Has anyone else considered Josh Garza a very real suspect in the Kimble/Verto identity quest?
Josh Garza is a bitcoin entrepreneur and serial scammer. He ran the GAW mining group, where he encouraged people to buy in to PayCoin, and recently, the entire project was unmasked as a giant ponzi scheme/scam. This put Garza under investigation by the SEC.
Today, he seems to have pulled the EXACT same exit scam that was pulled on Evo on the exchange he ran, Paybase. Deposits and site function remained normal, while behind the scenes withdrawls were suspended, until the entire site went offline, taking coins with it.
By reckoning, Josh Garza is the only suspect presented in the quest to unmask Verto that is even remotely qualified from a technical standpoint to have pulled the Evolution heist.
Lets look at the facts:
-Garza has admin over a MASSIVE amount of very secure computing power. Evolution was famous for its reliability and speed.
-Garza was coming under investigation by SEC just prior to the Evolution exit scam. A warrant was executed within 24 hours of the Evolution shutdown.
-Garza has a record of establishing multiple large BTC based services and exiting with the money.
-He is on public money-laundering watchlists due to his percieved possible criminal involvements
Prior to GAW mining group, about 2 years ago, when he was nobody -
-Garza had become known in some circles for phishing investment BB's and usenet groups, offering a variety of bad investments and ponzi schemes.
-Reddit users posted warning Garza was scamming ebay buyers
-Garza was once fingered in a public list of DOX claiming to be a list of members from several early fraud/carding communities and forums.
Now somewhere between here and GAW, he makes enough money to purchase hashie.io + cyptocoinnews + establish GAW + launch paycoin... This coincides with the establishment of Evolution.
During GAW involvement, prior to GAW scam -
-Databases from Paybase and Zencloud were "hacked" and user identities were stolen where possible. Garza was accused of doing this as an inside job due to his history of fraud and interest in carding. No proof could be found.
-Emails were leaked in which Garza urged one of his partners within GAW mining to take 'all forums and services, public or otherwise' offline until the SEC investigation surrounding him was resolved. (Verto to Kimble? vice versa?)
My theory is that Garza could have ran Evolution as one of many tools in his arsenal of BTC services. He would have ran it from his own servers, which would appear to any outside eyes as legitimate, hosting a variety of BTC websites. Anyone investigating through a remote hack attack could have gone so far as discovering bitcoin market and exchange software on the servers without ness. being able to definitively identify it has the home of Evo, as they would appear to have legitimate uses. Even the user databases for evo could have been stored hidden in plain site on a server of this size hosting a pre-existing bitcoin exchange by a good admin.
Would also theoretically allow him to have been cashing out Evo commissions/BTC without anyone looking twice at him for all this time. He would have owned his own exchange to do it with, and financial authorities were used to him filing BTC based income.
Then, upon the GAW/Paycoin scandal, aware of the SEC investigating him, Garza would have began considering his options for handling Evolution when the time came. Insiders have said that the Evolution exit scam was being hinted at for a while prior to it happening. The hints and theorys would have started flying when Garza became aware the SEC was watching him.
Garza would have become suspiscious or been tipped off that a search warrant on his machines was imminent. He would have at that time began halting Evo withdrawls.
An insider at Evolution (NSWGreat) revealed his intentions early, forcing Garzas hand. Garza wouldnt have expected this. Garza would have completed his exit.
Then, when the news broke of the Evolution exit, the authorities, probably having their own existing suspiscions about Garza possibly being Verto, would have carried their search of the servers out as quickly as possible, sensing their biggest piece of evidence in their case against him may have already been gone. Hence the search warrant being carried out almost instantly after the Evo exit scam.
Garza would have successfully purged all files related to Evolution from his servers, and stored the BTC prior to the warrant. He would benefit greatly from this, because it would provide him with a nice cache of funds that the SEC/IRS is blind to, to facilitate his escape should any criminal charges be brought against him for his involvement in GAW and Paybase.
In this scenario, Garza would either be aware that the authorities have located Evo data in their search warrant, or is aware that he will soon be charged for involvement with Paycoin, and the Paybase exit would be him trying to take any money he can before time runs out. He would see how successful his Evo exit was, and would be applying it across the board before ultimately disappearing.
TL;DR - Tinfoil hat business. But it actually makes a lot of sense. LE begins a huntdown for finance fraud on an accomplished market/exchange admin who made off with millions exit scamming his website - at literally the exact same time Verto, a known finance fraud expert and accomplished market/exchange admin makes off with millions by exit scamming his website. Lets just step back and think about that.
Sounds reasonable to me.