Bitcoin Forum

Just wanted to share a funny scam attempt.

I was trying to sell my knife (Karambit UV MW), and someone added me straight away. He said he wanted to pay on real money. I said I only accepted bitcoin, and he said okay. He quickly rushed into which escrow I was going to use. But I kept persisting with the question of "Can you give me your bitcoin address so I know you actually have the money?"

He finally listened to me, and said he had exactly $20 in good wallet, and have me the address 1F1tAaz5x1HUXrCNLbtMDqcw6o5GNn4xqX.

I checked it straight away, and found out the address was a wikileaks address ::)

It turns out when you search up "bitcoin address", the wikileaks donation address is the first thing that comes up. What a joke. ;D

that's funny.  :D

so... you have profile link or anything like that?

scammers are getting lazier.
you should ask for a signed message from bitcoin address, he was a lazy scammer otherwise he could have just opened blockchain.info and copied one of the addresses from live feed and say this is mine.

Lazy and with low IQ scammer or he thinks that others are silly. I wish I can see the link of profile of this scammer guy.

who is this guy so we can tag his account, scammer should not be left to go around undisturbed

be aware because some scammer buy a trusted account and use it as escrow, they control both account the escrow and the account for trading

Ahahhahaha he send an address already posted :D really stupid scammer :D and you got a good idea: search address on the net.
It's the only solutions to avoid scammers.


Yes I agree... post public such username/user .... when there is a scam we need to know and "red tag" !

Wow. This guy was so smart lol, even if he didn't know then he should have just made a new coinbase account, it isn't that hard.
Goes to show that scammers aren't that smart, and not really that hard to prevent.

You know despite on the scenario you described, if he did provide another btc address from a public ledger and shown proof of other peoples btc.

The escrow would be obviously the safety catch here since he/she isnt going to be paying from the same address.

But, yeah scammers are sometimes not on the brightest thinkers lol.

If he is a scammer he is very bad in that, he didn't even bother to prepare everything for good scam.
But if he isn't a scammer he is for sure dumb and lazy.
I don't see any other explanation, good thing he is busted in any case.
Your story is good example for people who trade, always infor yourself about people u trade with.

Nah, didn't quite catch his name, but im sure I can find it if I fish through my activity. But what use is it anyway? He was negged on steamrep already.


He didn't give me a bitcontalk account. He probably didn't even know what bitcoin was, judging by his "bitcoin address" ;)

 That address is not for wikileaks.  I would imagine you're seeing the bitcoin wiki link that comes up when you search for "bitcoin address" and getting confused.  1F1tAaz5x1HUXrCNLbtMDqcw6o5GNn4xqX is silk road siezed coins which has nothing to do with wikileaks.

 This is wikileaks address - 1HB5XMLmzFVj8ALj6mfBsbifRoD4miY36v

Are you really sure this guy was trying to scam you?!  Maybe you got the address wrong?

yeah that is very funny,  and he is really rally stupid, he could create atleast his own address, now it's just dumb

do you have his steam account? if yes you could report him, and share it here so others will report him too and i hope that he will get trade ban

yeah he is really really dumb, if he wanted to scam you he could think something better like creating his own bitcoin address atleast, because now it is just dumb, i hope you reported him so he will get ban on steam or share his name here yeah so everyone could avoid him

Yeah, reporting would be good, although there's the fact that steam will simply let him make another account.

I was recently added by a guy called Shiro who tried the exact same scam on me but for my Bayonet, so I told my group (That I am Co-owner of) to report him, and he's now trade banned. Looks like steam does listen to reports after all.;D

Yep i have come  across a lot of dumb scammers in my time here.

Somebody should create a thread just dedicated to stupid scam attempts they come across,  it would soon become a popular thread here there is somany scams going on.

Edit: Done, I created a thread for everyone to post the stupidest and lame scam attempts they come across.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1411801.0

Scamming for $20 is a lame attempt. Users here keep insisting on LBC escrows and claim to have over 4-10 BTC to sell and when users trust them, they fake the escrow and scam users. One user tried to scam me for just $5 by saying he has given a loan of $3 and hence I should trust him. The lending section also is being abused a lot and it leads to more scammers getting benefit by paying loans in time.

I've seen someone scam for twenty cents sometime last year. It was an obvious scam attempt for dust, and some guy felt pity for the scammer and sent him the money. Straight after, the guy stopped posting.

haha, dude you should check out the lending section of the forum to really feel how lame some of them are.
many will ask for tiny amount of loan with a brand new account and claim they don't know what is what every day.

i guess that was child try to scamming you,he dont think that you will search that address on address checker.
you can put that scammer on scam acusition,and let him know that he trying to scamming wrong person.

Add them here when you come across any stupid scam/lending attempts:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1411801.0

i sold lots of tf2 and csgo items and i met lots of scammers, but this one is of worst scammer

creating your own bitcoin address takes 10 minutes, and you don't need to give id or anything else so he is really dumb

yeah they're very lazy and dumb, it takes only up to 10 minutes to create bitcoin wallet, and he was even too lazy to do that,

but maybe it is good for us, because it is easier to detect a scammer because they make lots of mistakes

  I've been mulling it over and I'm having issue with the events of this alleged scam attempt.

1. After the buyer "rushed into which escrow" you were going to use, what was the issue?  You didn't want to use escrow?

2. What was the purpose of you persisting with the question of "Can you give me your bitcoin address so I know you actually have the money?" 

  This is an odd request at any time but especially after he had already left it up to you to choose the escrow agent.  Nobody asks to see my wallet when I make a purchase without escrow let alone with.

3. You attribute the Bitcoin address to the wrong entity after searching it!  WTF? How is this possible; in fact wikileaks doesn't even come up in a search of that address.

   This address - 1F1tAaz5x1HUXrCNLbtMDqcw6o5GNn4xqX - is a silk road seized coins address if you do a search at all.

4. If you search "Bitcoin address" this does in fact appear - 1HB5XMLmzFVj8ALj6mfBsbifRoD4miY36v (wikileaks) which is not 1F1tAaz5x1HUXrCNLbtMDqcw6o5GNn4xqX (silk road) the one you were given.

5. What purpose would it serve to give you an address, especially one they didn't own, showing a balance if you were using your choice of escrow anyway?

It's always better to have screen caps or PMs or like... anything to back up your claims.  We don't have a name and apparently the "scammer" doesn't have an account here either but yeah... what a joke.

These are rhetorical questions, feel free not to respond.  Maybe I'm too cynical after having been scammed myself.

luckily most scammers are not very hard working and are extremely lazy.

Usually the grammar is horrible and there is many mistakes. After all they are
lazy scammers and cant bother to get real work so they have to cheat people.

The two times I was scammed I really thought it through and wondered how silly
I was looking back at how sloppy, lazy, and obvious they were.

It just shows how naive people really are about the technology....At least that was an easy catch!  There are some sophisticated scammers out there that really make me wonder if they're doing it for the money or doing it for some other reason, such as to boast their own ego. I mean, why waste so much time with the sophisticated scams when they can use their knowledge to profit off of something legitimate?  It's sad....

This place is full of scammers.Not all scammers are smart and not all potential victims are dumb.Op saved himself from falling for his trick by showing some wisdom and experience.

what a lazy scammer.  ;D

i agree with that,this place have so many scammers,and very kind scammers,stupid,smart and expert scammers evailable here.
to prevent this scammers,we should distinct to everyone that try to scamming us,throw them in scam accusition thread,let all people know that scammers is detected,and we must be aware of it by open scam acusition thread to looking for information about scammers,so we can avoid to scamming.

i never think to try scamming people,and i dont mind how that people try to scamming with silly way,its a joke. but i'm sure people who dont know about address checker will trapped by scammer like him,this thread should give us warning.

 First I would like to thank you for never trying to scam people but your post dredges up old questions in my mind that have never been resolved.

 How are you going to be trapped by using an escrow of your choice?
 IS google the address checker to which you are referring?  It's really a bad one if so because 1F1tAaz5x1HUXrCNLbtMDqcw6o5GNn4xqX is NOT a wikileaks address.
 If OP had been fooled by this superlative scam, how would it have taken place?   Would the escrow of his choice actually somehow be in on the ruse?  Is google also in on it? I don't get it.