Bitcoin Forum

Hi guys! I was selling bitcoins worth £10 000 via localbitcoins.com and what's happened when the purchaser sent my money to the bank account? My bank has froze my bank account without telling anything. When I tried to contact the purchaser via localbitcoin.com he was already away and I didn't get any reply from him. I have been spending whole day in the bank and trying to explain my last transaction and nobody listened me. They just told me that everything is under investigation.

It that means that someone get my BTC and when sent me money just visit his bank again and told them someone abused his card and want money back? And I'm just a victim of that everything and will never get my money back?

I already reported that case.

Please, could anyone tell me what steps I should do?

Thanks a lot for your help and advise!

That is possible but most probably your payment was sent from a hacked account making your situation more complicated. Make sure you keep copies of all transactions details and communications with buyer as you will probably going to need them.

In the EU that amount of money is enough for an "automatic" investigation for tax purposes. Especially if this is an "extraordinary" high amount compared to your regular activity...

I would anyway insist on a contact at the bank. Keep escalating, while staying polite: "OK, if you can't help me who can?", "OK, but you understand I need my bank account on a daily basis, so I would appreciate to know who is in charge so I can have direct contact" et cetera...

Hi guys! Many thanks for your reply!

I'm aware that is bigger amount that I'm normally getting to my account (like wage from employer). But you know that is not normal, that bank told you that your account is under investigation and they don't want to provide me any money including my wage from work. They froze all of my money on my account. Horrible. I wanted to provide them all proofs what I have regarding BTC transaction. But they told me they don't need it and they will do investigation without me and any proofs. That is not normal. How they do investigation without seeing my evidence about the transaction? They really did my life more difficult. Everything is under investigation, they communicate just with fraud department blablabla...

They are more option what could happened:
1. If the person that bought my BTC is normal person without any criminal records, or didn't send me dirty money, I think my bank doesn't have any rights to take my money back.
2. If the sender sent me fraudulent documents (photocopy of Driving License and his Debit Card), it's not my fault, it's his bank fault, right? Because I was thinking that when it could be different person that sent me money on my bank account and now just called to his bank and told them that his account was abused and want money back. Or can say I was buying car but I have never received the car. But guys. What I found out yesterday is:

That all of transactions through localbitcoin. com having "unique transaction number" and that number see just person who I spoke to and just that person can enter into the trade. That person agrees that this transaction if regarding BTC and nobody else. Then the person can send anyone to the branch to send his money to me. It can be friend, mother, anyone.

Have you ever faced this situation? What did you do?

Should I wait for the feedback from the bank? Should I send letter to Financial Ombudsman?

What proofs regarding to BTC transaction are enough to show them?

Many thanks for your advices.

Cheers!

They probably flagged it as suspicious activity rather than the other guy claiming he was a fraud victim but that certainly is a possibility. If you're only used to getting your £1000+ wage in every month or something then 10k getting sent to you will be flagged and they might just be making sure you're not committing fraud or some other crime. The banks can do what they want really including freezing your accounts but they've shut many bitcoin sellers accounts down merely for doing legit business so this isn't uncommon unfortunately. This is why it's a good idea to have two or more accounts with different banks though just in case they ever do shut one down. It might be worth going to Citizens Advice or asking on some other financial forum about what UK banks can or can't do and if there's any compensation for losses you may receive due to them freezing your accounts etc.

I am going to tell you what happened as the same happened to me, and i believe you are european ?

That's one of the first reason, european citizen, as it has been said by a poster, it is enough to trigger the alarm in their system. (To give you an exemple, in my country, +2000€ of transactions in a month, and the system algo report you to an authority that has been specially created for. Then they do a routine check to see from where the money comes from: jobs, ect). Europe is evil with this now...

Secondly and the main reason, you have an unusual use of your bank account. While ordinary banks accounts are supposed to be used to receive  wage from employer, pay the bills, ATM withdrawls, ect banks are very stricts when you are using it for a "commercial purpose" and not "personnal". The term is surely not correct, but you have been flagged for an activity that look the same of a company. To compare it's like making business online with a standard paypal accoount unverified instead a business account.

What happened to me and what is surely going to happen to you is: your bank will send you a nice letter explaining  that due to an unusual use of your personnal bank account they don't want you as client and you have XX days to find another bank accepting you

Its actually you I will blame because if you want to engage in any financial transaction in anywhere then you should first understand the nature of the laws around there and how they trace transactions. From the way I see it. its obvious you are from a developed country where there are strict rules concerning movement of money. I guess you only have to wait for the outcome and from there you plan for what to do next.

Hi,

yes, I'm Europian and living in the UK. My bank is Barclays. I think your described case is the same as mine. Did you get your money back? I'm excepting the letter in next few days. But how can I withdraw my money from my bank account? The bank froze all of my money including wages from my employer and don't want to give me anything. Just saying that my account is under investigation. I already opened another bank account with a different bank. I'm scared that bank will hold back all of my money and just shut down my account. What steps should I follow now? Should I visit another branch and try to withdraw money? Should I send letter to "Financial Ombudsman"?

Look forward to your advise.
Regards L.

It isn't like these laws are advertised or known about by the average joe. I am legally literate but why should everyone else have to be to sell their property? FYI i am from the UK and any bank deposits are protected up to 75k, the bank cannot simply run off with your wages, etc. It is not something you 'think' about until it happens and let's face it, locking all of his money is simply ridiculous. I have helped so many get around ridiculous stuff like this just knowing the rules of a very corrupt system, but not a single person I have met understood them in the way I do apart from one, they just want to do what they do and get on with their lives, i am in the UK like this person. I have had the same thing happen selling BTC a while ago, even saw ID and everything IN PERSON they did the transfer but they still used a stolen account (and ID, they looked damn like the person on the passport they showed me too) it turned out that i kept my money after a scolding from my bank (halifax)

Although, its not as bad as the US with their IRS tax returns even if their citizens live abroad, quite a few renounce their citizenship... I wouldn't blame the OP, although its time people do start wising up to the system, easy enough to turn the system against itself with its pathetic rules, who would tax and create rules around intake of breath and simple act of existence given the chance with a 300-page law on simple existence and bodily functions!

Jacob

Once i got this later, everything was like nothing happened, i could do anything with the account and the money inside. The only thing is i had 2 months to find another account accepting me, before they close my account. As i knew this would happen i anticipated and opened another account. Lucky I was able to do fast and deposit money fast into it as well. Thanks bitcoin.. But if the personn can't open another account and get their wage, you can imagine how it can be horrible if you have a family to feed and the money "frozen" in your account :/

If you can, try to keep as much proof as you can regarding where the money come from, really. Because if they are suspecting to do something against the laws in your country and decided to give your case to authority, at least you can show them you are clean and just sold some BTC like a random guy.

Best for you is to wait news from your bank but if it takes so long, like more than a week or 2. Don't hesitate to call them again and again, because it is not acceptable to not provide any infos about what, when, hwo it's going on with YOUR money

I think large numbers, I suggest to contact the servicing bank so that your funds can be disbursed. logically if the bank accounts frozen, then the transfer cannot be done.

if you have a lot of evidence in this transaction is certainly no hope for your money back although it will take some time,,,
be patient and try contacting kept hopefully all can succeed and money you can get back.

i think its because the amount of the money that is really big for a normal person so they close your account and doing investigation with your account. i think the bank will make sure that what you are doing is not for illegal activity so they investigate and i think after they don't found anything illegal with your account, they will called you and your account will be back soon.

Probably due to the unusual transaction, I think anything above £4,999 is flagged as suspicious and checked to ensure no fraud etc is going on.  I think the best move in future is to find a bitcoin friendly bank or at the least contact the bank in advance to notify them and find out what problems you may face.

I could be wrong but that is my feeling on why they froze your account, I would expect better customer service from them though, from what you have said they haven't been very helpfull.

I dont know about legal matters. But if you seek for legal adviser. Maybe theres a higher chance you retrieve your bank account. You cant do this on your own. If they found that you are innocent, i guess they will unlock your account. But the chances of retrieving your account is low. Just seek for lawyer to give you immediate solutions.

Once assets are frozen you'd have to go through an intermediary... Banks freeze due to suspicious activity and tend to be easy to regain access to if proven innocent.

The Feds might contact you about taxation if you can manage to unlock it, but that's after banks come up with a positive decision.

Hi guys, I really appreciate your support. I have one good information for you. I visited different branch last Saturday and spoke to different people then I spoke before and these people were very polite to me and gave me opportunity to withdraw my money from my employer (wages). One thing what's happened with my BTC money (£10 000), this amount has been removed from my account and it's still under the investigation.

As I mentioned at the beginning of this communication I already filed a complaint regarding dissatisfaction with bank communication and today I received letter from the bank that my recent complaint has been resolved and closed.

''We're sorry that you recently had cause to complain. During our conversation today we discussed the details of your complaint and agreed an outcome that you were satisfied with. ''

''You have the right to refer your complaint to the Financial Ombudsman Service, free of charge - but you must do so within six months of the date of this letter.''

Guys, please anyone from you have ever faced this issue with the bank and have a template of letter to the Financial Ombudsman? I'm not sure how long it takes, but I'm a bit afraid I will never receive my 10k back :-(

Other things I would like to know:
1. For UK residents: what bank/association do you recommend for trading with BTC? Should I open a business account? What bank do you recommend?

Look forward to your reply.
Best Regards

Hi papaxamo111
Last week i was wondering about you
Did you get an answer from the bank? Did they released your funds and or told you a reason? 10k is a good bag of cash. I am not from UK but i think you should visit an association for consumers rights. It's free and they have competent people to help you

I am very sure that when you signed up for an account with the bank, there was a place where you were to declare the source of your funds. If it is a business account, it will have no problems but with a personal account, any amount which is bigger than your normal will raise suspicion from the bank. 

Keep us updated: papaxamo111

thanks

I think this is the case of the fraudulent transaction (the amount sent to your bank account was compromised), Make sure you keep all the transaction records (previous records and feedbacks of other transactions too) in for the further investigation. Unfortunately, the priority will be given to the recovery of fiat funds (which was sent to your account). Keep posting updates, good luck.

Did you write the letter. If not a template can be found here
http://www.which.co.uk/documents/docx/letter-asking-the-financial-ombudsman-service-to-intervene-in-a-dispute-with-the-bank-309322.docx

The bank must have some timeline to complete the investigation of the $10k. They can't hold it forever.

as soon as any of your money touches a bank, it's no longer 'your' money. it's a credit owed by them to you. there certainly will be legal avenues you can follow but that's the fundamental bedrock of anyone's relationship with their bank. not enough people seem to give it any thought.

That's why the bitcoin is the need of this hour. Governments are seeking for the extreme control on the economy of the countries (they are not wrong at their place but it's not convenient for everyone). Using usual route to remit funds outside the country requires much more time and we have to depend on banks for that but bitcoin gives the user, full control of their funds.

While your funds could have been tainted in some way, which will flag a transaction on this platform, you most likely are running into problems because of the amount of money involved with your account/that transaction. Transactions that large invoke AML/KYC procedures automatically, so they will most likely need you to answer a few questions and possibly identify yourself. Otherwise, they would be breaking the law (they may have to fill out a questionnaire for the transaction to cover everything on their end).

Hi friends,

It's been a few months since the last post on this thread but this is exactly my problem at the moment.
I'm from the UK. Yesterday I sold some bitcoin on localbitcoins to a new user with 0 feedback. I suppose I should've know better than that but his ID was verified with lcb and I made sure the funds came from an account in his name.
A few hours following the trade I discovered that I was unable to perform any transactions on my bank account (HALIFAX) when I contacted the bank I was told my account was being investigated due to fraud and I must report in person in a branch with identification.
I contacted localbitcoins and they refuse to release any details about the buyer ID that might help me prove my innocence to the bank. All I have is a record of the transactions on lbc and you can see that the buyer's real name is verified and that's the name that matches up with the bank transfer that he paid me for the bitcoins.
I've been really stressed all day and I can't sleep.. I feel so helpless. I saw there some really good people writing on this forum and contributing their opinion and experience. Please if anyone reads this and can give advice what am I supposed to do? I am totally innocent.
Will my bank Halifax accept the proof when I show them my localbitcoins account? Will they understand that of course there was no fraud since the buyer received the bitcoin in exchange for his payment as they were held and then released from escrow. There is actually no way he didn't receive them.
Will the bank accept that this person ID was verified by lbc and therefor of course it was him making he payment that came from an account in his name.. who is going to believe that some one stole someone's ID documents AND managed to steal access to their bank account... Now way! Of course it was him and now he's just trying to scam me after having received the bitcoins knowing full well what kind of trouble banks can cause.
Please tell me what to do... I'm so stressed. Will I lose all my money? Will I lose some of my money? What am I to do?

To freeze a bank account is unusual. It takes more than a large deposit for a bank to activate it. I mean that even if you're on minimum wage, you can always sell an used car, or get a loan from a parent. The cause of the freeze comes most probably from the other side. I mean the buyer who made a large transfer to an unrelated person. That transfer raised alarm at the other guy's bank, and that alarm spread to your bank.

Hi thanks for the reply
In my case I found out that the buyer complained that I had scammed him by taking his money and giving him nothing. Now I will have to prove my innocense to the bank by going to the branch with all the evidence that he did in fact receive bitcoin in return for his payment

If you are a victim of man-in-the-middle attack, then tough luck. You will have to show evidence that the bitcoins were indeed sent to him, and not to anybody else.

With rampant cases of money laundering, banks are afraid to transact in very big amounts of money. It will always be suspicious to have a single transaction with a very big amount. The best way to deal with this situation is have smaller transactions scattered over a period of time. When you were trading in the bitcoin, you would have sold a few and explained the transaction using another item but not trading in bitcoin. As it stands, bitcoin is not universally accepted and banks believe bitcoin is being used for money laundering. I hope your issue was resolved?

I don't think there's anything to worry about. The bank has regulations to prevent money laundry. Once they found out the source of the money is legal, they will remove the freeze.

Thanks for the reassurances. I'm unable to get into the branch until next Friday but I have spoken to their fraud department and I was lucky the last time I tried a really nice representative took the call and really tried to help me. But I'll still need to go into the branch and show my localbitcoins.com activity and prove that the bitcoins were given to the buyer.
I will update you on the results. In the meantime any more practical advice would be appreciated especially from anyone who has faced such a situation with a UK bank before.

And by the way to all those who post information about big transactions this isn't the case. The total was £1000 only and still if someone complains about you that you took their money and gave them nothing in return they are basically accusing you of committing fraud in which case they will most likely freeze your account and send back the money to the buyer unless you can prove that you did everything correctly and the fraud allegations are false.
The same applies for cash deposits, even that I read in places the person who deposits the money can attempt to get it back with claims he was forced to do it or was cheated etc.
Seems nothing is truly irreversible except cash and Bitcoin

If you have all the proof that you sent the coins to him (or they were released from escrow) then I can't see why there should be a problem. You should also file a police report and press charges against the guy because this is attempted theft/fraud.

Yes! I would absolutely want to make a police complaint about this guy unfortunately I just don't believe that my complaint would make a difference. I did ask my bank that should I prove myself innocent and it would mean I am actually the victim of fraud here would they persue this criminal charges against the fraudster and I got a vague response. Seems not.
It is a shame there isn't a process by which if multiple users were defrauded by the same user on localbitcoins.com that they could all share information and work together to bring that fraudster to justice.
Unfortunately at the moment reviews are anonymous ​ and localbitcoins themselves aren't actively pursuing fraudsters. I wrote to lcb and all they told me was that if they were contacted by the bank or police they would fully cooperate. I think there should be more tools on the site to combat fraud.

If it's possible to ask the moderator to change the subject of his thread from "My bank account was frozen" to "my bank account was blocked" or add the word "blocked" in the title. I think it would help some people find it.
I'm still interested to hear from people who had specific experience with their UK bank account being blocked.
I'm sure there are many victims

No i didn't get an answer from the bank and they didn't told me a reason . Yes 10k is a so good bag of cash .

Just what I wrote in the most above yours. Forget about punishing your fraudster. Your bank has other things to do, and so does localbitcoins. I guess it's safer to trade with cash in a public place.

Then press charges. The guy was probably dumb enough to use his own account if he's trying to get the money back. If what you say is all true then you should have ample proof that you sent the coins and he received them so it's black and white that he's trying to commit fraud. If you don't file a police complaint he'll just keep doing it until he gets caught. If he has a history of doing this then he'll likely face punishment. Doesn't local bitcoin use escrow any way to stop this sort of fraud?

It's a bit late now, but there's a thread detailing free EU bank accounts you can open online.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1756494.0

I suggested adding Fidor Bank to it, although I have no experience of using it myself. It's supposed to be Bitcoin friendly because it's possible to link it to a Kraken exchange account to facilitate fast transfers.

I don't in any way mean to blame you but if you don't have a second account or keep cash on hand you should take this as a lesson that you should start doing so. I have 3 bank accounts and always have money for food on me JUST IN CASE.

I hope you get everything back! Total BS that they froze it and won't even let you get your wages.

i guess the amount of money sent to your account is a reason for the bank to get suspicious! If you receive a normal wage monthly, and suddenly receive this amount of money, the will surely flag your account ! But, the way they are treating your case looks really strange, because they can't  just let you not know anything , or don't want to involve you in what you did with your account. I think you should try contacting your bank, and politely ask for solutions, or where you could give some explanations so you can solve your problem. It's not that normal the bankers not wanting to talk with the customer when something like this happen !

Has anyone else experienced something like this or in the USA with USA bank accounts?

As one with AML interests,  I would've loved to have seen how this turned out

Hmm... this is not the first time I am hearing about such incidents. And I am not just talking about incidents related to the American banks. Even in the third world nations, I have heard about savings accounts getting frozen, after the account holder used the funds to purchase Bitcoin.

Hope you will get it all back

when looking for a bitcoin friendly bank, use these guys:
https://www.bunq.com/en/

it is located in the netherlands and as long as you are in an EU country your money is fully protected upto 100k.
its alse free of charge within certain limits.

I has full banking licenses, but founded by IT Guys, and has nothing to do or ties with the old fat banking guys!
Also they are tied to the following BTC exhange:
https://bl3p.eu/en/

maybe it might be usefull for one of you

wonder the difficulty it would be to travel to europe, post up for some time and withdraw there, instead of in the US.

You could do this best by a bitcoin ATM I would think, no need to use a bank for that. ATM is also anonymous.
Issues is however, you are allowed to bring only back so many cash in or out of a country. Well  you can be lucky of course, i have never been checked in detail, but this is a risk. I believer the maximum amount of cash you are allowed to carry into the usa is 10.000 USD.

Not when you have an ATM camera pointing in your face and recording you.

Do peeps declare their cryptocurrency when they are travelling? All these peeps walking around with over $10k in cryptocurrency on a physical hard wallet or a soft wallet on their computers are leaving/entering the country with currency. Wonder what would happen if they didn't declare it and were found out.

When you shake in very much money you need to explain for the banks the proceeds will charge monthly income tax of more than $ 20,000. If you move around, be prepared to have all the purchasing documentation.

In some of the countries, there is a maximum yearly limit for financial transactions such as trading in digital goods. If you exceed this limit, then you need to get the necessary permits and licenses. If you think that your account was frozen despite the trade volumes being lower than this limit, then go to the bank branch and explain everything to them.