Bitcoin Forum

Lot of new registered account on LBC trying to buy bitcoins at premium rates who were mostly laundering money from hacked bank accounts into bitcoins.

Here are the something things you should do if you don't want to get into any trouble.

• Avoid trading with unverified accounts (accounts didn't verified their real name on LBC site).
• Avoid trading newly registered accounts and low trading volumed accounts.
• While you creating ads click check box of Real name required,ID verification required.
• Have low trade limit of high risky payment method.
• Never release btc before getting payment receipt (which is the only thing can help you to appeal against completed trade to LBC customer support).

More suggestions are welcomed by the community members to help the newbie traders on LBC.

Is it your own assumptions or something else? All high rate buyers are simply money launders? As per my country, all bank transfers and card payments now a days requiring second factor authentication. (We do receive alerts even for failed transaction attempts. A stolen card or a hacked bank account could be frozen out just with a phone call or even with a missed call. It means a hacker cannot enjoy with a stolen account/card for long time). I mean to say hacked bank account kind of things are here like old James bond movie stunts here.

I appreciate your efforts on educating this community with respect to a famous exchange still I never traded on local bitcoins. Yet, I do encash my bitcoins through P2P way of selling and I am not sure that where my funds are coming from. But, all my buyers are verified one as per my platform, all buyers/sellers must have cleared all the KYC norms. Hence, I never need to worry on money laundry things, I guess ::).

These are not my assumptions,I just want to let the community to know about the actual issue going on LBC and observed this from my fellow other traders of LBC.Some lost few thousands of dollars due to this and few faced legal issues because they are at the end of receiving money from hacked accounts.

Authentication needed for most of the bank transfers but lot of new strategies used by the fraudulent like swim swapping to get auth codes.Yes they cannot sustain too longer but they can take all the money from banks in one or two days and they comes with new acc on lbc with new hacked acc.

That's crazy actually, I was never under the impression that money laundering on localbitcoins was that big a deal, with most of it just being some pretty obvious examples (like a new account wanting to buy 50k worth of BTC with no verifications.

Let's say you tried to follow all of these rules but unfortunately, you let it slip and still fell victim to the bait, and now you have hacked/illegal funds in your account, what would be the best course of action to take now? Do you just lose like 50k, or is there a way out of here.

If the hacker didn't withdraw the btc from lbc account then you have chances of getting it back when we report that particular transaction to customer support if your bank transactions gets reversed or else we are going to be in loss.

That's crazy, I can't imagine the scammer being dumb enough to leave the bitcoins in the localbitcoin wallets for longer then a couple minutes after escrow is released. Very interesting learning about all of these different methods that you can get scammed.

There's a limit to new localbitcoin accounts and their volume luckily, with it being a maximum of 10 thousand euros of volume, max in a year.

I'd like to see that limit lowered to be honest. 10,000 euros is still no small amount of money.

For sure. And it's not just newbie traders either - I see a ton of experienced traders with pretty decent trading records with over 500+ or even 1000+ trades recorded in some instances offering 5-10% (or even 30% just once) premiums on bank transfer funds and Paypal funds.

Just keep in mind the fact that high ranking LBC accounts can be bought and sold, just like bitcointalk accounts, and they can be hacked as well. So don't blindly trust someone's rep or at least decide whether or not they're trustworthy solely on it.

Personally, I've came across another scam which is very subtle just not long ago. The buyer tried to deposit an empty cheque into my bank, which showed up in my balance, but wasn't in my "available balance". Extremely subtle if you don't look for the signs of it. In general, be ultra careful whenever you're selling BTC, since that's the irreversible side most of the time.

All of the suggestions you have given are just precautionary ways to avoid being caught up in series of legal battles and be accused of something you know nothing about for being an accomplice because really people who verified their accounts can also launder money in a case where they are using stolen identity which can be bought under the radar or even using their own name but now, they are no longer in the location where they can be traced and some might even be using a verified account of a dead relative.

So, a better way to protect yourself is just to comply with rules and regulations of the platform totally irrespective of whether someone is buying at a premium or buying at a discount. With that, you are protected should things go sideways.

How this is going to protect us? As per LBC terms anyone registering on their site can trade with any trader until the limit reaches so we have to protect ourselves.If we are having issues with the verified account we can get the details of the verified identity to face legal issues but with unverified account we are on our own,no one can help us.