On 10th October 2023, darknet market vendor, WinstonWolf, posted on Dread explaining how he seemingly had been scammed by HugBunter. The post went over how HugBunter offered to create him a private vendor shop, under the alias /u/Ghost, and vanished. This would be the start of a year long controversy.
HugBunter is the creator of Dread forum. He's a prominent figure in the darknet, along with his co-administrator /u/Paris. He previously operated private vendor stores in the past but stopped doing so years ago.
Private vendor stores are sites that act similarly to markets but instead only have listings for one vendor.
This article will break down how HugBunter used the alias Ghost to sell around $300,000 worth of stores, then abruptly shut them down without refunding the vendors:
Confirming HugBunter is Ghost
Who is Ghost?
On 23rd July 2023, the user /u/Ghost first created a post titled "Ghost Commerce: Private Vendor Stores - Start selling your goods on your own onion", offering private vendor stores. The first paragraph of the post:
Now that our demo is live, the time has come to offer our Private Vendor Store service publicly. The demo is currently in the testing stage to outline remaining bugs and establish anything further we need to accomodate for Vendors who are already on-boarded. We are beginning the process of deploying live sites and currently have a waiting list for taking on any new clients. Our stores have been tested and verified to be allowed to promote on Dread by the Dread staff.
Although this was Ghost's first post on Dread, the stores were "tested and verified to be allowed to promote on Dread by the Dread staff", and were advertised as being "the only stores approved by Dread staff". This is strange considering Ghost's non existent activity on the forum. Though, it's entirely possible, and later clarified by HugBunter, that Ghost is an alternative account for a well known member on the forum. What HugBunter left out was, Ghost is his account.
HugBunter is Ghost
In the original post that kickstarted this controversy, titled "This is Weird", well known vendor WinstonWolf makes it clear HugBunter was the user selling and providing the stores, and that he was asked to use /d/Ghost as a point of contact for anything related to the stores. Quotes from the, now deleted, post:
HugBunter messaged me over a month ago offering "limited spots for private vendor sites". He said he was reaching out to me for one of the coveted spots because I had a good long history here.
HugBunter asked that I keep his name from my announcements, and instead /d/ghost would be my point of contact. He wanted $10k to get the site up and running.
If this had been anyone but the legendary HugBunter, I would have ignored the message likely, Still, I asked that he send me a PGP signed message to confirm his identity, which he did and I confirmed the message. So I sent $2k to reserve my place, and intended to pay the rest within a week. He said that I would recieive a couple thousand dollars in Dread ads also, if I paid.
Read the full post.
The stores came with thousands of dollars worth of Dread ads, listing on Daunt and were advertised as "the only stores approved by Dread staff".
This section of the article should end here, as it's clear HugBunter is Ghost. Though, since HugBunter has denied being Ghost. This part of the article will continue.
HugBunter claims Ghost is not his alias:
Not my alias, I sold shops in the past and it was a mistake that brought great risk to myself and Dread, not making that mistake again and to associate me with these is dangerous.
I do not have time to be fucking about with vendor shops, its another reason I stopped doing so many years ago.
Not be behind the Ghost stores either, I gave my recommendation based on it being a respected member of the community, no conspiracy needed.
More quotes by HugBunter.
WinstonWolf has since said that was in error, because it wasn't me who asked that, I hadn't even been in communication with him at that time. He was just mistaken from the referral.
The reason for my reputation is due to quite the opposite, I have no interest in anyone's money. Dread only required limited monetization when it became clear it grew beyond what I could sustain myself, additional monetization was only realized when DoS attacks made it unviable, right now we still only make the bare minimum to pay staff... I've never pushed montization and we could have easily been charging fees to markets for everything provided to them.
Considering I've always turned down bug bounties and didn't touch the millions sat in market wallets when I hacked them, should tell you enough about my personal ethics and that I'm not going to be sat here scamming vendors for a quick buck.
I also don't have time for shit like this, I'm working on many things to expand the Dread network and we handle a lot of things that go on here that most will never even know about, you should know that I've had everyone's backs many times and prevented a lot of really shitty situations.
I wouldn't risk my reputation on stupid shit like was depicted here for such a minimal taking now would I? The majority of this is just wrong assumptions from something I now regret even involving myself in, but as far as I know the vendor's have all resolved the issues mentioned now anyway.
one or more assumed it was a ploy by myself, that sentiment grew as they each contacted each other as far as I know, I literally wasn't even online to be aware of this.
if I was to run a market or similar not only would there be forced encryption, but it would have to be XMR only. I don't agree with the use of auto encrypt even if it is to assist new users, they should be taught, not spoon fed.
HugBunter claims Winstonwolf is confused about the whole situation. He says all he did was refer WinstonWolf to Ghost:
He (WinstonWolf) was referred and wrongly assumed. That referral also had to expose their original alias for credibility which they understood they cannot expose. The whole reason this became a problem is because I wasn't online when they had a problem and they assumed my referral was some scam attempt, when in reality I had no other involvement.
He's (Ghost) trusted under another alias (...) His reputation has shown that he has been able to operate monetary services without issues and also shut them down without exiting. That doesn't say he couldn't choose to do this in the future, but its the same as trusting market admins, who always abuse my trust too. It is worth nothing that the majority of stores I have saw are stores that did not come from my recommendation, vendors I personally haven't heard of.
Despite these claims, HugBunter provides public relations for Ghost. When an issue with the vendor stores arises, HugBunter reassures users that he has spoken to Ghost and that everything is fine:
Can confirm Ghost did contact us to tell us he needed to take all of the servers down and his reasoning is valid. Will stay in contact with him and try to oversee things.
He (Ghost) is good and I trust in his technical knowledge, but it would be wrong for me to give recommendations of anyone and of course I could never guarantee he wouldn't exit scam so it was a poor decision and I decided to not involve myself further. I can confirm though he contacted us yesterday and explained what was happening, will try to oversee things today if I have time.
Although HugBunter claims WinstonWolf is mistaken, many other popular vendors have stated that HugBunter was the user creating their stores:
More vendors.
Even after HugBunter's claims, WinstonWolf still stated that HugBunter was the user creating his store.
One vendor, NextGeneration, posted his full year long private conversation with HugBunter:
The conversation:
The conversation documents HugBunter's process of creating the stores. Starting from 12th October 2022 and ending on 18th August 2023.
The store's footer:
1 prominent user and 2 vendors have privately confirmed to me that Ghost is HugBunter.
Vendors and Funds Affected
30+ vendors were sold stores by HugBunter. Vendor Freestate_EU, who was sold a store, estimates HugBunter was paid $300,000 in total for the stores.
Freestate_EU's post.
We, like many other veteran vendors decided to conduct business with ghost commerce to host our vendor shop.
Us, like many other veteran vendors paid around 250k on the conservative side and up to 300k(total payment from all vendors)
Yes, that's quarter million!!!
Ghost is alternative username of a known community member, this is the ONLY reason many veteran vendors decided to conduct business with him, before this whole fiasco, ghost had 1 post/comment attached to his profile, it was generic info about his shops. I repeat we and many other conducted business with ghost on the premise of his trustworthiness from the main account(which we are not allowed to make public, understandably) Ghost commerce proved this tie to us managing the shops in subtle ways(enough of this tie)
After chatting with ghost for 2-3 weeks about details, we were promised up time of 4 years for total payment of 10k.
Initially you would need to fork out 2.5k, thereafter 7.5k, our personal agreement with ghost was as the following:
2.5k, get shop
1 month uptime, another 2.5k
3 month uptime, rest payment 5k.
Ghost accommodated this payment structure wish with us.
We paid 5k in total and our shop was online less than 2 months before it got taken down.
Other vendors had different structures, some paid 10k upfront, but everyone made payments of several thousand dollars for a product that was supposed to last at least 4 years.
Ghost claim this is not exit scam since no escrow was stolen, but the whole point of vendors having their own shops was to remove the risk of escrow ever getting stolen, this excuse is mute.
Ghost claim he will offer a solution in a week(4 weeks ago) but there have been no communication from ghost beside a lengthy post that basically provided a lot of details about nothing.
Ghost claim since no escrow was stolen, no harm to vendors, even though most paid 10k and 5k payments for shops that lasted mere months, in our case less than 2 months.
Ghost claim he did not make any money on those shops that he did it out of good will and actually lost money on the project
Ghost claim he paid all our payments upfront for server cost, up to 300k... for this amount of money you could build a server farm!!!!
I have left out some details provided to us to not compromise private communication and only posted things which have been publicly stated and added context.
Ghost claimed only a handful of shops had issues and the majority got taken down as pre-caution, Ghost promised to solve this problem to the best of his ability(when the issue (arrived) later Ghost said he would provide us with options in about a week(4 weeks ago) and that he prefer another option(unknown option, as no details have been provided, only that the one with details was not his preferred option) instead of the one offered. The option with details was basically broke the agreements vendors had with him, which included hosting a static page with our contact details.
HOWEVER I am now reading posts claiming ghost have abandoned this project and closed it, since no escrow was lost, no harm(forget the quarter million taken for product not delivered, that's apparently pocket change)
We were in the process of building our brand through our new shop, we hired new employees & attained stock to support this project only for it to be cut short before it started, now we are stuck in limbo with employees getting frustrated due to lack of work, our stock is starting to deteriorate, worst case, some of our employees are starting to look for other work, basically destroying our whole project... but we are apparently supposed to be happy since no escrow was stolen.
When we chatted with ghost, he explicitly told me that only 1-2 spots were left for these shop and that he would not be able to accept more people, but after I boarded, at least 5-10 new shops were opened, some of these vendors had their shops for less than 1 week before being taken down...
All in all, this is a hot mess which involves a lot of money, affecting the vein of the community(vendors) in a very bad way.
IMO Ghost should improve his communication with paying customers
Ghost should provide a solution to the current situation that satisfy his paying customers
We are no reaching 2 months soon with downtime and vendors who paid for this product are not happy at all!
END RANT
This post has now been edited, and all the information removed, at the request of "Ghost":
I edited the post at the request of the operator who was pretty mad and cursed me out.
Freestate_EU's store was priced at $10,000, which came with a guarantee of at least 4 years of uptime. He paid $2,500 initially and then another $2,500 after 1 month of uptime. If the store had reached the 3 month uptime mark, he would of paid another $5,000. They were not cheap, which was even acknowledged by the store's promotional post.
Other vendors had different payment structures:
some paid 10k upfront, but everyone made payments of several thousand dollars for a product that was supposed to last at least 4 years.
Currently all the stores are offline, though "Ghost" is still online. He claims to have spent all the money on servers:
All setup costs paid to servers this was not for making money i lost money to this project.
The stores have been offline for 2 months.
The vendors paid thousands for their stores. In return they got 2 months of uptime, followed by 2 months of downtime and no refund. Despite all this, "Ghost" claims:
I did not do to anything wrong
Many vendors have publicly stated that they feel "Ghost" scammed them:
More vendors.
Some vendors have publicly vented their frustration with HugBunter:
These posts and comments are now erased.
Censorship of the Situation
Before continuing, it's important to have a basic understanding of how deleted comments are handled on Dread. When a comment is deleted it appears as:
This process allows people to see that a comment was made, but it's content is deleted.
Nearly every comment linking HugBunter to Ghost doesn't follow this process. Instead they are completely erased from the platform. HugBunter claims:
If a comment is erased it can only be done by request of the author when they want their removed comment to not be associated to their username
These are just a few of the censored comments:
More comments.
These are, apart from the comment that HugBunter claims "was asked to be erased by the author", comments from authors who didn't request erasure. Even comments from deleted accounts, which can't request erasure.
HugBunter claims that no censorship occurred, and that a single comment was erased, which resulted in the child comments below it to be erased:
They weren't top level comments, otherwise I would see them in the log. The only erased comment is a top level comment which shows 13 sub comments were under it, which means the other comments would have been part of that reply chain.
This isn't the case. Every mention of HugBunter in Ghost's announcement post has been erased by Dread staff.
HugBunter responded:
I will incorporate his response into the article soon.