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General Discussion / Re: Michael Taggart claims to be BitShares Co-founder?
« on: August 08, 2016, 02:04:56 pm »@Murderistic, I think it's a real misstep to let Mark be the face of of your marketing campaign. While it may be unfair to label him a scammer, it is very clear that he is not a good business person. Fact is, he did at the very least ROYALLY screw up and lost a bunch of money for a bunch of people. And yeah, it doesn't look good from the outside looking in. But again, in a civilized society where people have the right to due process, and there are laws against slandering/libeling others (as there should be), no one should be claiming with any certainty that he is a scammer.
As I've been digging into Banx case for the last few days, I've become very convinced that there is no way it could have been legitimate business. Lyford has been lying, deceiving and misleading people the whole time. When somebody criticizes him, he just denies it aggressively and usually calls the critic "troll" or "hater" who doesn't know anything. Many times he just deletes all messages that he doesn't agree with. Apparently he thinks that if he denies his fraudulent behavior enough many times, people will believe him. So he just continues to do that even when the evidence is totally clear.
According to the messages in Bitcointalk, investors are not happy and Lyford is under investigation. I'd be surprised if he doesn't go to jail because of Banx.
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Here's something that all of Lyford's investors should be looking at, what exactly has he closed down?, there are no formal filings with companies house that I can see so perhaps all he has done is turn off the website & turn his back?, is he naive enough to think that this will suffice?source
Then the question arises, what entity exactly sold the shares to the investors>, was it Banx Ltd?, if so than a formal liquidation needs to occur with a full winding up process undertaken with final tax returns filed,
or was it Mark Lyford as an individual? in which case, given that you cannot liquidate an individual if he cannot repay the investors he will need to file for personal bankruptcy (again), this will be a good thing as it will kill his directorships of any other company he may be associated with & offers the investors the opportunity to pursue adversarial proceedings against him to deny him bankruptcy protection from his debts,in other words, kill his credit for at least 20 years,small token,
something to watch
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a UK based investor managed to track Lyford down yesterday via 'phone, Lyford agreed to meet the investor to offer an explanation of what had caused the problems & a way forward, no one will be surprised to read that Lyford was a no show, no explanation no excuse he simply didn't turn up, he is a sociopath, he simply does not care about anyone but himself & he will do whatever it takes to get what he wants, he has hurt a lot of people & it means absolutely nothing to him, now the situation is that he sees himself as the victim, after all he has done for everyone!!source
anyway, the investor went straight to the police & filed a complaint, best thing he could have done given the circumstances,
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"I know Mark didn't set out to scam everyone"source
well,maybe not "everyone" but it's close, for my part I know that he stole $30k from me & tried to grab an additional $150k during 2015 & into 2016,in my opinion what he presented to me was pure fabrication from day one, the profits that were allegedly being generated and which he added to my balance statements (giving me a total declared value of $52k in Dec 2015) were bogus & had never been achieved by any legitimate means, (net value today $6.41...........maybe!)
The sheer length of time that Mark kept this scam running could very well be his undoing, there is no logical,sensible or believable explanation for what he was doing or why, we have a total mix of initial inducement to misrepresentation to bogus profit shares to a total lack of fiduciary duty,
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As of now I have managed to connect with 7 of Lyfords investors, we are uniting to lodge formal complaints with various authorities, is there any other investor out there that may want to join in?, you can message me via this forum,source
I have to say that after talking to my fellow investors that this situation is nothing at all to do with bad luck, it has nothing to do with the world not being ready for Lyford's business, it has everything to do with it being a concerted effort by a morally bankrupt Lyford to scam as much money as possible from wherever he could get his thieving hands on it, he has lied & misled everyone, he is even now still trying to buy time to avert any negative action,
If you are an investor or anyone here knows of anyone that has opted to believe in Lyford at this late stage & to give him time to make things right, get in touch, share your experience, you will find that he is not legitimate, he has no plans to make anyone whole, I'm wondering where the off-shore money is stashed & just when he will hightail it out of Dodge,
Lyford is a con, it is that simple,
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He deleted his post on Facebook and therefore all the comments that went with it.source
I saw four of the comments he got before it was deleted:
*Begin copy/paste from FB*
Commenter number 1
Think you should hold your hands up and be a bit more truthful Mark. Half a million dollers investment and u created fuck all. Most investors are going to be wondering where the money has gone coz i believe you used Banx shares to pay for the exchange and other services etc. It was only one month ago you were mivering me for more money for investment when you know the company had already collapsed. I can honestly say the trolls were 100% correct, you were running a ponzi scheme and u were caught out. Everything they said was true and the worst scenario for investors has come to pass. I think you owe investors some detailed transparency of where the funds have gone coz as i've said u created next to nothing with alot of money. I hate to say this but its true, your monthly updates in videos etc have proven you to be either full of shit or your living in some kind of dreamworld. I hope you do the correct thing and produce some legitimate transparency where investors can see that you have'nt spunked the investment on other things. Most people as you said yourself invested in you, what a mistake this has proven to be
Commenter number 2
I couldn't have put it better myself
Commenter number 3
Well said Commenter number 1! Turns out the so called trolls have been right about this clown all along! He's spanked away half a million dollars and told us nothing but a pack of lies from day 1. My friends and I invested over £100k into this shambles of a company. I wonder how much of our money he actually has left in his bank? That's a nice big house he's sitting in, who's paying for that? (There were a list of names here) where has our money gone? No transparency whatsoever. Just smoke and mirrors!
Commenter number 2
All the bullshit he's been posting on the forum for the last few months as well. Whilst all long knowing this day was coming. What a scumbag of a human he turned out to be.
*End copy/paste from FB*
As for the reason this thread started to begin with, I will just say this. I personally appreciate investigative journalism or anyone's attempt to uncover a scam or fraud. But it appears Ian DeMartino is trying to make a very circumstantial case against Michael Taggart based on a couple of erroneous bits of information on a website, and based on his association with Mark Lyford (who himself has only been shown to be a shitty business person). That's pretty flimsy. Generally speaking, unless you have conclusive evidence, you better not go beyond warning the public about any poor business practices you have uncovered (which is clearly the case with Mark). In other words, stick to the facts. Be professional. And follow the law. Otherwise you may be worse than the person you are accusing.
According to this pdf, Banx and Taggart have been business partners. It's dated 5th November 2015 when it should have been totally clear to everybody that Banx was a scam that will fail very soon. I don't believe that Michael could have been unaware how Banx was conducting it's "business". After all, he and Mark seem to be good friends. The fact that Michael is still defending Mark so eagerly indicates that either he is a scammer too (but much better hiding his trails) or he is living in totally different reality (he is incapable of being aware of scams even when he is actively taking part in them).
So we are really talking about a real scam here. There is no way anybody can deny it, the evidence is clear. If @Murderistic wants to clear his name, he should at least publish all relevant financial information from the companies that were in business partnership with Banx to show that they were actually doing something legitimate. But given that he tried to hide the realtionship in this very thread makes me believe that we are not going to see anything else besides insults from him.
