The following story was written in late April 2014 by Marie-Lynn Richard with Charlie Shrem.
On January 27, 2014, Charlie Shrem was coming back from a conference in Amsterdam when he was arrested detained at JFK Airport. After his arraignment he received a curious letter postmarked in California signed Marcel Mellish which referenced his current situation. That was quick! The name didn't ring a bell. The letter looked batshit. Charlie posted it on his Facebook feed for a chuckle after his lawyer told him "It's the cost of being famous!" In essence it looked like the kind of letter the gatekeeper would throw out without ever showing the executive.
Dear Charlie
I returned last week from a 4 week razzia in Venice honoring Italian World War 2 Kamikaze pilots and learned of Bitcoin tsopujris during lunch with an old friend from our days as adecedarian defenestrators, Bishop Carl Bean.
I have read part of all of the news stories on the tismmes--and even saw the story on the Crime Channel TV show last nigh. I am not the least bit gruntled at the way those rantallion patzers are ballyragging you and Bobby Faiella.. If I had any balls I would put my head in a moose. I am so depressed at this situation that I felt the need for a little bit of cheering and rented the movie "Schindler's List" to get some well needed yuks.
You can read it here: http://charlieshrem.com/files/letter.txt
The formatting and integrity in this text file matches that of the letter itself.
Here is a high quality scan of the letter:
I started working with Charlie on March, when he posted that he needed help launching his website. I knew who Charlie was but hadn't really researched him in depth. As it turns out, my new job was to be a professional stalker because I, obviously, had to distill all of his accomplishments into a biographical website in record time so we could announce the acceptance of the highly anticipated Bitcoin documentary The Rise and Rise of Bitcoin to the TriBeca festival. Charlie is so accomplished and involved in the community that I haven't even finished his website yet. You see, I got distracted...
It was around that day that I saw the letter in his feed. Having spent a lot of time in rec.arts.celebrity.gossip back in the day, and having worked on Abilify disease learning campaigns for Brystol-Myers Squibb, I thought the letter was simply one of those crazy obsessive fan letters. One thing was sure, it was mind-bogglingly random. However, out of concern for Charlie's safety, I submitted it to my spouse who has worked in the field of personal protection for many years and is freaky fluent in body language and mind reading. Maybe he could help me read between the lines.
After we all realized that none of the information in the letter was real, it became obvious that it wasn't a crazy fan letter. People who suffer from delusions (in a clinical sense) usually have a very specific cause they want to advance. Or, perhaps they are in love with a celebrity. In both cases they want to be known, found and contacted. Marcel Mellish is unknown, impossible to find or contact, like Satoshi Nakamoto!
(Artwork by Marie Lynn Rirchard)
We spent 3 hours into the night discussing the peculiar letter trying to figure out an angle to decypher it. We made a list of ways to manipulate the information. Stephan is a math person, I am more of a word person, Very much a n00b at crypto. I proposed that we should simply ask ourselves: "What could it be if it was the greatest secret message ever?" Because it will be easier to unscramble such a huge set of clues if we know what to look for. When I wrote to Charlie about it, I told him we should suspect this is a key pair containing a gift of bitcoins. This is when Charlie explained to me the concept of a brain wallet, something I was not familiar with in the context of cryptocurrency. It made even more sense.
Charlie showed the letter to a few people in order to provide analysis and help in understanding what this could be. One of them is Vitalik Buterin, current developer of Ethereum. Vitalik was speaking at The Future of Money in New York City and seemed intrigued by the idea. Now that more than six people have seen the letter and agree that it looks suspiciously like an encrypted message.
Time to open it up to pool decryption!
Charlie has compiled the notes below from our crazy week of thinking outside the box. He shared them with his friend Hal Finney. This happened at a time where his family were receptive but Hal was not able to provide help given his deteriorating health.
-- Notes from Charlie
Some odd things:
Normally, I would discount this as merely being sent by a paranoid schizophrenic, however there are too many oddities and a few people are started dissecting and decoding it
There are many double spaces, commas, and intentional misspellings. Words intentionally in Yiddish, that help the story, but spelled word. Oddities in the writing style, such as the last paragraph being justified while the others are not. The author proofread this, as he added a comma in pen on the last line, etc.
Few, who I have shared this with have suggested an underlying message, possibly a private key, or someone reaching out.
The letter was printed on yellow paper, when trying to do optical character recognition I found my computer unable to recognize even one letter or number, however simply changing it to grayscale I was able to recognize every letter and number. That leads me to believe the author did not want this being read by any automated USPS systems that scan letters.
1. The punctuation (,, .. ----- etc.)
2. The numbers
3. The capital letters
4. The justification (first paragraphs are not, last one is) Separate the key from the password?
5. The misspelled Yiddish-ish words (including in the return address ‘Gonif’ which mentions a thief!)
6. The old-timey words from 1920's Americana like quidnucs (someone who knows the latest gossip), Jewishprudence (case law)
7. The curious itemizations of places (i.e. there is no such thing as a Licensed Lava Lamp repair shop (LLL)Maybe draw those on a Google map.
8. The three physics courses. In Truecrypt I encrypt with three passes, the three classes make up acronyms POI, VGLMS, GACM
9. The quote, it is not encapsulated correctly, this is a person who write well and knows this. Why extra punctuation? No more room? See #1
10. We had a theory that turns this into a QR code. This needs to be explored.
11. I no longer have the envelope.
-----
After we started pondering this odd letter, other work took over our brain space. And then Charlie had his trial and then his sentence to contend with. Throughout the last year, the odd letter didn’t factor in my communications with Charlie in prison. But it was always Charlie’s goal to publish this to the whole crypto community.
So here we are.
My take on this as a non-cryptographer: This has to be SUPER evident in order to prevent mistakes in long keys. OR, the sender is familiar with Charlie’s high-level technical abilities and expects him to webscrape or API to a site like http://brainwallet.org. But my money is on ‘So simple that it will make us feel stupid that we didn't see it right away!!
So Steem community, we’ve given ourselves a headache over this, now it’s your turn to use your brilliance and make us FACEPALM so hard that we we fall backwards!
Marie-Lynn and Charlie with help from Stephane Beaudin
I returned last week from a 4 week razzia in Venice honoring Italian World War 2 Kamikaze pilots and learned of Bitcoin tsopujris during lunch with an old friend from our days as adecedarian defenestrators, Bishop Carl Bean.
Razzia = plunder for slaves to be sold in the market. Could be applied to Jews arrested and sent to concentration camps.
Italian World war 2 kamikaze = no such thing existed historically
Tsopujris = misspelling for Tsouris, Yiddish word meaning troubles
Adecedarian = misspelling for abecedarian, which means beginner
Carl Bean = Carl Bean is the founding prelate of the Unity Fellowship Church Movement, a liberal protestant denomination that is particularly welcoming of lesbian, gay and bisexual African Americans.
At this point I am lost
Perhaps the private key includes the misspelled letter in the words tsopujris and adecedarian i. e. P,J,D
why not asking the solution of this riddle to Nick Szabo? After all he has a Jewish last name and is believed by many to be satoshi nakamoto.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_Szabo
You can tweet @ him with the link. I do not know him personally.
My favorite part is the list of business concepts that don't seem to exist like the lava lamp thing. I remember looking up some of this and it pointed to a building 1 block from Charlie's bar EVR. Don't have those links anymore.
Sound like someone trying to hide a message for himself in plain sight.
Imagine Satoshi wanting to keep one or more of his private addresses very secret. Maybe using something like a brain wallet. He was pretty good at statistics and as such he knew that the amount of words needed was going to be rather long and complex. Maybe with a misspelling or two.
How to hold on to this for decades if you know you will go to other parts of the world and you suspect the police will get involved?
Simple, write a letter to a public figure so crazy and yet so smart it will get stored on the internet for live.
I would suggest he knows the trick and remembers it, and on top of that remembers one or two more words that are needed to complete the puzzle but are not written down anywhere.
"I have read part of all of the news stories on the tismmes"
This sounds like a reference to Bitcoin's Genesis Block, which includes the headline from a news story in the Times on 3rd Jan 2009: "Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks".
Good catch. "the tismmes" very likely refers to "The Times".
Sorry to disappoint you, but no private keys are hidden here :(
It is just some sort of a simple code using first letters after double space, first part to be read as follows:
"If I had (or "I have") all last VPNs"
It was just a ransom letter from an ex military gamble addict....
P.s. Last known address for Caesar Kimmel is in a small French village (probably just waiting the end of the world :D), the letter is written in this house: http://on.trulia.com/2bMGKlM
P.s.s.: I am sure there was some additional info under the stamps too ;)
Cheers
pump, I think you have the best guess so far. Also it's simple.
It is statistically improbable that letters after double spaces would form an intelligible phrase like that.
There is no reason for anybody to send Charlie a secret message that specifically mentions Bitcoin if there is no other things at the end of the string. Doesn't mean that this is the only string though.
Whoa!
in the original letter there is a difference:
"If i had*, AI of (or a(n) IO) VPPs"
-VPP= Vector Packet Processing
-the number "8" in [s] "Ru8tgers" could be intentional (because of the hand added comma, or just a u+8 tupo)
Your explanation doesn't match your demonstration. You are taking arbitrary single letters, multiple letters or whole words (haven't explained the rational about doing that). You are cutting words in two and taking a letter inside list "most" or "tray-bearing" etc. Again no explanation. With arbitrary rules, I too can make that text say anything of my liking. Please explain your reasoning.
Double spaces in the OCR version don't seem to match the double spaces in the scanned image, I am getting tiiamiuopp, way less interesting.
As a former psych nurse this looks more like someone trying to send a message rather than a crazed fan or a schizophrenic. The content is way too structured from what I have experienced on the psych unit.
Yes hilarski. That is why it's not in the bin and invading our head two and a half years on! Maybe it's a virus. It will make the pondered of the letter lose their mind :)
It is the ring!
That's my thought as well !
Charlie, you may want to scrub the address a bit better on the high-resolution image.
Anyhow, this is very intriguing and it does seem like something John Nash would like to crack if he was still alive. If I decypher this -- I give you my word to split the bitcoins 50/50 :)
I have purged the cache so the best blank out shows up. Thanks for the heads up fulltimegeek.
Spreading info and truth is what I do!
Cool sharing about a very secretive story, thanks a bunch, namaste :)
I really don't understand what is trying to be done here?
People are trying to decipher Satoshi Nakamoto's holdings to one of his wallets by deciphering a brainkey?
If that is true? Why would anyone want to steal his funds legitimately? Surely Satoshi deserves to own his wealth?
Or if I have this wrong, please explain. I feel clouded here.
The assumption that this is a brain wallet could be wrong. It could be a ROT13 type thing and say something outright without being related to financial stuff.
Assuming it's a brain wallet gives us a list of techniques to crack it.
Assuming it's a QR-Code gives us another list of techniques to break it.
Assuming it's a love letter written to Charlie by Wynona Ryder would give us another list of things to try out.
It could be ANYTHING. All we know is that it is not what it is trying to portray it is (a typical note from a paranoid schizophrenic delivered to a celebrity).
There is a reason I got this letter, just trying to figure it out.
Me too!
His brilliance new that you will end up on a steem like blockchain!
To address the Satoshi wealth aspect of your question: We are assuming this is a secret message. Of all the crypto friends Charlie has the most secret is Satoshi Nakamoto. A little later Newsweek propped up Dorian Satoshi as the likely Nakamoto. He's in California. No cigar. At the same time fake Satoshi Nakamoto props up on Twitter. Uses same kinds of words in his bio (i.e. Pasquinade. He changes it regularly by the way). None of this helps elucidate the letter. Since then Craig Wright, seemingly a prankster, comes along. He is something else. Could he have pranked Charlie? He's not in California though.
Also, bear in mind that people were told ahead of time that Charlie would be arrested because there was press at JFK when he came home from Amsterdam. The letter seems to have been typed in 1 minute and mailed right then and there for it to show up magically in Brooklyn so fast... Or it was written with much advance knowledge of Charlie's unexpected arrest. It's really weird.
Is Charlie's address the only thing in the letter that is real? If so, could it be the key to deciphering the letter?
Charlie's address IS the only thing in the address that is real. I will let @charlieshrem get around to your comment and follow-up.
This is what I was wondering as well @marielynn. That may be part of the key, or perhaps the letter in its entirety including @charlieshrem's address yielded an interesting hash... not sure, but I wonder if this is solvable without that piece of the puzzle. Fascinating letter. It's got the gears turning in my head! Thank you for sharing it!
That letter has several of my favorite needlessly ridiculous words in it, like defenestrators!
So, I don't much care what it says, that thing is classic!
Some of the craziest shit I've read. I'm intrigued and going to take a stab at it. Hope it's a private key to such coin. If I get it I'm taking all chu to burning man.
Fuck, thanks for this; something to obsess over, just what the shrink prescribed!
I'm going to take enough anti-depressants to induce a manic state and take a stab at this. I will let y'all know if it is actually just anagrams of lyrics from songs by The Doors or other delusions of reference from a semi-psychotic. Figure gettin' in that headspace is the best way to rule that out.
Then, to further expand my consciousness, I will take magic mushrooms. Words have a way of rearranging on a page by themselves with that stuff. The subconscious speaks louder and always reveals more.
I'm not joking. It's just a matter of if a burn-out like me is going to be too lazy to go acquire the hallucinogens.
Interesting ideas.. And great to have you here on Steemit!
In 2003 an inmate received something very similar, apparently...WTF..
You guys see that yet?
A INMATE IN PENITENTIARY RECIEVED THIS LETTER. I WILL NOT MENTION NAME FOR PROTECTION. NOTE : RUDOLPH HESS ( ADOLF HITLERS SPY ) WHO SUPPOSEDLY COMMITTED SUICIDE. AUTOPSYS PERFORMED LATER SHOWED HE COULD NOT HAVE HUNG HIMSELF. ALSO NOTE THE STRANGE WORDS ACTUALLY HAVE MEANING IE: GAY SEX RITUALS, MEN OF POWER, ETC.
DEAR BY,
I RETURNED LAST MONTH FROM A RAZZI IN VENICE HONORING WORLD WAR 2 KAMIKAZE PILOTS AND LEARNED YESTERDAY OF YOUR TSOURIS DURING LUNCH WITH A OLD FRIEND OF OUR DAYS AS ABECEDARIAN DEFENESTERS, SANTIAGO NUDLEMAN. I HAVE READ PART OF THE NEWS STORIES ON THE TSIMMES ALL THE WAY THROUGH AND AM NOT THE LEAST BIT GRUNTLED AT THE WAY THOSE GOLIARDS AND MISIOLOGISTS ARE BALLYRAGGING YOU.I IF I HAD ANY BALLS I WOULD PUT MY HEAD IN A MOOSE. YOU MUST TAKE IT TO A PIONT TO CACCHINATE WHEN YOU LEARN ABOUT THEIR PASQUINADES IN THE RESTROOMS! REMEMBER YOU ARE IUNDER ATTACK BY PRIAPIC QUIDNUNCS WHO MOST LIKELY SUFFER FROM FROTTAGE. IT IS A PRETTY SAFE BET THAT THEIR ATTITUDE WOULD CHANGE IF THEY DEVOTED THEIR TIME TO GIVING EACH OTHER CLYSTERS. I HAVE GREAT FAITH IN THE AMERICAN SYSTEM OF JEWISH PRUDENCE AND AM SURE YOU WILL BE VINDICATED AND HAVE YOUR SENTECED EITHER TERMINATED FOR TIME SERVED OR CUT DRASTICALLY.WE'VE PASSED ALOT OF WATER AND GAS SINCE THE TIMES WHEN WE WERE STUDENT PUTZES AND STREAKED ACROSS THE LOBBY AND GOOSED BELLMEN AND CONCIERGES AT THE SCOTTSBLUFF INN. I STILL CHORTLE WHENEVER I RECALL THE FUN HAD WHEN WE STAMPEDED THE TOWN GIRLS IN BAYARD AND MADE OUT WITH THE GRAZING DAIRY COWS NEAR MCGREW.
BEST WISHES
BISMARCK HERRING 8/18/03
THE INMATE THAT RECIEVED THIS LETTER ESCAPED FROM PRISON WAS CAUGHT AND RETURNED. THE PERSON 21 YEARS OLD THAT HELPED HIM IS DEAD NOW SUPPOSED TO HAVE HUNG HIMSELF. I SHOWED THIS LETTER TO COLLEGE PROFESSORS IN MY HOME TOWN. THEY SAY TO GIVE IT TO THE GUYS ATTORNEY, THEY FEEL ITS A THREAT ON HIS LIFE IF HE TALKS. I SPOKE TO THE INMATE WHO SAID DON'T BECAUSE THEY WILL LOCK ME IN PROTECTIVE CUSTODY. WHAT DO YOU THINK? ANY SUGGESTIONS?
http://www.prisontalk.com/forums/showthread.php?t=27378
You guys are blowing my mind! There is a secret message using in Charlie's letter based on spaces (see pump comment). But this is not at all formatted in the same way. Crazy cursed letter brain virus.
Another thing I found really bizarre, is that a lot of those old-fashioned words have their etymology dated to the 18th century, as does the slang term he uses is from a dictionary published in 1788. ABECEDARIAN =alphabetical, like a dictionary.
So, I wonder if it's possible to contact that woman on the forum and find more about this letter...from 2003 to 2014. WTF? Hell, she(?) could have wrote it herself, she stopped posting in '08, and had a post claiming that she kept penpals with 50 inmates, one was her son who had bipolar. She claimed she devoted all her time to writing them. Is that selfless nurturing or mentally ill?
For sure the writer is into latin (there are no words of Greek origin that I looked so far) It's likely a student of history wrote this. Or just enjoy latin as a hobby lol Nerdy
I've found how more references tie into each other, loosely, but damn creepy. The Schindler's List and "patzer"(bad chess player), they placated a Nazi by letting him win at chess in the real life story. I'm thinking it's a psychotic person's gem. But who knows. Truth is stranger than delusions.
The poster said the letter was typed.
claimed to be from Nebraska
I tried pasting this into a diff checker but because it is in all caps it's screwing up the process. :(
I have tried contacting the author of that post, hopefully, if she is still on the board, she may offer additional information.
This peotomys word kinda attracting my attention lol .
Maybe he pointing some locations for your treasure .
There are so many weird words in there! Like the word pasquinade which raised an eyebrow for me when our favorite fake Satoshi Nakamoto on twitter (@satoshi_N) was using it in his bio. So many weird words in this.
I'm on steemit now too.
Woohoo!
That may mean that there is an S in the code given that it was misspelled as peotomyS
I like your thinking :)
or remove the letters in the word PENIS.
Whether it is the key to Satoshi's wallet or there is some secret society trying to communicate with you in cryptic code, perhaps we'll never know!
On the topic of Schindler's List, I am unsure if that is the type of movie I would just randomly rent. lol
I found the 3 Physics courses listed in exact order using this google search:
“Physics of Oscillatory Integrals” “Vorticity in the Ginzburg-Landau Model of Superconductivity” “Geometric Analysis of Chow-Mumford”
Thanks to Google Books, we see this is lifted right out of the mystery novel:
Funny Money
By James Swain
2002 Hardback, 2007 Softback, Atria, 304 pages, ISBN 1-4165-7502-2 ISBN 978-1-4165-7502-3
hmmmmm ........
I was going to say, those subjects are most definitely not freshman courses, they are legitimate topics though. Reminds me of one of those CV (resume) generators that can create a fictional (nonsense) resume based on a random web search - probably a letter writing version of it available too. To the uninformed, they can sometimes sound plausible. Maybe the author was just trying to send a basic message, but muddled it up a bit to confuse automated systems.
This is really interesting! I had never searched these three things together. Bitcoin is... Funny Money. LOL Good find!
That's definitely some kind of clue. The theme of the book is from a detective series where the protagonist is trying to catch people who are cheating casinos. From the description:
"Tony Valentine has a gift for grift: He can walk into a casino and spot a cheater across a crowded floor. A man who still uses pay phones and won’t spend more than a buck for coffee, Tony has protected Atlantic City gambling palaces for twenty years and learned every trick of the trade—until a new one blows him away."
and Caeser Kimmel relates to that. He had the largest amount of shares in Warner communications at one point. and mob casino ties or something....google...
---UPDATED---Mellish might be a reference to Feilding Mellish from the Woody Allen Film Bananas. Note that the initials of "Feilding Mellsih" is F.M. which is nod to FM Radio Broadcasting which is a way to send a message (which implies that there is indeed a hidden message in this note). When the Woody Allen movie came out in 1971, AM Radio was still more popular than FM radio and FM was cutting edge tech at the time.... Also the writer of the note to Charlie was likely making reference to a kangaroo court. Moreover, Marcel Mellish are the initials M.M. or "M2" M2 unlike M1 money supply contains liquid assets that are not cash..perhaps a nod to our friend Bitcoin.
That is really interesting. So the letter points to two works of art so far. Bananas (film) and Funny Money (novel). This doesn't feel at all like narrowing a field though.
a cool mystery
Yes, this sounds to me like a way to help you out financially Charlie, since your BTC was stolen from you. Very intriguing.
wow.....this article s one of the dopest shit i have ever read here.....To be frank i didn't get the message when i first read it. Good job👍
Sounds very much like a puzzle from Cicada 3301
What stood out to me right away, for the hell of it I checked it out...as I thought it was weird that Marcel Mellish contained the letters in Shrem.
Take them out and you get: A C L L L I and since there is no "Licensed Lava Lamp" repair shop (LLL) you are left with CIA
Creepy coincidence?
Why would you think it must be a Private Key hidden here? Do you think it might be something else? Why would you think he had wish to to contact you? I do not think that anyone else than you might crack it as it was just for you.
This link does not work: https://charlieshrem.com/letter.txt
Fixed! Thanks cryptohead!
Have you tried calling the phone number? :)
We looked into all of these things two years ago and they came up empty. The address doesn't exist. This research could be re-done now by people who have better tools.
Geo-cached keys? Do the places the address reference(city, street, etc.) not exist, or just that specific address?
It reminds me of a finished word game I used to play as a child called Mad-Libs.
this is so freaky - if I received it, I'd go into hiding
Deeeep under, way hiding!! :^)
First! Thanks for posting this two year mystery Charlie. Let's hope it provides braintertainment for the community. Or riches!
It's very exciting, thx!
It's a shame, the Satoshi wallets are just the biggest failsafe for SHA2 at this time; if this letter were real and the funds moved it would take away the biggest coal mine canary of our time. I like having the security of a few million coins that no one can get at unless they break the entire project.
When Satoshi's funds move, it's time to change the protocol.
It's not necessary that the first one to move them would be their hacker. It could be Satoshi if he felt there was justifiable danger.
I think if ALL early unhashed public keys are broken, then one could assume something like a quantum computer broke them. If only Satoshi's coins (or those thought to belong to him) move, then it's probably a normal move.
If this is an encrypted gift to support a friend through difficult times, it would not be a hack to decipher it and take the money. This message was sent voluntarily.
Have you used google or other search engines or Facebook and tried searching for whole or part of the sentences in the letter ?
I don't remember anybody trying this out. We concentrated on linking the letter to a brainwallet.
Just checking but did you look at the back?
Nothing on the back.
are you sure? try some lemon juice and a hair dryer ;)
There was no indication that the paper had been modified in any way.
Why do make money with this crap?
They make money because there is so little competition. Most people are dimwits and just write comments like "why is this making money" when they could be trying to make money. So the people who actually try actually win. Seems unfair doesn't it?
Don't be so hard affiliate :) I could have published this under my own (unknown) name (with zero followers) and it will get no upvotes or attention. Platforms are used by unknown people (like me) until celebrities come in and get all the followers. It's a tale as old as social media :)
If you can break the code in this crap, you could have, literally, all the money that's fit to have in this world.
Or someone quietly figured it out years ago and now there's just an empty address with an interesting transaction history. ;p
Bitcoin being bitcoin, we could see this in action which is great.
lol
please help and share Family in need about to loose everything gofund.me/bigs21024
Satoshi IS John Galt !
So we have a third reference to a work of art but this was published AFTER the letter was received in Fall 2015. But this multilingual poem refers to "ruptured gonid" from the sender address.
PER CONTRA: An international journal of the arts, literature, and ideas.
THE LOVE CALL OF F. SCOTT FITZGERALD by Alan Soble
http://percontra.net/issue/fall-2015/poetry/the-love-call-of-f-scott-fitzgerald/
He was coming back from a conference in Miami, FL when he was arrested. I was at that conference.
You mean Amsterdam right?
https://steemit.com/steem/@mindhunter/why-should-charlie-shrem-profit-from-spreading-fud-on-this-site