funds info from a concerned what.cd VIP

[elbuitre]

okay, statement from a sysop:

P.S. I won't be donating again until What start operating as a non-profit organization and publishing their accounts.

As you're full aware, this is a patently ridiculous suggestion, do you not remember RachelFaith?

As for the article as a whole, I'm happy to share some facts with you:

Yibbles did offer to transport a new server for us 2 years ago and soon after stopped all contact.
At the time he was a trusted mod of over a year, whom multiple staff members had met in person.
He was also a lawyer that drafted the Gazelle license and helped immensely with the various legal issues that arise from time to time when running a torrent site.
Seeing as the server required delivery by hand, the options were to trust Yibbles, or pay for an admin to fly to the relevant country, hire a car and then deliver it. Or maybe we shouldn't trust admins either and it should have had to have been WhatMan himself?
The management of the time made a judgment call that should have saved the site a lot of money, I would have made the same decision at the time.

With regards to the_e_male / The_Riddler, he was also a lawyer, that took over from Yibbles when he 'left'.
the_e_male has been around since the time of OiNK, where he was a trusted moderator. Every single person that was involved with OiNK knows the_e_male, he was a much beloved legend of the bit torrent community in his own right.
At the time, we were saving up for new hardware at the time and had a larger than usual amount of savings, the kind that paypal likes to freeze every now and again.
There are, for good reason, very few people with access to donation money and we decided to bring the_e_male into the donation 'loop' at the same time as another long time staffer. The money given to the_e_male was justified as a way to spread out funds between accounts - it isn't safe to keep so much money in one place and having another account to shoulder the impact of an account freezing was an attractive prospect.
We did not believe that a staff member that had been in a position of power for 5 years or so would just up and leave, but this is what he did. Staff are yet to hear from him regarding the matter. Did we make a mistake this time? Clearly, but this was clearly a special case, that would have never been considered for anybody else and will never be considered again.

Both occurrences happened well over a year ago, this has nothing to do with our recent request for donations, which has everything to do with them being off-line for so long.

No staff members have been demoted in the past few weeks, each of them stepped down for their own personal reasons and, as far as I am aware, none had anything to do with any of the information in the FST post.

[Duckater]

okay, statement from a sysop:

As you're full aware, this is a patently ridiculous suggestion, do you not remember RachelFaith?

As for the article as a whole, I'm happy to share some facts with you:

Yibbles did offer to transport a new server for us 2 years ago and soon after stopped all contact.
At the time he was a trusted mod of over a year, whom multiple staff members had met in person.
He was also a lawyer that drafted the Gazelle license and helped immensely with the various legal issues that arise from time to time when running a torrent site.
Seeing as the server required delivery by hand, the options were to trust Yibbles, or pay for an admin to fly to the relevant country, hire a car and then deliver it. Or maybe we shouldn't trust admins either and it should have had to have been WhatMan himself?
The management of the time made a judgment call that should have saved the site a lot of money, I would have made the same decision at the time.

With regards to the_e_male / The_Riddler, he was also a lawyer, that took over from Yibbles when he 'left'.
the_e_male has been around since the time of OiNK, where he was a trusted moderator. Every single person that was involved with OiNK knows the_e_male, he was a much beloved legend of the bit torrent community in his own right.
At the time, we were saving up for new hardware at the time and had a larger than usual amount of savings, the kind that paypal likes to freeze every now and again.
There are, for good reason, very few people with access to donation money and we decided to bring the_e_male into the donation 'loop' at the same time as another long time staffer. The money given to the_e_male was justified as a way to spread out funds between accounts - it isn't safe to keep so much money in one place and having another account to shoulder the impact of an account freezing was an attractive prospect.
We did not believe that a staff member that had been in a position of power for 5 years or so would just up and leave, but this is what he did. Staff are yet to hear from him regarding the matter. Did we make a mistake this time? Clearly, but this was clearly a special case, that would have never been considered for anybody else and will never be considered again.

Both occurrences happened well over a year ago, this has nothing to do with our recent request for donations, which has everything to do with them being off-line for so long.

No staff members have been demoted in the past few weeks, each of them stepped down for their own personal reasons and, as far as I am aware, none had anything to do with any of the information in the FST post.

I do like the way oink is mentioned in this means the owner was found to make a profit from oink in the court case and to be honest cannot remember wether any other staff where implicated in taking any money so cannot comment on that.
But the mention of an ex site that did make money in a statement to try and clear this I find quiet ironic

From BBC News

The jury was told that police found almost US $300,000 (£183,580) in Mr Ellis's Paypal account and that he received $18,000 (£11,000) a month in donations from people using his website.

Mr Ellis told the court there was no intention to defraud copyright holders.
He said the donations were to pay for the server's rental and any "surplus" would eventually be used to buy a server.
He agreed he had about 10 bank accounts with some £20,000 in savings when police raided the house he shared.

[ca_aok]

The post by NightOath is factual. Yibbles did indeed steal the server, and the_e_male was given money in their manner to spread out the accounts in case one was compromised, which until that point and from that point has worked fine. The fact that he walked away immediately afterward is sad and a poor testament to his character, but unfortunately not much can be done about it now.

The OP here is a mixture of speculation, and I'd be quite interested to see whoever made it man up and do so under their real name.

Donations have always been a matter of trust, and it will be up to you who you trust, as it always has been. I wouldn't hesitate to trust them with a donation, and hopefully these events have taught them to be more careful with trust in the future.

[Duckater]

The post by NightOath is factual. Yibbles did indeed steal the server, and the_e_male was given money in their manner to spread out the accounts in case one was compromised, which until that point and from that point has worked fine. The fact that he walked away immediately afterward is sad and a poor testament to his character, but unfortunately not much can be done about it now.

The OP here is a mixture of speculation, and I'd be quite interested to see whoever made it man up and do so under their real name.

Donations have always been a matter of trust, and it will be up to you who you trust, as it always has been. I wouldn't hesitate to trust them with a donation, and hopefully these events have taught them to be more careful with trust in the future.

I guess the main lesson from all of this is for site owners and very senior staff to be careful who they trust

[RealWhoop]

From the looks of it What SysOps couldn't have been more careful. It was an unfortunate mistake.
I'd also like to reiterate what NightOath said - that money wasn't handed out as a loan, it was for the_e_male to hold on Whats behalf (to distribute their funds) - it wasn't ever meant to be spent.

[Waddafocky]

Didn't EyeCandy admit to being OP like 3 or 4 posts down, as soon as Lard Vader requested he come out of the closet?

[Quarterquack]

Didn't EyeCandy admit to being OP like 3 or 4 posts down, as soon as Lard Vader requested he come out of the closet?

If you weren't thinking of lard all the time (I blame fat parenting), you'd realize EyeCandy was making fun of the lack of evidence.

[IdolEyes787]

Didn't EyeCandy admit to being OP like 3 or 4 posts down, as soon as Lard Vader requested he come out of the closet?

I got this off a hidden spy cam.Mystery solved.

the-informant.jpg

[Waddafocky]

Didn't EyeCandy admit to being OP like 3 or 4 posts down, as soon as Lard Vader requested he come out of the closet?

I got this off a hidden spy cam.Mystery solved.

the-informant.jpg

Is that The Informant? If it it, how was the movie?

[bijoy]

it's their site

yes,

and have the right to spend their money as they wish,

unfortunately, it is not their money.

but should people really continue donating to a place where money may disappear without any acknowledgment or visible steps taken toward stopping it from happening again? Having been a VIP for years now, this makes me extremely disappointed,

Simple solution, stop wasting your money: a.k.a. donating.