental rights and freedoms of the data subject which require protection of personal data, in particular where the data subject is a child.

I'm not sure what you mean here. I think we'd all be in agreement that if any of the alleged scams are false, there's a problem, so the only debate is whether the allegations are OK if they're true. So if they're true, how does what you said here apply?

So basically you don't want to look at what these websites have historically done to make me suspicious of their motives and the type of people that operate them? Furthermore, there is an implication that if you pay the debt off they will take you down. That's what the "pay now" button implies. Lastly, the fact that they opened the website in a country with little to no oversight can be used as an indication of their motives in any reasonable court of law, since they don't restrict their actions to that country (in fact they seem to exclusively be targeting people outside of the country).

??? I'm not sure why you're using the plural, but I did exactly that - had a look at the stories about mugshots, and I agree that it was an extortion site. I agree that any site like this could be used for a similar purpose. But as I said, a person can set up an extortion site any time they like - they don't need to take the first step of a scammer info site, and then make it into an extortion site. So while I understand why you're suspicious, there's no need to forbid sites about scammers because they *could* be made into extortion sites. They should be allowed or disallowed on their own merits.

Yeah, that's a strong possibility, and that's where they go down a possible blackmail hole. But their alleged lack of response to OP indicates otherwise. Or is just indicates an idea that was abandoned.

Sure, I suppose. I kind of see this as a side issue - either what they're doing is wrong, or it isn't.

I mean I'll just restate the obvious and say the OP did scam someone...so there is that in his specific case. Poor guy with those illegal sites exposing him for his scams though. Really feel for the guy, 100%. Hopefully he can hire some expensive lawyers to try and get that site taken down.

i dont think either of these apply.

e) requires a task carried out in the public interest and publicly posting scamming allegations does not fall into the public interest especially when you are weighing in the (human) rights of the scammer. while the scammer of course did wrong he has the right to go through trial and defend himself against the allegations being made. in case a site like the pokerscam.rip one could be justified through e) the scammers right to defend himself would be completely circumvented. posting personal info on the internet in this case is only in the backers interest but not in the public interest.

f) doesnt really apply for similar reasons. in case we would assume that the alleged scammers human rights do not override the backers interest in creating a scammer site, this would simply lead to granting the backer a right to self justice which is certainly not wanted.

If a site like this was created in good faith, with much better effort to confirm allegations, then I think either e) or f) could definitely apply. In this case, where it doesn't seem like much of an effort was made to check on anything, either could be a stretch.

At the same time, I know of at least one person whose personal details are there for a scam he claims to have no knowledge of. I couldn't say for certain or not if this is true, but I'm inclined to believe it. I don't think the site has done any vetting of claims.

And in that regard, it's just like our Transaction Feedback forum here - mods aren't vetting the posts. But there are some key differences - people who are accused are able to respond, we limit what kind of personal info can be posted, and if a situation is resolved we will edit allegations to reflect that. Unfortunately, none of those controls seems to be present on the pokerscams site.

Of course, none of this changes the fact that OP got himself into his present situation by ripping someone off.