Accepted Appeal: 76561198052024056 - (samalex / BANNED BY SR)

The change to the TWS policy does not cover working with/assisting a banned user. Please re-read the thread again
http://forums.steamrep.com/threads/policy-change-trades-with-scammer-policy-end-of-life.119528/

If you still insist your case falls under the new TWS policy, and that you were not actively working with/assisting a banned user, please add me on steam, otherwise this appeal will be processed as a regular banned by SR appeal and will be dealt with in due time.

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After some consideration and talk with various other staff, this case, in my opinion, does not fall under the revised TWS policy. Even if you did not know prior to your ban the user was marked, its reasonable to assume at that point you did. As you mentioned to me, you did more trading with the banned user after then prior to your ban. The arrangement between the parties (you paying the one party and the banned user trading you the items) indicates some sort of arrangement/agreement formal/informal/implied was in effect. Thus, the appeal will be treated as a regular appeal.

Working with a banned user is not covered in the revised TWS policy, your case will be treated as a regular appeal for that reason, I thought my previous post made that clear. As for timeframe of appeals, see the appeal tips thread.

Sorry for the delay in looking at your case. It seems that all of our admins had for one reason or another been recused from handling your case, which can happen once in a while for high profile individuals. It was decided that I will be handling your case, so we can move forward now.

Just to be clear, you were banned for:

1. Intentionally engaging in business with banned user(s) - This was the cAre case you discussed with You Are The One.
2. Middlemanning for banned user(s) - This refers to a middleman trade with 76561197999762459 a couple weeks before you were reported to FoG (mid June, 2015).

It doesn't look like @You Are The One talked to you about #2, only #1, so I'll address it now. I'm sorry it took so long to get to this point, but if you're not active and able to respond in this thread within the next 2 weeks, I'll have to conclude the appeal without you so we can move on to other appeals. Do you recall what happened between you and Crab?

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With no response from @samalex despite reasonable attempts to inform you that your case is up for review, I am forced to conclude this appeal without you.

1. Your first offense, as stated, is multiple trades with a marked scammer, while you wore a trusted middleman tag. The evidence is fairly strong on this one, and uncontested, but there is no proof of actively working with scammers.
2. Your second offense was intent to middleman and broker for a known scammer(s). The evidence for this incident is not as strong, falls under what we'd normally consider entrapment: an anonymous trader presented a transcript of their conversation with you - in which they wished to trade with 76561197999762459, then you defended said marked scammer's character and agreed to facilitate a trade - to r/globaloffensivetrade mods, who then contacted us to inform us a trusted middleman was working with scammers.

Given the fact that you were a trusted community middleman at the time of both incidents, you most certainly did this willingly. All middlemen are held to a higher standard, and that's made very clear to them. To put that "higher standard" into context, before working directly with SteamRep, I was part of a SteamRep partner, where their middlemen candidates were told they can expect temporary BANNED BY MCT tags if they were suspected of wrongdoing, as a precaution until investigation was finished. Middlemen there, and from other communities, were expected to background check all parties before conducting any trade, then if any slight warning signs surfaced, they were to advise both sides to call off the deal, even if one wasn't BANNED. It was also common knowledge among tagged admins, untagged admins, and even moderators, that partner community staff were heavily scrutinized by the community, and it was absolutely essential that community staff of all roles kept their noses clean, with my own community having zero tolerance for slip-ups. It was also made clear that middlemen and community admins would make less profit as traders, because they would be expected to abstain from otherwise profitable trades in order to keep their noses clean. This was standard practice, so as a trusted and vetted middleman you were, undeniably, fully responsible for checking who you deal with. A normal trader would have the leeway to say they "forgot" to check, or messed up, and might have received greater leniency in an appeal even before the retroactive policy change. But reviewing logs of your conversations with community admins, it's clear you had every intention to continue trading with marked scammers because you disagreed with the policy, or you disagreed with the decision to ban them. That said, trading with marked scammers alone, without anything else, still qualifies for the retroactive appeal criteria, so I'm simply giving background for the "higher standard" bit here.

Although trading with scammers is not by itself bannable, using your position as a trusted middleman to facilitate a trade with a scammer is still a violation of our revised policy on working with scammers, so the retroactive amendment does not grant you any special leniency for this offense. That's the main reason why your appeal was not expedited, although I'm disappointed that particular offense wasn't explained as a reason. Under normal circumstances, we probably would've thrown out a report like this one because it used entrapment (even if it wasn't our admins doing so). However, an abundance of caution is warranted when vetting middlemen, who are once again held to a higher standard. Some communities would even temporarily apply a BANNED tag during an investigation, to proactively protect the community with discretion to lift it later. Before it was forwarded to us, your case was investigated internally by the Subreddit community who gave you the MIDDLEMAN tag in the first place with high priority, because of the risk a rogue middleman posed to the community. While I cannot condone the method of investigation, and the evidence isn't of the quality I would've liked (you never followed up to contest it here either), I am expected to be stricter with community admins and middlemen. I must therefore concur with r/globaloffensivetrade's assessment that between this report, and your above offense for trading with scammers - which both occurred within less than a month of eachother - that you definitely betrayed the trust that the community invested in you in a systematic or routine fashion. And while I might not outright tag someone for betraying staff, I can't overlook abusing your position as a middleman.

Reviewing this case from a broader perspective of overall threat to the community, I do not believe a full BANNED BY SR tag is warranted. My reason for this is because you did not (as far as I can tell) directly contribute to fraud, and based on the reports we have, I do not believe you will outright scam someone you casually trade with. However, you did betray a position of substantial trust for either your own benefit, or to make a statement in defense of a scammer friend (someone you have no business presenting yourself as a neutral and mutually trusted middleman for). The community, including anyone else who might invest a similar degree of trust in you, has a right to know about those transgressions, and you knew you were putting yourself in the spotlight when you accepted the MIDDLEMAN tag. So a CAUTION tag is still warranted. As such, I have downgraded your BANNED BY SR tag to SR CAUTION, and preserved the notes on your SteamRep profile.