Karma catches up with BwE (BetterWayElectronics)

PlayStation modder BwE has just been revealed to be a sex predator of the worst kind. Following the news, BwE has been busy trying to delete all his online presence, including his website, Twitter account, Youtube channel, and github repositories. The video below by Louis Rossmann has the details.

The narcissist modder…

BwE (BetterWayElectronics) is a PlayStation modder with the ego the size of a planet. The developer had created tools that were quite popular among the PlayStation repair community and that, to his credit, have little to no equivalent in the open source world.

At some point in time, some of his tools were free, but the most useful features were locked behind an expensive license. This system was apparently accepted because BwE had virtually no competition, and his customers were people running repair businesses. They were getting paid to repair PlayStation consoles, and paid for the tool that let them do their job.

Although paying for scene tools is definitely not something I’m personally aligned with, I’ve always tried to respect the guy’s work. But as anyone who’s ever had the displeasure to interact with BwE can confirm, he didn’t make it easy to talk about him in a neutral way. Every single interaction I’ve had with this person on Twitter, he was a full show of arrogance, grandiosity, and entitlement.

From a personal perspective and as a scene news site owner, eventually I had enough of the guy and I stopped talking about him or his releases around 2023 (as can be seen here)

BwE thought so highly of his software, that he crippled it with tons of spyware to monitor what his customers were doing. If you purchased a license from him, but happened to be doing something he didn’t like, he would revoke your license, with no explanation given. We’re talking of licenses that cost hundreds to thousands of dollars.

Attempts to appeal to the guy led to surreal conversations that have been well documented. Examples include multiple people who happened to have debugging utilities installed on the same computer (it is not uncommon at all for console tinkerers to use those). BwE assumed this meant people were trying to reverse engineer his tools, instantly revoking their licenses.

Adding insult to injury, BwE would often show no remorse, and even go as far as retaliating on people who called him out on his poor business practices, including, but not limited to, his customers.

This was the case of youtubers TheCod3r and even more so Louis Rossmann, who have both investigated the business practices of BwE on behalf of the console repair scene, and pointed out some of his most egregious interactions with his users. Instead of making amends and working with his impacted customers in good faith, BwE started aggressively attacking the youtubers and trying to get their videos taken down.

… wasn’t only a narcissist

BwE’s attacks on Louis Rossmann in particular lasted for several months and looked like an all-in strategy to take down his entire Youtube channel, to the point that the youtuber finally had enough. Yesterday, Rossmann published a video in which he revealed that BwE, aka Louie Tahiri aka Luan Tahiraj is a sex offender of the worst kind. I won’t describe it here and you can watch the video for details, but yes, it’s exactly what you think, possibly worse. BwE spent more than a decade (update: it appears his sentence was lowered following an appeal) years in jail for his crimes, but that apparently hasn’t fixed the guy.

After being sentenced to years in jail for his actions, Luan Tahiraj apparently changed his name to Louie Tahiri. It was fairly easy for Rossmann’s team to find out the whereabouts of BwE, as the owner of his website (betterwayelectronics.com.au) is a relative of Tahiri. As to why you would ask a relative to be the legal face of your business instead of you, well in this case the reasons seem obvious: I’m betting Tahiraj/Tahiri didn’t want his criminal past to be known. (His relative has a different family name, check the video for details)

Following the reveal, BwE has shut down most of his online presence. As of yesterday, it was still possible to find places where some of his customers, or himself, referred to him as either “Louie” or “Luan”, but most of those have been taken down now. For example, https://buymeacoffee.com/bwe was still active yesterday, but is down now.

I’m hoping this is the last we hear of BwE, I don’t think the hacking scene needs folks like this anywhere near it.

What to do if you are/were using BwE’s tools

If you are/were a user of his tools such as NOR Validator and are looking to switch (I really don’t think you should be supporting such a sleazy person), I know there aren’t that many great alternatives, but you can have a look at the following:

• NOR Modifier by TheCod3r (source here)
• PS4 Wee Tools by Andy_Man (source here)

In particular, for those of you on the scene interested in developing alternatives to BwE’s tools, Louis Rossmann has a bounty up and running: he states in his video that he will give $1000 to the top 5 contributors to TheCod3r’s NOR modifier. This is here: https://github.com/TheCod3rYouTube/PS5NorModifier