Bitcoin Forum

Couple of days ago, a group of fraud from Bangladesh made around $250000 within 2 months through influncing people to gamble in their gambling sites/apps and later scam or something like that, have been arrested by police. From the amount they made, they had to sent a lot of funds to Ukraine where the leading people live. They used bitcoin to send the money. Police said they are investigating more to find everyone related to the gang and/or who have helped them directly or indirectly.
I sometimes sell BTC in local market through the help of some facebook group. I never felt that I am in risk but for the first time, it seems like we are actually risking ourself a lot of by selling BTC to unknown. What if they get a trace of ourself and link us with such transactions? Would we be also get punished? For your info, we had to use our mobile number to continue dealing.

You are probably safe from possible arrest. The worst that could happen to you is that your personal information will be taken by the authorities. The way I look at it, there is no reason why you should be punished along with the real criminals. I don't even think the money used by the criminals to buy BTC will get confiscated. They should focus on trying to confiscate the BTC instead.

You are just selling BTC to anyone interested. You are not an investigator on the people you sold BTC to. Just like a money exchanger accepting clients without necessarily investigating whether they are going to use it for crimes or not. How would you know?

I forgot to mention that BTC itself is illegal in our country which is the major reason of my fear. I sometimes sold BTC to unknown guy and that's what I'm fearing of. If it was legal, I would have nothing to fear at all.

This is irrelevant case to your case, probably if they sent Bitcoin to Ukraine where they live it should by bulk and not a small number of transactions. But I don't know if the investigator will know the actual sending address of scammer since they don't know the transaction(I assume). So, there's nothing to worried about because Bitcoin transactions from the unknown buyers will not also directly linked to your personal information.

Just curious if how you convert your Bitcoin into the fiat since it is illegal in your country. I suggest always be careful who you are dealing on the internet.  Better to chose p2p exchange or you can exchange here in the forum.

Is it? I thought only financial institutions are barred from facilitating bitcoin transactions. It was the Central bank who issued the ban and P2P transactions aren't covered.

---

The way I see this, it's similar to you selling a mobile phone to a criminal and not knowing that he'll use it in his criminal activities.

We all know that bitcoin transactions can be tracked by the authorities because they are only stored in the bitcoin network.

So as you are not doing bad things and you're just making transactions then there's nothing to worry. You are not a criminal compared to those real criminal who are buying BTC illegally.


If that so, then that's a very risky move for you. You should be careful of selling BTC because authorities can use "someone" to find those people who are making bitcoin transactions. That's the reason why KYC is really important for most of us, especially for those people who are living in a country where cryptocurrency is illegal.

All such things start to be discovered because of they scammed victims. Then they were reported by victims to police officers. Further investigations for governments caused troubles to scammers or scam projects' owners. If they run a project and don't scam anyone else, nothing wrong will find them.

Make bad initiatives then get bad endings. They decide what they do and what they will receive.
Hey. The point is you sell your bitcoin, so what's wrong with it. That is your bitcoin, and you earned it officially.

For tradings with the others, try to trade with reputable guys only if you trade with huge amount. It will minimize your risks. Trade with reputable guys, influencers in your local communitites.

For tradings with strangers, don't trade with huge amount. If something is wrong, you won't get troubles with it.

The news I've read a couple of years go about bangladesh towards bitcoin still frightens me, Imagine they started hunting their own citizen who uses bitcoin, trades bitcoin and any activities that relates to cryptocurrencies. Imagine how hard for that for crypto user in Bangladesh, yet still they trusting the decentralized network of bitcoin for not getting caught, one mistake and you'll be arrested. Thinking of it all, police are going to do as much as the agents needs to do to track a person using alphanumeric address.

And OP, just for a safer transaction avoid making a connection with a lot of people especially in facebook, just a friendly reminder.

Detectives would have to link you to them but if they can only find a Facebook conversation and a blockchain transaction, I think its not enough to really indict you to a crime.
But bitcoin isn't legal in Bangladesh though, that is something that might get you in trouble for some other violation.
Is making transactions in facebook the way you cash out your BTC in Bangladesh?

I am also from Bangladesh and in our country Crypto is not legal but it is now a popular project and also in our permanent already Govt said that we are getting interested in new technologies like block chain technology.
So if you haven't sold a huge amount and to a perticular person regular then you have nothing to worry.
Remember one thing Money laundering isn't the same thing like Bitcoin selling.

Personal contacts, community. You know I am here foe a long time now and I have built a good community. Many facebook users suggest me to other people if they look for BTC. Since I don't have to go first, I can deal easily and sometimes I got some unknown contacts too. That's what I'm fearing. I don't know whom I sold BTC.

There are some websites too. I don't trust them. Most of the times, they make an exit scam when the deal is big. And you have no way to complain to the authority since you are playing with an illegal commodity.

Still there are a lot of country where bitcoin is illegal crypto currency because government isn't able to trace transaction. But day by day many countries are interested to accept it because it is modern age. Developing country, like Bangladesh will accept bitcoin within short possible of time.

If your country passed a law regarding bitcoin as illegal then you need to be careful to whom you are dealing with as it will be a complicated case if you are dealing with a criminal. If i am dealing with bitcoin i would make sure that i am dealing with a legit exchange and then try to convert or withdraw my money so that i will not face any legal ramification and i will not dare to trade bitcoin if it is deemed illegal in my country.

I believe you would be punished if you knew you were trading with criminals and all your activity info were being tracked by your authorities. At least that is what I saw on the cases on which middlemen and traders were punished with the criminals.
But on those cases there are a lot of investigations which run for several months or years, so the police can collect irrefutable evidences against the parts involved. If you are an innocent bitcoin buyer/seller there won't be any evidence to be collect, so you are safe.

Why dont you guys use non-KYC P2P alternatives like LocalCryptos.com, local.Bitcoin.com or HodlHodl.com? The first two seems to have many offers from Bangladesh already...

BTC: https://localcryptos.com/Bitcoin/Bangladesh/

BCH: https://local.bitcoin.com/offers/Bangladesh/

ETH: https://localcryptos.com/Ethereum/Bangladesh/

LTC: https://localcryptos.com/Litecoin/Bangladesh/

If you are a pro, try https://bisq.network though.

I also read the article today on a online news journal. I'm also from Bangladesh, I also use the same method to sell the bitcoin or eth if I ever need money. Last a year a group of people was arrested for selling and buying crypto if you remember. I used to sell my bitcoins to them after that news I was so afraid that I had to deactivate my facebook profile to keep myself safe. When the situation came to normal I came back to facebook.

So, again with this case I don't think anything will happen to people like you and me who used to sell a small ammount of btc to them. If the worst happens we may asked some questions from them nothing else.



For your kind information I tried to sell my bitcoin to one of the localbitcoin buyer. But he asked my passport and NID copy to verify my self. Then how this a non-kyc platform I don't know. Also, I don't think the rate of the loaclbitcoin is fair enough. There is always a big difference from the market rate.

Do I need to complain your bounty manager that you are doing shit positing without even reading the post? (http://archive.is/4YebG) Where did you find that I mentioned LocalBitcoins? LocalBitcoins now has mandatory KYC rule. I am talking about other non-KYC P2P alternatives like LocalCryptos.com, local.Bitcoin.com or HodlHodl.com, where there is no concept of centralized KYC. You may chose who to trade with and decide whether you'll provide any of your personal information. Moreover, these platforms are safer because authorities will never get your personal details from the platform administration. Even if you provide any of your personal info, that would be between you and your trading partner. If someone asks for your info, you should ask the same from him/her as well.

Include also the LocalCoinSwap exchange, the KYC thing is optional and it is fully operated on the country of Bangladesh.

Back to the OP situation, I guess you have nothing to worried about because bitcoin transactions won't able to reveal your real identity. That is why most usually scammers did not get caught by the authorities because of being pseudonymous anonymous in every data have.

That's a big problem if your country banned bitcoin and you are still using it even it is banned, sounds like, you are ban evading.

Could it be something bigger than this? Kind of a global network of fraud or scammer? If it is about money laundering globally, I think it may be done structurally and generally. Respect for all the police that can reveal this kind of criminals. As we know, fraud/scammer systems are commonly very complicated to reveal. And if they are arrested under the law, the police can also reveal more to the people related to them.

Of course, they can reveal more people in relation with them. And if they can track you, do you have any evidence that proves that you are only selling BTC to someone on Facebook? If you have it, you may not worry about it because you may be excluded as fraud systems.

It depends on what kind of law in your country about using Bitcoin. I think that many people in your country actually have been involved with crypto and your government have known about it. I cannot decide what kind of punishment they will give. But, as long as you use it not for criminals and you can prove it, you may be safe. Pray for it.

Why? Did you give your credentials or information to them before selling your btc? Or just a codename and your btc address? But how come you have cryptoexchanges that you can use in Bangladesh? If it is totally illegal, they won't allow these cryptoexchanges to operate?

https://www.bitrawr.com/bangladesh

Be careful when you deal if it's illegal in your country. I can't understand why some countries still say that bitcoin is illegal if they can actually help their citizens on this. What if the person you will deal with is someone from the government and they just did that for entrapment?
Can't you trade on exchanges as your main option than to trade with others? I think that's a safer option.

This isn't the first time an arrest happening for money laundering in Bangladesh. Earlier for using bitcoin few of them got arrested. Bangladesh has got high growth rate in the previous years, and the government believed that the usage of cryptocurrencies might affect the growth. Based on the same the government complete ban of cryptocurrencies within the country. Someday this scenario will change, even now a transaction might be misinterpreted as money laundering service.

Increasingly, criminals are now using Bitcoin for money laundering, so we should do Bitcoin transactions on credible exchanges.
So you can avoid transactions with criminals, although there is still the possibility of criminals also doing Bitcoin transactions
on trusted exchanges. But at least we can minimize the risk, and I appreciate the performance of the Bangladesh police with
managed to catch criminals who have harmed several people by committing fraud.

Now this poses a little more problem. But since you're probably not involved in the specific crime narrated in the OP, this will just serve as a sort of a warning. The next time around, you should not make transactions involving third parties such as Facebook where some of your personal information are stored. Make deals involving Bitcoin in ways which do not involve even a little information about you.  

Selling BTC to unknown people should never be a problem. This is what Bitcoin is all about. You need not know the owners of addresses you are sending Bitcoin to. On your part, make sure you are not using a single Bitcoin address over and over again.

I heard that the group is partner of the scam shit binany and they have scammed a huge sum and paid part of the amount to the head of binany. This is really a stupid happening for we bitcoin users. Anyway, if you want to sell your BTC at any time, you may reach to me- Sell Bitcoin in Bangladesh (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5251387.0)
I can purchase your BTC any time if you are flexible with my terms and condition. Be alert and stay safe, dude.

Honestly you don't have to worry about selling Bitcoin to your local market there's nothing wrong on selling Bitcoin directly since most of the governments doesn't have such law yet and besides Bitcoin might not be that anonymous but the chance of tracing the coins would be really to difficult.

Just make sure that the transactions you were conducting is fully legal and just a selling bitcoin and not selling illegal stuff or something.

ya.ya.yo!

The problem is that most local market is not fully established, I do not think that we should be worried that we are part of a laundering group if you are just a customer. The problem with these laundering group is that most of them will still be there because bitcoin will never compromise just for that, there are a lot of solutions that can be used to address this problem and one of them in my opinion is invidual vigilance which I find most effective because there will be people that will be commiting money laundering and all kinds of fraud but I do not think they will operate for long if there are people willing to report them to authorities, let's admit it that not every fraudster can be apprehended if we were to only depend on the authorities, they too have limits and they are also human but if we can atleast help them pinpoint the problem by tipping anonynously then we can atleast make crime reduction much more efficient.

First, I think you should change the title of the thread BTC instead of bitc.
2nd, it would be nice if you put some link on the source of this news or story so we can read the full report about this particular news.


Based on the story.

I think you are not risking here, that's how p2p is done, and buying and selling of bitcoin is not illegal as bitcoin itself is not legal.
I know you are concern on the money laundering, but it wasn't you who are laundering money when you buy or sell from someone as you are not in the list, unless you are suspected to, but you will be under investigation and if they don't find any evidence, you'll be safe so there's no need for you to worry.

I think you should read more about what is money laundering.

here : https://www.investopedia.com/terms/m/moneylaundering.asp

Selling to unknown people actually puts you at risk which is one of the reasons why the noose around KYCs is on the rise. Its not always about stifling freedom but sometimes its about protecting that freedom which we have all come to enjoy. A lot of people have entered the crypto industry and continued to use the technology for nefarious activities and that has made the work of law enforcement more difficult which is why when they manage to get one or two people, they tend to use it as a means of sending message rather than punishment.

As a way to stay out of trouble, the best approach is either you transact with people you know or carry out transactions on reputable platforms although the rate might be lower than selling directly but its way better than having a run with law enforcement agents.

As long as you are not involve in using bitcoin for a shady business, I don't see reason why you should be fearing anything. Those people you mentioned committed crime and they are being caught. They are part of the few people giving bitcoin a bad name. When you sell to local exchangers make sure you are selling to people with legitimate business about digital currency. I also sell to local exchangers here and they are registered business owners that I've known for almost a decade

Looks like the arrest for gambling cases over crypto is happening nowadays?

recently there is  a gambler that lose million dollars  of His company's  money and Got  arrested.
Maybe these  gamblers  know nothing about  Mixer?thats  why they got caught ?

It depends on how much BTC are you selling them and your skill to hide your identity by using a 3rd party transaction method like mixers to hide your real BTC address. Sometimes authority can track you easily when you only use some the same address all the time. but if you only sell a little amount of BTC, I think you are safe from being followed or tracked because what the authorities aim is for those who sold them big amount of BTC. Consider yourself lucky for now but next time you should know how to properly hide your real BTC address when doing unknown transactions with others.

As far as I know there are still a lot of people like you in your country and I guess you should be really careful. I read an article that says the government are trting to warn people about using it and finding users of it since it is banned. You can go to jail but as long as you keep yourself hidden, I guess you are fine but you should be wary of the consequences that might happen.

Bitcoin is banned in your country but I can't say you should'nt do that but since we are in times of pandemic, all we can say is that, desperate times call for desperate measures.

Countries should make it legal so that the government could also earn through the taxes and this will give them another source of revenue. Just like countries do allow gambling in their country because it adds to the revenue and so government should move towards making it legal and can frame the regulation around it. But unfortunately, people must stay away from it as it is not what government encourages it.

Thank you a lot for pointing the mistake. I didn't notice that until now. I would share a link to the source of the news if it was written in English but it's written in Bengali which makes no sense to share here because you know there are very few users from Bangladesh who are active in this section.

First of all selling btc using facebook is very risky as its social media and crime unit easily trace you. On the other hand you using mobile phone and if i don't mistake all mobile SIM now registered by individually by NID(National Identity Card). So this is very easy to catch you as BTC or other crypto currency strictly prohibited by your government. If i don't mistake police are catching those people who made fraudulent with people by BTC and money. So i suggest you not don't make any transaction via social media.

thanks.

Such act contributes to the reason why people see cryptocurrency as a currency used by scammers. The saddest part of it is that considering the fact that bitcoin has to do with anonymous identities, there's no way we can stop specific people (scammers, kidnappers, etc) from using the currency. However, I'm at to know that this set of people were finally caught.

I don't understand what you mean by saying "government believed that the usage of cryptocurrencies might affect the growth" how can the usage of btc affect the growth of a country! Or Do you mean the economic growth of the country, maybe the use of btc in bad activities like money laundering can affect the economic growth of Bangladesh,  well maybe that is a possibility but money laundering are also done in fiat too, and this has been on for a long time, still the economy growth moving accordingly,  I also think with time this will change and crypto will be seen differently.

It will be illegal if the government is against it, perhaps, it doesn't necessary mean that if bitcoin can help the citizens, then it will be automatically allowed to be used. Government is always in front of this, either they will see bitcoin and crypto as a functional and helpful technology, or a threat to the economy. Stll, the jurisdiction will be followed.

In our country, cryptocurrency is quite regulated especially in local exchanges that are mostly monitored. There's no doubt the fees are significantly higher because we might not know, we are already paying taxes just by conversion.

Since Bangladesh is not yet legalizing Bitcoin ok their country then their people has no rights to use it. All we need to do is to promote Bitcoin all over the world so that every country can legelize it and if it happens, the mass adaptation will occur and it will make Bitcoin as the new financial system. If something like that happens, all country will be having a good state and those poor countries will be having a better life. We also need to wait until our country legalize Bitcoin or else we can get caught and out into jail.

You need to remember that after all, most of the funds are laundered using cash, so crypto is only a small part of this shadow side.

To my knowledge, Bangladesh is one of the few countries in Asia that has declared Bitcoin illegal. Not only Bangladesh but also India is currently facing a lot of problems with cryptocurrency and bitcoin. If Bitcoin and cryptocurrency are declared illegal in India, the same situation will start in India. If the police think it is necessary can check your message and your call record at any time. Once Bitcoin is legalized, there is no problem. Who knows if it will ever happen in Asian countries ?

Bangladesh has long since declared Bitcoin illegal from their government to their country. If you have Bitcoin then they give Bitcoin the same punishment as having another illegal thing like drug or alcohol. Here the money laundering case is very bad. In a word, it means tax evasion or theft of the government. In all these cases, the police do not compromise. The police can track your phone calls at any time if they want. I would say be careful from now.

All of the countries in the world where Bitcoin has been declared illegal face money laundering cases in this way. Since the government does not receive any tax as a transaction in all these cases, the government always follows it. Police in all countries want to always arrest those who deal with this type of bitcoin or cryptocurrency. If this is the case in your country then you must be careful or leave it at that. Otherwise you may have to stand in the way of the law at any time.

I know that Bangladesh have declared bitcoin illegal but the money laundering culprits might not have been caught dealing with bitcoin but they might have arrested for running illegal gambling centers and they might have found bitcoin in their possession. The situation in India and from what i heard is that it is a democracy and if you are not doing anything illegal why would any police officials check your message and call records.

I want to read the news. is the any source? I mean online news link or something like that? because I didn't hear this kind of news. If you provide me the link it will be great. Thanks

Actually price is low. If I sell my btc to the reseller they give us best rate even some time more than expected price. Also easy to use and faster. For safety reason these sites too good.

Better be safe than sorry since bitcoin is illegal in your country it is best to be careful in doing your transactions. A warning to the users that the government is on the look for those who use bitcoin. As others advise there’s a way on selling bitcoin by using other exchange.

We can't argue that thing because it is illegal and the authorities will never tolerate such activities and they are doing what it the right thing to do. But the bad thing is that they are using crypto for the seek of their illegalities and hide their activities to keep anonymous. I'm not sure how they trace them? Maybe it something to say that we are not anonymous anymore?

Maybe a link of that particular will something to help to get it clear for the readers. Because we can just go into speculations that using crypto isn't anonymous anymore, instead, we all can be traced if someone would do for it and can identify our identity which I think is not.

^ Legalized? Never that bitcoin becomes legalized in any country. Probably you meant is bitcoin adoption but not in legalization because that is impossible to happen that bitcoin will become legalized. Different countries have different law and we can't blame this country Bangladesh that the banned using bitcoin. If you are using even though you are not doing any illegal, that is considering you are not abiding the law. That is very risky in your part if you keep using bitcoin even though you know that it is banned in your country and for sure there will be a punishment for that.

OP we aren't risking. What about if you own supermarket and a person which in reality is murderer, buys something and pays you with money that he got for murder. Will police charge you? No. Same applies to bitcoins. See the amount of bitcoins that move in dark web and then think about how many people would have been in touch with those funds. You aren't a problem, for them, problem is that person who was laundering and if you are clear in this task, then you can feel safe.

What do you mean in illegal? Then why do you own it? Will you be punished for owning bitcoin? Is it the same as owning banned substances? Or why are you afraid? Do police raids your computers with the fear and cast doubt in it? No??? Then no problem.

Another story about Bitcoin is used for illegal activities, I am very sad to know this. Therefore I am very happy heard
that people who use Bitcoin for money laundering can be caught by police in Bangladesh. Negative news like this can
make new investors panic, so it can sometimes affect the price of Bitcoin. I hope in the future people can use less
Bitcoin for money laundering.

Is there a source ? if its true then it will have a significant value to Institutional Investors and governments knowing that you can retrieve your money in Bitcoin. Im just surprised that this scammers didn't know that Bitcoin is not fully anonymous and it's traceable through the blockchain that is open to the public.

but the problem is, people(except for people who have knowledge about bitcoin) won't it that way, in their point of view bitcoin is the reason why the laundering happened or what made the scamming possible.

why be afraid if you do not do it.
although your data is there, you can explain where you got bitcoin and how you exchanged it with strangers through the history of Blokchain transactions.
the regulations there
making everything bitcoin dangerous when in fact the actions of those who abuse it are wrong.

I’m pretty sure law enforcement wouldn’t make such assumptions although it really happens sometimes. You wouldn’t get tagged as some accomplice since you wouldn’t really give much info on a P2P trade, except of course if people really asked for some info for trust purposes. It’ll be quite hard to pin someone down unless evidences are stacked up against them, so you’re in the clear if you only did a one-time trade with someone you don’t really know.

Staying vigilant against such things is good, and we must exercise it everytime to avoid negative consequences brought forth by being lazy to research things.

I think you have miss something and this is what he says at the first page.
And probably he's not doing anything bad unlike the others and to worried about but since it was illegal for their country, no one could ever feel such worries and fear since their authorities are aggressive in implementing the law. Of course, all illegalities just like money laundering is a need to stop and punish those involve.

---

@OP, will it hopes that your Leaders will change their minds and think good for Bitcoin adoption. Though they are apprehended those illegalities but not in a way to generalize it and arrest those Bitcoin holders/investors who did nothing bad to it. Of course, I feel the same if that so.

That's right. The case of those illegal activities and transactions are already in different case as of yours because it is not already your concern on who will be receiving the transaction because it is not already into your attention into whom you sold your Bitcoins and into what purpose your client would use such. Also, I doubt that it will be linked or traced toward you for the reason that investigators will surely focus on high amounts of suspicious transactions that would lead to those illegal transactions that are made from illegal activities.

That is why whenever you get into the online world most specially in this industry we are all into, better take precautionary measures to keep your private informations safe and that you will not be victimized by any hackers, scammers and other related illegal doings in this vast world of internet.


I do also got curious about how the OP have deal on using cryptocurrency despite of the fact that it is illegal for their country to use such. It is kinda risky because you are bumping against the government law and that might cost you into some trouble so better be safe on doing because if you might not be punished for transacting into illegal personnel, you might caught up abiding the law of your own country.

It is only a matter of time to change their views on bitcoin or crypto in general. If their government will see those advanced/progressive countries that are openly accepting crypto, why not them? For those users who are residing on that country, they just need to be extra careful in dealing with crypto for the moment. Make sure that they are dealing with legit individuals to avoid getting ill-gotten crypto.

As long as you are not doing anything illegal, I don't think you can get arrested that easy. As far as the law in my country, using Bitcoin is not protected by the government and it's not banned. It means that if something happens when you are using Bitcoin, you will not be protected at any kind, it's not that you will be arrested by using Bitcoin. Unless the law of Bitcoin is different in your country?

Yes, if you are not doing any illegal thing with your crypto, then you are good to go.


That's the important thing, if isn't illegal from your place then there's no chance of punishing you if you are not doing anything that against the law.


You have to determine this thing, you have to understand the risk and make sure that you fully understand everything from this system.

OP, from what I read those who were arrested were not for using BTC but because of money laundering and fraud cases through their gambling sites. What you have to concern is the crypto ban in your country is use crypto as payment method to buy or sell goods only or all aspects, mean that citizens are can't from having crypto, if the prohibition is in having crypto then it can be a problem for you and also people who have it.

BTC could be very suitable for money laundering but still fiat is still much more popular for that