Varka: Sean Piche with Money

[a pigeon]

What's with the Scottish/Dutch person listed as the President?

That's Varka. On the bad dragon forums he gives his location as Scotland. Furthermore, Baneki press releases mention that its operational infrastructure was in the Netherlands:

Baneki Privacy Computing owns and manages several market-specific VPN
services, including goldensVPN (goldens.com), TorrentFreedom
(torrentfreedom.com), and TrueOnlineSecurity (trueonlinesecurity.com).
Primary operational infrastructure is based in the Netherlands, with
additional in-house server capacity in other privacy-friendly jurisdictions
worldwide.

http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/hush-communications-and-baneki-privacy-computing-team-to-offer-comprehensive-vpn-based-network-security-57211207.html

And European "offices" in Glasgow:

Baneki's European office is located in Glasgow, Scotland; North American administrative facilities are in British Columbia, Canada. Baneki's CTO and co-founder, Douglas Spink, is additionally known for his work with Exitpoint Stallions Limit e (stallions.net), and with his partner, the world-renowned showjumping stallion Capone I.

http://pcsecurityprnews.com/security_articles/2008/08/baneki-offers-freeware-solution-to-chinese-government-blocking-of-itunes-62393.htm (I guess they were hoping for free publicity by mentioning itunes)

Varka mentioned Doug Spink in a post from a thread made in 2008, which was about the financial viability of the Adult toy business:

http://forums.bad-dragon.com/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=277&start=0

He described him as:

the best leader I've ever met, who made $100 million or so in the dot-com boom, lost it all on 9/11, got involved in smuggling and did 2 years for posession of 150ish KG of cocaine, came out the other end a changed man and started a privacy company

(http://forums.bad-dragon.com/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=277&start=0#p4049)

And he said in another post in that thread that Bad Dragon would not have been possible without

the ongoing financial support of what is now VPNTunnel's parent company, Baneki.

(http://forums.bad-dragon.com/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=277&start=0#p3648)

Varka said that the reason why Doug Spink got in contact with him in the first place was because Varka was running a virtual private network service, and Doug Spink wanted to run a VPN service, but needed someone for the technical side of things:

I got into contact with a 'competitor' which had everything but a technical solution (including real, proper funding -and the best leader I've ever met [...] I had the technical solution but no business / tax / financial / management experience, which meant that when we merged the two companies into Baneki, I was in the perfect position to concentrate on what I wanted to do most: manage the technical side of stuff.

I've since learned a whole ton about how business works (Both from practice with bad dragon, and from my involvement in baneki, which has been beyond invaluble),

http://forums.bad-dragon.com/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=277&start=0#p4049

It's pretty easy to imagine why Doug Spink would want VPN services.

[Jim Demintia]

So basically even if he isn't sitting on dirty money now or involved with criminal activities, Bad Dragon was paid for in the beginning by Doug Spink's operations. Nice.

[rathernot]

I worked for Baneki up till October. I signed an NDA but they ripped me off to the tune of 15G's and then the company dissolved so I don't mind discussing it.

[Jim Demintia]

We're listening.

[rathernot]

Just throwing it out there if anyone had any questions. I'm not sure exactly how much jan, doug, marc, paul, etc have already revealed, in fact I found this thread while trying to find that out myself.

[Jim Demintia]

I don't know if anyone here has any specific questions. And if they do, you'd probably want to find "the Doug Spink thread" and/or start one, instead.

And just cuz I gotta ask: is there any reason you're being cagey instead of dumping whatever dirt you have? I mean, I really doubt anyone here's gonna "give" you anything for whatever information it is that you have.

[rathernot]

Not really trying to be cagey, there's just no simple way to "dump" a lengthy employment experience. Just wanted to see if there were any gaps I could could fill, since there was a (relatively) recent conversation going on. It's not all about doug either. Jan was a part owner and didn't leave the company til things had begun to hit the fan.

[a pigeon]

there's just no simple way to "dump" a lengthy employment experience.

Well, if you're up for it I'd be interested in reading the whole thing. It certainly would be interesting to hear about Jan/Varka's involvement with Spink and Baneki at the least.

[Jim Demintia]

Not really trying to be cagey, there's just no simple way to "dump" a lengthy employment experience. Just wanted to see if there were any gaps I could could fill, since there was a (relatively) recent conversation going on. It's not all about doug either. Jan was a part owner and didn't leave the company til things had begun to hit the fan.

Basically we would want to know how involved Jan was in any shady shit that went on. And how did that contribute to his ability to drop nine grand on hard drives he doesn't have an obvious need for.

But yeah, what pigeon said. If you want to dump, there's a couple of people here who will probably pick through the entire thing. I wouldn't feel that a wall of text would be unwelcome, at least not from you.

[rodox_video]

I would be very interested in knowing well, everything. A full employee list would be a good place to start; who worked there, who worked there but quit before the arrest, who knew what. For example, what do you know about Chris Darrow? Apparently he and Spink used to be friends until a major schism happened.

If you have anything that you think might be best kept out of the public eye, you can always contact me via e-mail.

[greaseyote]

You know, non-disclosure agreements can't legally be used to keep you from disclosing illegal or unethical activities (though you should of course disclose those to the proper authorities).

To be enforceable, the contract should also be limited in scope and should specifically apply to that company's particular trade secrets, intellectual property or private information which is clearly confidential. Casual information about that company is not generally protected by an (enforceable) NDA.

Just saying.