Disclaimer: Please read this post fully before passing judgement. This is going to be a tough pill for some of us to swallow and some will argue we might not want to discuss this in public. However, we can't hide from this. It happened, it needs to be made known, we need to collectively apologize as a team to those who were taken advantage of, and then we need to move on and let this experience only make us stronger by never letting something like this happen again. Note also that I have the blessing of Kyle Bennett to now talk publicly about this and I've also talked to Kendrak and a couple other elders about this.
Now, to the task at hand...
As some of you know, gkanakis was recently banned from [H]ard|Forum but many of us did not know why. He was banned because Kyle had received very strong evidence that gkanakis had kept giveaway PC's for himself. gkanakis also never provided Kyle with the evidence needed to clear his name.
[H] recently installed new cookie tracking filters to make it easier to detect multiple account logins from the same IP address. lwatson92 and Hard_Gopher were both newbie accounts who signed up to the forum and only posted in the giveaway threads. They both signed up from the same IP address, An IP address gkanakis used regularly.
lwatson92's last post says "My name is Lawrence Watson and currently at FT Bragg, NC." but his IP is located in Soldotna, Alaska.. an IP address gkanakis used regularly. lwatson92's reg IP of 24.237.252.240 shows numerous users, all reg'd late January 2011, all with zero posts and all with @me.com addys (same with gkanakis and lwatson92):
dougmunn
lwatson1992
mkanakis
rberhorst
as the mods started digging deeper, it got worse. The last "boxen giveaway" was won by Hard_Gopher, another two-post n00b who signed up for the contest using the same 24.237.248.20 IP address in Soldotna, Alaska. All of this was just too coincidental to be anything but the obvious.
My friends, we were duped. Duped by someone we thought we could trust. Unfortunately we can't do anything about it really. We just need to prevent this from somehow happening again.
I would therefore formally like to put forth a motion calling for the removal of his Hard DC'er of the Year 2010 title and it passed onto the runner up. gkanakis is definitely not worthy of such a title under these circumstances. I also believe many voted for him because of his work with the giveaway threads.
I hate to be the one to have had to bring this news to you. Please do not shoot the messenger. I've tried to present these facts to you as professionally as possible.
To those who donated hardware to gkanakis, I'm deeply sorry on behalf of the team. To outsiders looking in, this is not how we conduct ourselves as a team. This was one individuals very stupid mistake.
Respectfully,
Brother Tobit
Now, to the task at hand...
As some of you know, gkanakis was recently banned from [H]ard|Forum but many of us did not know why. He was banned because Kyle had received very strong evidence that gkanakis had kept giveaway PC's for himself. gkanakis also never provided Kyle with the evidence needed to clear his name.
[H] recently installed new cookie tracking filters to make it easier to detect multiple account logins from the same IP address. lwatson92 and Hard_Gopher were both newbie accounts who signed up to the forum and only posted in the giveaway threads. They both signed up from the same IP address, An IP address gkanakis used regularly.
lwatson92's last post says "My name is Lawrence Watson and currently at FT Bragg, NC." but his IP is located in Soldotna, Alaska.. an IP address gkanakis used regularly. lwatson92's reg IP of 24.237.252.240 shows numerous users, all reg'd late January 2011, all with zero posts and all with @me.com addys (same with gkanakis and lwatson92):
dougmunn
lwatson1992
mkanakis
rberhorst
as the mods started digging deeper, it got worse. The last "boxen giveaway" was won by Hard_Gopher, another two-post n00b who signed up for the contest using the same 24.237.248.20 IP address in Soldotna, Alaska. All of this was just too coincidental to be anything but the obvious.
My friends, we were duped. Duped by someone we thought we could trust. Unfortunately we can't do anything about it really. We just need to prevent this from somehow happening again.
I would therefore formally like to put forth a motion calling for the removal of his Hard DC'er of the Year 2010 title and it passed onto the runner up. gkanakis is definitely not worthy of such a title under these circumstances. I also believe many voted for him because of his work with the giveaway threads.
I hate to be the one to have had to bring this news to you. Please do not shoot the messenger. I've tried to present these facts to you as professionally as possible.
To those who donated hardware to gkanakis, I'm deeply sorry on behalf of the team. To outsiders looking in, this is not how we conduct ourselves as a team. This was one individuals very stupid mistake.
Respectfully,
Brother Tobit