Bitcoin Forum

What happened: I would strongly advise against accepting escrow through BTCrow.com without double checking the transaction ID (not to be confused with a Bitcoin TxID). What's happening is this scammer is going around spoofing BTCrow.com e-mails making it appear that they came from noreply@btcrow.com in an attempt to get you to fund an escrow address that belongs to the scammer.

In this case the e-mail listed was ellenloyar@gmail.com, which has been used in this sort of scam attempt before. When pressed about the invalid transaction ID, he wanted me to send him a paper wallet as "proof" of funds as his backup scam attempt (don't do this if you find yourself in this situation). Of course he wouldn't accept a signed address.

Scammers Profile Link: btclover (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=550545)

Reference Link: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1167247.0
Amount Scammed: 1.00 BTC (attempted)
Payment Method: N/A
Proof of Payment: N/A
PM/Chat Logs: N/A
Additional Notes: Associated with btcearnerz.tk. Alt of iamalive (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=541185), Skype name was abbas.aoun7

Damm, scammers nowadays think of everything to try to steal money from you.

Why didn't you use a more reputable escrow like Tomatocage? All you would have to do is verify his GPG signature even if the escrow agreement didn't make it to your PM inbox.

This is why I prefer to only deal with more reputable/established users because of the lower instances of scam attempts.

last time I checked people dont sites like those.

And people are more towards on the forum with a high reputable escrow list that have a green rep with high #`s to avoid this.

The problem is that even those "high" on the reputable list have been shown to be thiefs.

Go with your gut and dot your Is and cross your Ts.  I've had a number of people try to scam me but I can read them really easily.

The address he tried to get me to send to was 1LJG5pFT3ht2bVJr2bnkwTG8rijQZ7JMza. Not sure if anybody can tell anything from that.

IP address associated what that skype handle is 182.188.199.138 which appears to be associated with a Pakistan location.

That skype handle is also associated with  btcseller255 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=545150) who apparently tried to scam earlier last month.

It looks like we are dealing with a serial scammer. Now it is more important then ever to use an on forum escrow when conducting trades

It looks like that address received some money and then send that money to 1DeXAGj6HHRtwjdzvmYxkACsD1JUiAZHxc which is associated with trademe (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=405348), and bitbond288 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=544075). This guy has tried to scam a few times before

We appreciate you have contacted us early to avoid the scam. We've contacted to the freehosting used for spoofed emails and soon will update our system to prevent this situations.

Regards,


BTCrow.com

I very much don't like operation of SOPPORT btcrow.com.
They report: " Complete the form below to get in contact with us. We typically respond very quickly within business hours (9am-5pm)"
But actually on three addresses to them with a request urgently to help me I didn't receive any response !!!
Because of similar operation of SUPPORT I consider that it not reliable Escrow service as they don't keep the promises and in case of any deception they won't be able to help neither the seller, nor the buyer.
Therefore I don't advise in case of the inference of transactions to use as the guarantor of BTCrow.com

I am not familiar with any allegations against this site, however the experience of the OP is a very good example as to why it is not a good idea to use a non-forum based escrow because there is a lot less to verify when you are not dealing with a specific person, and this fact is exaggerated when you are trading via email (or even skype)