Squishy,

I understand your want to defend him while only knowing a small portion of things.  If it is very important for you to know his side of the story and know all about his business, then I ask you to talk to him directly.  Ask what he was saying and how he meant it.  It would save a lot of back and forth.

I have spoken to him directly, I have asked him what he was saying and how he meant it. From my perspective, it appears that he was raising an issue that he considered problematic for the game to try to fix things, rather than making an accusation.

I do not think he was accusing you of what you state here; I have saved a lot of back and forth and confirming that LG shares my assessment that he was not directly accusing you of anything. 

I think you've misinterpreted this and handled it poorly, but I also think that you of course have the sole ability the judge the situation and mete out punishment.

In turn, I have the ability to express my disagreement with your judgment, despite the fact that it almost certainly won't change anything. 

I have nothing left to say on the subject that has not been previously stated, except to express my resounding disappointment and grief regarding everyone involved here and for the community as a whole. 

I can't comment on the efforts made to accumulate the wealth, other than I know a vast majority was made in another time, through bets made with City Hall.

There is nothing false about this statement. The few players who wield insane wealth in this game achieved it by making bets with a "non-player" user. In character, we call it City Hall. These bets are visibly different from user-to-user bets, for a few reasons:

1. The credits that City Hall was playing with were spawned into the game, rather than purchased or earned by a player.
2. The only other credits won this way, via the House character, have limits which would require insane sequences of wins to amass a single fortunate bet with "City Hall". And that limit was reduced dramatically (by a factor of 25) some time ago to try and limit this particular problem.
3. They injected a massive supply of credits into the game's economy, unchecked by any user's personal risk (because City Hall was playing with house money) and the game's built-in limits (because House only allows fortune to earn you so much).

In my opinion, comparing the stockpiles of credits "earned" in this fashion to the availability of offering bets to other players is not discussing this issue in good faith, or even with a good understanding of why some users were frustrated with how those credits then have impacted the game for years.

Are you going to deny that you made large bets with Sticks and Premeir that won them tens of thousands of credits? Because that's the only thing that would make the above statement a "conspiracy theory", and at that point you're simply lying the userbase.

Disclosure: I am not equating the existence of these bets to admin favoritism, admin intervention, or cheating. I am simply saying that they happened.

Not by working the streets. No common gangster in this life will ever get a chance to earn that kind of credit assets, and so will never get the chance to challenge a hit placed on them.

The reality is, purchasing and gambling credits is a gateway to power in this game, and that means that the people who made fortunes through bets with City Hall years ago will always retain a profound advantage over those who didn't, and the hitlist is one way those fortunes translate to in-game power. As someone who has faced these hitlists- asking a crew, district, or city to kick up cash to help pay them off is infuriating, and represents one of the worst aspects of this game.

It is not a conspiracy theory to suggest that a user would have to spend an inordinate amount of USD money to purchase the credits to rival the fortunes of these players- which is where these hits come from. It is not a conspiracy theory to say that the wealth accumulated through bets with City Hall have had an influence on the game since they happened, and grant a considerable advantage over those who did not or could not do the same thing.

To see a dedicated user who has put thousands of hours into this game, risen to the top on numerous occasions, and volunteered to serve as staff have his character admin wacked for three sentences of legitimate in-character frustration that many of us have felt for years instead of actually addressing what's frustrating him is a tragic, but predictable, misstep by the administration.

Disclosure: I am not suggesting that the admins must or should re-instate JackMezzo's character. I am critical of the way JackMezzo's statements were interpreted by the administration and how they have been mischaracterized in this thread. I share Mezzo's frustrations, and would enjoy finding solutions to the problems he saw. But as long as it's "against the rules" to say that these things happened, that will be impossible.

Frankly, I'm still not sure what I did other than disagree.

When you PM'd me for more information after I'd publicly said my piece, I tried to explain my thinking the best I could.  

I said that LG disagreed with your judgment, that I disagreed with your judgment, but you still had the right to judge things however you'd like. I said that it thought it was a misunderstanding: that you and LG seemed to be on different pages, and I wished cooler head prevailed.  How is that dishonest? 

I suspect that that private conversation that you initiated and pushed at me to respond will be used to justify my punishment. Unfortunately, killing people for what they allegedly say in private and then directing people to ask them to clear things up tends to extend issues rather than solve them. Hitchens razor: what is asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence. 

Again, you have the right to punish people however you see fit. I disagreed with your punishment of LG and said so, and I strongly disagree with mine as well. In a parallel universe, I think LG phrased his argument better, game admins did a better job of understanding what he was trying to say, and we're probably having a lively discussion about the hitlist right now.

Unfortunately, as Candide clearly shows, we do not live in the best of all possible worlds.

Cheers, all. 

So long- and  thanks for all the swimmin' with the fishes.

Or.. Hypothetically they could have talked after it was said they did and before they said they didn't?

Then again, I know nothing of the timeframe