Well....
Here's the Gareth thread in question. The reason why no knows about it is beacuse, dispite the fact that almost all who got taken were in America, Jeremy desided that a thread in the feedback section was not needed and kept only the one thread opened in the Europe section where all the American forum members would natually look.
I could be wrong, but I think Gareth was coddled.
I actually followed that thread from the begninning (or close to it). It appeared that Gareth was trading items he didn't yet have, weaving a tangled web that eventually came apart on him. I remember several instances where members suggested he was being coddled, only to be shut down by the moderator, and I believe in once case even threatened with suspension.
-Matt
(Sorry if this post has become OT)
I find that whole situation odd as well. Its obvious that Gareth was trying to scam people, got caught, and made up some half ass "pity me" story.
Whats weird though is that Jeremy protected him so much. I mean in all honesty, there have been threads with 100x worse flaming at Rebelscum that have stayed open and not a word was said by a staff member. The people involved were pissed because he was scamming them, and they have every right to be. I don't think that the "flaming" that was going on was even that bad, let alone unwarranted. I don't think that bannings or suspensions needed to be used at all.
I understand that the staff want to be non-biased and try to be fair to everyone, but there is a line. Halfway through the thread it turned from Jeremy being balanced to defending Gareth. I equate this to the people who protest that a convicted serial killer is not being treated humanely enough (or like Saddam in the news recently at his trial and how he bitches about everything). Did they treat their victims humanely? No. So they shouldn't be treated humanely. (Its a bit of a morbid metaphor, but you get the jist of what I'm trying to say).
While Gareth hasn't technically flat out admitted he is scamming, or been "convicted", even if he is telling the truth he still messed up in a lot of ways.
I don't know if banning Gareth was such a good idea either...now the only way people can reach him is via email (which he doesn't seem to reply to), and I'm guessing that since a lot of the information he has about the people he's dealing with (their addresses, the transactions, etc.) are probably from PMs, if he was wanting to send them their packages but didn't have their information saved they would be screwed.
Good luck if any of you are involved with this.