Bitcoin Forum

Actually, Ed & I are only ONE account holder.   We had 25,000+ Bitcoin in only one of our accounts -- the largest one of about a dozen accounts we had there.  

It's more likely that the total of all the 10s of thousands of account holders balances is worth millions of dollars --- even at today's low prices.

The site is NOT back.   People who should know..... believe:  The bogus statement is a stall tactic to buy him time.    He is getting very scared.... and he desperately needs to buy time.

The good news is:   He is a bitcoin multi-millionaire himself.     ( Remember, he's been in this since before July 2009. )    It is very possible that he DOES have the funds somewhere.    But pressure MUST be applied to the FBI and the Canadian Mounted Police's Cyber Crimes Division.   If you had an account there, please call the New York FBI Cyber Crimes Dept. IMMEDIATELY and file a report.   They will protect your anonymity if you ask them to.   The more account holders they here from, the more chance these funds can be recovered.... for the 10s of thousands of people affected.    

If you had an account on MyBitcoin.com Immediately Telephone:  212-384-2929



Only Love,

Bruce

Bruce Wagner
Founder and CEO
http://OnlyOneTV.com
global television network
text/voice: +1 646-580-0022
email: bruce@onlyonetv.com
skype: punlman
twitter: http://twitter.com/brucewagner
facebook: http://facebook.com/brucelwagner

Haha, wow, this is such bullshit. If the site had really been hacked, he would at least have posted here. He's just trying to weazel himself out.

I'm with you, Bruce.

That really does not make sense though.  Any communications is a chance to create a leak.  Once someone decided to split and hide they would remain dark.

Not if you can make it look like you never split and hid in the first place.

buying time for what? I don't get what he needs time for? if its a scam then he has no need to buy time, Prolonging isn't going to help him in anyway, But yes I agree people should not stop pursing this just because he wrote what could be a bullshit message on his site. If he is legit then contacting the FBI shouldn't be problem, All he needs is to show proof that he was hacked and a good reason why he didn't communicate for so long, That shouldn't be hard to prove for someone legit. I will be ringing that phone number tonight as it wont hurt anything or anyone if he is legit, and if he is not legit then I have wasted no time stalling to get my bitcoins back.

Not if the community already knows EXACTLY who you are...

You need time to make travel arrangements...  and move loads of money...

We must NOT give him that time.    The police nabbing him/them fast is the best chance of recovering all that stolen money.

Any source for both of these claims?

For lots of sources, see Freenode channel #bitcoin-police

Also....

Regarding "Tom hasn't done anything illegal" comment.  Yes he has. He was entrusted with a fiduciary responsibility with other people's assets and he has not allowed those people access to their assets.  He has stolen them.

This whole thing still looks to me like a kid in over his head trying to pretend he runs a fortune 500 company out his basement.
The whole "from the desk of..." thing really cracks me up.
The BS description of his security posture and the liberal use of the word "we" is somehow supposed to make you think you are talking to some professional team when its obvious to everyone this is not the case.

I actually see the potential for a reasonably good resolution to this. I agree that "Tom" is probably young-ish and not very experienced. At some point, he/she had to have figured "if I take all the BTC in Mybitcoin I'm set for life, and Bitcoin is, after all, anonymous".

Now he/she is starting to realise Bitcoin is pseudonymous, and the internet is not anonymous at all, and that people who hold bitcoins, by definition, tend to be computer and internet savvy. So what does one do? Concoct a story about getting hacked, which will explain the loss of whatever BTC one has spent in the last week or so, try to make amends, then quickly get out of the game.

Depending on where "Tom" lives, this may or may not be too little, too late. But if he/she is already feeling the pressure, it would stand to reason that most people would get most of their BTC back.

The only part that is likely true is.... the "we".  

People seem pretty sure that they have already clearly identified the entire little "posse" of amateur crime guys involved.   At this point, their only hope is if they start ratting each other out.  If they haven't already.    ;)

Do you have a link to the progress on identifying these people? I haven't seen anything beyond all the fake dns info. I'd be very curious to see where the collective investigation work stands.

Yes, we're running investigations in #bitcoin-police on freenode.

http://bitcoin.crimeunit.net/wiki/index.php/MyBitcoin < not alot here, alot more in channel

Also, some info here:  http://tinyurl.com/mybitcoin

Cheers, updated.

Hey Bruce, I really hope you are wrong.  It would be nice if this was all just a big misunderstanding and it ended with most depositors getting most of their coins back.

He doesn't appear to use these forums at all, so it is quite possible that he never thought to come post here.  And yanking a server for a full forensic analysis isn't exactly unheard of in cases like this, however bad it looks from the outside.

But yeah, having local law enforcement tell him not to leave town before this is all sorted out is the best insurance.

Yes, but I don't see the point of constantly bashing him either. There is no definitive proof that he is lying about anything. As you have already stated on your program, he's been here for a longer time than most of us are, and there is reason to trust him/them. I had thought your live announcement was premature, and I think this ongoing talk about it still is.

By the way, does the community really know EXACTLY who they are? I mean, really... Considering the likely (or remotely likely?) scenario that they have really lost some of the coins, and want to work on saving their reputation, let's not destroy it beforehand. I still have respect for the MyBitcoin name, and will use their services if they recover. Also, otherwise, why would he even want to fix the problem?

Nothing I have seen posted indicates that who they are is known even close to EXACTLY.   That also does not negate what I said even if they did.    It does not take time to make travel arrangements really, if you already have a passport, and with bitcoin the need to move money ahead of time is also negated.  

In any case, the core idea that you want to push forward I think is very valid.  This does not create any reason for people to pause in their reports and doing whatever actions they planned to towards investigating and reporting things.

I glanced at mybitcoin.com when I was first researching bitcoins and could only see two use cases for it.  The merchant services and  a place to keep a small remote balance for on the road spending.   It did not look sustainable or scalable since it had no revenue model.  So you had no contract with them or consideration, and they did not even try to use ads to be even using the eyeball model of the early .coms, so I was surprised to learn so much was held by them.  I hope most do somehow get back control of at least a decent percentage of their bitcoins.  I also hope that bit-pay is able to grow and become a dependable merchant service quickly, as that is a void that bitcoins needs filled for long term growth.

The site IS back up the service isn't.  ::)

Also, if the accusation is running away with the coins, they would have already ran away even before the site went offline.

I hope the people who are involved continues with the investigation, and I wish them luck. But maybe we need to be more phlegmatic at this point.

For the most part, this is how I feel. Where we differ, however, is in the fact that I will not be using mybitcoin.com anymore - not for security reasons or fear of fraud, but due to the total disregard for customer concerns mybitcoin.com has displayed. If those running the site never visited these forums, then that was another mistake they made. To say their customer service is poorly handled would be an extreme understatement. Having any interest in their customers would necessarily require some interest in the discussions going on here. The statement released just a few hours ago doesn't even include an apology of any sort!

Criminal, incompetent, or victim - mybitcoin.com's days were numbered simply from a customer relations standpoint.

I would believe it alot more if they has simply redirected DNS to that exact page right when they shut down.  I would even possibly trust them if they asked for recommendations from the public on how to proceed.

An incident like this would have been a solid opportunity for an audit and collaborative security updates to make MBC a open and trusted ewallet provider.

Most information about their (not "his".... "their") identity has not yet been made public.   Obviously, international law enforcement are on the case big time.

Tom williams is reading this.

It's like Osama  listening to the our military commanders discussing how we're going to capture him.

If the MyBitcoin posse has no ill intentions....  The ENTIRE COMMUNITY should DEMAND that they ( all of them ) appear live on my show via skype!

Aren't they associated with a bunch of sleezy porn sites?

Can I just ask what can be done about this legally ?

Thomas has said that he's not stealing. But we believe he is, and that he is lying. We are Doubting Thomas.

Bruce, how many coins you got left? Did he take the majority of them?  Not all of them, I hope

So if he is claiming they were lost to a hardware failure, where is the HD? Would he/they allow a forensic analysis?

It's a shame how low and ignorant someone will go for the greed of money. Even though I had nothing on his service while everything was taken, still, I get a jolt of anger for such low scum like this.

Where abouts does it say that?

The problem I have is this hurts the entire bitcoin community ...   it has far more widespread than just 25,000 coins here.. or a 100,000 or more coins there...    

It makes every bitcoin service look bad...  even if the other one is steller it appears to be crap in this new light.   He setback the entire bitcoin economy by at least a year or more.

Quote from MyBitcoin ""We will settle all accounts with a online claim process that we are currently in the process of working out.""

 ;D ;D Oh , it was all a bad dream , were saved I tell you , saved ....he's just been dissecting his servers , were all going to get 99.9% of our bitcoins back !!!!  :D :D (ironic-humour)

not the green hat gang after all then  ;D

I have to agree to that, but FWIW, their customer relations was non-existent since the beginning. The problem is, this information doesn't propagate very well; people should have been aware of its limits. IMHO, it never was an establishment that could protect large amounts of cash. And that was the deal you were in, when using their service. MyBitcoin did its job and did it well, but it should have been obsoleted by better and more professional services long ago.

If someone else bought it (compensating all the lost reserves), and started operating it with a better customer service, would that eliminate the negative image? I think the name still has some value...

EDIT: Deleted unnecessary comment.

No one who cares about privacy and security is going to agree to use skype.

I just requested an interview with Bruce on Skype...    But I am not trying to hide....

Thats just it though, they had no customers.  They just had users.  Maybe a credit union type of set up where the depositors own the business would be a better model for it to run under?   Probably a discussion for another thread though.

Ok, cause I read through the earlier links you posted and all they showed was things like a mail drop address was used, a certain type of hosting service was used,  and privacyshark was used etc.  All leads, that can help narrow things down, but all pretty hard to make much more headway on without real police powers (which bitcoin-police probaby does not have,  it is probably more likely bitcoin-watch)


Hope to see more information public soon, and people getting their coins back etc.

Depends. Did you have a legal contract with mybitcoin (or anyone for that matter) that said if you deposit the coins you would get them back? Or... Did you just send your coins to an unknown party and hope that they would be nice and reciprocate by returning your coins? If you don't have a legal contract, perhaps you just gifted your coins away.

If you are looking for legal remedy, you have to specify what laws or contracts were broken. I don't see any laws or contracts broken.

I realize that this might not be the moral answer, but it is probably the legal answer. I am not a lawyer so take it for what it is.

This isn't privacy.. this is hiding. 

Semantics I guess, but to me not using a software that steals your resources,   refuses to allow a security audit and has been known to tap conversations is a privacy issue.  Much like i don't get how anyone would have put much into an online wallet, I don't get why anyone would use skype.

It may not.  :)
Excuse my ignorance if i'm wrong, but i thought people were saying mybitcoin "lost" their wallet. I assumed that meant a hard disc crash.

Yes, because it would be simply horrible if an interview that is going to be shown to the public anyway gets tapped!

There's always good old "conduct implying an intent". So, basically, yes, you have a contract with mybitcoin if you deposit coins with them. No doubt about it. Not a very detailed one, and possibly not enforceable in its entirety, but a contract nonetheless.

you miss the point, but enjoy your spyware.

I agree with you twobits,  but this isn't exactly normal circumstances....   I personally hate skype...  but at the same time I think that guy should man up and talk to people that lost their 1.3 million USD or so regarding it.

If everyone who has used MyBitcoin and had the "Payment Notification" feature set to ON... could please do this:

(1)   Do a search for ALL emails in your email (or gmail) archives for messages with a SUBJECT containing:  "MyBitcoin Payment Notification"  .....or the FROM address containing,  "MyBitcoin Robot"     ......or  "nobody@mybitcoin.com"

(2)   If possible, Save all of these messages into a ZIP file and submit them for analysis..... so that the Community can be tracking those bitcoin addresses and watching for any movement of funds.      You can email them to  bruce@onlyonetv.com

Optionally...

(3)   If the notification says,  "You have received Bitcoins!"  ......then enter the TO bitcoin address into a spreadsheet, along with the Transaction number, the date and time, the amount, and your email address.

(4)   If the notification says,  "You have sent Bitcoins!"  ......then enter the FROM bitcoin address into a spreadsheet, along with the Transaction number, the date and time, the amount, and your email address.

Just out of curiosity, has anyone's bitcoins actually moved since the site went down?

from what I am hearing no....   that doesn't mean that they didn't in whole... but just from what I have been reading in the forums the people that knew their bitcoin address didn't move IE: no transactions since July 29th, which is a good sign.

Or this is the prime opportunity for someone to step forward and shine as a reputable service. Bitcoin needs some more grownup infrastructure. We need services that are going to make holding bitcoin more secure and easy.

I challenge the people posting here who are outraged about this to start something of your own. I'm sure we can all pool our heads together and come up with good ideas for services that can build the bitcoin community and move it forward.

Cheers
Jonathan

The radio talk show host (of Free Talk Live) who mentioned his bitcoin loss on-air seemed to think he had been having funds periodically siphoned from his donation address for some time.

But I don't know how Mybitcoin held a user's funds, so that might not even be relevant.

i live and work in the U.K so calling the FBI is not really option.

Latest update on MyBitcoin ------

ARCHIVED RELEASE FROM AUGUST 4 2011

PGP-SIGNED COPY OF THIS RELEASE

Friday, August 5th, 2011

From the desk of Tom Williams, operator of MyBitcoin.com

For immediate release.

SECURITY BREACH DISCLOSURE

After careful analysis of the intrusion we have concluded that the software that waited for Bitcoin confirmations was far too lenient. An unknown attacker was able to forge Bitcoin deposits via the Shopping Cart Interface (SCI) and withdraw confirmed/older Bitcoins. This led to a slow trickle of theft that went unnoticed for a few days. Luckily, we do keep a percentage of the holdings in cold storage so the attackers didn’t completely clean us out. Just to clarify, we weren’t “fully” hacked aka “rooted”. You can still trust our PGP, SSL, and Tor public keys.
It appears to be human error combined with a misunderstanding of how Bitcoin secures transactions into the next block. Our programmer was under the assumption that one block was good enough to secure a transaction. Two years ago when the software was written, this single confirm myth was a popular belief.
In hindsight we should have credited deposits after one confirmation so they would show up in the transaction history, and held the deposit until it reached at least 3 confirmations. Keeping track of two balances and displaying them in the login area would have been trivial.
CLAIM PROCESS DISCLOSURE

We are in the process of building a claim procedure for the remainder of the holdings now. We expect that we will have it online soon.

The claim process will consist of a online form where the claimant will be required to enter their MyBitcoin username and password. Their balance will be displayed along with the percentage of remaining Bitcoins that we still have in our holdings. That percentage will be paid to a Bitcoin address of their choosing. This percentage will be based on our current total liabilities vs. our existing assets. We will disclose these figures as soon as they have been totaled.

Each online claim will be written to a ledger and will be manually approved within 48 hours of being filed online. We have decided to have a manual claim approval process for better security. The last thing we all need right now is for someone to breach the claim form. We are confident clients will find this satisfactory.

RECEIVERSHIP

After some research and careful consideration regarding the appointment of a receiver we have concluded that it would be very costly and slow.

Also, finding a receiver that even understands what a Bitcoin is or how to handle the claim process online would be troublesome, and would only end up in increasing our costs. Receivers are typically paid from the remaining assets and we’d like to maximize the amount that we can disperse to our clients.

We have been trying to figure out a way to appoint a 3rd party to certify the asset/liability figures, but there are many risks involved. It would involve having us trust some unknown agent that could possibly just steal the rest of the holdings out from under us. Or, we could be accused of bribing the 3rd party to agree with our figures, and on and on. Trust is a real problem with an anonymous and irrevocable currency.

It is true that we could disclose all of the Bitcoin payment addresses we manage and let everyone look them up and track the lineage of the coins. This is also troublesome due to the way that we defragment small payments to keep the processing engine speedy. Also there are the moral implications of disclosing our client’s finances. We are sure that, unknowingly to us, that our processing system has been used for nefarious purposes.

A GIFT TO THE COMMUNITY

After the claims have all been filed and dealt with we will be releasing the entire MyBitcoin processing engine into the public domain. Our only hope is that the community can improve and adapt the software to all sorts of new and interesting Bitcoin-related things.



Tom Williams

Yesterday just emailed me.  It want's it's news back.

 ;D  ;D think my brains got a 24 hour satellite delay  ;D  ;D
Bringing yesterdays news...... tomorrow  ???

Though, if he really is a BTC millionaire, why would he be stealing petty cash from commoners at the risk of plunging the value of what he already had?

We have an ongoing investigation in #bitcoin-police on freenode, most of the information we have is being kept here (http://bitcoin.crimeunit.net/wiki/index.php/MyBitcoin). If you have any information that could be important please drop #bitcoin-police or message MrTiggr or myself on IRC (or PM me here).

MyBitcoin.com USERS HAD BITCOIN STOLEN. They are returning a portion 49% of them to you: Not sure where to send them? CALL ME. 646-580-0022

The jury is still out on if they were stolen or not...  see my problem is why return anything if it was stolen?  Why this elaborate scheme of returning 1/2 of them?   Why not just run?

Because this way they can make it look like they haven't stolen anything.

If he's building plans that deep to steal from people.  he's not just a thief... he's a criminal.

I don't think it was planned, actually. I think he was just planning to take all the money and run, but when he noticed people weren't going to just let him run off and were talking about contacting the FBI and were starting to collect bounties, etc etc, he got scared and decided to take half of the money (maybe the rest is already sold?) and give it back, hoping that would save him while still getting away with a fortune.
It seems pretty convenient that it's almost exactly half of the money that's gone. I also find it hard to believe for that much money to simply "trickle away".

That said, no one can be certain whether "Tom Williams" is lying or telling the truth. Yet. But I think this smells way too fishy. You'd think he would have at least posted something here on the forum when he took the site down if his claims were indeed true.

Bruce, what are you proposing? Do you really want everyone looking for a secure wallet to call you? If I file a claim, I'll be getting 0.588 BTC back; should I call you?

Stalling tactic because the owner was worried peoples' investigations were getting too close to comfort?

@Bruce did you get 1/2 of your Bitcoins back?