Bitcoin Forum

Hi everyone

I have recently made the mistake of selling Bitcoin on eBay UK and being paid with Paypal.

I sold BTC - got paid by Paypal; the buyers did chargebacks / said they didn't buy it. Paypal terms and conditions protects them from that & I am now left with no Bitcoin and no money.

Obviously, this is completely wrong. I'm in the UK - what do I do, just take the buyer to the small claims court? Any info that could help me would be very much appreciated.

I love Bitcoin! And I now absolutely hate Paypal. Bitcoin is way better than Paypal - and they probably know it right? I was even reading someone saying it's Paypal insiders stealing the coins in this way. How have they been getting away with this - It's been going on for years.

I've gone to the financial Ombudsman, but I worry they are powerless against Paypal anyway.
So I need to take the buyers to court, as they had their security compromised and that's not something I should be paying for..

I read the article in the Guardian newpaper in 2014 - exactly the same thing has happened to me now in 2017 - How are they getting away with this? The sale of Bitcoins should be banned on eBay / somethings got to change. I sent the coins, I have the digital tracking that confirms the item sold is in the wallet address provided by the buyers. Now someone had the coins and the buyer has their money back.

Is there a way to look into the wallet address used? I've tried to do it a bit, mostly I can't see anything, one of the wallets has put the coins into a Bitcoin Doubler. Do they even work?! Isn't he just going to lose them that way? Is he trying to wash the coins? Please! Someone help me; these coins are mine and my girlfriend's savings from last year and we worked super hard for that money!

Anyone got any tips?

Thanks a lot

Unfortunately Bitcoin transactions are irreversible. There isn't really anything that you can do to get your Bitcoin back. You could attempt to contact Paypal and explain that the Bitcoin was sent and that the buyer had scammed you. You can prove that you sent the Bitcoin; you have the address that the buyer sent you and the transaction id of the transaction itself. If your wallet allows you to sign transactions (i.e. its a desktop wallet) then you can prove that you were the person who sent the Bitcoin. Of course, this requires that the people at Paypal know about Bitcoin and how it works, so this may not work.

Yeah, that hasn't worked out.
I've proved I send the Bitcoin. Thats not in dispute. They do not however, cover seller protection for "intangible" items.

So; I need to take the buyer to court - as they failed to secure their account / are fraudulent.

How much is transaction worth?

Also it might be carded/or someone may be using stolen cards if so(just move on) you can't get your money back, but yeah you can report it to the local police department and tell it was a fraud, and AGAIN never deal with paypal or eBay about bitcoins, they care only about $$$.  :-\

£2,000

Majority of which is in two transactions of 1BTC each + 2 smaller transactions

You'll probably have to submit that to your local police sation or you could probably report it online if it's the UK (based on the currency). You may also first have to send it to the ombudsmann that regulates those sites who may redirect you to the courts.
Otherwise, you'll just have to move on.

Yes, UK here.

In my experience the police are actually less than useless regarding previous crimes I've reported. I'd imagine with Bitcoin they'd be even worse.
I've got someone who knows what they are doing looking into it. I'm really looking for legal advice regarding sue-ing the fraudulent buyers... The way I see it - hacked or not, that's not something I should be paying for.

I am sorry for your loss.

I will point some coin at ck-solo pool

If it hits I will send you some coin.


Don't use paypal

halp meh too :)

Whatever you do, it normally has to go through the police/an ombudsmann to get a settlement. They probably won't do much for £2000 because it's probably not worth them doing anything.
You should probably try to find them yourself as if you have enough information and know who took it then tey aren't going to decline your report as much if you've done the work for them already.
Although, it is quite likely you'll never see that money again...

What's the address, it coul be traceable? Do you have any other information that may be useful. How did you communicate the deal? If it's through emails then you can normally decode the IP address and find the owner from the email headers.

Lol he can just move on 2k£ isn't much and not worth to waste my time in.

I pointed .01 btc at a rental from nice hash.    That is about a 1 in 1250 chance at a block.

His chance of getting his btc back is about 1 in 1250.  I have never heard of anyone any where winning a btc sale case against PayPal.

So that is a zero chance.
He would need to find the criminals and force payment from them.  Good luck.

At this point he is not sure if the eBay buyer is a victim.  Or if the eBay buy is the thief.
So if he found the eBay buy and spoke with him in person or if he got the law to talk to them. Good luck on figuring out what happened.
If the eBay buyer truly was a victim he has zero recourse against him or eBay or PayPal.
He next option would be find out how the eBay account was hacked track the hacker down and get funds there.
Not much better then a zero chance.

Like I said his best shot is I hit the block with the rental.

I meant it would not be viewed a profitible for them to investigate it as it will probably quite a complex thing to resolve. (Bitcoin is not really a well known thing).


Yeah. coupled with the fact that you probably will be unable to get the coins back. It is also against the terms and conditions of paypal to sell them in the first place meaning that they won't do anything about this (the law still could though).

I fixed the title for you, how did you get those bitcoins? from your first post looks like you already familiar with bitcoin then how come you ended up selling them in eBay? that is the last place for you to sell, you can always register in a trusted exchange or localbitcoins.com even if you are trying to sell illegally acquired bitcoins you could still sell them normally after mixing them.
Paypal isn't a currency but a private company with so many flaws and yes they are against bitcoin because the system is their competition.

Start your own thread, you turd.

OP, the only solution is your local law enforcement and the court system in your country.  I highly doubt anyone on this forum is going to be able to help you.  That's the problem with PayPal and bitcoin---they don't mix when your counterparty is untrusted.

It's not EBay or PayPal to blame. It's the buyers. This has happened many times in the past. Fraudsters have been doing this. You learned your lesson. Only trade with a person you know very well. I would suggest you now only buy/sell bitcoins on more secure sites like Coinbase and Local Bitcoins. I successfully convert bitcoins to PayPal balance with Coin base every time. I avoided being scammed because I do some research and background checks first before going into trading.

the only way to prove the "buyer" was the buyer. is if you have a picture of the buyer holding a piece of paper saying something related to the sale.

otherwise the account owner can just say he was not physically the "buyer". and someone stole his paypal credentials.
though advice above is not 'official' it atleast can be used as some form of proof of the human you were trading with

you can however try to get paypal to look at the geo location metadata of the paypal transaction and compare it to other paypal transactions the "buyer" done prior to the scam and after the scam.

if the geolocation data matches then obviously it was the real owner of the paypal account.
but you still should have done some due diligence and made sure who you were trading with was not just a username someone hacked.

that is why he won't get any satisfaction  by legal means.  or for that matter illegal means as his chances of actually catching the thief  is slim to none.
  I was a power seller with eBay with thousands of transaction over a 14 year time period 2003 to 2017.  I no longer sell on eBay.  The seller has no protection in many cases.  I have had buyers first file no item delivered then when they lost the case file empty box then when they lost that file stolen cc. In my case with this seller I got protection because I followed tracking and signature rules.  Took 38 days to win but it was a physical item.  For anyone to think that selling on eBay is worth it I feel sorry for them.


meanwhile here is the op's best shot at his coin

http://solo.ckpool.org/users/1JdC6Xg3ajT3rge3FgPNSYYFpmf53Vbtje

Once after receiving the payment through paypal you could have withdrawn it to the bank account. PayPal stands on their terms and conditions. You just raise a ticket on the concerned difficulty felt. They might help you with a solution to make things clear. Because Bitcoin or eBay cannot help you. eBay just lists the traders, its our responsibility to have trade based on our convenience.

I feel bad for you but unfortunately you cannot reverse a bitcoin transaction which has made.
taking the scammer to court is bot a bad idea but i think you lack proof since bitcoin tx are untraceable..

That's not fault of paypal rather you had meet up with wrong trader this this not because it is paypal but if you do transaction with unknown person online then you should first know the person the make the payment otherwise you might get scammed there also

That is a huge amount to loose. I don't think you will find a solution online to this scam. You have to go to local police and courts. Even many country's police are lazy and uneducated when it comes to Bitcoin scams. I hope you will get your money back somehow.  :(

The bitcoin system was always made to be a one and done type deal of a thing: almost always pure anonymity and no reversals. And on top of that you have Paypal who don't actually recognize or support, even to a point of condemning, bitcoin and bitcoin related transactions. Perhaps you could offer some amount to the forum or wherever else to help get your bitcoins back (assuming it's possible and may that be blackhat: your discretion).

Be that with Bitcoin or what, selling through Ebay is quite risky for anything that involves digital goods - including bitcoin, video games or whatever. Always got people making bogus stories that they've been hacked or in this case, they chargeback you.

In regards of involving the local police, good luck and hoping there's some cybercrime law or whatever in your locale that covers bitcoin.

As some groups would say that paypal is a scam but nobody would believe them except for those who are a victim itself. You can no longer do something about losing your bitcoins to paypal as well as e-bay. The only thing you need to do is to move on and make sure next time that your old mistake will not happen again. If you would like to buy bitcoins next time then buy through legit exchangers so you will be sure that you will receive what you paid for.

I always believe that PayPal and such sites are giving more protection to the buyers and that's why scammers take the shelter of such provisions to scam others. Fortunately, there are some limitations in using PayPal in my country so any amount received in PayPal account is auto withdrawn in the bank associated with the account because of the central bank's rule so I never faced any such situation but it is still expensive so I prefer payments in bitcoin which is safe for both buyer and the seller.

The Bitcoin world is flooded with stories about this kind of fraud going many years back. Sorry for your loss but you should have done your homework.

I am sad for your loss.trade in exchange is a good way,if no exchanger in your country,you may trade in lbc.

Be careful on tradinf bitcoin for paypal funds.We all know that paypal transactions can ba refunded and be revised.Unlike bitcoin,bitcoins once send there is no way you can stop and request a refund on it.Thats the bad thing i hate about bitcoins,once youre tricked you never have a chance to take it back unlike paypal where you can dispute,hold and even refund a transaction

perhaps you've encountered a bad thing, paypal functional currency recovered after it has been sent. it is a disadvantage to the buyer, the sellers took advantage of it to commit the fraud. I extremely hate them. not like PayPal, Bitcoin once sent can not be retrieved. there is some risk of fraud, but if you're careful, you will not be anyone fraud

This is nothing new, EBay and Paypal put out messages all the time to sellers relating to the selling of cryptocurrency which they don't protect against. Similar situation happened to me when someone attempted to chargeback on bitcoin that I sent them so I had to do a pretty scummy thing.

I paid for shipping and sent them an empty box (their btc address inside) of postage to be able to make sure that there was something being sent to their house so Paypal and Ebay would just go "well you did receive the package so the seller did everything"

I didn't end up losing a dime and still made all the profit I wanted, minus the $2 for shipping

lawnshark - I'm really sorry to hear about your loss. Unfortunately, losing £2,000 and even more happens a lot with bitcoin trades on various sites. The problem is so bad we just launched a new site to try helping at https://trustedcointrades.com. What you'll find with experience is scam artists take advantage of system weaknesses such as you experienced with PayPal. There are many other ways people get scammed out of their money. One of the best ways to protect against this is trading lower amounts.

To get your funds back I think your best route is using all legal avenues available to you. Best of luck.

AFAIK it is against eBay ToS to sell bitcoin, or any form of cryptocurrency, Op, you broke their rules in the first place.
This rule is set exactly to avoid this kind of situation where PP or Bank users will reverse transaction after receiving the coins.
It is impossible for anyone to prove that scammer ever received the coins.
He would deny that he traded anything, as his BTC address and TX ID has no value as valid exhibit, they can't be linked to him directly.
There is no court which will listen to you Op, your coins are lost forever.

It is really very very sad that this has happened with you. I am sure by now you would have realised that the Bitcoin payment is irreversible and paypal policies are against the seller. What you could do is consult a legal lawyer if it's a big amount. If the person also is of UK file a police complaint under cyber crime or something as Bitcoin complaint is not regocnized. If you have the address of the person you could send him a legal notice. At this stage there is very little you can do, if it's a small amount let it go. If it's a big you need legal help but I doubt even they will be able to help you much. That's why every one on this forum is against paypal transactions. Hope somehow you do recover.

this is why we should be careful when we want to make transaction with other people which we don't know. i am really sorry to see that you have loss much of money and i think there is no another way for you to get your money's back or your bitcoin back, because once paypal make decision, as long as we can not give valid proof then paypal will not listen to us. so i hope, in future, when you want to make transaction, just find person in around you that have bitcoin and want to sell to you, i think in UK, there are many people that using bitcoin so you can easy to find them. make this experience as your lesson so you don't have to do the same thing in future.

Too bad for you mate I feel sorry for you. But you already know the sad thing about bitcoin transaction. This should be a lesson for you and you should know the people that you are going to transact with this type of trade. Even that financial ombudsman has nothing to do and help with you. But next time that you will trade, be cautious.

Thanks for the replies everyone!

I've spoke to a few solicitors and they seem to be saying the same thing: that when the buyer bought the product on eBay they entered into a contract with me and that as they provided me the wallet address and that's where the coins are - I shouldn't be footing the bill if they got phished.. I imagine this will take a long time to sort out..

I just lost mine and my girlfriend's hard earned savings, so - if anyone wants to donate a few Satoshis they have lying around - I won't say no!

15VcX65L9wf7k2VtGJAVghqpAL3w6j4k38

Since this thread is very important, I place details of my experience

I am very angry with eBay and PayPal!
Because:
eBay allows cryptocurrencies and recommends PayPal as a payment method!

I sold cryptocurrencies
Scammers bought and made chargebacks.

eBay threatened a debt collection, if I had not paid right away.
As soon as I paid, they blocked my account. But they have to give me back the commission money on the last chargeback.
PayPal has canceled all payments despite my tests. Now it wants more money. My PayPal account is overdraft

I've been scammed.
I have been defamed.
I lost days to produce detailed tests.
I am very angry with eBay and Paypal!
(sorry my bad English)

http://torbak.com/ebay_2.jpg

Another cases here
scammed on ebay 3 (http://torbak.com/ebay_3.jpg)
scammed on ebay 1 (http://torbak.com/ebay_1.jpg)

PAYPAL is frauder frendly payment system. Never use it! Ive lost $162 for selling BTC

I’m very displeased by selling Bitcoins on eBay as buyer easily scam sellers after receiving the Bitcoins by saying their account was compromised in order to get back refund as well as Bitcoins.
I sent 0.002 Bitcoins to eBay Buyer (stubailey666) to his provided BTC address wallet 16TUetN2NhEFNxjf82MQYGsBpzHPDQgZhq
He messaged me his BTC address via eBay Messaging.

‬

As soon as I sent him a confirmation message on eBay that Bitcoin is sent to his address. He opened a PayPal dispute to get a refund as he knows Bitcoin transaction is irreversible and he can get away with refund and my Bitcoins.

eBay allows listing of Cryptocurrency so that’s why I sold Bitcoins to him but he scammed me. After doing research on forums I found that eBay and PayPal are soft targets by scammers to buy Bitcoins and then claim chargeback by saying their account was hacked. In this way they get their money back and also the Bitcoins from seller. eBay and PayPal needs to do more to protect sellers from this ongoing scam.

eBay can investigate the buyers IP address when he logged in to send me his Bitcoin address via eBay message.

PayPal is investigating this case. I won’t let the scammer get away with my Bitcoins and refund money.