So I first started some odd years ago, cheating by actually discovering the announce packet while monitoring some azureus traffic (I think azureus was around version 1[dot]smth around that time and it was the best p2p application as it was eating a lot of bandwidth from the shared wireless local provider, so hourray for me). I still remember the first time I saw 100KB/s in the torrent client. But anyways the first thing I did was test it on a tracker and because I just registered for a myspleen account and because I saw top snatchers there with dudes with a lot of gigs I instantly spoofed myself 1TB (or smth, might've been less). Top of the list very happy, I was there for about 6 months till my account was closed but I don't think I ever downloaded a bit. It was childish I know. That was a one-time test I never repeated again.
Later I got involved with some private general trackers and kept myself afloat the old school way. I was getting a 0.7 ratio so I was getting by barely. Another year or so, broadband and isp peering became a commodity, so they upped the minimum to something like 1.0 ratio for normal users, 0.5 became a minimum for maintaining your account. So here comes along RatioMaster (don't know how I stumbled acrossed this one ). Because I knew how torrenting worked and from the start I was keeping the client opened at least 12h a day, I had incredible seed times on a lot of old torrents. Popped in a few older torrents in the software and after some mindful spoofing I was back on track with above 1 ratio and averaging less than 1KB/s upload for those torrents. No detection there so everything AOK.
On to the next part! Some 5 years ago (might be more) I was becoming more and more involved in the idea of the private tracker community. My private torrenting needs were covered by Demonoid, isoHunt and Torrentz so no ratio problems, and I was getting into web design doodling for my own satisfaction and for others in the private tracker world. My computer was averaging 18h a day awake and not long after it became 24h/24h 7 days a week. I never had good upload speeds, most of the time .5 or .25 out of the ddl speed, but I was persistent despite being able to cheat because I always felt torrenting was more about giving back than taking and bouncing.
So steadily I got myself a front-row seat in private tracker communities based on messing around with design and after a while I was becoming an honorific member on quite a few trackers. I than became part of the staff and got cooking on better understanding of the whole dynamic of underground communities. At that time I was still cheating from time to time, but nothing much, just rounding .7 or more to 1.0 on old as hell torrents. Nobody cared and RatioMaster became more and more competent at cheating. Skipping ahead...
As for SB-i I first discovered it in my college years, when cheating was quite old news and because I just wanted to leech from the campus tracker I googled around for torrent mods and this is the place I came running to. I was a member of that staff too, and because I didn't like the direction it was heading to, I quit my post and went on being the crazy ass leecher which the stupid staff never suspected.
Actually being a member of some private trackers is what got me banned time and time again from other trackers. Some time ago, like I mentioned about in another forum, people began recognizing my nickname and after being banned on one tracker, an admin friend moving to that community got me a 2TB up 0b down account that still got banned cause the rest of the staff loved me so much. ooh the stories.