Bitcoin Forum

Please submit your requests for a review on a website, and if it looks like a scam or not.
DISCLAIMER: I am not responsible for any investments or decisions made based on my predictions..
In the table below, I will credit myself with any scams or scammers that I uncover by myself. Only with solid evidence I will make conclusions, and this cannot be appealed.
Busted scams:

Busted scammers:


ANY tips, upon request, will be respected by a non-disclosure agreement between us. Any evidence put forward by you, no matter how obtained, will be kept anonymous at your request.

If you felt that I did a good job, please tip ;)
Official (and only) tip jar address: 1Atq2eKKAC9HR6SwxDDaPBAtFaNrQF7rRc

Ongoing Investigations:
Link between Gismo28 and BuddyIsrael. Requested by tarsua

Cloudthink.io and signature campaign, suggested by Anonymous

Pretty much everything in the investor based games is a scam, no way around it. If you could compile a list of other scams you have found, it would be very useful.

Can you review bitgold.com ,,?
Trading platform with more great news but the domain ever use to ponzi investmen

Ok, i have a job for you, I want you to prove that two accounts are related, real solid proof only, how much will it cost or will you do it for free?

Most is a scam.
There are some games that are not scams, and are simply for gambling. Providing those games don't run away, I won't call them a scam.
You can check and search the thread for previous scams in the future.

Doing a very quick lookover of the site, it does not look like a ponzi. There is nothing paying you interest, it is simply a gold transaction website where you can hold and pay for gold (and trade between currencies).
The site design is VERY professional, something that could be on a million dollar website.
I cannot predict if its a scam or not, however the site looks very promosing. Especially with the espensive ssl certificate they have here:
http://i.gyazo.com/5fd60802a0a610beef7be24cf08dc2e1.png
I would personally use this website.

PM me some details, I will do a basic check, if I have to go in much deeper, it may cost you but as long as its not a huge investigation I will do it for free for the community ;)

I have edited the OP, and as I find out more and more information and uncover scams I will update it in the little table I have made right now. I hope to prevent and scams and scammers, and stop them in their tracks.
If this service is used a lot, I will set up a donation jar.

Can you check scrypt.cc? It seems legit but some people say its shady.

Scrypt.cc is quite long known (I have heard about it a while ago).
Looking at the website now, it looks awful. Not a modern design and it is hard to navigate. Site design is very simple, and there are some small css errors and little things that should have been fixed.
The site is a cloud mining website, high are notorious for being ponzi schemes (you don't need to prove you actually own the khs so it is easy).
If anyone can come forward and confirm payments (Although they probably wouldn't have their site up if they stopped paying) that would be good for confirmation.
The forum button does not link to any forum, it just redirects to the main page (index.php). It originally links to /forums/index.php however it looks like this has never been set up and therefore redirects.
All of the server status indicates state offline, so maybe they just stopped paying??? They claim 24/7, but the servers are offline so that might not be true.
Lastly, I recommend against any mining site. There are very few people that are making a profit off of mining these days due to the increased difficulty. You probably won't get your money back even if they are legitimate.
I myself would NOT invest in this site, and do not plan to.
There is a chance of this being a scam.

I would say that James Volpe (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1046791.msg11275422#msg11275422) should be listed as a notable scammer  :D

Of course Quickseller, however my job is not to list scams in the past, but to find new ones and possibly connect them to the past to avoid anything further.
I just did an investigation possibly listing 2 people together at a persons request I will release in the next post

l know that, it's a new trading platform
how about old web ,,? He is run ponzi scheme look this https://web.archive.org/web/20050403034103/http://www.bitgold.com/

Source: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1059057.0

Investigation requested by tarsua.
I don't know the purpose of why I was requested this. If there is any more evidence please PM me so I can add to the list
BuddyIsrael
Addresses:
1EdgXM2gbYedANE8yaZ1kC5QtXQHWNMSPC
1GAGfamAuSFwcrrYscQ2VrUhPEfHWPMXHM
Speaks german
Almost all of his posts are buying or selling something in marketplace
Gismo28
Addresses:
12NUDU4oKg2kjCuEqJiFNziQJ6mjM4GdoU
ALSO speaks german
MANY of his posts are in marketplace

It is possible that they are the same person. there are 2 pieces of evidence that link them together
I could do a thorough investigation of the addresses and see if there is anything linking them together, but this would cost a fee (it takes quite a long time)
https://blockchain.info/taint/1GAGfamAuSFwcrrYscQ2VrUhPEfHWPMXHM
https://blockchain.info/taint/12NUDU4oKg2kjCuEqJiFNziQJ6mjM4GdoU

They also have left trust rating for each-other:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=trust;u=513698
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=trust;u=404902

People that have alts often leave trust for each other to help them out with their business (whether it be scamming or genuine business).
This looks like a very direct connection here. I would say I am 65% sure they are connected, 100% when I connect their addresses, for example there is apparently a transaction between them, if that is true (and I find the reference) that means they are the same person.

The password for BOTH of them have been changed recently as well, which could link each of them.

Some more information found from tarsua
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1073492.0
Conclusion: Nothing directly links them together, however it is very probable
Evidence: Both german and both posts are in the marketplace buying the same things, left trust for eachother

Wow. Thanks for your in depth investigation. You should add your address for a tip jar in the thread!

Good job in finding that cache. However I purchase domains from people all the time, and I doubt people link the new domain owner with the old one. This COULD be evidence however the bitcoin forum does MANY trades and selling, as bitcoin is a currency, so I wouldn't call this linkable evidence unless someone proves that the owner of the old site and new site are the same.
This was also in 2005, before bitcoin.

I added the tip jar in the OP. Here it is: 1Atq2eKKAC9HR6SwxDDaPBAtFaNrQF7rRc
If you need anything else please put it here and I will investigate for you!

That why iam not trade in bitgold
Iam very scared after i see that chace

Are bitgold safe for trade,,?

Emm only question,, are you ceck old chace before you buy domain,,?

I would check the old site if I was going to set up a business that could be targeted by scammers or people trying to uncover something.
I don't personally reccomend any sites for investment, however bitgold does seem legitimate, and I would if I wanted to get into gold trading.

What about this one MidasRezerv.com? Thanks! They launched MRCoin, which is claimed to be decentralized distributed 100% Gold backed digital token platform designed to enhance investments, trading, and payments of physical gold in its digital equivalent.

They also claimed to have had two successful deals with each other, no one wants to trade with BuddyIsreal as he doesnt want to use escrow, look at his trust,  and Gismo28 doesnt want to show proof of the transactions, how much would it cost for you to look into their bitcoin addresses?

The site sign is PRETTY good, not the best however better than average. I personally don't like the style but thats my opinion and don't take that into account.
The press section is legit, links to real articles from legit sights
https://midasrezerv.com/press
If you want to look at each article it is good but highlights:
Yahoo
Kitco
And a bunch of other bitcoin coin sights, however being recognized by Yahoo and Kitco is VERY large.
I think the idea is very good as well, and it seems that they are not claiming to make you any profits, or anything ridiculous. The website has an SSL certificate, and loads very fast and works well.
They claim to be partnered with other gold vaults
Image:
http://i.gyazo.com/f1b836bb1a840cdd28eddb46a1661d55.png
If this is true, they are a good company.
I would personally invest if I was in the market

They also put trust on each other, thank you for pointing that out (I will add to the post for reference)

How much will it cost for you to investigate their bitcoin addresses for possible links?

I will have to think about the rates I will charge for in depth investigations. I don't want to charge people high and charge people too low, I want it to all be standard rates from me.
I am off to bed now, however tomorrow I will have some time to go into this investigation and possibly check the addresses.

To organize things better, and make ongoing investigations more view able, I will quote all the ongoing investigations in the OP so everyone can see them well. It also makes it easier for me to edit and add information and evidence too. I am off to bed now, hopefully you guys can get me some more evidence for me to sift through and make the connection.

Does this only include bitcoin related websites？I might have some other websites I want you to look in.

I think that I will keep it bitcoin related. I trace transactions with the addresses, and scams in bitcoin are much better to uncover (because ofirreversable transactions). I could take a general look but I know bitcoin best.
So I would give an official NO to non-bitcoin websites however I could take a look at some if I wanted to.

Please also look into this https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1073492.0 its a thread i posted a bit more than a week ago about those two, pm me also, i have some half points that i would like to share via pm, or does everything have to be public?

Do you think you can check Bit-x and Cex.io? I would like to know more information about them. I'll send you a small tip for this :D

Thank you for posting that thread. I have linked to it in the current investigation about them. Please share them via PM. I think things should be public, if they could better the community, but if you have something you want to say that you don't want the public to know, that is fine, I can be compliant in keeping a secret.
I want to be as transparent as possible so more people can see my thread and see who is scamming people.

Haha, I might check into them, however they are huge companies are they are in the roots of our community. I highly doubt they are scams, but if I find anything suspicious I will let you guys know (Thats a HUGE case, cex.io and ghash.io are million dollar company, but bit-x probably isn't). I think they have proven to pay out, and not be a ponzi scheme, considering ghash.io (owned by cex.io) is THE biggest mining pool.
I doubt I could find any evidence against them though

Going to study and sleep now, sent a small tip for your service thus far
https://blockchain.info/tx/7fed66d36cc74eb09eb117b8d44f6787dc772a8e9ffa0e8e2a618f785d575961

edit: sorry about the fee, hopefully it will confirm within an hour

Thank you for your tip. It may seem small to you, but the fact that someone is recognizing my work is very great for me.
The fee is fine, I don't need the btc anytime soon.
I am off to bed in the next half an hour or so (I need sleep), so if you want me to look at anything tomorrow, ask it tonight.

I have received an anonymous request (I will not disclose anything you don't want to) from someone to check out the cloudthink company and their signature campaign. A brief look at the sig campaign post makes me skeptical already, the rates are EXTREMELY high, and well paying, especially for a investment (another flag) service.
Already, I am thinking ponzi, because 1. It is relatively high interest (30% in 6 months), and ponzis ALWAYS try to get new investors ASAP, so through this sig campaign that can be achieved.
Full investigation to follow

Thank's for your help :)
now i can trade in Bitgold for fast trade be quiet

I agree, there are a lot of scams pretty much everywhere, the invester based games section is rife, offering crazy profit, you are better off taking your chances on legit games in the gambling section at least you do have a chance to win.

I would like to see a service like this within the altcoin section as a lot of people are getting burned withe ICO coins.  You are offering a good service which can only benefit the community.

Can you find any links to any of these?

https://btcjam.com/listings/42886-trading-and-buy-khs-in-scrypt-cc

Borrower (User #1022640) - https://btcjam.com/users/184176

and

https://btcjam.com/listings/43526-venta-de-bitcoins-3er--prestamo

Borrower FabianRates - https://btcjam.com/users/162764

Hi, interesting service indeed.

However, this one should be reconsidered.


Password changes are currently not good hint towards potential scammers because just a few days ago the forum sent a notification to all users, urging them to change the password. This is in no way related to both the investigated user accounts but applies to all users around here.

Best regards,
PeBo

there is this website called aprilcoin
which gives interest about 2.5 % on deposits
I would like to know whether its a scam website or a legitimate one

BTCjam is very hard to track. No input or output addresses, and I can't follow any funds that get loaned because its all hidden and non-transparent. There would be no worthy evidence that I could link together between anything on btcjam, sorry about this

Yea, I guess they did ask us to change the password a couple weeks ago, however, if they did not ask this, and this was more than a month away from that time period, I think I could use that as evidence. If 2 accounts change password at the same time, its very probable that they are connected, as what are the odds that out of the hundreds of thousands of accounts on here, 2 account passwords are changed within 1 hour of each other.
However with that recent password change PSA, I would cancel the meaning of this evidence.

Is this the website you are speaking of?
https://www.aprilcoin.com
If so, this is a ponzi no doubt. No one can offer 0.1% hourly, which is 2.4% daily. NO one can provide those terms, and if aprilcoin COULD, they would be doubling their money by themselves and not roping anyone else into it.
Just a simple example:
Investing 1 btc, at the rate of 2.4% per day, for 365 days (A year), would offer you a return of ~5747.6 btc, which is roughly 1.3 million at the time of writing. If the site can turn 225$ into 1.3 million dollars in less than a year, they would NOT be offering this service to us.
The site is nice however, but there are some bad spelling and grammar mistakes, done by an amateur I am sure.
Do NOT invest.

One thing to build upon the case of cloudthink.io, my reply to their topic was recently deleted. I had asked them about something and declared that the 30% figure per 6 months was large and could be a ponzi scheme. The topic IS self-moderated, which is a big red flag for businesses here, because they should always be as transparent as possible and not have to self-moderate their topic. They would only self-moderate it if they really had something to hide, which maybe they do...

Your post has been deleted because you had nothing to say about the campaign and only accusations. Do not post off-topics posts which don't have anything to do with our campaign. Thank you for understanding.

No, it is not a red flag. I receive daily 3-5 messages of threats, extortions, spam and more. Did you think about that? A lot of users post bad stuff which they don't research. You are in no position to make this claims or investigate, you are a beginner looking for some trust and some quick bitcoins.

Thank you!

Some messages I managed to find:





I have like 10-20 more but I don't have time for your bullshit, I won't make the usernames public to avoid scum from leeching to my name or CloudThink's name.



Do your research!!!! and stop acting like neewb

Cloudthink is obviously a potential scam, and my post was NOT off topic because I was directly talking about your site.
According to trust left on you (which is all true I checked the source:)
You obviously don't have 48 million
Your pictures are lies.
You have a history in ponzis.

Concluding from this information, you are obviously lying. Why would people invest in a company that blatantly lies?

Also, why can't you release the names of the people who messaged you???

I am currently building an investigation against the site cloudthink.io.
The most current information I have will be entered into the OP, inside a quote under current investigations. If any of you have anything toadd, please PM me or post here and I can add that.

Updated the OP with my current investigation and details about the cloudthink.io website
Could people (and the original person that left the trust) confirm that the info I have is true, and please tell me if this is enough information to point out as a ponzi scheme.
I strongly believe its a ponzi scheme, if you think it is NOT, please convince me with hard facts.

Did you yet get to know about Cloudminr.io
They are 99.9% scam. Can you write a review on them. If you go through the scam accusation board, you will find a number of scam reports against Cloudminr.io

If there is a general consensus that they are a scam, and there is multiple proofs, then I don't think I will waste time reviewing them. I don't want to confirm past scam attempts, or solve ones that have already been solved. I want to uncover new attempts because no one has ever done them before.

No there isn't a general consensus that they are scammers. Just a few accusations. I found 2 of the accusations on first and second page.

PS :- Should it be moved to Scam Accusation Board?

All accusations should be on the Scam Accusation board, they will get moved their by the moderaters anyways.
I will take a look at the data within the next day or two, I will see if its blatantly obvious they are scamming or not. From the name of their website it sounds like a scam already :)

Op do you have any unconventional methods that I could not use to investigate a scam myself?

You dont even do proper due diligence when they ask you for services

Bitgold bought that domain for a lot of money, its a Canadian startup that raised large quantities and now is in the Toronto Stock Exchange

http://www.stockhouse.com/companies/quote/v.xau/bitgold-inc (http://www.stockhouse.com/companies/quote/v.xau/bitgold-inc)

They are insured by Lloyds of London and the gold is stored by BRICKS

All of this with a simple google search

I feel this service itself looks like a scam

Like I said before, I do basic investigation for free, and from what I saw from bitgold, they are VERY legit.
With the data you also gave to me, that even further makes the website trustworthy.
The site was listed on kitco and yahoo news.
This site is very trustworthy like I said before, and I guess you could research to prove it even more but I already trusted it from the data.

These 3 links should help, they are all links from the scam accusation board about cloudthink ant their campaign manager/owner

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1074272.0
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1081414.0
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1076517.0

Thank you for this.
Someone in PM also sent me the company profile, and they have zero contact info meaning they aren't as transparent as we think.
I am currently looking through my PMs, lots of people sent me evidence there.

What a great public service you have here,
may i send u alot of PM to help me with some basic and deeper investigate? i dont want harm my profile and my signature running campaign if i make a lot of post on your thread here..
Sorry for bad english.

Send as many PMs as you like, I appreciate any evidence. Like I said before, if you don't want me to reveal if you said any information, I wont, I promise.
Your profile will not be harmed because you will be kept anonymous

Ok, i am sure BuddyIsreal is a scammer now
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1082978.0
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1082971.0


please use those two links to compile a case against him

I dont think theres a case to even compile, he is attempting to sell illegal services, refuses to use escrow and demands he go second, on a new account even less. zero doubt he is a scammer, and I am in favor of the theory that BuddyIsrael is an alt of Gismo28.

What exactly are u offering  ? and how do u bust scammers do u get the individuals money back ?

If so u wld have a lot of business :D

It seems that thia guy is offering detector service but I am not sure about quality of his service

Are you talking about me? I have only done a couple days of this service, and I wouldn't call myself a great detective, but I think I have done a pretty good job. You don't have to trust me, nor should you, just take my advice and use it to make your own decision

I am offering basic investigation services for free upon request, to try and cut down offers, but if you want me to go more indepth, like wallet and cash-flow investigation that could be done for a reasonable fee. Since this is bitcoin, there is not much I can do in terms of getting individuals money back, however if you want to go ahead and press charges against them and get your money back yourself, I will provide any evidence you need.

Yea there isn't any doubt he is a scammer. Hacking IP isn't necessarily is a scam, however it could be used to scam, and could be used to extortion someone, and is also illegal and a shady business.
I think its pretty concealable they are alts as well, you can see all the facts in the OP, I have posted all of them.

Bump, does anyone have any requests they want me to find, no one has asked for anything in a couple days now, and I have lots of spare time on my hands!

he was offering to sell a "guide" on cashing out hacked paypal accounts, thats what I was referring to as illegal. the thread was deleted some time after he posted that. and now, gismo and all of his alts have been banned for spamming to farm accounts, if buddyisrael doesnt make a post in the next month or so I think its pretty safe to say the accounts belong to the same person.

Yeah, that buddyisrael guy seems shady. He accused me of asking for a review copy of his IP hacking service in which I didn't ask. There's another newbie around his thread he accused too. Since there are proofs now, just transact with extreme caution guys.

Why would anyone accuse you of asking for a review copy? Review copies allow people to test out the product, no need to get mad for asking.
This guy is obviously quite shady, I wouldn't deal with him

im sure they belong to the same person, they were auto banned at the same time, im gonna try to do a taint analysis to put another nail in the hammer

https://i.imgur.com/1C19dQQ.png

this can be placed under busted scams now

I'll be closely watching for cloudthink.io, red flags as you mentioned are there so hoping they don't turn out to be a scam.
Has anyone invested there? Have they received daily payouts? The smallest plan is for 6 months. So it will seem that this has to run for at least 6 months for someone to get their principle back.

Well if there is something worth the money 6 months at these prices is not the worst buddy

But try to mine with your own equipment or just buy!

yeah you are right ! if they could turn this much profit out of this service , why would they even care about others.
my friend invested in this scheme for a short time and got some bucks out of it. i should warn him about this fraud asap .

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1009406.msg10952068#msg10952068 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1009406.msg10952068#msg10952068)

you could elaborate on those maybe? more details..

Its a huge list, and it looks like all the evidence has pretty much been there, remember my service is about new things and finding new scammers and scams, not confirming and investigating things that have already been made a conclusion

well I have a question here
what if I am lending a person some money and he is a newbie
then how can we detect whether he is a scammer or legitimate one ?

Give me his profile, newbies are hard to figure out because they are new and don't have many evidence on them, or any history with scamming.

here is the profile of him
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=523261
although he  has a negative trust I guess he is not a scammer
you can check out this thread too
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1093242.0

He is a scammer, he is asking everyone for loans at different amounts, is he going to offer collateral?

I guess you are right . he is a scammer .
what I find funny is the comment on the negative trust that says
if you lend him any money consider it as a donation. lol .