Cryptocurrency, Horror Story

Scammer tries to frame me as THE scammer on Wells Fargo

I put up an ad on LocalBitcoins, stating that I would accept bank deposits through Wells Fargo or Western union. Some guy with bad English reached out to me, he offered to pay well over the cost, and wanted to do it through Surepay. I spoke with Wells to make sure that once I get the money that it can’t be taken away. The customer service agent assured me that after 12-24 hours the money cannot be taken away through a reversal.

I let the guy on LocalBitcoins know that I would only send him my BTC after I got a full deposit onto my account, assurance and what not. He agreed and I loaded my coins into escrow. He showed me a confirmation picture and all I had to do was wait for the processing.

A few hours later and I get a ton of emails from my bank telling me that my account settings have been altered. I immediately thought that he may have attached some sort of virus to the picture confirmation of the transaction that he sent me previously. I rush to log in and look at my bank account, and guess what!

My password doesn’t work and my account was locked.

I called my bank and they accused me of being a scammer due to a report that I was trying to steal someone’s money through Surepay. What the hell??? I immediately contacted LocalBitcoins to let them know of the situation and that I had BTC in escrow. Never deal with Wells Fargo again, as well as any other odd payment methods, screw that.

 

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Cryptocurrency, Horror Story

Bitcoins stolen. Tricked with a dying laptop

I found a local ad on Craigslist, some guy who was selling close to two thousand bucks, which was a great deal for me because I didn’t want to lose any money on exchange services. I’m a cheapskate lol. We agreed to meet at a restaurant and the trader to send me some money from his computer to make sure that the transaction works, I used a wallet on my phone. It took a long time so we decide to eat and talk. He seemed pretty trustworthy, and knows a lot more about crypto technologies than I do. We finally get approved for the coin he recently sent. He starts to send over the rest of the BTC, and I whip out my money.

Unfortunately, the dude’s laptop dies, but he said that he sent the transaction.

The restaurant soon closes and we decided to move to a coffee shop nearby. It took forever for the transaction to be processed, but I guess it was already registered on the Blockchain and we just needed a few more confirmations. I got really tired and decide to call it a night. He agreed and provided me with his phone number and driver’s license. I’m home, too tired to check the transactions and went to bed.

I woke up the next morning from a nightmare, decided to check my wallet… Nothing, nothing is there.

I contacted my wallet provider and they said that there’s no information pertaining to the transaction and nothing on the Blockchain as well. I called the guy, he doesn’t answer. I filed a police report and they ran the license information, but didn’t get any returns.

A fake license, who knows if anything he said was even real and I have absolutely no way of getting my cash or coins back. I’m going to try, but I probably won’t be successful.

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Cryptocurrency, Horror Story

Lost over two grand through a lousy PayPal escrow service on CryptoThrift

I was a seller on a site called CryptoThrift. It’s like eBay, but it offered a BTC to PayPal escrow service and charges a little extra for the conversion process.

I was careful. I checked on the feedback and reviews for both the site and what it’s like being as a seller.  I did one small transaction successfully first, then I waited for a few weeks before I kept at it. I continued to do a lot of transactions, selling through this platform and everything was cool.

However, a few months pass and I get several emails from PayPal notifying me that a few transactions were unauthorized and that money will automatically be withdrawn from my account.

I’m guessing that some of the people performed a chargeback. I tried talking to PayPal and they told me that they couldn’t do anything about it because they don’t support digital currencies yet, despite me providing them with a ton of solid proof. I know there is a ton of stories about PayPal, eBay, cryptotrades not going to well in the end, but I just thought that everything was good since I went on for a few months without any hard issues. I guess scammers are getting smarter now. I just don’t understand why popular systems like PayPal don’t have a sophisticated enough fraud prevention service.

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Cryptocurrency, Horror Story

Lost a little bit on a crypto-converting website.

I’m not very computer literate, and I use PayPal a lot. I found this one website through an ad that could convert crypto to PayPal. I don’t know why, but I decided to do it, signed up, connected my wallet, and without thinking too much I tried to convert 0.2 btc into cash.

Got an email confirmation from the service, telling me that the conversion would be done in 30 minutes.

I waited for about two hours, nothing, no btc, no PayPal money, nobody to contact and nobody to help me resolve my issue. Please don’t be as stupid as me!

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Cryptocurrency, Scam

Lost cash through a Coinbase email phishing scam

I received an email on Wednesday from Coinbase asking me to accept a new service agreement. I clicked on the link and my browser took me over to Coinbase so that I could log in and accept the new terms. I did, and I waited for a verification message to be texted to my phone. So I entered that code and proceeded to log into the platform. At which point a message popped up letting me kindly know that all of my coins have been transferred to another wallet. Fantastic, I won’t say exactly how much, but quite a lot. I was stupid, I didn’t realize that the email address was fake and was not sent from Coinbase customer service.

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Cryptocurrency, Horror Story

I’m not so good with checks.

I had a guy message me through local bitcoins, he wanted to buy about 500$ worth of them. Okay, I set up a meeting with him. I got all of my things together. We agreed to meet a shopping mall which isn’t too far away from my house. And there are a lot of people there so I wasn’t worried about getting my ass beat. I met with the guy, and I instantly got freaked out. He told me he didn’t have any money, but that he had a check with him. Hm. I thought okay, I have gotten paid with checks before so it wasn’t anything to crazy. We walked together to the ATM machine in the mall. And I deposited the check into my account with the guy next to me. Then I sent everything to his wallet. Cool.

But four days had passed and I already spent the 500$ check that was deposited into my account.

Wells Fargo called a few days later and said the check had bounced and I needed to repay them the 500$. Should have asked for the guy’s ID.

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Cryptocurrency, Scam

Been scammed before, didn’t expect fake cash though…

I have been scammed before, pennies, here and there, nothing too big, phishing blah blah etc. I found a buyer online who wanted to buy over ten thousand dollars’ worth of cryptocurrencies from me, and he wanted to do it in person. I was pretty suspicious, I think any normal person would be, and terrified!! So, I picked a place, I live in a big city by the way, I picked a place where I knew that there would be some security cameras. I came prepared for mischief, I had a full proof form that I wanted him to sign just to secure myself and protect myself from any kind of liabilities.

When I presented the guy with the document that I wanted him to sign, he kind of freaked out, he filled it out anyway with really bad handwriting and was kind of sneaky in covering his id.

His signature was also super sloppy. Everything felt off.

At one point the odd gentleman said that he needed to withdraw an extra 500 Euros because he was short. We walked together to the nearest bank. The guy was visibly nervous. At one point, we were in the bank and I had possession of all of the cash. So, while the guy was withdrawing his money, I ran up to the teller and asked her to do a check on the funds through their machine.

Long story short, all of the bills ended up being fake, security was called, and the guy was put under arrest.

I later found out that any such transactions could be taken care of at the bank and notarized for a small fee as well as with all of the legal requirements pertaining to them. This was probably the craziest situation I have ever been in. I honestly don’t know what I was thinking of doing a trade like that in broad daylight. I’m glad that everything went alright though. I could have possibly been mugged on my way home.

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Cryptocurrency, Scam

How I tried to buy an old MacBook with bitcoin from Craigslist

I saw an ad concerning a used MacBook for sale on craigslist. What appealed to me about this advertisement was that the person said he accepted bitcoins. Cool, if this deal went through then this would have been the third transaction I do with bitcoins. I wanted the experience, and just wanted to do it for fun. Plus, I needed a new computer. So, we chat up, and decide to meet at a local Barnes and noble store. The guy comes in, I look at the Mac, and everything is okay. So, he gives me his wallet ID, and end up transferring my BTC over to him.

The guy then just stands up, takes the Mac, with my crypto, and walks out, saying that I can’t do anything. And you know what, I really couldn’t do anything.

I thought about calling the police, pulling up the video footage. But how would I have proved anything? Even a lawyer told me that my case was futile, what the hell! I was completely helpless. Bringing a friend would have probably been a good idea or a concealed weapon just in case lol.

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Cryptocurrency, Scam

Someone stole 3 bitcoins from me through a Google Chrome Extension

So, I frequent a few trading platforms. I kept seeing advertisements about some kind of chrome extension. Selective ad marketing I guess. Anyway, I installed the BTC ticker into my browser. Everything was up and running, I used it a couple of times, didn’t think anything of it. No red alarms etc. Here’s where it gets fun, the ticker actually came with some malware it somehow picked up! I was going to go withdraw some coins from my trading account, everything was going smooth.

It was only after I got #$%^&*#$ out of 3 bitcoins that I realized that the add-on changed my deposit address to its own.

At least they didn’t cost 4,000$ back then…

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