Bitcoin Forum

http://www.bitcoin7.com/

Genuine? Or have they pulled a MyBitcoin scam?

Yet another one bites the dust.  Luckily I have leaned the hard way to a) keep minimal money at any exchange, b) keep 0 BTC at all exchanges, c) use very strong passwords, d) use unique passwords for all of my BTC related accounts.  I guess this is to be expected for the near term.

    I think that statement of theirs right there makes it much more plausible that they are sincere.  Atleast that is what I want to believe until it could be shown otherwise.  It would be my first instinctive action in such a situation anyhows.
  The other option is that they are just smart enough to say that to take heat off while they 'manuveur'. Though again, without knowing anything about them or the site, they sound legit.



and damn that sucks!   :'(

But didn't MyBitcoin say the same when they claimed that they were hacked? Hence the 49%/51% payoff for those 'lucky' enough to be refunded part of their money?

B7's volume is not very high.  This goes to show that they do not have a good financial backing if they can't even refund in full amount without seeking outside investors.

MyBitcoin took forever to come forward with anything.  They went offline for a while with not even an error message.

yeppers. And the payoff offering or any other sentiments of responsibility or accountabilty came much later if at all...

I found out who they are:


Registrant:
Domains by Proxy, Inc.

DomainsByProxy.com
15111 N. Hayden Rd., Ste 160, PMB 353
Scottsdale, Arizona 85260
United States

Registered through: GoDaddy.com, Inc. (http://www.godaddy.com)
Domain Name: BITCOIN7.COM
Created on: 08-Jun-11
Expires on: 08-Jun-12           Couldn't even make it a year!
Last Updated on: 08-Jun-11

Administrative Contact:
Private, Registration BITCOIN7.COM@domainsbyproxy.com
Domains by Proxy, Inc.
DomainsByProxy.com
15111 N. Hayden Rd., Ste 160, PMB 353
Scottsdale, Arizona 85260
United States
(480) 624-2599 Fax -- (480) 624-2598

Technical Contact:
Private, Registration BITCOIN7.COM@domainsbyproxy.com
Domains by Proxy, Inc.
DomainsByProxy.com
15111 N. Hayden Rd., Ste 160, PMB 353
Scottsdale, Arizona 85260
United States
(480) 624-2599 Fax -- (480) 624-2598

Domain servers in listed order:
NS77.DOMAINCONTROL.COM
NS78.DOMAINCONTROL.COM

I take it that you are being sarcastic? :)

This is a proxy domain.  We don't really know who they are. 

I can envision so many bitcoin exchange jokes now.  Heh.

Dear User,

Please read carefully the following critical announcement.

On Oct 5th 2011 Bitcoin7.com became the victim of a number of pre-planned hacker attacks. -- (This pre-planned phrase has be puzzled)

While our investigation is still going, evidence reveals that the attacks originated from Russia and Eastern Europe. (Where all the mad guys on the internet come from)

The attack itself took action not only against the bitcoin7.com server but also against other websites and servers which were part of the same network. Eventually the hackers managed to breach into the network which subsequently lead to a major breach into the bitcoin7.com website. (What network is this? No dedicated Server?)

As a result of the hacking, unknown individuals managed to gain full access to the site's main bitcoin depository/wallet and 2 of the 3 backup wallets. (I foresee a 33/66 return oppose to a 49/51)

In addition the hackers gained access to our user database. (Great News! More passwords to be DUMPED on the net.)

Even though our faith in the bitcoin project and community remains as strong as it ever was, it is our responsibility to admit that the scale of the damage is far beyond our financial and physical capabilities. (33% is still better than 0%)

This is why we have decided to cease the operation of bitcoin7.com and instead of investing in new technology and personnel that could possibly help us overcome this unfortunate situation, we decided that we'd rather gather all possible finances through all possible means and initiate a crisis plan for reimbursing the lost balances of our users. (I will start sucking dick if everyone gets back 100% of what is owed them.)

This is also an open invitation to all interested investors which have interest in taking over the site at the only cost of recovering the stolen bitcoins. (Every time I find a great investment, I'm always to late. Surely others are ahead of me knocking down the doors to get in on the ground floor of owning this outfit.)

The crisis plan will take action over the next 90 days. On behalf of the management of bitcoin7.com we want to apologize for this extremely stressful situation. (90 days is better than 30 days, but afterwards no promises of further contact.)

More specific updates will follow within the next 24 hours with detailed instructions about how to withdraw your funds. (Let's hope it's only a three step process without having to change user names, passwords, etc.)

Why were people using an exchange in Eastern Europe with no public contacts and a previous history of bad security? Same story with MtGox. Same story with MyBitcoin. I honestly cannot understand why.

And I should mention that orderbook volume is usually 1% of the total funds on a site. It probably is a significant amount of funds. It's sad this has to happen to people time and again.

http://libbitcoin.org/intersango.png (https://intersango.com/)

Yes. Except for the one year registration. Every time I see this for any company tells me that they don't have a business plan pass the one year mark. Ten more bucks (thereabout) gets you two years. One less red flag for me to see.

They are a bulgarian game software firm with an office in Sofia. I believe they can be tracked pretty easily if someone wants to.

Пaлиш BMW-тo и към тяx :D.

There is a lot of information about them in this thread https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=17043.0 right here on our very own forum.  Seems like there was a lot of red flags from day one.

I just read a post by Bruce Wagner, written back in July, where he states he didn't trust them.

A convicted scammer and fraudster like our absent Bruce calling out another scam? Who'd have thought it?

Scam.

And everyone who used it deserve to lost their coins.  ;)

I see there were troubles https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=44390.0 https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=45307.0 , but scam?

Sorry to all the users.

I hope all the exchanges learn from whatever mistakes were made that could have been prevented here.

There was rumor a couple of weeks or so ago, that this actually happened back then.

It was mentioned in #btc-value and on #bitcoin

I assume that someone has IRC logs from that far back mine however are gone.

Yesterday i wrote that:


https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=46897.msg558689#msg558689

And guess what, i was right. The same tactic saved me from all scams in EVE Online, while other people...well, the last big scam in EVE, some months ago, scammed over a trillion of billions of ISK. Funny thing: a lot of ppl were saying that it was a scam, but that didn't stop them from finding fools to scam.

So this is overall feeling on the topic since Bitcoin is what is in the eyes of the laws and governments or whoever.  I understand that.   I still think the real threat of having such large quantities of Bitcoin being held by some who may not be the top people in security factors in.

Wonder what the total was taken.

and obviously all the coins will be dumped on the market, pushing the price down...

yes I wonder too. I dont think the volume was big.

Ya.  Execute the end-game strategy before the next exchange does so.  Being late on the trigger can cause users to wise up about the stupidity of leaving excess funds in someone else's care.  Or not :(

On the more hopeful side, I am glad that lowlifes are obtaining some reasonable amount of capital in this manner.  I'm betting that these are the types of people who will release their (and I use 'their' deliberately) BTC in exchange for scooters, rent, blowjobs, etc.

---

As for the funds taken, I looked at the offers history on the bitcoincharts history and it seemed to be around 1600 for the USD one.  Probably some morons had BTC with these guys which were not in play.  Lets say 3000 BTC total.  So after all of whatever effort they put into this thing, they made off with about what a semi-skilled software engineer makes in a few months.  Pretty lame.  At least by not having a big haul they probably didn't piss off anyone too important.

More than their allowance money I bet.    I say this jokingly, but it might be true.

About 1..2 weeks before this happened, there was an incident where I sent euros to b7, but b7 claimed they never arrived. I started investigating this by contacting the involved banks, but before my investigation finished, b7 reported that my euros finally arrived. I was able to trade them for BTC, and withdraw the BTC. Unfortunately I chose to not withdraw all BTC  :'( .

This incident is consistent with an honest b7, but another theory could be that they tried whether this was a feasible way to steal money, and decided to cancel the action once they somehow found out that I was serious about getting my money back.

If this 'hacking' incident is another theft attempt, I assume we can again push the b7 people back into honest behavior by showing how serious we are about getting the money back. To start this: I have e-mail headers from Radoslav, which confirm that they were sent from some game company in Sofia. It should not be too difficult to find all kinds of evidence about his physical identity.

I expect that an honest b7 will be able to send all euros and dollars back to their owners. Since the user database was compromised, authentication should be done by e-mail. As far as the BTC are concerned, I expect them to release evidence about which Bitcoin addresses were used in the three wallets, and send back at least the fraction of BTCs that was not stolen.

Actually it might be kind of nice if a solution existed where a terse log of anomalies associated with businesses which hold other peoples money could be reported.  Perhaps patterns could be spotted if they emerge and users might have some sort of advanced warning.  I'm thinking of a stone simple form based incident report thing which would take only a moment to input info into, and the results could be searched.

Maybe the bitsyn people could pick up on that one.

And BTC/USD went down to 4.60 right away.

Until people (especially exchanges owners) start to take security more seriously, Bitcoin will not take off.

Creating an exchange that doesn't have bank-grade or better level of security is a complete waste of time.

Uh?

Wake up, the exchange was a scam...

Oh, seriously ?

Sorry, didn't have time to read the whole topic in detail.

Anyway, scam exchanges are even worse for the currency than badly secured exchanges, so my point stands.

Observation from /r/Bitcoin In light of the recent bitcoin hacks...does anyone else think it's suspicious that an awful lot of namecoin have been moving around in a short period of time? (http://explorer.dot-bit.org/b/19182)

http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/l2xbq/in_light_of_the_recent_bitcoin_hacksdoes_anyone/

http://www.gravyboy.com/brian/images/blog/barneyfife.jpg

Namecoin, Mr. Moon, Chris, Christian, B7, Youth Suicide, moonco.in, hacked, ... , etc. We're going to need a bigger chalkboard.

http://www.buffalobeast.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/conspiracy_corner2.jpg

CampBX is a very secure exchange.

I liked the way CampBX handled their shit from the beginning, and I still think they are the way to go in the long run. They just need some market makers :) You can tell their knowledge and effort are above average.

We haven't heard from them for I while... I wonder what they have been up to. I would really like to have SEPA transfers for example.


As for bitcoin7, I wasn't expecting this. A lot of people were using it so I thought they had appropriate security measures in place.

It's a bad form of reasoning. A lot of people actually don't think that much, so trusting on their judgement should only be a last resort.

Actually, there were already previous mentions of bad programming on this exchange. I largely ignored it because this usually was a quite cheap exchange (low exchange rate). Depending on how much I will get back, I might have lost more because of this than I saved with the low exchange rate.

BTW, a new message appeared on the B7 website:

I would take all emails claiming to be from Bitcoin7 with the biggest grain of salt you can find.   

I suppose you have to be careful that whatever instructions they send don't come down to "give us access to the rest of your money". I think it's worth a warning to people to not follow instructions without thinking.

Once somebody receives such an e-mail from B7, can the contents be posted here? Please post it in filtered form (don't include any information which shouldn't be visible to the whole world, such as full URLs with identification numbers in it, or passwords).

Perhaps we could have a sticky thread here in which these things odd things concerning exchanges are reported.  I think a lot of people would be far more likely to check out the last few pages of the thread than would search a database.

It can also be difficult to know whether odd stuff is significant or not.  There's something going on with one of the Australian exchanges at the moment which may or may not be important, and I've been reluctant to post about it because the public records don't give information about "why" and the reasons behind what's going on could be fairly minor (or even if they aren't, the exchange could say they are and there's no real way to verify that information).

A reporter was ready to comment on what you feel like is a problem over at the Australian exchange with he was interrupted by a more pressing concern: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aTcSi7c06oc

I don't see how to withdraw my 1 bitcoin.


https://i.imgur.com/fu3AH.png
https://i.imgur.com/NLLuM.png


I also do not see a way to specify USD amount even.


Note that 0.00 is plain text and not an input field.

Although, I did not have any usd in my account, only 1 bitcoin.





I'm also a bit skeptical that this process is designed to fish for information of others in which the submitted images (if any) will be used for identity theft purposes.

Again, bitcoin7 have no documented information as to who they are, so they are free to fuck with anyone and everyone as much as they desire.  Bitcoin7 will most likely respond assuring that this is not the case, but that easily can also be part of their effort to continue the fuckages through sense of doubt and willing to take risks, for anyone who is willing to naively consider such options. ^_^

i had some cents in bitcoin7 and they are displayed right in that image.

Shit is going to be very serious with whatever is going down with this site and wanting that much information from a user.

At the least this might be filtering out those who use their Bitcoin/exchanges for non legal purposes who will outright refuse to give up that much information.

It's ok guys. You can trust them. All they need are scans of your ID, utility bill, bank account details and address etc. What harm could that do?

Anyone sending them these docs deserves to be scammed imho. Call it a stupid tax.

Maybe users can use http://bitcoinmarkets.com/exchanges.php as a kind of reference to see which bitcoin exchanges are trustworthy/reliable in which the contact information is available.


HOWEVER....


The information must also be verified/confirmed so that new exchanges do not provide false information to give perception of legitimacy and continue the fuckages taking advantage of gullible peoples.

I do wonder who fact checks everything all these exchanges blurt out other than Gage.

This is why we use OpenID. Even if someone manages to steal our database, it's worthless to them. There are no passwords in it. We also support two-factor authentication.

You can achieve practically the same using multi-round, multi-algorithm, multiple salts hashing. Makes the hashed password databases useless as long as people are using long (> 8) passwords.

I have to agree with this. If I were a criminal, I would have wished that I had thought of this first! Combine the loss of Bitcoins from MyBitcoin, along with the database leak of MtGox, and you end up with a bunch of money AND enough information from your users to perform identity theft! It's brilliant, really.

Under NO circumstance should you provide them with information that they didn't already have. It won't help in verification even IF they are sincere. MtGox didn't even ASK for some of the stuff Bitcoin7 is asking for, and unlike Bitcoin7, MtGox's database was publicly leaked! In fact, I'm surprised that Bitcoin7 didn't just "leak" it themselves to appear more legitimate.

That is why you should only do business (serious business anyway) with companies where you KNOW who the person behind it is, that is his/her full name, e-mail, phone and physical address is known.

Also, the company must be registered in a decent country, and preferably have insurance if it deals in finance and trade.

I received this e-mail:
From: info@bitcoin7.com
Date: Fri, October 7, 2011 10:48 am
Subject: Bitcoin7 Account Access Retrieval
The e-mail was marked as "SPOOFED"; probably by my e-mail provider. According to the e-mail header, it was generated by some PHP script on what seems to be the root account on bitcoin7.com.

By following the link and then logging in with my b7 password, I entered the page that looks just like the screen shot in the post of mizerydearia.

In my case, it said I could only withdraw 0.00 EUR or 0.00 USD, so I didn't even bother submitting any of the requested information.

Considering the type of information they want to have, this really looks like an attempt to identity theft! DON'T FILL IN ANYTHING THAT YOU THINK ISN'T STRICTLY NECESSARY FOR THE WITHDRAWAL TRANSACTION!

For me, the amount of stolen money is about a single day of salary, so I will only spend a limited amount of (otherwise quality-)time in retrieving the money. Are there people who want to cooperate? What kind of action would be appropriate? Personally, I oppose any criminal counter-measures. Does anyone know what we can expect of the Bulgarian legal system?

The reason we need to give this kind of information (passport, license, utility bills, etc.) to Mt. Gox is that they need it to comply with regulations so they can continue our accounts and continue their business.

But, we have already been told by Bitcoin7 that they are discontinuing business!  They do not need all this personal identification information for that.  Remember that Bitcoin7 was originally a verbatim rip off of other exchanges.  This looks like a verbatim rip off of the Mt. Gox account validation procedure.

All they need is a simple way for people to reclaim their accounts so they can give them back whatever money and BTC are left in the “hacked” accounts before they close up shop.

There is absolutely no reason for anyone to send this kind of information to an exchange that is going out of business.

One reason I can think of off hand would be so that you can get your money.  Although I am not a lawyer, it would surprise me very much if someone could legally avoid 'complying with regulations' by going out of business.  Even in Bulgaria.

So, B7 has figured out a way to get, in addition to the BTC, either the money which was in the B7 accounts or even better, information of probably even more value.  And probably both for anyone dumb enough not to write this one off to...er...'bad luck' to be diplomatic in my terminology.

Also on the one hand:  Our security was so piss poor that we go hacked and lost a bunch of your money - sorry guys.  We do not have the resources to fix the holes in our security so we are leaving town.

On the other hand:  Give us a bunch of personal information - we promise that even though we admit we have done nothing to fix the holes in our security your information is safe with us, no, really, we are serious.

How to get rich off of Bitcoin in 4 easy steps:

1. Set up an exchange with timing that coincides with a large amount of distrust in your competition and desperation for alternatives. Name it something reminiscent of the hit 1970's British sci-fi show, Blake's 7 and the 1960 film, The Magnificent Seven.

2. Convince people of your legitimacy by pointing to other businesses you might run and/or by soliciting endorsements.

3. Set up a pyramid referral scheme and have people spam their referral codes all over.

4. "Apologize" for the referral spam and do some half-assed rectification, but only after this advertising for your exchange has thoroughly saturated the market.

5. Wait until your exchange wallets seem to have reached their maximum and then plateaued.

6. Have someone you know "hack" the website and steal the money. Politely sidestep the huge security issue of having all the money in wallets that are internet-accessible (Any exchange should only need like 10% of funds in a readily-available wallet).

7. Say, "Oh no we've been hacked. Welp, we're going out of business. We'll give you whatever money we have left, if we feel like it or are legally forced too somehow. Good luck with recovering your funds legally, suckers, as we're in Slovakia or some shit."

8. Move around the "stolen" BTC a bunch of times, then sell it on another exchange. Wait a minute, actually do that a few steps back, so you can exchange the BTC before your announcement lowers the exchange rate or other exchanges catch on and start looking for suspicious exchanges.

9. High fives all around. Hooker and blow. Pancakes and whipped cream. Ice cream fights. Getting serviced so often by high-price prostitutes that you actually say, for the first time in your life, the uncanny phrase, "Man, I'm really getting tired of all these blowjobs."

10. Buy a zeppelin, a top hat, a gold cane, a pocket watch, a monocle, and a rare, purebred yappy dog named "Captain Flufflebunny III". Travel the world. Use the words "orient," "dark continent," "savages," and "colonies" when speaking of your travels.

11. Moon base.

I lied about how many steps this would take. Lying is very advantageous in getting rich off of this scheme.

MyMtcoinicasangotradebitcardshop.com https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=47098.0

The most vital step in the plan!

I posted about some trouble I had with bitcoin7 a few weeks ago in this thread: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=44390.0. After that sham of a transaction I experienced with them, I wasn't surprised to learn about this today.

They said that they had some bank trouble, and could not locate my funds. A while after, the transaction I sent was returned to my bank account. I suspect their european bank account may have been frozen, and the payment bounced back.

I am shocked by the number of scams, by the lack of professionalism, and by the general bad vibe associated to Bitcoin.

The worse part is that everyone seems to be powerless, unable to deal with fraud on an international scale. Maybe victims should create a non profit-making organization defending bitcoin users' rights, or something like that.

Or maybe people should just learn how to smell a scam, and stay well away. Due to the nature of the system, I think any organizations set up to protect "bitcoin user's rights" would be just as powerless as the rest of us to settle issues like this.

What shocks me isn't the number of scams (scams are ubiquitous, and not isolated to bitcoin) but rather, the total lack of due diligence being done on these businesses or individuals before sending them money! People seem so bloody eager to give bitcoin, hand over fist, to complete idiots! And I, to my shame, am guilty of this myself.

Drop in Bitcoin price today directly linked with the sale of stolen coins from the Bitcoin7 exchange.

I would use "stolen" with quotation marks. Anyone who has lost coins with this shambles of a company should cut their losses, and certainly shouldn't send those criminals photo identification. Unless you want it to get "stolen" also.

This stinks to high hell of a scam. They want me to upload a picture of my passport? HELL NO.

Not sure I even had any bitcoins there, but I can't see my balance... so who knows.

Everyone is powerful.  Vote with your bitcoins.

There shall be better organization of information as to which bitcoin exchanges are reputable, reliable, trustworthy.

According to the information available at http://bitcoinmarkets.com/exchanges.php

The following exchanges are possibilities for similar scam/fraudulent opportunities and should be used with caution (or not at all):

aqoin
Bitchange
BTC-E
BTCex
Bitcoin2Cash
Bitcoin Central
BitMarket
BitStamp
Bitcoiny
Brasil Bitcoin Market
Global Bitcoin Exchange
IMCEX
Mercado Bitcoin
OtcExchange
OzBitcoin
Ruxum
The Rock Trading Company
Tradehill

Actually, it may be useful to establish a kind of standardization to better evaluate and rate which exchanges are reliable/reputable.  Those listed above have little to no contact information that is reliable or reputable enough.

People should just learn that (as applicable to Information Security):

Risk = Threat * Vulnerability * Asset

I am pretty sure you just plagiarized chapters 8-11 of my autobiography, "Bitcoin; how I rode the backs of poor nerds into space". It's coming out mid-november, just in time for the Christmas season...buy one for the wifey and four for the kids in case they wreck one or two. Prepay with btc only. 8-12 weeks for delivery.

Just by the way, to whoever runs that site:

The emails shouldn't just be put in plain text out there, too easy for spambots to get them.
Perhaps some scrambling or javascript should be used to hide the adresses.

Some of those were mine. I offloaded a few thousand BTC's over the past couple of days in private trades, leaving me with just a few hundred bitcoins to store on my USB stick. I've lost much of my faith in BTC after recent events.

From the looks of it, a lot of BTC is moving tonight. Others abandoning ship maybe? Or maybe people laundering the money looted in recent 'hacks'?

People seriously need to start making real buisnesses instead of fake scam exchanges all the time.

I am thinking some of this fake exchanges may be CIA/Govt job, maybe they finally decided Bitcoin is a threat and it needs to be destroyed (they openly admitted their involvement in BTC after all).

I'm pretty sure a lot of these businesses start out as real, but end up turning fake when they realize there aren't any consequences to simply taking the money and running when things either slow down or go sour. Then after they've tasted the blood and tears, they come back for more.

The large number of namecoins moving was the bitparking pool closing down and paying out the remaining balances. The total amount moved is inflated due to the block chain explorers counting the 'change' address multiple times.

What do you mean ?

Obviously you are aware that CIA invited Gavin Andresen to a closed-doors conference ? Use google (http://www.google.fr/search?q=cia+gavin+conference&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a#sclient=psy-ab&hl=fr&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US%3Aofficial&source=hp&q=allintext:+cia+gavin+conference&pbx=1&oq=allintext:+cia+gavin+conference&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&gs_sm=e&gs_upl=14557l16124l0l16245l11l9l0l0l0l5l233l1373l0.6.2l8l0&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.,cf.osb&fp=ebd7e37f97df27f3&biw=1680&bih=833), read the forums (https://bitcointalk.org/?topic=6652.0).

Look, yes people should be more careful, and shouldn't be blindly doing whatever an e-mail says them to do.

But no one is immune to scams. Everybody can be trapped. It's not the victim's fault. We should rather blame scammers and take real measures against them. (well… probably victims should organize themselves and take those actions)

I didn't read every last post, but didn't see Gavin say anything of the sort. Where is it mentioned that the CIA has been involved with BTC?

Unless Gavin being invited to give a presentation is suppose to equal CIA involvement, which wouldn't be the same thing.

Thanks for panicking and selling all these cheap coins. I think people who are getting out have made a serious mistake and I'm buying up all I can afford (which unfortunately isn't that much). But it's your money to lose. :)

As I've said repeatedly, Bitcoin's fundamentals remain unchanged, so panic selling is ill-advised.

It was free money. I've made a very healthy profit from both mining and trading, and was lucky enough to buy and sell at the right times. I also sold my rigs without losing out when I stopped mining. The few thousand I sold this week was just the bulk of what I was saving for 6 months from now. It's a gamble. 6 months from now we'll know if you were right or if I was right.

I still have a few hundred BTC's though, so I'm not out of the game yet.

Wasn't that much.
And you know that griefers like Tyrrax and others (all of GHSC for example) dedicate their "EVE-life" to scamming, and no one does anything, not even CCP, so...

I have some news regarding this topic:

Just before B7 was 'hacked', I sent some euros to them. These were now returned to me, with the comment that it was a compensation for a fraudulent foreign transaction! The comment was in my local language, not in English or Hungarian or Bulgarian.

Is it possible that the authorities are on this case?  If so, what should we expect?

It could be your bank being overly cautious about foreign money transfers?
It does seem like too much of a coincidence though.

A slightly more decentralised exchange would be a good idea, something more automated than #otc

It is newly written on bitcoin7 homepage that they "successfully confirmed the first withdraws". Can anyone confirm it?

Yes, not me personally, but people in another forum I visit regularly have confirmed they have received all their money (not BTC unfortunately)

I lost $5 and 1 BTC to this exchange.
Of course I am not going to provide any personal information to them, for "recovery".
It is disappointing that it is so difficult to find reputable exchanges
which honor anonymity.   The other exchanges block me from using
them, because I connect through TOR.  Bitcoin7 did not block TOR.
It seems I am now left with no options.

ME

Can you tell me what 'another forum you visit regularly' are you talking about? I haven't received yet bitcoin7 email, although I send then already 3 email about it (on info@bitcoin7.com and bob@bitcoin7.com adresses).

Here it is - http://hardwarebg.com/forum/showthread.php/202054-%CE%E1%F9%E8-%EF%F0%E8%EA%E0%E7%EA%E8-%E7%E0-Bitcoin-%28%EA%EE%EC%E5%ED%F2%E0%F0%E8-%E7%E0-BTC-%E1%EE%F0%F1%E8-%F6%E5%ED%E8-%E8-%F2.%ED.%29?p=2922939#post2922939

The forum is in bulgarian and this is the topic dedicated to Bitcoin prices, exchanges, etc.)

http://oi61.tinypic.com/25irtz4.jpg
The founder of Bitcoin7 is going to be a speaker at a presentation of bitcoin in Sofia(Bulgaria).....
How do you have moral to show yourself at bitcoin presentation after "loosing" all the coins of your customer.
This is the url https://coinwisdomsofia.com/ (you can check him at the speakers section)...

How come after everything that happened around the BTC community, people still think about keeping their BTC in any exchange !!! Well maybe this kind of scams are necessary for the newbies to learn a lesson.