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For those of you who don't know this site has been in financial trouble for some time, today the website and database have disappeared.

If you are one of the many sellers owed money by GEMM do not expect to see it, Site owner Roger Raffee had emailed several people stating that he intends to file for bankruptcy and close GEMM down .

     —"discogs forum gemm more music two months ago"

I don't understand the choice of past perfect for email—before what event. Before today, the disappearance of the website, I think past simple would fit; or did he email sellers first to say that "they will lose their money"?

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    Note the reformatting and repunctuation. If you click edit you can fix that 'discogs' line yourself, and you can see how the blockquote is effected. Oct 3, 2015 at 17:08

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You shouldn't expect very precise use of verb constructions and time references in a very casual medium like an online forum, where writers are typically improvising their posts, not going back to edit and adjust.

Looking at the original post and googling the recent history suggest that what more_music intended readers to understand was that Raffee's emails went out some months before the disappearance of the website and database. That is, the 'reference time' to which the past perfect is related is the disappearance, and although that is "today" it is not now but in the recent past—that he says the site and database have disappeared. So earlier today the website disappeared, and the emails had been sent before that happened.

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