- Posted on Steem initially.
Several users informed me that @darthknight has posted My Steem funds are currently being frozen by the top 20 Steem witnesses (reward for info)
In particular, @guiltyparties asked me on a discord channel to take a look at the issue and we have discussed it with other users (including @dr-frankenstein). I told him that I would try to fix this issue soon - and this posting summarize my thoughts for now.
The following is an open letter to @darthknight. Note that this is a gesture of goodwill, not legal opinion or advice.
Dear darthknight,
Great to see your posting.
Your posting was required to start any action
my funds are being transferred weekly to a scam account, because I made a mistake when trying to withdraw those funds.
I believe that the Steem witnesses are aware of this, but have taken no action to unfreeze my account.
There are some users who reported me of your situation, and I assume some of other witnesses would have heard too.
But nothing could be done until you openly declare that your setting the power down path to bittrix was a mistake and you did not want your power down fund to go to bittrix.
Why? Because no one except you can verify that whether you intentionally did it. Who knows whether you actually wanted to send the power down fund to bittrix for whatever reason (your friend's account, or your alt, so on).
Contact jayplayco asap
I will contact them and give them a chance to unfreeze my account and reimburse me directly for the loss I have already had.
You should contact @jayplayco (on discord: jayplayco#9869), as @geekgirl and others have recommended.
And "reimburse" for your mistake? that does not make any sense... you have to admit that it was your fault to set the wrong power down path.
Moving on to the legal issues.
If you have any information about the real world identities of the top witnesses on Steem, please post it here. I will provide a 5% reward of any recovery I make with the people who provide correct information about witness identity (first come, first served on identity of individual witnesses).
I do not know where you live, but this is very dangerous (at least in South Korea). This could be subject to defamation and/or violation of privacy (or more) in South Korea. Take a look at @abitcoinskeptic's reply to your post.
And there are some users who encourage you to pursue legal actions. Of course it is one of your choices.
But reading the replies, I can tell that most of them are not familiar with legal issues, in particular regarding the South Korea case.
If you choose to bring this case to the court, it will be difficult for you to deal with the following issues (and more - I have talked to a lawyer friend and she was not be able to fully understand the situation given her lack of knowledge about how Steem works, but she mentioned these issues to "start with")
How can you prove that you, the plaintiff, own the account called @darthknight ?
How can you prove that you, the plaintiff, does not own the account called @bittrix ? Otherwise, you cannot prove that you "lost" your "asset".
Were you forced to take that action? in other words, anyone forced you to "power down" and/or set the path to "bittrix"?
Who is(are) the defendant?
How can you prove that the defendant has caused you the damage, given that you admit that you made a mistake?
It seems that the "asset" you claim to be lost is used in the system called "Steem blockchain". What are the "rules" of that system? Is there anything that the defendant has(have) violated?
... I will stop here. It's already too many.
And also note that unlike the US, in South Korea if you lose a trial usually you are supposed to pay the winning party's legal fees (up to a certain amount - it's like up to 7~8% of what's at stake).
To move forward.
While talking to guiltyparties and others, I have reviewed the following options.
Run a quick SF update that excludes you: but this option has a problem that may break the mechanical selection rules (as @roelandp pointed out, "You should not help out as goodwill for darthknight, as that will remove the "mechanical" part from the script")
Run a quick SF update that includes bittrix so that this account may not be able to transfer any fund until the discussion ends and temporary SF is reversed.
Of course this needs to be discussed among witnesses, but I personally support the 2nd option for now.
Summary
Given that you wrote that you made a mistake in setting the power down path, we can do something.
Contact jayplayco#9869 if you want to resolve this issue fast.
Be careful with legal issues - defamation, etc. Check @abitcoinskeptic 's reply.
I personally support a quick patch to limit transfers of the bittrix account.
Best,
glory7.