You've heard the slanderous accusations no doubt.
The story they don't allow you to hear is rather complex, but I'll give it a go.
jl777 is an anonymous web financier who lives on the internet and sells people millions of dollars in ponzi investment products. He is 100% anonymous and goes to great lengths to keep it that way.
Arrival at NXT
I arrived at
NXT with virtually no knowledge of the project. I was curious about some of their claims. I got to know some of the people there and some suggested that I make a proposal to improve the currency. I proposed a feature called
Virtual Corporations, which allow for complex internal asset and money management in a p2p environment. We went through a community process and the community agreed to fund roughly 33,000 NXT(about $1000) for what I estimated to be about 1-2 months of full time work. The project gained a lot of interest.
jl777 approached me soon afterwards with a vague 'business' proposition. I was completely unclear as to what his intentions where. I did not even know he was anonymous at the time, he claimed his name as
James Lee and he was a Korean citizen who lived in Argentina. Next thing I know, there is money in my NXT wallet, some new assets, and lots of activity on the forums. I had no idea what was happening.
jl777 issues the NXTautoDAC asset
I would in the following days discover for instance an asset with a descriptor that I did not understand. In forum posts on a completely different project, I inquire as to what the meaning of the word DAC is. I also complained to several people that I didn't understand the asset descriptor and generally had no idea what was going on. He had told me that he wanted to help 'monetize' the project. Not soon after this, he attempted to form another business partnership with me, this time requesting that I open bank accounts in my name.
It turned out that
jl777 was manipulating the market and inflating the price of this asset(he has done this several times since with other NXT assest) with my name on it, and convincing others that I was responsible for their investment without my knowledge. Upon learning this, I decided that I wanted to have nothing further to do with jl777. Coming out strong against him at that time would result in an immediate and total collapse of the share value in
NXTautoDAC. I gave him several opportunities and hints that he needed to fix things. He refused to respond in a positive way. His only interest was bringing in lots of money from mostly clueless investors.
I began to seriously question the entire nature of the
NXT project. I would find out that mostly everyone of any consequence was entirely anonymous(they still are). I also found out that there is virtually no theory behind their chain algorithm(there still isn't). In addition I would witness several thefts transpire on the nxtforum.org and the administrators and other so-called "community leaders" didn't seem to care. There was some indication that they were in on these thefts. People emerged on the forums such as
Tuck Fheman warning us of the ominous implications of Cointropolis' presence and the damage they had done to
Feathercoin. At this point I became extremely averse to everything about NXT, I posted on Bitcointalk.org what I thought about what was going on there.
Sodom is Provoked
Within hours
jl777 had mobilized the entire
NXT media machine against me- the phrase "
bluemeanie stole 1 million nxt" is just one of many attempts and that was the one that stuck, because there was a corresponding transaction that would appear would implicate me in what they call a "theft", however no money was ever coerced from anyone. As matter of fact I have never had any dealings with any of these people who are bringing charges up against me.
I have never sold them anything, never sold them assets, nothing. This fairly sophisticated media machine is how
NXT keeps their price afloat. The project has no real talent or technical merit and most people know this, but their targets are the clueless and hapless.
jl777 has access to millions of dollars US in dark money. It's not hard for him to buy influence on places like bitcointalk.org, or other promotion channels to get his story told the way he wants.
jl777 has a lot at risk, just judging by the
Erik Voorhees case, he may be liable for millions of dollars, even jail time.
Antonis, a Greek who runs
NXTBLOCKS.INFO, asked if I would refund the money. I did it within minutes of his request. This was confirmed by
Pouncer. The harrassment and such went on for several days, caused me major problems, duress. They issued death threats, they continue to harass me online and it's not over some disputed money- it's over the fact that I know everything about their software and I can articulate the very severe problems it has.
As a professional in this area it is my responsibility to inform the public about projects like this. Jl777 severely abused my name without my permission, posed very serious hazards to my well being, and cost me significantly out of pocket.
As A Matter Of Fact, during this period after
NXTautoDAC was issued, well known and visible community members were trying to get me to fix these core NXT problems, which are entirely known to them. They just don't have a solution.
All of this, from my arrival to the provocation was roughly 4 weeks.
Edward DeLeon Hickman Writes an Article For Cointelegraph
Things quieted down a bit for a few months. The shady sketchy things going on at
NXT continued. There was a huge controversy over 2 separate hacking incidents, one of which
Cointelegraph appeared to help
NXT cover for(the Bter.com incident). Then someone by the name of
Edward DeLeon Hickman of Honolulu, HI approaches me pretending to be interested in my story. I could tell within minutes that he had no interest whatsoever in my account. There were other questionable aspects about Edward(multiple LinkedIn profiles, etc.). His interest was getting incriminating quotes(none of which he managed to get as he doesnt even quote me in the article). Later we would find out that Edward is a long term promoter for
jl777, even a
shareholder in one of his ponzi assets.
Threats, Extortion and Worse
At this point I was to learn a lot about how some of these
altcoin projects work. Most of the participants are petty criminals, people who I never really even liked to read on the forums, didn't interact with at all, and had no relation to whatsoever suddenly were coming after me extorting me for money.
Dave Pearce of Amsterdam(Pearce Motorcycle Services) who goes by the name
EvilDave is one such character. It appears his job is to either pump up the coin(probably has a number of accounts) or extort people and do general dirty work for the project 'whales'(which jl777 is). Once I began to identify him and expose his real world identity, his extortions seem to die down, unfortunately it continues on bitcointalk.org with anonymous accounts(who may be operated by EvilDave).
Lessons Learned
These altcoin projects are mostly scams run by petty(or not so petty criminals). They use people like me to build up the profile and credibility of the project to convince people like you to invest.. They begged me to write a whitepaper about
NXT with my name on it.
take aways,
1) Do not get involved in this project if you value your safety and sanity.
2) Do not in invest in this project if you value your money.
3) Do not even interact with jl777 if you value your life.
