Hi everyone, this is Mike McFadden, brother of Steve McFadden a.k.a. "Psycho Penguin". As some people already figured out, Steve actually passed away a month ago today. At no point did he repent for his misdeeds and I couldn't find any evidence that he was going to either.
Therefore I'll do it for him. Show me evidence that you were scammed by Steve McFadden at any point in the past 12 years or so, and I'll reimburse you for the trade via PayPal. I'll also take the time to answer any appropriate questions.
You can either email me or post here, doesn't matter.
- Mike
How can I tell if I traded with Steve McFadden?
He had a few known addresses and sometimes went by Steve Saunders, and here are some of the aliases he used:
Psycho Penguin, RandyKOrton, Juan Dixon, KidRock101, MysticalGames, TooKool, WilliamRegal, lita, kidrock, gr81, mikesanders, DiscoFever20009, DoinktheClown, Felix Rivera, Joe Johnston, Steve Lawrence, and Seth Perkins
How can I show that a trade took place?
You may still have private messages or emails from before the trade, or records of reporting him after. If you were one of the people who publicly warned others about the bad trade I might contact you on my own at some point, but it's incredibly time-consuming trying to track down each user individually!
Don't most of the items I traded have wildly different prices now than compared to when I first traded them?
Good point. Just estimate the value of your items at the time the trade took place, and I'll send the money via PayPal when I can. Since I'm not filthy-stinking rich (yet... ) I'll have to wait for money to come in from sales of my various apps and games. Also, keep in mind that increasing the estimated value from $40 to $50 is the same as scamming me out of $10.
How can I be sure you're not just trying to harvest my email address, or do something even more sinister?
I've been a reliable eBayer for 10 years, I've been running a legitimate online business for eight, and I have access to thousands of unique customer email addresses which are all linked to valid PayPal accounts. The only thing I can do with this information is send them money or pointlessly ruin my reputation.
Okay... but how can we be sure you're actually Mike McFadden?
My AtariAge account is linked to my Facebook profile, and the fine folks here already did their homework!
I wasn't scammed by Steve, but I might know of some people who were. Should I tell them about this thread?
Yes.