Archived Appeal: 76561198030026090 - (Nikriontra / BANNED BY SR)

Appeal for BANNED BY SR

Steam profile: 76561198030026090 (Nikriontra)

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:

​

Appeal description:

Hello,

Recently I decided to play Team Fortress 2 again after a hiatus of three years. Since then I have discovered that the community has changed and that both Valve and the community have taken a tougher approach to scammers. I respect that but I do not wish to be punished for a crime I did not commit. I want to play on trade servers without having to be banned.

I was banned because I was and I quote: "a member of a fake SR Middleman Group." I was invited to said group by a scammer I had met on Team Fortress 2, referring to user: "http://steamrep.com/profiles/76561198050873798." The guy had scammed me of a hat or something (I genuinely forgot.) However he felt a bit bad for scamming me so he added me on Steam and gave me a bit of compensation (not enough to cover my losses.) I noticed he had a huge TF2 inventory and being the young naive fool at the time I asked him how he amassed such an impressive collection of TF2 items. He was reluctant to share his secrets but we got on friendly terms.

A bit later, he invited me into a "Middleman group" that he said could bring us lots of items and money. (at the time I did not know about Steamrep nor the official middleman group on Steam.) I was very hesitant but he managed to convince me and said that I did not have to do anything. I thought "why not?" and joined. Naturally afterwards, I heard nothing from him. I don't know if the group actually successfully took part in any scams but I assure you that I had absolutely nothing to do with them. I don't know how to prove my innocence. I have not talked to the scammer in a REALLY LONG time. (I think the last time we talked was four years ago.)

I left the group a long time ago and its only member is the scammer's alt account, referring to user: "http://steamrep.com/profiles/76561198072569148." I believe there was only one or two other members but they left the group quite early on.

Link to group: "http://steamcommunity.com/groups/sr_Middlemen"

I am not the kind of person to scam people. I did attempt a couple of scams (none of them were successful) but after I stopped communicating to the scammer I stopped attempting. I stopped playing Team Fortress 2 sometime in late 2012 due to unrelated frustations. I never used services like TF2Outpost, Steamrep etc except in special circumstances when I was selling off my inventory.

I didn't actually realise that the fake middleman group was mimicking the official one until last year when I stumbled upon it by mistake.

I hope this can all be sorted out nice and easy. I can't provide any solid evidence as all of the chatlogs between me and the hacker are gone, and my memory of those days has faded considerably. I hope that the appealers can take my word for it.
Should you have any more questions, please feel free to ask.

Sincerely,
Nikriontra.​