Bitcoin Forum

Hello everyone,

First of all, I am not sure where to post this kind of problem, so I apologize if I went to the wrong forum group.

I would like to ask, I noticed some transactions on my wallet both going in and out. It is always the same amount +0.01575000 ETH going in from the same address and a little less (I assume due to a fee) going back to the same address minutes later. I discovered this through https://www.blockchain.com website. I sent ETH to this wallet but it would seem I cannot withdraw it, when I set the request, it changed my assets status to "frozen" and I cannot see the withdraw request anywhere, not even on the blockchain.com website. I am not sure what to make of this, however I am quite new so if any of you have similar experience or maybe an idea what these transactions mean, I would be thankful for any information you can give me.

M.T.

I need more details to help you out.

When you transfer tokens , some eth transactions will go out of your wallet.
Did you transfer any erc20 tokens?

If the gas was more than enough the transaction might have been refunded (so the value comes back)
Do you mind sharing your address?

Hmm, I'm kinda confused with all your explanation, my first question is are you sure you owned that wallet? It sounds like those wallet that scammers give away to scam scammers, they show their recovery seed for greedy people to make deposit and once you make deposits it will automatically send the eth to another address, I hope this isn't what's happening? Also drop your wallet address

need more detailed informations about your issue my friend
maybe you can write your wallet address here, and people will help you to analyze about what happend with your wallet address
regards

Hello again,

thank you for your replies.
I do feel like this whole thing was a scam.
I am rather new at this, the wallet in question is 0x9725c06cf5593ba75573dae30823ed5776a1b4a7

All of the transactions with value +0.01575000 ETH, I have no idea what they are, if I understand correctly, they are coming into the wallet, as if someone was sending it to me. Minutes later -0.01501500 ETH, as if I was sending the ETH to someone else, however I did not. The transactions with different ETH count, those I did.
However now, I cannot withdraw the remaining ETH from this wallet (which inside the wallet, I see a different remaining ETH count than I see when I check the address on blockchain). I put a request for a withdrawal and after several hours, it gets rejected and the ETH is back in that wallet


Thank you for your help

First of all I don't see any balance on your address. https://etherscan.io/address/0x9725c06cf5593ba75573dae30823ed5776a1b4a7

But yeah it is weird though,whybthe funds are coming to and froth from the same wallet address and when I visit the other address it seems contains tons of transactions in recent times. So please tell us what kind of wallet you are using and did you used any unknown exchange in the recent times?

Thank you for such a quick reply. I do have some funds there, I assume, these are lost. It is not like I put my life savings there, I am more angry than I am broke because of it but still, I have to ask, whether there is a way for me to reclaim this.

That is exactly what confuses me as well, that when I check the wallet on blockchain and etherscan, I see a different amount than when I open the wallet at the exchange website. I think this particular exchange is a scam (I am not sure if this is even possible but I assume when it comes to scamming, anything is). I can post the link to the exchange but if it is unsafe, I am not sure, if I would not get banned from the forum.

You will not be banned for posting links here, make sure that link doesn't contains any referrals which is only goes against the forum rules.

Yes, it seems the exchange is shady and no one able to withdraw their funds once they deposited into their address. Let's see what is the exchange we are all talking about.

The exchange website in question is https://licbtc.com/pc/pages
It was recommended to me by a friend, I am not sure how he found out about it.

I can't find any review about the exchange you mentioned which itself a great warning for scam site but when I looked for the domain details it was quite old like 2 years and still in the active status but there is no further details about the site is available on any scam finding related site.

Are you saying that you buy bit coin in that exchange and you never receive any in return after widrawing to your wallet ?

And where do you hear that exchange ?

I am still liking for review of this exchange . I am just confused how the name of that exchange and the link you give is different maybe its just a phishing website.

That is what I checked at first too before depositing: how old is the website, I tried looking at websites where scam sites are being posted, I could not find it anywhere, so I thought it would be alright, as for two years of being active it was not reported as a scam. Well, I should have registered on this forum sooner and read about scams and frauds a little more. I will know better now.

So, is it a exchange wallet?

This is not really your wallet man.

Your exchange let you use their wallet. It is a "custodial" wallet.

To create your own wallet one good and easy alternative is to download metamask extension.

Those transactions within that addresses all belong to the exchange. There are even some binance transactions.

The binance transaction would be mine (I am guessing). The thing I did was I bought ETH on Binance and I transfered it to this website as to my friends recommendation, since he advised me to invest in a cryptocurrency published on this particular exchange This is the first time I hear about a custodial wallet, to be honest, so I am going to google that. I would ask you to go over the cryptocurrency whether it looks legit or not (I did look it over before I invested and I read a couple articles as to which cryptocurrency is a scam, what should a cryptocurrency have etc. but I guess I should have read more) but I do not want to promote anything here since it looks really weird, in case someone new like me just looks at a few comments and does not read the whole topic.
Anyway, thank you for your advices and all the information, it is really helpful.

Yes strange link too but I don't find any actual exchange in that name in cryptocurrency space so it can't be a clone one. The website itself created by scammer and stealing people money for every long time.

@OP who is the friend who referred this website to you, someone you actually know or an online friend?

Well that is a very long time indeed, a little weird that it was not reported yet since the crypto community is so big, nobody stumbled upon it.
An actual friend. I will ask him where he heard about it the next time I see him.

Well, let me tell you this:

Basically anythinng with "crypto" is a scam. My advice is to stay away from everything but bitcoin and electrum wallet until you understand this ecossystem.

There are very few legit players around. There are few good exchanges (the big ones, such binance and coinbase, but they can become a scam at anytime). Few good casinos, few good cryptocurrencies and so on.

Your friend probably doesn't know what he is talking about when he suggested that you send your coins from binance to that exchange.

If he knew anything about crypto, he would have recommended you to download a wallet (like electrum.org for bitcoin or metamask for eth)

Yes, actually that was my question once I read a quick article about custodian wallets. What if Binance or Coinbase decide to cease operation and keep all the tokens people have in their wallets. If that actually can happen or not (I know the chance with an exchange as big as Binance is small, at least I guess).
So if I understand this correctly, metamask is a wallet (an app, which you download, basically), where you keep your ETH under your control, instead of relying on an exchange like Binance, Coinbase or the exchange in question here, LicEx.
Once you buy ETH on Binance for example, you withdraw it and deposit just like I did before but you deposit it to your own wallet?

this licbtc.com sounds quite suspicious to me. First of all, seems a little unprofessional coded. For example, they did not redirect HTTP to HTTPS (check with and without "s")
I find some reviews about them, but I did not check it all
licbtc.com Review (https://scamwatcher.org/licbtc-com-review/#:~:text=Is%20licbtc.com%20Legit%3F,disappear%20any%20time%20without%20notice.)
https://www.scamdoc.com/view/467846
https://www.signal-arnaques.com/en/scam/view/297625

to me, these transactions look like a trading bot is using those funds. Maybe is your funds locked in open orders. Can you check your open orders there?

Not every scams got reported but most of the scams will be exposed in bitcointalk as well as in reddit forum. We are still growing and people are doing it voluntarily that is why we didn't see these few hidden ones.Hope your friend is not the one who is behind the shady exchange or an actual victim. :'(

Thank you very much for this information
I sent an email to another person who was apparently scammed and wrote his email address in the comment section of that website.

Your statement was a bit confused to me, I don't know if the other members here in the forum noticed this thing also.
There is no clear about your experienced in terms of withdrawals if I am not mistaken to my understanding. But anyway, did you double
check your address before you confirmed you transaction?

I am not sure what you mean by experienced, can you explain? You mean whether I did something like that before?
I did check my address, I tried it for a couple of times now. The transaction changes to status "checking" which I see there and after several hours the ETH just returns to the wallet.

Exactly.
It is very important that you create a new wallet immediately if you want to buy cryptocurrencies.

Once you have your wallet, try to withdrawal the coins from your exchange wallet to your new wallet.

For ethereum, I like to use metamask (a browser extension)

For long term storage you will need to buy a hardware wallet. The best ones are ledger nano and trezor.  They are much safer and you won't be hacked

You forgot to say that any wallet where you control or have private key is under your control. Of course, the essential condition is that only you have control over the private key. Usually, exchanges do not allow access to PK, which implies that we do not have complete control of the addresses from exchanges.

Do you mean to try and withdraw the ETH from the exchange that appears to be a scam? Do you think trying to withdraw to a new wallet would help? If that is the case, wouldn't revealing the address to the scam site compromise the new wallet? Or is it that they would just see the public address (key)?

Yes it will solve all problems if you can withdrawal everything

Create a new wallet a generate a new public address.  Withdrawal to that address.

It will not compromise.

If they are scammers, they won't let you withdraw

That seems possible because he can't able to withdraw the fund. The address that he has shown to us is beyond his control, it is an exchanges wallet address, and any transactions that he has seen is that a part of the exchanges transactions, not solely for OP.

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@OP, to avoid that confusion, you better leave that wallet, it is not yours, you are not in control of that and if you keep using that wallet, you are just feeding these scammers.

You guys better read the thread or atleast the OP before making any posts because he is talking about exchange's wallet not his own. He can't able to withdraw his balance which is showing on the exchange balance but actually there is nothing left in his wallet address so most likely he deposited into a scam exchange so there is no possible way to access those funds.

Thank you for the explanation gyus, I will try to summarize the issue here, since there is a number of posts here and people seem to read only part of it.
When I sign into the account on the particular exchange and I check the wallet there, I see remaining ETH in the amount of 0.19... However, when I check the wallet's address on a website like blockchain.com, I see the remaining ETH amount is 0.000084 (I am not sure now, because I do not want to sign into the account anymore, just in case). Also, it is showing transactions which I did not make, these transactions are not shown in the exchange's website, when I click the wallet and check transactions. These are only shown on blockchain.com.
Now when I try to withdraw the remaining ETH (shown on exchange amount 0.19...), it changes the status to frozen, there is a transaction with the status of "checking" for several hours, I think it is about 10-12 hours and after that it gets refused and the ETH just returns to the wallet (probably because that is not the actual amount that is in the wallet according to blockchain.com).
I tried to be brief, so I am not sure if I caught the bulk of the problem in this but everyone should read the whole topic in case of their interest.

I will try what you guys adviced, to create a personal wallet through metamask and withdraw to that wallet, however, I doubt it will work but I am very grateful for your advices.

I don't think you can be able to withdraw those funds because it looks clearly that exchange is scammy so better don't deposit anything again or never recommend to anyone like your friend did to you.

You also can create a scam accusation thread so people will be aware of this exchange in future in case if they search for it.

Yes, I think I will not be able as well. Do you think they could somehow access my other wallets, for example on Binance? Say, if I buy ETH or Litecoin on Binance, are those tokens in any dangers from them?

I don't think you can do anything against people depositing coins in your wallet. But that is fine I guess since it's just a gift for you. There is no law that will force you to repay the money people put in your wallet. But seeing withdrawals from your wallet is not acceptable. I would instantly advise you do contact the company and let your wallet being locked until it's all sorted out. If you have some proof that you are the owner of the wallet than you shouldn't have problems getting new access to your account

If you have same passwords or your devices are  being compromised better to double check everything and change it right away,

then add some more securities like 2fa and if whatever available extra security for your account, be very furious and careful in dealing

with your investment hackers are just everywhere waiting for your single mistake to penetrate.

I do not use the same passwords, luckily. Thank you

It seems you aren't compromised, you just picked the scam exchange to deposit so it is not going to affect you with other exchanges but still it is better to do things like changing the login credentials and add 2FA security layer if you didn't and also if possible put IP login guard so even if someone knows you password they still need your authorization to enters into your exchange's account.

Yes, I am familiar with two factor authorization, I do have that not only regarding crypto exchanges.
Also some other news, I received a response from the exchange's customer support, after 3 days that is, I wrote them an email regarding not being able to withdraw my ETH and they are asking me to provide them with my account details or email address so they can look at the transactions happening in my wallet and see what is the problem - that seems a little unusual request from a customer service, doesn't it? Customer services never should ask the details of your account or am I wrong?

Let me guess what will happen next, they will ask for email verification which was used to register on their account and may send you a phishing link to hack your device further.

Or they will trick you again with further verification needed like deposit 0.01ETH to resume your account to normal.So you should never fall into any of such traps but just reply to them to see what is going to be their approach.

That was my idea. I would not deposit any more tokens there, that would be a very very suspicious verification of my identity.
They do have my email address already since I did write them an email, however if they send me something back with a link, I sure will not click it.
However I do have a dilemma, do you think I should let them know that multiple users reported the exchange as a scam, or should I leave that out?

It is indeed good when you are receiving tokens from an unknown address but it is not good for you when there's withdrawing your tokens. I think someone knew your password and able to access your wallet and using that as his primary wallet but still it is unbelievable that someone will send you a token out of nowhere and also withdrawing your holdings. I can recommend to you that you need to change your passcode to make sure that your holdings are secure.

thank you for clearing this confusion. I made such a comment because I thought it was his personal wallet. However, it was the wallet belonging to the stock exchange. If there is a money entry and exit to your wallet in the exchange, someone may know your password in the same way. I recommend using 2fa for this. However, sometimes eth will still appear in your wallet even if you have used eth amount on exchanges. I see this in many of my wallets. In this case, it can be caused by cold wallets. But if you really get in and out of your wallet, I recommend you to report it to the exchange. Because serious situations may open up to you. Definitely ask for it to be examined.

They will simply ignore your queries and request once they know that you realized that they are scam exchange because the only intention of any scammer is to make money as much as possible and run away.