Rejected Appeal: 76561197995244886 - (MagBau5^ / BANNED BY SOP)

Appeal for BANNED BY SOP

Steam profile: 76561197995244886 (MagBau5^)

Appeal Plea: I am innocent of all listed offenses
Appeal Reason: [Process] Mistake - Admin misunderstood evidence or made a mistake

Victim Repayment: No, I committed no fraud or had no direct victims
Previous Appeals: No, this is my first appeal here​

Alternate Accounts:

I only own one alternate account but it isn't used for trading, idling or chatting. The account was also only created about 2 weeks ago.​

Appeal description:

So, I've been SteamRep banned for a looooong time. The sad thing is, it never really bothered me because I was never a part of the trading scene. Like, ever. That's why I have no reputation threads, I never had any interest in trading or the steam market until I started playing CS:GO this year.

I'm banned by Unusual Hat Club and SOP (I don't even know what SOP is, and I only know that UHC means Unusual Hat Club because a friend told me what it meant after I was SteamRep banned). Now, let me start by saying that I have never scammed anyone, have never owned an Unusual Hat, and have never had any interest in owning an unusual hat. I use steam a lot (not for trading), but I've owned my account for around 7 years and I have never been anything but a positive member of the community. I've played games competitively, hosted training sessions, mentored new teams in the games I'm interested in, and overall tried to be a good person.

Now, long story short, I'm tired of this ban following me around and haunting me and preventing me from using some sites that I would like to use now (such as CSGO Lounge) to do functions OTHER than trading. I never did anything wrong, I never belonged to any trading communities, and I'd like to overcome this obstacle so I can interact with new and emerging communities of gamers that follow the games that I enjoy.

This ban took place three years ago. Three years. Almost half the age of my account. There was and can be no evidence that I ever scammed anyone because, well, I didn't. I'm the only one who's ever had access to my account (I had steamguard beta). I've never owned an unusual hat, nor had an interest in owning one. I've never scammed anyone on steam. Ever.


Please let me know if you require any further information. I can promise you that I am not a problem in this community, and I do appreciate how much steamrep does to help root out the problem areas in the trading community. I don't want an account that I've made hundreds of friends with, played thousands and thousands of hours of games in, and shaped my online personality around become unusable due to an action or actions that never took place.

Thank you for your time.​

I did a little digging on SourceOp and found this post: http://forums.sourceop.com/threads/5928-Scammer-Database/page63?p=267332&viewfull=1#post267332
Seems you tried a fake middleman scam three years ago.

As far as the UHC tag, read this: http://manncotrading.com/index.php/topic,3443.0.html
You would have to appeal the tag on Mann Co Trading, but you would need proof that you did nothing wrong.

I understand why you are trying to appeal now, but you've had three years...

Hey all,

Thanks for taking the time to respond first off. I'll try to go in order of these posts to make this more readable and understandable.

The post in question seems to be linked to one of my friends. His name is "j-tins" and I've been friends with him on steam for about 5 years, but haven't chatted with him in problem over 2 years (I'm not sure if he uses steam anymore). The post in question is, I believe, misleading as to what my role was in the situation. I was never the one who pm'd the original user (as I don't use that SourceOP site, I didn't even know what it was). J-tins had sent me a PM saying his paypal was "locked" outside of trading with friends and family so he was going to "western-union" me the money (since no one online outside of friends would accept getting money via western-union) so that I could buy the hat for him and then he would just pay me back. Since we had a been friends for a few years, I agreed. I bartered for j-tins with the guy based on how much he wanted to pay, and followed trade instructions that he gave me. Then, the middle-man (which I believe was j-tins on an alternate account or on an account impersonating a middleman), received the hat I asked for the users paypal info immediate so I could send MY money to him.

Long story short, j-tins told me he got the hat and went offline. I was worried since he was supposed to, at that time, send me information to go pick up money from a western union at that point, so I didn't proceed with the paypal transaction. However, this users post does NOT show that I did attempt to contact him again shortly after this took place (like, within 15 minutes) trying to explain the situation and that I was still planing on sending him the money once he contacted me via Western Union. Of course, he wrote it off as me being a "scammer" and told me to "f✿✿✿ off" so I didn't really get to pursue this much more. I talked to j-tins a WEEK later (yes, he was offline for a whole week) and asked him what happened. He told me he was acting as the middleman and that he got the hat so there was no reason to pay. I told him the guy expected either the hat or the paypal.

In the end, I told the guy what happened and I told him I was going to try to get his money from my friend (who I was sure now had his hat) and that I would send him the money as soon as I could. But at the end of over a week, (and still to this day), no money ever came from j-tins so I could send no money out. I had no knowledge of the trading community (as I said, I never was very interested in the sites), so I didn't know that I was doing something phishy, nor helping a user who was previously banned (as you can see from the post on SourceOP). When I contacted j-tins after a week, he told me he had already traded the hat away (don't know if that means sold it or traded it or whatever), and that he wasn't interested in giving it back. It kinda killed our friendship, and we haven't played games together since, but I still hope that one day he'll apologize for getting me into all this s✿✿✿ over trying to HELP, not harm. As far as the hat itself, there was no gain in it for me, I came out at a loss. I probably lost a friend because I kept asking him to be repaid for the money he owed me. Which, on that note, leads me to the "if you want me to remove j-tins from friends, I will" portion. I know it probably wouldn't make any difference, but this was a person I met in real life once in 2010, and I thought I was pretty good friends with. As I said, though, we haven't talked or played in about 2 years. I don't know if removing him would prove anything though. (You just hope people change, right?)

I realize this probably comes off like a sob story, and that some of the evidence may appear circumstantial, but at that point I had a 4 year old steam account and had never been involved in the trading community, why would I risk it with one trade or one thing that didn't even result in me GETTING anything? Can I prove I never received anything? Is there a way for you to go through my backpack since the accounts creation to show that I never owned this hat, never received it? I honestly don't know since I'm not that big in the scene, so if there is a way please let me know.



In response to the latter portion of your message Knuckle, so does that mean I basically have no chance of UHC tag being removed? Don't know much, well, anything really, about the Mann Co. Trading that you mentioned. I don't have proof I didn't participate in the scam since I obviously did and I will 100% admit to that, but I did so unknowingly and while trying to help a friend (who was apparently a known scammer at the time). I know it's been 3 years, and that seems like a long time. At this point, I would send this guy my own personal money if it would mean forgiveness for this act which I did not intentionally commit. I gained nothing out of this. If I appealed next year Knuckles, it would've been 4 years. Or the year after would've been 5 years. It doesn't change the fact, and as I said, since I wasn't active in the trading community I didn't even KNOW I was banned until about a year and a half ago. My day-to-day functions on steam haven't changed at all except for maybe about a year ago when I started getting into CSGO lounge. And I don't even use that site for trading.

Lastly, I did some more digging in that sourceOP thread and it appears the hat WAS traded away, bought by user
Gitominoti
and that he listed who he was buying it from (which was NOT me nor my account). So I guess that's the only proof I can give for that I received nothing from this trade, but all I can do is apologize for my actions that complied with it.

Thanks for taking the time to read all this again. I apologize if it came off like I was holding this information back in my first post, but that was not my intent and hopefully this long and thorough post will show that.(obviously as these forums say, the admins already know the answers to all their questions, it's better to just answer them accurately and honestly). Have a good one,

Short answer? No.

Long answer... If you can explain your story and have evidence to back it up (such as inventory history, paypal history, etc.), you can still easily appeal the UHC tag as well. The question here is... what was the UHC tag for? Is it related to the SourceOp tag or was it for an unrelated matter? At this point, I have no way of knowing. The only information I see on MCT is that it was an imported ban, there is nothing else on it...

Yes, there is. I suppose you've never clicked some of the links on your profile page? One of them on your inventory page shows who you traded with and what was traded.
I'll give you a link to it and an image showing where it is. Link first: http://steamcommunity.com/id/knucklejoe/inventoryhistory/
Image next:
(click to expand)
That link will redirect from my history to yours. Lucky for you, the Mannconomy update had been put in shortly before your issue happened. There should be a record on your inventory page. Just take a screenshot showing your history of around the time of the incident and do include the url in the shot. Hide your log in name in the top right corner, no one should know that but you.

Don't give up on removing these tags before you even try.

Knuckle,

Thanks for the help! I actually had no idea there was an in-steam way to check inventory history. I'm glad it's so easy.

I would assume that the UHC ban is for the same thing, since it's about an unusual hat, but I suppose you all AREN'T supposed to assume anything which I can understand. I've added my inventory history from the time after the mannconomy update went live. I only have 3 pages of history total, so if you need to see more of it, that's fine. Like I said, I wasn't involved in the trade scene so my history isn't that dense. Here's the link of the image that shows the initial 6 or 7 month period after manconomy release (this should cover the time in question). If you need newer logs, please don't hesitate to ask.

Well, post all 3.

XRaY, Here's an album of page 2 which goes well into 2013. http://imgur.com/a/Bq0gk

The remainder of the trades on page 1 are CSGO trades, and I can copy those as well it's just an annoyance to cut and paste them all if......

Inventory history is pointless. Wasn't the report made after the mannconomy update? I guess that's really shitty if it was around the time, but my inventory history doesn't count for anything. I could find a paypal statement from around that time and show I received nothing on paypal. I guess what I'm asking is, where do I go from here. I'm trying to provide you with any information I can, but at this point it sounds like I'm SoL

Am I allowed to bump this?

It's been a few weeks, but I'm still interested in getting this worked out... preferably before Dreamhack Winter.