Heist or Hoax? Titan Theft Allegations Disputed
Z-70K1, Omist - On 01.05.111, GoonSwarm purported to have stolen capital ship components for 3 titans and a Nyx mothership from Atlas Alliance. Atlas dispute the claim, alleging that the Titan parts in GoonSwarm's hands belonged to the departing pilot himself and had never been Atlas property. This article examines the claims of both sides and the evidence presented.
Avatar-pilot Sasheria Windsong defected to GoonSwarm from Phantom Squad corporation of Atlas with a number of close associates including monkeyking1 and Tamerlane Kahn. They took with him a number of capital parts - both the number and the original ownership of those parts is being disputed by the two alliances.
GoonSwarm Intelligence Agency chief The Mittani greeted Atlas Alliance on GalNet with the words "Gotcha titan(s)."
GoonSwarm member Helen then presented three images as evidence of the theft: one of a contract of capital parts and two shots of capital parts in a hangar. A further image showed some 25,000 units of Promethium, the theft of remains undisputed to date.
The Images
GoonSwarm member Talzaris commented "I only see enough parts for 1 titan in that contract. Though I don't understand the reason for the 2 identical [shots] of parts after that. Someone explain."
Examination of the two hangar shots showed they were indeed not just of identical sets of items, but were in fact the same image shown twice in succession. The contract was for the same quantities of the same types of items and contained no information that could be used to prove or disprove whether it was, in fact, the same items from the hangar image simply placed in a contract.
Claims of the magnitude of the consignment of capital parts are therefore open to question.
"The Mittani Sends His Regards"
At 19:10, Tamerlane Kahn sent a message to Atlas' alliance mail stating only "The Mittani sends his regards." These were the words previously included in a Black Nova Corp wallet transaction when former director Haargoth Agamar robbed the corporation, kicked out members and disbanded Band of Brothers alliance with his associate Arkannen. GoonSwarm posted an image of the message being received as evidence of their infiltration of Atlas.
In the background of this image, Phantom Squad's corporate communication channel can be seen. Krissi ivg's expression of alarm was perhaps the most dramatic:
"We've been royally [expletive deleted]."
Evidence of the effect of a crippling theft or a reaction to the potential threat implied by the message? Krissi ivg explained:
"[When I said that], I had only seen the mail. [I only knew] the fact that monkeyking1 and his [associates] had left for goons; [I'd seen] the alliance mail [and] with The Mittani's past work, it couldn't have been good."
Bobby Atlas, leader of Atlas Alliance, added:
"Regarding Krissi and also some other comments Goons highlight from screenshots of our alliance chat, it was after-effects from the Goon thread on CAOD and alliance mail spam - people had assumed that we had gotten ripped off, naturally, when first looking at the thread which cascaded through corporations in various degree's of shock.
"Once things had been assessed of who was actually involved it became clear what the situation was and that it was nothing more than a disgruntled member flaring drama for Goons on his exodus. Perhaps our only regret is knowing he was leaving and letting him leave safely with his titan and his component kit."
Access
Bobby Atlas claims that neither Captain Windsong nor any of her fellow defectors had access to critical alliance assets, though she was able to remove Promethium from a silo at one of their moon mining towers:
"The member in question was in a newer corp in Atlas, the member itself being new to that corp. In and of itself, that would mean we would have had to trust one of our youngest corps and newest members with alliance assets; that is a little foolish considering the number and maturity of long standing corps already existing in our alliance.
"Obviously the loss of a titan pilot is one you take note of but in this case the pilot is one we held in questionable state since [she] came to Atlas from those we have negative standings towards."
A Spare Titan?
Ayman Zahawiri of GoonSwarm questioned the credibility of claims that Sasheria Windsong, given she already possessed one Titan, would own component sets to build more.
Bobby Atlas replies: "Sasheria hops alliances frequently, is a heavy industrialist (nothing wrong with that) and... [she] is an inherently wealthy person..."