stunned me more was when I found out Richard Bates
did most of the technical work. I knew Richard. We were in a few of the same
clubs, we had a class or two, we hung out in the same friend groups, and we
were almost friends for a while. Richard was a... peculiar person. He had no
people skills whatsoever, and he managed to be both shy and condescending at
the same time. He treated people horribly. I ended up having a falling out
with him in my senior year after he cut me out of his life for trying to patch
things up between him and one of my best friends, who he suddenly cut out of
his life with no explanation whatsoever (that is, Richard cut my friend out of
his life). IMO, hegut-check and deciding to go
ahead with the hit anyway.

(edited for grammatical clarity)

~~~
pakled_engineer
He hired CIs posing as hitmen a few times. His diary/movie script/fictional
book on his laptop they found claimed he tried to kill an employee who had
potential to snitch, and a scammer in Canada that ripped off many users.

He also agreed to a higher price for the "hit" in Canada, as it was claimed by
the CI the target lived with 3 other people and if they were to collect all
his assets as ordered then everybody would have to die. Ross was totally cool
with that and paid.

I also don't think this is why his fanbase on SR dumped him, they seemed more
pissed that his security practices were so terribad awful it put everybody
else in jeopardy. It's almost as if