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It's here! Another exciting episode of Believe it or Not, the game show where you decide. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome tonight's contestant, Mister Craaaaaaig Wriiiiiiiiight. 1/11
What a welcome. How are you Craig? A bit nervous actually, and all the rest of it. That's great. You know the rules: give us your best shot at telling a true story and our studio audience gets to decide if they...all together now...BELIEVE IT OR NOT. Your time starts...NOW! 2/11
I met a guy called Mark Ferrier back in 2013 at a conference. Don't ask me which one bc I can't remember. It was an old fashioned hole in the ground mining conference. Mark told me he had a trust fund and did multi-million dollar deals all the time. 3/11
Mark's company was a mining service provider so I asked him if he could get me some SCADA software. He didn't know what SCADA was but told me he could get some, so I asked him if he could get banking software. He replied from his Hotmail to say he knew some guys who could. 4/11
Meanwhile my best friend Dave died, but I wasn't distracted. Then Mark phoned me and said he could get some gold from some mining people and if I bought the gold & software as a bundle he'd get his dad to value my companies for free. I bit his arm off. 5/11
Mark was naturally curious about my source of funds so I told him about the offshore trust I'd set up to hide my money from the Australian tax authorities. Helpfully, Mark offered the services of a business colleague who I understood had some expertise in these matters. 6/11
I'd told Mark I would pay him in bitcoin. He didn't know what bitcoin was and seemed dubious that it had any value at all but, fortunately for me, was happy to accept tens of millions of dollars worth of "funny money" as he called it. 7/11
Mark said his lawyer would send a contract but in the end he shared it over Skype. We agreed a price over Skype too: ~$60M total, incl. $20M for the gold. I was excited. I sent Mark $38M worth of bitcoin plus another $20M worth. Then, and you won't believe this: <crickets>. 8/11
Mark went dark. He didn't reply and nor did his company. It turns out he was a bit crook and had been arrested & extradited. His name was removed as director of his company. In desperation I wrote an email: "Is anyone there?". There was no reply. 9/11
I got the software but the bugger kept my $20M of gold. I claimed tax credits for the non-existent gold but the ATO caught me. All this because Dave and I wanted to start a bitcoin bank w/ smart contracts. Never did ofc. That's my story and I'm sticking to it. For now. 10/11
Ladies and gentlemen, we've reached the end of the show and that means it's make your mind up time. Do you believe it or not? Vote now. 11/11
