Bitcoin Forum

i made a cash deposit to buy coins worth $10,000 after payment seller demanded for receipt which i did sent to him , after all the process he claimed they held money in his account and he has to resolve before sending money , he has since been acting funny as money is no longer held on escrow ...nos he does not want to send money ...

Immediately go on and report it on localbitcoins for his account to be frozen. Payments are held on escrow until both parties released funds on both sides, and escrow wouldn't be completed or finished until both parties finished the transaction or the transaction is cancelled per se. The only thing you could do is to report immediately, provide documents/proof that this happened and hope for the best. Also take note of the seller's bank account details.

If the seller already received funds and something happened on his end, he already is liable and obliged to give you the part of the deal if your funds are from credible sources, otherwise you already can take legal action from that point forward.

How come the funds are no longer in escrow If the transaction hasn't been completed yet? Open a dispute (https://localbitcoins.com/terms_of_service/) (scroll down), it should end in your favor If he's not being responsive.

What were the ratings for the seller? They matter a lot and I usually select someone with a 100% rating to minimize the chances of these things happening. Anyway, your funds should be in escrow and Localbitcoins will most likely send them back to you once you provide the appropriate proof in this case.

Something like this happened to me once, but the seller used another account to take care of the transaction immediately.

Report his account immediately to hold the transactions. If you are talk to him you will never take back your coin.I think bitcoin management need to upgrade their security system to avoid this kind of problem in every each of us. It is hard to make an transaction like that but we don't have a choice because it is the flow of the society that we are belong.

Wondering how it happened that the money was no longer held by the escrow. I mean, that's the purpose of having an escrow, right? To protect both parties interest. You should probably report it immediately and  ask for his account to be frozen, that is a huge amount of money.

sure, report immediately.

well, that's a good question. how come escrow does not hold the money? was it an escrow actually?

From what I understand, did you allow him to cancel the trade, and thus, release the coins from escrow?

If you did, then your only chance right now of getting your funds back would be if you were able to get LBC to freeze the seller's account for you, as others have said. Or try to talk to the bank about it and potentially open an investigation in the worst case scenario, though I doubt anything fruitful will come out of that. You should have never allowed the escrow to be cancelled AFTER you send your payment. Period.

What the seller is doing is extremely dodgy and is most likely trying to scam you. No doubt about that.
 
If you didn't authorise the cancellation of the trade, and you have marked the payment as complete, then your funds should still be in escrow. BTW, please move this to service discussions.

Report to the site support let the money be hold down on an escrow if not he may cash out from the Bank once he have his issues resolve and make away with your money, and next time you make such transaction on localbitcoin always use an escrow.

Did you send a trade request or did you just sent him a message, either way the guy could easily walk away with your $10,000 since there is no cash deposit in the localbitcoin so the escrow does not matter here, all you can do now is wait and see if the guy is trusted enough to send you the btc otherwise you just gonna have to contact the support and tell them all about the situation, this is why you should only do hand to hand exchanges when it comes to the cash, or do it from a trusted site.

You should report that immediately to Localbitcoins so that they can take necessary action about your problem. $10,000 is huge money to trade with and you should only trade there from a reputable account.

That's why in Localbitcoins I don't trade easily until I find an account that has the history of a good trade. Act now so that you can still get your money back.

Funds get held into escrow once trade is initiated, if you have done the payment and seller is not releasing escrow, you can immediately report the matter to localbitcoins. After showing required proofs escrows may be released to you. Seller cannot get these funds back I believe. Transactions are only to be done with trusthworthy  people on p2p exchange, if seller/buyer has done number of transactions have have good percentage like 98%,99% or 100 % positive feedback. For such a big transaction I recommend only to trade with persons having 100% positive feedback. Localbitcoins is a trusted site, I hope you will receive you BTC.

Why didn't you buy from several sellers instead or at least by doing several trades with this person? Better to make 10 purchases worth $1,000 than 1 single one of $10,000, especially online with unknown persons. I hope you can do something, think about doing what others advise you to do.

LocalBitcoin may be a trusted site it doesn't mean people in are too.

Always remember sellers on localbitcoins are legit so better just to look for seller who has high reputation and buy from them.Reporting this incident in local bitcoins will help eliminate scammers but you cant take back your money i think

On top of what others are saying, I think that another viable option would be to open another escrow for $10k with an advertisement by the same seller.

Since that would again put funds in escrow, it means that even if he is unwilling to release the funds to you, at least you have a shot at resolving the issue through a mediator of LBC. But this will only work if he still has an active advertisement running, and that he has at least that amount of funds in his account.

Otherwise, your chances of recovering your funds are slim. Cash deposits aren't easily refunded or reversed by banks, when compared to debit card payments or transfers.


That's true. But I don't think that's the main problem here. Main problem is that OP was apparently lured into cancelling the escrow process. If he didn't do that, then he would still be able to dispute the transaction even if the seller goes rogue.