Possible Bad Bif'er @Lightning91

I ran the 2015 NHL Fantasy Hockey league, which had 8 excellent participants, one grumpy ass who got very lucky (me) and one, well, one fellow that has disappeared. Our last place finisher @Lightning91 was to ship to @SRBush1974 but has been off the grid since April 11th. Sent before his absence is a message that he neglected to read, which let him know his target. Another message went unread that was sent to him after his disappearance, updating target's address. Additionally, he was tagged at least three times and an email was sent to both his fantasy league invite email and the email he listed on the fantasy site. Finally, I have texted him (He had a positive trade rating after 9 trades, and I was able to reach out to every trading partner he had in order to get his cell phone number) but he has not responded to text either.

On a side note though, I'd like to mention that all of his trading partners did respond. Even thought this isn't their problem, all of those fellows were very understanding and incredibly nice. A couple went on to offer help making the winner's bounty whole, but I assured them that since I am accountable (and didn't have to ship to anyone anyway), I was taking care of it. So basically, within this gray cloud of questionable BIF'ing, lay a silver lining of excellent community. But I think anyone reading this thread already knew how great the community can be.

I included the caveat of "possible" in the thread title because I have not dismissed the possibility that something of bad circumstance could have very well happened to him; I don't want to recklessly drag someone's name around if they indeed fell upon misfortune. With that being said, it's doubtful in my opinion that at this point he's going to ship. It's only right to have (as a minimum) his account blocked from future trading and BIF'ing until he does resurface and either explain or come clean, thus the real reason for this thread.

On a different note (and as a public service to other new Fantasy BIF commissioners), I can point out that there are a few things that I could have done as an organizer that could have alleviated (to some degree) this problem. So here's some "lessons learned".

1. I am in a Fantasy Baseball BIF that required a $50 deposit. This seems like a fair "skin in" way to go about the league. I could even see this as a remedy for first time fantasy BIF'ers or folks wanting to get in on BIFs that have insufficient trade history.

2. I should have paid attention to rosters throughout the year. When researching his (@Lightning91) activity in the league, I went back for the last few weeks to see if he was indeed active, which I noticed all too late, that he wasn't. Injured players starting, starting inactive players while active players were benched, etc.,. Being proactive in confirming his commitment to ship prior to his "last seen" date could have been accomplished easily enough, if I'd been proactive in researching everyone's activity.

4. Demand that communication primarily take place on BA and not the fantasy page (which was totally on me - just a creature of fantasy habit!). This would have allowed me to more easily see who was reading, responding and participating at a high level throughout the season.

3. For BA in general, maybe I could throw traction behind having it an unwritten rule, that on one's personal details page under "about you", BA's can list (with thread link possibly) BIF's they have participated in, sort of as "cred" for future BIFs.

Here's the league thread:

http://www.beeradvocate.com/community/threads/2015-fantasy-hockey-bif.328592/

That's enough out of me. I doubt I will see any development in this situation, but if so, I will certainly update one and all.