Bitcoin Forum

Hey there! LBC blocked my $ 5,000 immediately after registration and verification. How it was?
This is my account information:
[spoiler]
https://i.redd.it/ayt7cbbweua31.png
[spoiler]
One week later, I sent 0.476 BTC from my wallet to the LBC. After three confirmations, I tried to send a part of bitcoins to another wallet and saw an error message:
https://i.redd.it/x17u9mizeua31.png
https://i.redd.it/8qvf7mizeua31.png
Then I immediately created a ticket and asked a question about my problem, then I attach screenshots of my correspondence with the support service:
[spoler]
https://i.redd.it/mxhdglu2fua31.png
https://i.redd.it/u3jzdpv2fua31.png
https://i.redd.it/hssh4qv2fua31.png
https://i.redd.it/r0wbbgc6fua31.png
https://i.redd.it/ldcatcc6fua31.png
https://i.redd.it/ktspb40afua31.png
They said that this account belongs to me, but I registered and verified my account one day earlier. How can this be?
https://i.redd.it/g0gwbtb6fua31.png
https://i.redd.it/6c8xfjc6fua31.png
https://i.redd.it/o4nz7jc6fua31.png
https://i.redd.it/vf500mc6fua31.png
https://i.redd.it/xk6adwc6fua31.png
https://i.redd.it/sh0kewc6fua31.png
[/spolier]
I went to the police, where I was told that they could not help because they had no evidence that I owned the Pepapig1844 account. There is a presumption of innocence in my country and until my involvement in a crime is proved, I cannot be called guilty. Help me solve this problem, I first encountered the arbitrariness of the administration of the exchange, I never thought that they had the right to block my funds without giving reasons.
If someone has already encountered a similar problem, I ask lawyers to contact me to make a lawsuit against the illegal actions of the exchange.



P.S. They removed my post from r/localbitcoins without any reasons.

You are in a very tough situation. If you are the real owner of the ID then the other guy must managed your ID illegally and was using it for his localbitcoins account.

Now, I do not see how this case will be resolved.

Asking help from the local authority for what?  Identity theft?

If you file the case then how they are going to get the other guy?
Will localbitcoins disclose their information if the local authority ask?
How would they (localbitcoins) know that the request for disclosing information came from the local authority?

If you failed to provide further information then what happens with the fund that was locked? Will localbitcoins keep them? Can they really legally keep the coins?

Have they locked the other account too?

I think this is what could be a possible solution.
Send the coin back to the address it came from. Lock the other account too and if there are any balance to the other account then also send those balance where they came from once that other guy will ask for his funds.

By the way, I suggest you to move this topic to the scam accusations board and also follow the proper format so that you get attention from the DT members. Here is the format to follow:

Thank you for answer! At first, I thought of posting my post in the scam accusations board, but then I realized that it did not correspond to the topic of the section. The exchange detained my funds and does not want to give them away, they offer impossible solutions to the situation and I do not know how to resolve this issue.

How the hell that hermanproudfoot account and Peppapig is the same? Just looking on the profile of those 2 where on is being created 2 weeks ago and that Peppapig was created 3 years ago.LBC support response isnt really that convincing on my part which they havent clarified and using up privacy as an alibi.A very hard situation and also local authorities cant help out on this one.

We might not connect the dots based on the information provided by  the OP but fyi LBC has access to all this information which includes ids, IP addresses that might have been used to make the connection.
And AFAIK  opening a new account does not whitelist anyone from any past infringement and seeing the reason for this unfortunate situation I don't know how this will go but you deserve the benefit of the doubt,Good luck OP.

I have a question: why did the verification system successfully accept the same ID two times?  How does localbitcoins protect user data from being re-verified by other people?

It's the ID that was given was same for both account.



That's a very good question. The issue should be spotted at the time of verification. By the way, I just want to be clear here: You are the real owner of the ID?



Assuming you are the real owner of the ID and in that case you should create this topic in the scam accusations board to get the targeted people for your case.

Have all the information including the transaction ID that was sent to localbitcoins account also try signing the address to prove your ownership of the from address of the transaction.

If you provide solid evidences then you will get good attention and hopefully this will awake the localbitcoins team to resolve your case in a priority base. We have seen so many examples that were solved when the awareness were raised in here.

Good luck bud.

Sure, i can make any selfie with my ID and me. I've sent them my transaction history from huobi exchange where i bought bitcoins and then sent it to LBC.

If you really want to post a selfie with your ID and other sensitive information then I would suggest to post them in the Investigation board.

Okay you can not post them in the investigation board. You will need to be at least a member but I can help you if you want. If you PM me the information then I can post the information in the Investigation board.

But before that I will suggest to create the scam accusation topic in the scam accusations board. In the topic body give the link of the investigation topic as well once it will be created. Posting the sensitive information in the Investigation board protect your privacy from Google and other search engine. They can not crawl those data and expose your personal information.

Feel free to PM me if you need help. I am online for the next one hour or so.

PS: When you take the selfie, make sure you hand write your BticoinTalk username and the username in localbitcoins in a paper to prove that the photo indeed had taken for this purpose.

I stopped using localbitcoin because I always had problems with them, they are the worst place to buy bitcoin look at the amount of people complaining about them:

https://www.trustpilot.com/review/www.localbitcoins.com

report your case to the police, here are the data to facilitate your task:


The owner of the site:

Nikolaus Kangas

https://www.linkedin.com/in/nikolaus-kangas-6755392/

Both accounts used the same ID documents to verify. Normally, a service would just close one account and transfer funds to the other, but in this case there are fraud allegations.


Did you tell the police this may be a case of identity theft? It looks like someone stole your documents -- maybe they were sold on the dark web -- and used them to verify the Pepapig1844 account on Localbitcoins.

The police should open a case for identity theft and give you a case #. Then you should give that case # to Localbitcoins support.

What LBC is trying to do is that they are trying to uphold the integrity of their escrow system, and their promise that the traders of both sides will always be protected.

They do have reasonable evidence to at least suspect that you are an alt account of the account that has been previously banned, so from their perspective, they are simply trying to use the funds in your current account as 'motivation' for you to resolve any problems with the other account. Sort of like legal blackmail, if you will.


You don't need any evidence that you own the account. You're trying to prove the other way around.

As squatter said, place emphasis on the fact that your documents were stolen and that there is $5k or so at stake. Don't go into the mumbo-jumbo of bitcoin jargon or too much about Localbitcoins, just keep it simple and ask them to file a case.

Whatever it takes, OP should get his money back. $5k is a lot of money and Localbitcoins should not keep it as bait to get that fraud guy. If they found the account was suspicious then they should not allow the 2nd user to verify their account.

They approved the verification and then they let him to deposit the money and now when the user needs the money, now they are creating problem for him. This does not look good.

Did you go through KYC with the same exact ID anywhere else, ICOs, exchanges, etc.? Perhaps pinpointing who leaked or made use of your ID is possible.

Most likely the case where if there are chances that ID's being used into other things like you had mentioned then high chances that those information already been leaked.

LBC do have the right to close or block the account yet using same ID into different accounts is already a violation.Why not trying to prove out to LBC that he do own the ID legitimately and
convinced that this is completely an identity theft,they might consider it out.

There was already another account which was 1 year old and verified using the OPs ID. According to OP he does not know about any of this but Localbitcoins found the match and locked his account. OP is not sure about the old account though.

This is the likely culprit. The Pepapig1844 account was probably a legitimate account that was hacked/sold. The new owner procured the OP's documents on the dark web, verified the account with them, and then engaged in fraud.

This is why I avoid KYC like the plague. I gave Coinbase my documents a few years ago. I don't plan on giving them to anyone else.

He should get his money back. But LBC here is really juggling two mutually exclusive and directly conflicting interests.

One is that the people who got scammed from the flagged account that OP apparently has no affiliation with should get their money back, especially when an account with identical verification documents submitted just pops up like this. Two is obviously the interest of OP to get refunded.

It's tough, because is it really anyone's fault at all? Not really, apart from the identity thieves that are nowhere to be seen now. Can LBC be blamed from trying to uphold their protection of the counterparties, as I said before? Not really either.

The only thing that LBC should have done better is probably not allowing him to deposit in the first place, or even not allowing him to verify with the same ID.


Exactly. People understate the importance of anonymity in terms of protection against identity theft so much, and this just goes to show it.

Do they supply an address to deposit to the moment you open an account before verification? If so considering they're KYC heavy now they shouldn't be doing that. Plenty of people won't pass it. And I've zero idea why OP would want to use them as a wallet. That's emphatically not what they're for and a potentially suicidal move even if this hadn't happened.

If I were OP I definitely wouldn't bother with LBC's own reddit sub. They'll erase anything that makes them look uncool. I'd get on r/bitcoin and r/cryptocurrency where there'll be plenty of people happy to tear them a new one.

This is a pretty weird story so perhaps it'll get some traction.

As far as I can remember, they do.

I think the OPs intention was to get the attention of LBC team and that is why he posted in their own sub reddit. But since it did not work, I believe now he is trying the other options.

It's sickening how LBC is acting so scummy these days! You should not be asking them for details about the other person but your own money. Just tell them assuming your accusation is true and I suffered identity theft, just send the bitcoins back to whichever wallet it come from? That's not very hard to do.

Sue LBC to your local authorities.

I do not understand why this is so hard for these exchanges or gambling sites. We see scam accusations topic almost regularly and the common issue is multi account/ same ip this kind of things.

When this happens, I see the best practice is to send the money back to the address it came from.

i don't like it, but look at it from their perspective. based on what they know, the same person ran multiple accounts and used one of them to engage in fraud. it's not surprising that they would use the deposit as leverage to force resolution of the earlier issues.

this is one reason why i basically don't do KYC anywhere. the chances of identity theft are just too high. also, it's good practice to do a small test deposit to see how a service reacts before loading an account with high value.

Trouble is it's the big deposit that's likely to set one's troubles off.

If anywhere has a whiff of KYC I wouldn't bother putting a penny in without verifying. The places that claim they don't, or it's selective like Changelly, usually spring it on you at some point anyway.

At this point it's best to specifically ask a given service if they can envisage asking for KYC at any point or circumstance. And monitor their website for changes in their stance.

Well, your title is wrong now, since they have a reason for locking your account.

I'm not sure where to go with this either. You have to do several things though:

1. Prove ownership of identity. If you can get them to accept a 3rd party verifier (the EU has several now), then maybe there's a way.
2. That account Peppa, it's old and has a long history. Has your ID been compromised for so long you did not know? I'd take malevolent's advice and find out the source of the leak. LBC should at least help in this.
3. Why on earth did you deposit after you got blocked?

But yes, I like LBC but I can never understand why services seize funds like this, when there has been no proof of crime. If anything, this punishes the victim twice, if the victim truly did have his ID stolen.

Reading at the OPs information what I learnt is that LBC is not helping him by giving any information. In fact legally they should not do that. It will be like, I or some random person will go and ask them that I want to know the IP address of xyz user.

I think the solution for this issue will be blocking the both account and send the money back to the transaction it came from once it will be asked. Since OP is asking for the money then give his money back without creating any drama.

that account was only recently verified. in fact, it looks like it was verified one day after the OP verified his account.

there's been lots of LBC accounts for sale on the digital goods board and elsewhere over the years. a fraud could have bought an unverified high feedback account and then used stolen documents to verify.


from LBC's point of view, there has been proof of fraud. what bothers me is that LBC probably just ends up pocketing the money in these situations. they wait for police investigations (which never come) before repaying anything.

@Royse: They can help, once the user initiates an investigation from law enforcement. They need only confirm what documents were used or if the scan was even the same one.

@figment: you're right, they believe they can determine a fraudulent activity has taken place, but they can't determine which account was the fraudulent one. But because they haven't provided evidence of their claims, there isn't any proof presented... it's basically still their word against the user. In any case you're right. They just shouldn't be withholding funds is all. Stealing a thief's money isn't right any how it's put.

I wonder about this case. OP, did you able to resolve it?

$5000 is a lot of money and I believe LBC are not a shady platform. Hope we hear better news from OP.

Maybe the issue got resolved yet hes been online last July 17, 2019, same day on the account that he had created.So i presume that he completely lost up the way back here to make some updates.