That’s because it’s fraud.

Nah. It's not fraud if they don't get any benefit from it. Since they refunded the single, solitary person who pledged $3/month, then shut it all down, it's all good from the fraud angle.

It's wire-fraud and it's a federal crime. "Refunding people" doesn't change the fact that a crime has been committed, period. This isn't a legal advice.

I am not a lawyer, but I doubt refunding your fraud victim after the fact gets you off the hook for fraud. If the victim or the police wanted to pursue that.

I think it might make it difficult to prove intent to defraud if you immediately return the cash. Is it theft if a magician picks your pocket but then returns the wallet at the end of the trick? By the most technical sense of the term, it might. But i can't imagine a prosecutor that would go after something like that.

I see what you're trying for but I don't think the magician analogy is accurate. Bare minimum you agreed to sit and watch the magic show, and every time I've seen a magician involve the audience they always start with "Can I get a volunteer?", at which point it's clear you're a willing participant (yes, you don't know what's about to happen, but the magician gives the wallet back after so it's clear about the entertaining show and not an example of the magician attempting to commit a crime)

> Is it theft if a magician picks your pocket but then returns the wallet at the end of the trick?

If a "street magician" randomly picks my pocket out of the blue, you can bet I consider that theft, even if they give it back afterwards. They'd better get my consent to do anything with my person or my property.

Clearly there was no intent to defraud. He was testing for a security issue and promptly returned the money of the one person who was fooled.

A dead comment asked if stealing 100 dollars if fine if you give it back.

So I'll chip in that for basic theft, one of the core elements is intent to permanently deprive the original owner. So if someone steals money, changes their mind, and then returns it, that's still theft. And taking money to spend, with a promise of returning money later, still counts as theft. But if the intent all along was to return it the next day, stored safely the entire time, that's not theft.

Obviously intent is hard to prove, so don't try to pull that off without a lot of evidence and/or a very understanding target.

> But if the intent all along was to return it the next day, stored safely the entire time, that's not theft.

Legally, this isn't even remotely true.

If you deprive someone of their legal possessions without permission, even with intent to return it later, you are guilty of theft.

There is no loophole that allows you to temporarily steal things as long as you intend to return them.

Intent only comes into play if the person had no intention of depriving the other person. An example would be if you accidentally pick up someone else's jacket because you thought it was yours.

Permanent deprivation seems to be the more common standard as far as I can tell, not just deprivation.

The difference isn't a loophole.

I'm fairly sure if you steal something with the intent to return it 5 years later you will still be charged with theft.

No, theft is theft, regardless of whether or not you return the item later.

There is no loophole that allows people to temporarily steal things as long as they kindly return them later.

The parent isn't claiming that it's legal to take something so long as you have intent to return it. Just that the standard definition of theft requires "permanently" as an element, and maybe taking something temporarily would be some other crime.

See the model penal code[1] "(1) "deprive" means: (a) to withhold property of another permanently or for so extended a period as to appropriate a major portion of its economic value, or with intent to restore only upon payment of reward or other compensation"

See [2] which mentions the "permanent" requirement three times.

[1] https://archive.org/details/ModelPenalCode_ALI/page/n207/mod...

[2] https://www.findlaw.com/criminal/criminal-charges/theft-over...

We’re so deep into pedantry that we’re missing the point of the conversation.

To clarify, most jurisdictions have definitions of theft that will be true even if you only deprive the person of their property for a short period of time:

> Today, many states have extended the definition of theft to include depriving the owner of the property even for a short period of time, thus rendering unauthorized borrowing as theft.

From https://lawshelf.com/shortvideoscontentview/theft-crimes-a-s...

So yes, maybe there is some jurisdiction somewhere that wouldn’t define unauthorized borrowing as theft, but chances are good that if you borrow something without authorization, you can be guilty of theft (among other things) in most jurisdictions.

> No, theft is theft, regardless of whether or not you return the item later.

Theft generally (specific statutes may vary!) requires intent to permanently deprive; if you don’t have that, its not theft.

It may be another crime, and its almost certainly the tort of trespass to chattels, so its not “allowed”.

Everyone in this thread should read

www.criminaldefenselawyer.com/resources/criminal-defense/criminal-offense/what-difference-between-joyriding-stealing-a-ca r

How was this fraud? He simply created a Patreon account. Yes, it happened to be used by someone else previously, but how is that his fault?

> Yes, it happened to be used by someone else previously, but how is that his fault?

Fraud is deception with the intent of personal gain.

He wrote and published an entire blog article entitled "How I exploited existing youtube videos with a fake Patreon profile" in which he describes how he registered a Patreon account with the expectation of deceiving users into sending him money.

Didn't he also use images from the youtube channel to make the patreon account look like it belonged to the youtube user?

Why are you asking me?

it's called "responsible disclosure" though this is not 100% responsible. lol