How is it impossible for someone to have stolen product, then hacked into Tristan's account? You know what you can do when you are on someones account? Change where the money goes. People are acting like it's some impossible feat to change the paypal account attached to an account.
People making claims based on loose facts? Like that never happened before.
Sure it's POSSIBLE that some one hacked his account and had the money sent to another paypal account, but it is UNBELIEVABLE that this would have been happening over several months without him noticing and avoiding this whole situation. If LSV and others from Channelfireball believed this to be a possibility, they wouldn't have "severed all ties with Tristan".
How is it impossible for someone to have stolen product, then hacked into Tristan's account? You know what you can do when you are on someones account? Change where the money goes. People are acting like it's some impossible feat to change the paypal account attached to an account.
And then when he admitted it was his account?
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How is it impossible for someone to have stolen product, then hacked into Tristan's account? You know what you can do when you are on someones account? Change where the money goes. People are acting like it's some impossible feat to change the paypal account attached to an account.
People making claims based on loose facts? Like that never happened before.
If you re-read the statement, you'll realized how farfetched this is.
Your alleged hacker/thief did the following :
1) Steal a total of 200 big ticket AVR cards from CFB stock.
2) Gain access to TSGs eBay account (and possibly PayPal) to post these auctions
3) Be at TSGs house to impersonate him when the police went to confirm the situation.
4) Render TSG unable/unwilling to answer attempts by CFB to contact him about the situation.
If this alleged thief went to this much effort to steal a pile of cards and succeed, why not redirect his efforts to something much more lucrative? ~$5,000 is pretty low pay for that much work.
No, I got it, it is just far fetched and ridiculous. You are saying TSG was framed ( can't believe those words were actually typed) Well, I look forward to you cracking this case then, after you're done there I have a rabbit named Roger who could use someone with your expertise.
If you re-read the statement, you'll realized how farfetched this is.
Your alleged hacker/thief did the following :
1) Steal a total of 200 big ticket AVR cards from CFB stock.
2) Gain access to TSGs eBay account (and possibly PayPal) to post these auctions
3) Be at TSGs house to impersonate him when the police went to confirm the situation.
4) Render TSG unable/unwilling to answer attempts by CFB to contact him about the situation.
If this alleged thief went to this much effort to steal a pile of cards and succeed, why not redirect his efforts to something much more lucrative? ~$5,000 is pretty low pay for that much work.
Yes, this makes no sense. Someone with that skill set could be stealing hundreds or millions of dollars from financial institutions and/or identity theft schemes. $5000 in MTG cards would be wayyyyyyy below their pay grade. They would also realize that it would be far to easy to get caught.
Also, note that CFB is a pretty sizable business. You can guarantee that they had lawyers look that statement over before it was released, and there is NO WAY lawyers would have green-lighted it if there was any possibility that it was someone else.
Heck, if nothing else they do have Sperling, who is a lawyer himself!
This seems very strange. TSG was always professional, well-spoken, and often the voice of reason in conversations. I wonder if he had some sort of psychotic break or was in a desperate situation. There has to be some deeper explanation apart from "he's a thief". It doesn't even make sense. He would have to know he'd get caught if he was 100% coherent.
Very strange.
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Dude just got married too. What a bummer way to start your new life together. Stealing is bad mmmmkay
I'd wager this has something to do with it. That was my first thought when I heard about this, that either his wife was pressuring him to provide for a more lavish lifestyle or that he perceived her to care about his provider cred more than she actually did, panicked, and stole cards to "save his marriage." To a guy head over heels in love, that can seem like a cause just enough to warrant such drastic measures.
I'd wager this has something to do with it. That was my first thought when I heard about this, that either his wife was pressuring him to provide for a more lavish lifestyle or that he perceived her to care about his provider cred more than she actually did, panicked, and stole cards to "save his marriage." To a guy head over heels in love, that can seem like a cause just enough to warrant such drastic measures.
That isn't how real life works.
TSG is not Jorah Mormont.
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That isn't how real life works.
TSG is not Jorah Mormont.
Actually, that is exactly how many things in real life work. i hope it's not the case here, but people do actually do crazy things for love. It's not just in fairy tales.
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"A little nonsense now and then is cherished by the wisest men."
- Willy Wonka
The Quote function doesn't work for me on this forum. Sorry for any confusion created.
I'd wager this has something to do with it. That was my first thought when I heard about this, that either his wife was pressuring him to provide for a more lavish lifestyle or that he perceived her to care about his provider cred more than she actually did, panicked, and stole cards to "save his marriage." To a guy head over heels in love, that can seem like a cause just enough to warrant such drastic measures.
Let's make up more ridiculous stories about TSG they get funnier and funnier.
If you re-read the statement, you'll realized how farfetched this is.
Your alleged hacker/thief did the following :
1) Steal a total of 200 big ticket AVR cards from CFB stock.
2) Gain access to TSGs eBay account (and possibly PayPal) to post these auctions
3) Be at TSGs house to impersonate him when the police went to confirm the situation.
4) Render TSG unable/unwilling to answer attempts by CFB to contact him about the situation.
If this alleged thief went to this much effort to steal a pile of cards and succeed, why not redirect his efforts to something much more lucrative? ~$5,000 is pretty low pay for that much work.
Wasn't this on Monk last week? Yeah, I remember it, there was a surprise ending... TSG is a crook!
C'mon man! They caught him, he admitted it was his account, we should just put this "might not have been him" to rest.
Wasn't this on Monk last week? Yeah, I remember it, there was a surprise ending... TSG is a crook!
C'mon man! They caught him, he admitted it was his account, we should just put this "might not have been him" to rest.
Lol, Monk has long since been over as a TV show. I assume you mean a re-run. But I will award points for the joke anyway.
But yeah, reading through the responses to this it sounds like something out of an episode of CSI. Either the guy stole the cards himself, or he was framed. If some other thief stole the cards, hacked into the guy's account and sells them. The only reason you do that is if you specifically want that guy to get in trouble for it. Because if I have a lot of money's worth of stolen cards, I can just as easily sell the stolen product by other means.
Come on, we have to allow for extenuating circumstances. TSG caught the movie 2012 on Starz yesterday and realized he only has four months to build himself one of those arks so that he can take himself and his new wife to safety on the Cape of Good Hope. Unfortunately, $1 billion is on the steep side, even for a magic writer, so he had to raise money the only way he knew how - by selling stolen pieces of printed cardboard over the internets.
You can't say you wouldn't do the same in his shoes. Now he's going to drown with the rest of us.
The nice guys always seem to cause the most trouble. $3000 worth of cards (thats a guess. Its $8000 if all the cards were bonfire). Thats a lot. I was confused by twitter all day until i got home to read the announcement. That s**t crazy.
How can a professionnal magic trader could make so much stupid things one after one ?
Steal card from CFB stock, i could understand how he does, you take them in a bag.
BUT AFTER THAT...
I just ask me, why don't he sell them at grand prix or SCG ?
Why he doesn't create an other nick name ?
Why does it sell them by himself and no tier-personn ?
Why sell the exact number of cards in the same time ?
I really ask me.
I just read the announcement at the beginning of the thread and it explains away a lot of these questions. The ebay account wasn't obviously TSG's account at first. It took a lot of police investigation to get to that conclusion and he only admitted it was his account after the police questioned him (and his info was tied to the account to back it up so he couldn't lie). It's not like TSG's ebay auction said "this is TSG from Channelfireball... I'm selling an extraordinary amount of cards but don't worry, they aren't stolen".
Now, to your credit... it was kind of stupid of him to sell off exactly what had been stolen rather than being a little more careful about it. My only guess is that he didn't think they would discover it as fast as they did and didn't think they would make the connection to the ebay account that wasn't obviously tied to him.
I don't know what will happen from the criminal perspective of this story, because it seems like the only evidence they have is that the quantity that he was selling matched what was stolen (how "exactly" it matched is another issue... but if it was enough for them to get the police involved to investigate the ebay account it had to have been suspicious enough). However, if all of that is true, despite it being just circumstantial evidence... it's still a pretty big coincidence.
he's already admitted that the account was his and that he took the cards. That's no longer up for debate.
Source? I don't think he's admitted to taking the cards, just that the eBay account was his.
I am curious how CFB is going to tie TSG to the stolen cards. The eBay account is his, but I don't know that "he sold approximately the same number of cards as were missing" would necessarily hold up in court. Though, I'm far from a legal expert. Maybe it would.
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Did you come here for the sake of the Dharma? Or did you come here for the sake of a chair?
Source? I don't think he's admitted to taking the cards, just that the eBay account was his.
I am curious how CFB is going to tie TSG to the stolen cards. The eBay account is his, but I don't know that "he sold approximately the same number of cards as were missing" would necessarily hold up in court. Though, I'm far from a legal expert. Maybe it would.
If this were a murder case, I think that a jury would demand more because of the seriousness of the crime. But for an ordinary case of theft, I imagine circumstantial evidence like that could be enough. It has to be pretty good too... and I imagine if like it says in the article where 40 AVR rares/mythics go missing from a store, and by coincidence the same 40 rares end up in an auction on ebay. It would be one thing if it wasn't the same quantity (which it might not be) or if this guy was known for selling masses of cards (which is possible that he is known for that).
If this were a murder case, I think that a jury would demand more because of the seriousness of the crime. But for an ordinary case of theft, I imagine circumstantial evidence like that could be enough. It has to be pretty good too... and I imagine if like it says in the article where 40 AVR rares/mythics go missing from a store, and by coincidence the same 40 rares end up in an auction on ebay. It would be one thing if it wasn't the same quantity (which it might not be) or if this guy was known for selling masses of cards (which is possible that he is known for that).
Exactly. While the quantities will likely be shown as similar, they are not exactly the same, as we can tell from the use of the word "approximate" in LSV's statement. Looking at the eldraziseller completed auctions page, he was selling mass quantities of more than 4 AVR chase cards. There are multiple playsets sold of Bonfire, Tamiyo, Griselbrand, Entreat, Restoration Angel and Cavern. So just from poking around on eBay, it would already appear that he sold bulk quantities of more AVR cards than "4 of the top selling Avacyn Restored cards." If he's (presumably legally) selling bulking quantities of other chase cards from the very same set, how are they going to prove that the 4 cards in question came from CFB's stock? It seems like it may be difficult to me.
I was actually just on a jury that convicted a guy of armed robbery. Common sense dictated that he was obviously guilty, but we deliberated for over a day because of the lack of hard evidence. Sparing you the details, there was much more evidence than has so far been made available in this case. It's "beyond a reasonable doubt" whether you're accused of murder or stealing pieces of cardboard.
However, CFB must be 100% certain so I'm guessing they have something else.
It was 50 copies of 4 of the top AVR rares. It really comes down to how close it is to the actual list of stolen cards, because it's not an every day occurrence that that many cards get put up on ebay. Again... if TSG was known for doing this kind of selling all the time, then it wouldn't be suspicious but until someone corrects me saying that this sort of business is common, I'm going to assume it is suspicious. It depends on how close the totals are, so if it's 52 cards that were stolen... and 55 cards that appeared on ebay. That's close enough. Because you can just as easily add 3 cards to your own collection to get to that total. If it's off by 10, then that's when you get into the gray area.
But the fact that a single person is selling such a high amount of 4 specific cards, all from one set.... it's suspicious as well. Usually (and again, correct me if I'm wrong) when one person is selling 50 cards... they are selling a bulk of their collection and it might be 12 playsets of a bunch of the top rares in the format and they want to get rid of them for whatever reason. It's rarely 12 copies of 4 specific cards all from the same set. Some stores don't even have that kind of stock available to sell, let alone one person.
It's from that perspective that this looks really bad for TSG. If it were literally 4 copies of ONE card that were stolen, well **** everyone has a playset of the top rares in the set, and it's not normal to sell them (especially if they are selling well).
Sure it's POSSIBLE that some one hacked his account and had the money sent to another paypal account, but it is UNBELIEVABLE that this would have been happening over several months without him noticing and avoiding this whole situation. If LSV and others from Channelfireball believed this to be a possibility, they wouldn't have "severed all ties with Tristan".
And then when he admitted it was his account?
Nah, let's ignore facts and wildly speculate instead.
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Erm... Just pointing out, most everyone has three names. First Middle Last.
It's just most people don't use their middle name.
On more topic, seemed like he must have been kind of an idiot, or had something going on, because this is kind of out of nowhere.
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If you re-read the statement, you'll realized how farfetched this is.
Your alleged hacker/thief did the following :
1) Steal a total of 200 big ticket AVR cards from CFB stock.
2) Gain access to TSGs eBay account (and possibly PayPal) to post these auctions
3) Be at TSGs house to impersonate him when the police went to confirm the situation.
4) Render TSG unable/unwilling to answer attempts by CFB to contact him about the situation.
If this alleged thief went to this much effort to steal a pile of cards and succeed, why not redirect his efforts to something much more lucrative? ~$5,000 is pretty low pay for that much work.
No, I got it, it is just far fetched and ridiculous. You are saying TSG was framed ( can't believe those words were actually typed) Well, I look forward to you cracking this case then, after you're done there I have a rabbit named Roger who could use someone with your expertise.
Yes, this makes no sense. Someone with that skill set could be stealing hundreds or millions of dollars from financial institutions and/or identity theft schemes. $5000 in MTG cards would be wayyyyyyy below their pay grade. They would also realize that it would be far to easy to get caught.
Also, note that CFB is a pretty sizable business. You can guarantee that they had lawyers look that statement over before it was released, and there is NO WAY lawyers would have green-lighted it if there was any possibility that it was someone else.
Heck, if nothing else they do have Sperling, who is a lawyer himself!
This seems very strange. TSG was always professional, well-spoken, and often the voice of reason in conversations. I wonder if he had some sort of psychotic break or was in a desperate situation. There has to be some deeper explanation apart from "he's a thief". It doesn't even make sense. He would have to know he'd get caught if he was 100% coherent.
Very strange.
- Willy Wonka
The Quote function doesn't work for me on this forum. Sorry for any confusion created.
I'd wager this has something to do with it. That was my first thought when I heard about this, that either his wife was pressuring him to provide for a more lavish lifestyle or that he perceived her to care about his provider cred more than she actually did, panicked, and stole cards to "save his marriage." To a guy head over heels in love, that can seem like a cause just enough to warrant such drastic measures.
That isn't how real life works.
TSG is not Jorah Mormont.
Twitter
Actually, that is exactly how many things in real life work. i hope it's not the case here, but people do actually do crazy things for love. It's not just in fairy tales.
- Willy Wonka
The Quote function doesn't work for me on this forum. Sorry for any confusion created.
Let's make up more ridiculous stories about TSG they get funnier and funnier.
Aren't we already?
Wasn't this on Monk last week? Yeah, I remember it, there was a surprise ending... TSG is a crook!
C'mon man! They caught him, he admitted it was his account, we should just put this "might not have been him" to rest.
Lol, Monk has long since been over as a TV show. I assume you mean a re-run. But I will award points for the joke anyway.
But yeah, reading through the responses to this it sounds like something out of an episode of CSI. Either the guy stole the cards himself, or he was framed. If some other thief stole the cards, hacked into the guy's account and sells them. The only reason you do that is if you specifically want that guy to get in trouble for it. Because if I have a lot of money's worth of stolen cards, I can just as easily sell the stolen product by other means.
Why in the WORLD would he ignore CFB Management's attempts to contact him if he didn't do anything?
Save the conspiracy theories and tin foil hats, that's all you need to know.
I can only wonder why he felt entitled to do it?
You can't say you wouldn't do the same in his shoes. Now he's going to drown with the rest of us.
"...a talisman against all evil, so long as you obey me."
I just read the announcement at the beginning of the thread and it explains away a lot of these questions. The ebay account wasn't obviously TSG's account at first. It took a lot of police investigation to get to that conclusion and he only admitted it was his account after the police questioned him (and his info was tied to the account to back it up so he couldn't lie). It's not like TSG's ebay auction said "this is TSG from Channelfireball... I'm selling an extraordinary amount of cards but don't worry, they aren't stolen".
Now, to your credit... it was kind of stupid of him to sell off exactly what had been stolen rather than being a little more careful about it. My only guess is that he didn't think they would discover it as fast as they did and didn't think they would make the connection to the ebay account that wasn't obviously tied to him.
I don't know what will happen from the criminal perspective of this story, because it seems like the only evidence they have is that the quantity that he was selling matched what was stolen (how "exactly" it matched is another issue... but if it was enough for them to get the police involved to investigate the ebay account it had to have been suspicious enough). However, if all of that is true, despite it being just circumstantial evidence... it's still a pretty big coincidence.
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Source? I don't think he's admitted to taking the cards, just that the eBay account was his.
I am curious how CFB is going to tie TSG to the stolen cards. The eBay account is his, but I don't know that "he sold approximately the same number of cards as were missing" would necessarily hold up in court. Though, I'm far from a legal expert. Maybe it would.
If this were a murder case, I think that a jury would demand more because of the seriousness of the crime. But for an ordinary case of theft, I imagine circumstantial evidence like that could be enough. It has to be pretty good too... and I imagine if like it says in the article where 40 AVR rares/mythics go missing from a store, and by coincidence the same 40 rares end up in an auction on ebay. It would be one thing if it wasn't the same quantity (which it might not be) or if this guy was known for selling masses of cards (which is possible that he is known for that).
Exactly. While the quantities will likely be shown as similar, they are not exactly the same, as we can tell from the use of the word "approximate" in LSV's statement. Looking at the eldraziseller completed auctions page, he was selling mass quantities of more than 4 AVR chase cards. There are multiple playsets sold of Bonfire, Tamiyo, Griselbrand, Entreat, Restoration Angel and Cavern. So just from poking around on eBay, it would already appear that he sold bulk quantities of more AVR cards than "4 of the top selling Avacyn Restored cards." If he's (presumably legally) selling bulking quantities of other chase cards from the very same set, how are they going to prove that the 4 cards in question came from CFB's stock? It seems like it may be difficult to me.
I was actually just on a jury that convicted a guy of armed robbery. Common sense dictated that he was obviously guilty, but we deliberated for over a day because of the lack of hard evidence. Sparing you the details, there was much more evidence than has so far been made available in this case. It's "beyond a reasonable doubt" whether you're accused of murder or stealing pieces of cardboard.
However, CFB must be 100% certain so I'm guessing they have something else.
But the fact that a single person is selling such a high amount of 4 specific cards, all from one set.... it's suspicious as well. Usually (and again, correct me if I'm wrong) when one person is selling 50 cards... they are selling a bulk of their collection and it might be 12 playsets of a bunch of the top rares in the format and they want to get rid of them for whatever reason. It's rarely 12 copies of 4 specific cards all from the same set. Some stores don't even have that kind of stock available to sell, let alone one person.
It's from that perspective that this looks really bad for TSG. If it were literally 4 copies of ONE card that were stolen, well **** everyone has a playset of the top rares in the set, and it's not normal to sell them (especially if they are selling well).