TRADESPOT RESPONDS [Author: wirehead]
In response to my accusation below of Pucky, a Tradespot broker, of money laundering, Jon, also of Tradespot, had this to say:
As a long time reader of your site, I must say in the last few days I have been growing more and more upset. When the rumors regarding a dupe on Siege Perilous began, I was interested , but the same sort of passing interest that any concerned UO player would have.
I understand that often the material on your site is not necessarily your opinion, and it could very well come from an e-mail, not unlike this one. As far as the SP dupe goes, I don’t know. I have heard a lot of evidence both ways about it. If it exists, I don’t know it, nor does Pucky. I have known Pucky since my first days of UO..literally. I have never known him to be less then honest, and never ever known him to use/abuse bugs.
In your most recent post (at the time of this writing), you stated that you don’t think he duped, but he was “money laundering.” I would like to put these rumors to rest. Since day one of SP, Pucky has spent most of his free time laboring away on SP. He has build up, by no other means then hard work, several very skilled and talented characters. About three weeks ago he started keeping me updated on his progression toward a tower. At that time he had about a million and a half gold. He and his friends on SP, and his guild worked day in an out, smithing, tailoring, monster killing, you name it. I am sure that Pucky doing brokering too and from SP played a role, but it was definitely not a large role. Every week there are between 50 and 600 brokering requests, and I get a copy of them all. I would estimate that not more then 5% of them relate to SP, either same shard real estate transfer, or cross shard transfers. And in the case of cross shard, most people pay the fee on standard shards, because paying the fee on SP would be about 5 times more money for them.
If Pucky has transferred duped money to or from SP, I am willing to stake my reputation on the fact that he did it with no knowledge of the money’s source. And, even if every single transfer he did involved duped money, it would still account for less then 100K or so out of the total price of the castle.
The day he placed the castle he was very excited, as he had a right to be. It was the culmination of months and months of work. I cannot see someone taking as much satisfaction out of something on which no time was spent, and if that was the only piece of evidence it would be enough for me. However, it is not the only piece. With my own eyes I watched him work for that money, and again I know that he did not dupe, and if any part of the money was originally duped he obtained it without any knowledge of its origins.