+TundraChief SilverHare Posted December 18, 2003 Share Posted December 18, 2003 Can anyone shed light on this situation: Clean Up Crew visits 12 caches and takes 28 bugs and places them into a nonexistent cache named "In Bugs and Booty". An email to Clean Up Crew asking the wherebouts of one of my bugs produces this response from H8tSpam@aol.com "It is on an island in the middle of Blue Mesa". There is no cache on the only island in Blue Mesa. A check of Clean Up Crews profile shows all 28 TBs placed in the same nonexistent cache. Appears to be a case of overt bug theft. Hope that is not the case. Some ones idea of a sick joke? Some of the absconded bugs have over 5000 mile histories. Shame for them to die in a nonexistent cache in Blue Mesa Reservoir! Link to comment
+Eric K Posted December 18, 2003 Share Posted December 18, 2003 There was a Travelbug thief around earlier. Make sure you report them and their user account to Geocaching. If that is the case I'm sure they will delete their account. Link to comment
+GBOTS Posted December 18, 2003 Share Posted December 18, 2003 One of the bugs stolen by "Clean Up Crew" was ours and we have tried to email them, with NO response. I think this is a case of theft, pure and simple... Link to comment
+bazzle Posted December 18, 2003 Share Posted December 18, 2003 Just a thought here but.... Perhaps the cache DID exist when said cacher placed it there and has subsequently been archived by the owner. When one archives a cache they have the option to leave it visible for future viewing or not. Could be that it was plundered and permanently archived so that it can or longer be viewed. Not the way I prefer to deal with a plundered cache, but it is an option. The fact that the bug logs show a valid cache drop would seem to indicate that said cache did actually exist at some point in time. Link to comment
+Sparky-Watts Posted December 19, 2003 Share Posted December 19, 2003 what is the name of one of the bugs? Will a search of the bug name show the cache? If so, does the cache actually appear? Ya peaked my interest, now I won't sleep till I find out! Tell me MORE!!!!!!!! Link to comment
+IV_Warrior Posted December 19, 2003 Share Posted December 19, 2003 A search for caches found by the listed username will bring up several caches. Clicking on their profile, then the stats tab, and then travel bugs will show the bugs in question. It appears to be a legit bug drop, but when you click on the cache name that the bugs are listed as being in, it takes you to the "hide and seek" page. Here is one of the travel bugs in question. Mountain Mickey Link to comment
+Sparky-Watts Posted December 19, 2003 Share Posted December 19, 2003 That's really weird.....have you contacted any of the approvers to see if they recognize the cache name to see if it has been archived or removed? Link to comment
+RIclimber Posted December 19, 2003 Share Posted December 19, 2003 It was never approved. Many people around here put TBs in a cache when they put them out and you will get the same thing. Link to comment
+Eric K Posted December 19, 2003 Share Posted December 19, 2003 Could be like Downy said. Maybe he put them in a new cache he created that hasn't been approved yet. Give it a few days to see if either the cache shows up or the user responds to his e-mails. Link to comment
+TundraChief SilverHare Posted December 19, 2003 Author Share Posted December 19, 2003 I received two email responses from "Clean Up Crew" today; he/she will answer yes or no questions but no conversation as such. In my last email I requested that he educate me: "Why did you place so many Travel Bugs in a non-existent cache"? No answer yet! A study of log entries for the twelve caches visited reveal that they were all visited in a two or three-day period in late October. That is when all the bugs disappeared. The TB entries were made some time later in November. The 21st I think! Strange. Link to comment
+BlackstoneVal Posted December 19, 2003 Share Posted December 19, 2003 With almost 30 TBs up for grabs, I may fly out to Colorado and fetch them from the pre-approved cache. If in fact they were placed in a new cache as it appears they were on 11/24, then they should be waiting for first finder. It seems like a long time for approval, unless the owner asked for it to be held up intentionally. You know it would have been tracked down by now if it were here in New England. Most all of those bugs were retrieved and moved less than 100 miles. With that information, using any three bugs, you should be able to triangulate the cache position and with 25 additional readings you should get a pretty good fix. Well that is the way, I would go figure! If this is a spoiler, I will delete, if Cleanup Crew emails me. Link to comment
+Eric K Posted December 20, 2003 Share Posted December 20, 2003 From looking at the logs on some of the bugs Clean Up Crew picked up I think those bugs may be gone. One of the messages he left said 'I hate bugs'. If one of the moderators get this you may want to check into his account. Link to comment
+TundraChief SilverHare Posted December 20, 2003 Author Share Posted December 20, 2003 I received two more emails from “Clean Up Crew” today. The first contained this message in answer to the question “Why did you place 28 Travel Bugs in a nonexistent cache?” "It was not nonexistant when placed.” That would seem to answer part of the question, but then a followup email added more unusual interest to this mystery. In part it said, "N 38° 28.209 W 107° 13.921 are the coordinates of cache the crew placed on an island in Blue Mesa. The container was a Knack gang box box filled with 2 TVs, 4 FRS Radios, Electric can opener, electric knife, 2 hand saws, hammer, tools, various computer gender changers and cables plus pci cards, cable modem, vacuum cleaner, chaise lounge, 28 TBs and all manner of stuff we have collected from our clean up sites. The cache has yet to be approved because of its location, it was approved and then withdrawn by geocaching.com. It appeared in listing for a short time. The cache is now not safely accessible. One of the crew is going to retrieve it this weekend with help from Gunnison S&R Team." Wow, this is quite a list of items for a cache. Can anyone top that? Left me wondering who S&R team is! Link to comment
+Sparky-Watts Posted December 20, 2003 Share Posted December 20, 2003 Gunnison Search and Rescue....hmmmm.....I've heard them mentioned somewhere....may have been these forums. I think they are TB Assassins. From some of the items listed as being in the cache, I'm thinking that these folks are quite possibly hackers, and most likely hacked gc.com to get a cache listed for the purpose of eliminating TB's. Some of the terminology I've heard before from one of my friends that is a hacker. Link to comment
+TundraChief SilverHare Posted December 20, 2003 Author Share Posted December 20, 2003 This sport is fascinating and amusing in more ways than you can count! Link to comment
ckreef & Hawke Posted December 20, 2003 Share Posted December 20, 2003 Just curious what state the cleanup crew is working in ????? That way when I release a TB I can put a note on it to stay far away from there. This thread has been going for a little while now --- I'm also curious why an administrator has not posted something in here about all this. I know a moderator must have read it by now or somebody isn't doing their job. Link to comment
+droosa Posted December 20, 2003 Share Posted December 20, 2003 Just curious what state the cleanup crew is working in ????? Colorado Link to comment
+GBOTS Posted December 20, 2003 Share Posted December 20, 2003 They are in western Colorado and eastern Utah. I don't think that they took all the bugs out of the caches that they logged... I think they just steal the bugs without logging the caches. None of their logged caches mention bugs. Link to comment
+Bob Rich Posted December 31, 2003 Share Posted December 31, 2003 Clean Up Crew first showed up in the logs on 10/4/03 "trash canning" A Good Place to Rest (GCGPR2) after Geo$ing on 10/2/03 logged his dislike of that cache. Clean Up Crew did not log this cache as a find. Clean Up Crew next logged their first find at Geo$ing's Outa Da Park cache (GCH3ET) on 10/24/03, three days after my no find log indicated something strange about the cache/coordinates and 5/5 rating. Although he didn't log taking any of the existing 4 TBs from this cache, he did log traveling to six other widespread caches that he hadn't logged finding before, all of which require some amount of hiking and searching, and removing travel bugs from each of them. At a subsequent date, Clean Up Crew predated two TNLN finds on 9/26/03. To date, Clean Up Crew has logged 12 finds, all of which are TNLN. All of those that I have visited after his "find" date show no entry in the cache log book for Clean Up Crew. I have personally visited three specific caches and left travel bugs. Geo$ing was the next logged visitor within a day or two, and after that the TB was reported missing by subsequent loggers. I have stopped placing any TBs in Western Colorado and Eastern Utah because of this. The above TBs were sometime later logged on the TB pages as taken by Clean Up Crew and placed in Bugs and Booty on 11/24, although no "find" was ever logged on the cache's webpage nor logbook. Some of the inconsistencies: Clean Up Crew places 28 TBs on an island cache on 11/24/03 after retrieving 5 of them the very same day from different caches as far as 180 air miles away. Clean Up Crew doesn't log a "find" either on the webpage or on the cache logbook for any of the sites where he took these TBs. All of the 28 TBs placed by Clean Up Crew in the Bugs and Booty cache on 11/24 were from caches previously visited by Geo$ing. Clean Up Crew's 12 internet logged "finds" all say TNLN, although some contained TBs. And these cache logbooks list no visits by Clean Up Crew on the purported dates. Clean Up Crew has no log/TB listings after 11/24/03, but Geo$ing has again begun taking and accumulating TBs. So it appears to me that Clean Up Crew (and probably it's other identity) has been taking TBs from caches around Western Colorado and eastern Utah for the past months, and not leaving anything in exchange nor logging them on the cache's webpage or logbook. Then, if previous forum logs are correct, they were placed in an island cache in the middle of a lake. In my opinion, this does not seem to follow Geocaching.com's Travel Bug etiquette, but rather serves to greatly restrict TB travel and make retrieval unnecessarily difficult. Link to comment
+Eric K Posted December 31, 2003 Share Posted December 31, 2003 No matter what, there always seems to be jerks in every walk of life that want to mess things up for other people. Bob: I would recommend you forward your information to Groundspeak so they can delete those accounts and ban thier IP's. Link to comment
+DeadReckoner Posted December 31, 2003 Share Posted December 31, 2003 I too have suffered a hijacked travel bug at the hands of Clean Up Crew and their mysterious Bugs and Booty cache. (My travel bug was the Cranberry Carabiner.) I can confirm that the Bugs and Booty cache is an unapproved cache. I was told by my local admin (SoCalAdmin) that this cache was not approved because it is inside national park land. From the cool new mapping functions on the travel bug log pages, I was able to ascertain the location of the unapproved cache to within 3 decimal degree accuracy at 38.470 N, 107.232 W. This concurs with the coordinates reported above, and does indeed put it on an island in the Blue Mesa, in the Gunnison River, just about where Red Creek enters, and at just over 7500' altitude. Some have suggested that the location is not accessible this time of year. (Among other reasons, covered in snow?) Makes me wonder whether they actually could have put anything at that spot on Nov 24, when the cache was supposedly placed. My own emails to Clean Up Crew have gone unanswered. I think it's time to bring this to the attention of TPTB. I'm sending an email right now... Link to comment
+Hemlock Posted January 2, 2004 Share Posted January 2, 2004 A note was posted to the page by Clean Up Crew on 12/19 saying "One of the crew is going to retrieve it this weekend ..." Nothing more has been posted since then. The communications I've seen from the Crew all appear civil. It appears it was a newbie mistake (placing it in a NP) and they are working to correct it. Be patient and all will hopefully work out fine. No I'm not the reviewer handling this cache. Link to comment
+sturgeongeneral Posted January 3, 2004 Share Posted January 3, 2004 Any way to record their IP address? Maybe we can send out a vigilante mob.... Link to comment
+dino_hunters Posted January 6, 2004 Share Posted January 6, 2004 Turns out the cache was in a National Park This cache was never approved. Here is some of the info from the cache page. N 38° 28.209 W 107° 13.921 Like boats, wet feet or long swims. Now is your chance. A treasure chest filled with booty. Bugs 'n Booty is a plethora of unimaginable treasure. Where's George, TBs, foreign currency, new small appliances, Mardi Gras beads, mint roll of SBA dollars (US legal tender), flashlight, LED blinker, CDs, stuff. ------------------------------------------------------------- December 19, 2003 by Clean Up Crew (12 found) N 38° 28.209 W 107° 13.921 are the coordinates of cache the crew placed on an island in Blue Mesa. The container was a Knack gang box box filled with 2 TVs, 4 FRS Radios, Electric can opener, electric knife, 2 hand saws, hammer, tools, various computer gender changers and cables plus pci cards, cable modem, vacuum cleaner, chaise lounge, 28 TBs and all manner of stuff we have collected from our clean up sites. The cache was approved and then withdrawn by geocaching.com. It appeared in listing for a short time. The cache is now not safely accessible. One of the crew is going to retrieve it this weekend with help from Gunnison S&R Team. ----------------------------------------------------------------- November 25, 2003 by CO Admin (0 found) HI, I finally completed my research of the area where you placed your cache. you have placed your cache in the Gunnison National Park. This land is maintained by the National Park Service. Guidelines for geocaching state: Caches will be quickly archived if we see the following (which is not inclusive): Caches on land maintained by the U.S. National Park Service or U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (National Wildlife Refuges) You will need to pick up this cache as soon as possible to prevent it being confiscated by the NPS. This would be a shame with that many travel bugs. Before re-submitting this cache in a new location please re-read the guidelines for helpful info. Please let me know if I can be of help. Thank you CO Admin ---------------------------------------------------- November 25, 2003 by CO Admin (0 found) I have a question, I looked at the caches that several of the travel bugs you have came from and found no logs from you stating that you took the bug out of the cache. Why is this? It would seem that you spent some time amassing a large amount of TB;s but not logging them at the cache page. This in not the normal way things are done. Can you explain your through process at not logging the finds? Thank you CO Admin ------------------------------------------------------------------- Travel Bugs have been seen in this cache - New Jersey LAND SHARK Panic the Gargoyle Fiesta Bowl 2003 National Championship Cash Bug The Racing Travel Bug Joe Dalton Little Boy Geo Pokado Free to fly Route 66 Fly Army Chicken Soup for the Sole Horsing Around Utah Gone To Look For America Iditarod Sadie VI Mountain Mickey Hubert Bernie the Bored Beetle Toof Fairy TB Cranberry Carabiner BLUE BEAR Itsy Bitsy Lady Bug Pizza Eater Chip the Chip Ammon Ant Link to comment
+Bob Rich Posted January 14, 2004 Share Posted January 14, 2004 It would be interesting to discover how the Bronco Bug TB supposedly placed (and still) in the Bugs and Booty cache by Clean Up Crew on 11/24/03 has been recovered from the Not So Scenic Stop cache on 12/27/03. Link to comment
+3cacheteers Posted January 31, 2004 Share Posted January 31, 2004 I also have recovered four of the missing TB's. They were in the Million Dollar Breeze cache site (gcg86h)((which happens to belong to Geo$ing)). Since I hadn't seen any of them listed on the Internet cache descriptions page I brought them all home with me not knowing anything about them. I hadn't been keeping up with the forums so had no idea of all the problems with the TB's. Now I am wondering how to release them again? I have Hubert, Fly Army, Pokado, and Dalton. Link to comment
+Bob Rich Posted January 31, 2004 Share Posted January 31, 2004 On the individual Travel Bug page, select "Grab it from somewhere else" and tell where you found it. Then it's in your inventory to redeposit in other caches as you wish. Thanks for the rescue! I hope the Itsy Bitsy TB will also be found somewhere else close by. I think we should all look in nearby GJ caches. Link to comment
+TundraChief SilverHare Posted February 6, 2004 Author Share Posted February 6, 2004 (edited) I gave up hope that my TB "Itsy Bitsy Ladybug" would ever surface after several illogical emails from Clean Up Crew. I don't believe the cache in the middle of Blue Mesa Reservoir was ever anything but a paper cache in the minds of its author. So, after sufficient down time I retired the TB to a final resting spot cache in the Great Salt Lake. No sooner had I done that and Geo$ing reported grabbing it from somewhere "High in the Rockies." From what I can tell that must be near Geo$ing's cache "Million Dollar Breeze." January 4 by Clean Up Crew (14 found)Left 4 tb's in box and 24 other tb's in California National Bank money sack ($1000 nickle bag - white) 117 paces NW from cache. Bag is inside large Juniper on edge of cliff. The view of parking lot below just disappears as you approach tree. And, February 4 by geo$ing (104 found)I found bank bag and bugs. About 2 feet of snow up here today. I hope I log all TBs correctly as they have lead a troubled past. The above quotes close a big hole in the mystery of these lost TBs. Now, if we could just figure out if there is a relationship between Geo$ing and Clean Up Crew. Geo$ing, won't you tell us what you know? Edited February 6, 2004 by TundraChief SilverHare Link to comment
+TundraChief SilverHare Posted February 9, 2004 Author Share Posted February 9, 2004 The saga continues. Today, Geo$ing reports dropping the following travel bugs in his cache "Outa Da Park." GCH3ET that no one has ever found. February 8 by geo$ing (104 found)Dropping bugs for mileage. TBs are not really in cache. Travel Bugs have been seen in this cache - New Jersey LAND SHARK Dineaux The key to the cut up Sue the T-Rex Panic the Gargoyle Cash Bug The Racing Travel Bug Denali Cockroach Little Boy Geo Free to fly Route 66 Chicken Soup for the Sole Horsing Around Utah Gone To Look For America Iditarod Sadie VI Mountain Mickey Uglier than Dirt Bernie the Bored Beetle BAILEY the BOOZER Toof Fairy TB Cranberry Carabiner National Park Tourist There's No Place Like Home BLUE BEAR Itsy Bitsy Lady Bug Chip the Chip Ammon Ant The White Banshee Something really strange going on here. Is this in keeping with geocaching.com guidelines? Link to comment
+TundraChief SilverHare Posted February 9, 2004 Author Share Posted February 9, 2004 Number Freaks. Placing Travel Bugs in nonexistent caches. Collecting and holding large numbers of bugs for ages. Destroying their missions. Causing many cachers to quit placing travel bugs. Pretensious transfers from cache to cache that really don't take place. Who needs this kind of "fun"? Who really cares? This topic is closed. Link to comment
Recommended Posts