For the past several months, Mr. Homero Joshua Garza has been the subject of several investigative pieces from the Coin Fire editorial team, contributors, and other staff members. With the reports from Coin Fire regarding Mr. Garza, PayCoin, PayBase, and SEC investigations, Coin Fire has often been the receiver of DDOS attacks, domain hijackings, email server flooding, personal threats, and attacks. These have been directed at Coin Fire staff, servers, contributors, editorial teams, and our social media accounts.

We have been actively pursuing various leads and information regarding these attacks. We have exhausted multiple avenues to determine the source and nature of these attacks while weighing our legal options with law enforcement and security specialists.

Friday, I personally began filing criminal charges and preparing civil suits against the individuals involved with these attacks (including Mr. Garza) and am actively working with law enforcement officials to pursue damages and criminal charges where applicable to bring these individuals to justice.

With the assistance of forensic computer specialists, Coin Fire has obtained two sources of these attacks against the Coin Fire team.

Due to the unique nature of one of these sources of attacks, Coin Fire is going to fully pursue all legal options.

It is my belief, and that of our Editorial board, that taking this action against those individuals is in direct conflict with the very editorial policies that our readers have come to expect from Coin Fire.

We understand that remaining objective, fair, honest, and transparent in our reporting is a primary reason that many of you have made us your home for cryptocurrency news and information. We also collectively understand that filing a lawsuit and pursuing criminal charges and other actions against an individual whom we have reported on previously could raise questions regarding my ability to remain objective in reporting.

For this reason, I am abstaining from personally reporting on Mr. Garza during this process. I am also relinquishing my editorial duties on pieces published about Mr. Garza or related parties to other members of our team who are not involved in this legal action.

We understand that our reporting has been valuable for many in staying up-to-date regarding the situation with Mr. Garza. As such, I will abstain from sharing further information from our investigation until public charges, an administrative action takes place, or my own legal actions against Mr. Garza result in a resolution to this situation. I also will leave all reporting and editorial oversight regarding these individuals to others on staff who are not involved or impacted by these actions.

Thanks,

Mike Johnson

Executive Editor, Coin Fire