Bitcoin Forum

Dear Clients,

We would like to apologize to all our clients for the lack of customer support provided over the past weeks, as of 14th February we have been faced with another banking institution issue, which includes the following;

We've had an account suspension issue with our Commonwealth processing account and are unable to execute EFT AUD withdrawals while the account is suspended. We will leave the exchange in its 'frozen' state until we are able to re-commence operations.

We've had an issue or two in the past with other banking institutions in Australia so we understand the tension this causes for customers and ourselves. However we've always managed to correct them.

We thank you for your support and appreciate your patience as we work through this.

WBX Team

Hi Andre, any update on this?

Andre,

What's going on with all this?

Hi Andre,

Just seeing how you are going. The banking issues, were they to do with charge backs?

IE Someone hacks someones bank account, sends across X amount of Dollars, it goes into the exchange.

The hacker then buys BTC, withdraws them, next the exchange bank account holder gets a letter saying to repay X amount of Dollars due to a non authorised transaction.

Is this the issues you are facing Andre? then the bank will not deal with you again because of the "Risk".

It seems to me that this would be the issue is, damn scammers depositing money via hacked bank accounts, then charge backs causing you these problems.

We have also had our fair share of this also, and have had to put in tighter measures and protection, people do not understand the difficult and challenges of running an exchange, when you have people constantly out trying to rip you off with these hacked bank account deposits.

This is why our banking system requires information from the client, because of these issues and risks.

Good luck, and I hope everything is ok for you, feel free to contact us any time. I would suspect, the same group who also got away with the same with us, only for a small amount before our fraud detection kicked in and prevented the rest.

Regards

Crypto X Change

Thanks for clearing that up.
It's exactly what I've suspected was the cause of all the exchanges' problems with banks but so far no exchange ever admitted it.

People should realise that banks close exchange accounts mostly because of what you described, not because of Bitcoin.

Hi PSY,

Yes, this is the reason why.

See the criminals, affecting all of us Exchanges, do not give a F*ck about the BTC community, exchanges etc.

It's pure profit, and that's all they're out to do, and they are destroying good business's in their doings.

We are lucky to have the fraud prevention etc, but this is also why it does require client information etc, and KYC, AML and everything to operate properly which people do not understand.

Our loss was tiny, however if our protection systems had not been in place, the loss would have been huge. This is why the underlying banking system structure for all exchanges are so important.

Thanks

Crypto X Change

Well, almost 2 weeks and not a single status update.

Andre, would it be too much to ask for a daily (weekly even!) update? It really would be appreciated, by all of us who are hitting refresh on the news page twice a day or more.

For anyone that's interested, I've left a voice message, and emailed. I'll reply here with any details if Andre responds at all.

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Andre several people, myself included, I know very well are starting to get rather ticked off about this lack of communication. Further silence on this subject is not exactly helping you to settle this amicably or get the exchange back into operation. As I know you've actively been offered help in getting things back on track from several members of the community.
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It's a shame my brother changed jobs as I think he was working in the same town and would have been very good at getting answers (but he now elsewhere in Australia).

I've been very supportive of this exchange since it's inception and done a lot of trading, but was in the process of extracting my funds for legal fees on a case I'm taking and have around AUD3000 in limbo land.  That's enough for me to jump on a plane and fly to Aus and accept a cheque or an atm withdrawal in person.

Not good enough Andre.

Maybe he's in jail...

I'm in the same situation as most of you too. I've emailed on various occasions, no reply... Even offered any assistance, no response.

I too have been supportive of WBX and have been pretty actively trading recently so have a lot of AUD in my account which I'm waiting on a refund for. Next step??

Given that his company is listed with an official ABN, it shouldn't be too difficult to track him down. I think at this stage he's obviously lost interest in serving WBX customers.

I sent an email to the site developer and actually got a response.  I'm not sure what is going on, but they don't appear to be gone yet.  I'm still hopeful they'll be back, but it would help if they posted a public update.

in comparison, i'm about 45 minutes drive away and have $497 in limbo... definitely worth the drive if i thought i could get it paid in person, but i very much doubt that andre's going to be able to do that.

Taking into account hat Andre is not answering a single e-mail I'm considering taking some legal action here. Unfortunately, I'm not from Australia but I know some people down under so I guess I'll either file it with the police there or with a regional lawyer. If anyone of you is interested in joining or already filed something please give me a shout. I know that in my jurisdiction it helps if there are several people who have been scammed vs. only a single person.

if you're looking for the 'scammer', try ANZ.

ANZ will not reveal any data of it's clients nor confirm that accounts have been frozen due to fraud investigations without the consent of the owner of the account. I tried that, already :) Probably they would be more willing to share information with the local law enforcement agencies.

I think the point payb.tc was making was that ANZ is the scammer, not Andre.

The last I heard from Andre was on March 6th, when he wrote:

"i will be announcing a statement with in the next 7days on the site and forums".

I just received an email from Andre: WBX will be shutting down.  :(

As an update:


It's a pitty as I liked wbx, but if it means that everybody receives the his money back then that's good news

The problem is that Andre stayed silent most days since before 14 February.

There should have been a daily "nothing new to report" or "I can't say anything more while the lawyers are looking it over".

In today's announcement there is no timeline for the return of clients' funds.

A+

I have been holding the WBX Bitcoins in an offsite account, for safekeeping.  They're all accounted for, and are available to withdraw right now for users with BTC balances.  I transfer them back to the WBX wallet as and when they're needed.

The server emails me when it's short of Bitcoins, so if there's ever a delay with your BTC withdrawal, it's because the server wallet was emptied and is waiting for me to transfer more in from the offsite wallet.

This is something I was doing for Andre rather than leaving them on the WBX server, in an attempt to prevent a Linode style theft.

I also notice there is not announcement here or on the site's News page to match Andre's numerous copy & paste emails of today.

It seems like he sent the same reply to every email in the support queue.

Thanks for providing that information.  For those with coins, that at least makes it easier (although I would have thought most coins would have been shifted long before now).

Any information of the dollar balances?  I have half tied up in pending withdrawal status and half waiting to move.

You may want to consider offering, though only as an option, to let people withdraw their fiat currency balances in Bitcoins. You can use the rate from another exchange or you can fix the week's average rate. This is probably easier for you to do than mailing people checks, especially from closed accounts. And at least offering it will reassure people that they'll be getting their money back.

yeah i'd much prefer this

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@ Andre,

Shutting down is all very well and dandy but people deserve to know exactly when they are going to be receiving their funds.

Just clamming up about things isn't exactly helping your position on this. As I know several people are more than contemplating legal action. And judging by the way you've been handling this to date I doubt that most people here put much faith if any into anything you say when you aren't being specific.

You've deregistered the company supposedly running the exchange and who knows what else has been going on without you informing your clients.

IMO Andre is just as big a scammer as ANZ in this case as he's spent well over a month trying to cover up their wrongdoing by ponzing around with CLIENT funds etc. Using other peoples deposits to cash others out etc.


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As a note, the supposed company was de-registered in December (4th).  That is actually useful as it means rather than hiding behind a limited liability company structure, the actions have taken place by Andre as an individual and he is personally liable.

Still, not really a good sign that he deregisters his company without informing anyone... to me it still smells like scam. But I hope I will be proven wrong.

He probably didn't de-register the company, ASIC probably deregistered it for not filling annual returns.

Furthermore, bank account payments to and from WBX are in Andre's name not the company. So again he's personally liable.

ABN is registered in Victoria: http://www.abr.business.gov.au/SearchByAbn.aspx?abn=61131700779

WBX lists address as Gold Coast, Qld: https://www.worldbitcoinexchange.com/?page=help


Andre's linked in profile states he is in the Brisbane area: http://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=67791024&authType=name&authToken=oL4o&locale=en_US&pvs=pp&trk=ppro_viewmore

Hmmm ...

Looks like an address changed in January 2009. Did he just forget to update his ABN, or is it something more sinister?

Those entries all look pretty dull.  I thought he was in Orange (inland NSW).  I have some contacts in QLD.

I think the Orange NSW address you are thinking of is for CryptoXChange's legal registered office address.

The ABN looks like it predates the move to Qld.

The absence of Annual Return filings reinforces a view that the company was deregistered automatically for not lodging annual returns.

However the company was not up-to-date with ASIC paperwork before it started the exchange. Strike 1 to piercing the corporate veil (and thus making Andre personally liable).

ASIC also regulates the provision of financial services in Australia. They love to go after shonky Queensland-based Kiwi get-rich-quick peddlers. And a company called "High Net Worth Property Pty Ltd" sounds like the perfect target. ASIC has powers to ban a director from working in the financial services industry, ban the holding of more directorships, or just ruin a director's reputation.

ASIC can also pierce the corporate veil and go after the director personally.

Although I was a Kiwi working in Australia for a while, I commuted to Melbourne.  I also held a Financial Services Licence, but that was for trading electricity rather than a shonky deal.  ASIC was interesting to deal with, but on the whole the legal framework was pretty sensible.

One of the services on the web is their scam alert https://www.moneysmart.gov.au/scams

Not sure, but it does look like there could be criminal and civil proceedings here.

Sorry for the cheap shot at my kiwi cousins... I went to primary school in Christchurch one autumn/winter. I held a financial services authority once too - for raising film funds.

Yes the legal framework in Oz is quite good. So you'd think Andre would man up and start talking rather than risk the legal ramifications of anybody calling the authorities.

Sadly I suspect it will come to criminal and civil proceedings as Andre is burying his head in the sand and ducking everyone.

He needs to, pay our money and btc back.

Happy to support any legal proceedings against Andre if he doesn't surface soon.

i vote for the wild west option.

+1 - I'm in as well

There's a new posting on the news page at WBX, presumably from Andre:


I have a few comments:

1. I've never been appointed any position at WBX.  This is the first I heard about being their "Technical lead".  I set up the exchange for Andre originally, using the open source Intersango code, and made improvements as requested, and also agreed to hold Bitcoins offsite for Andre rather than leaving the whole wallet on the shared hosting server that WBX runs from.  I don't think that makes me "Technical lead".

2. I am still holding 1768 Bitcoins for WBX.  Until recently I have been depositing them back to the exchange on an as-needed basis, to keep the number of coins actually in the wallet on the exchange server to a minimum.  I used to try to keep between 200 and 300 coins on the server to allow for day to day withdrawals, but since the Linode incident I've been keeping the exchange wallet pretty much empty.  Here's a link to the address the coins are held at, so anyone can verify that I have them still: http://blockchain.info/address/1KnAveDXHDSdXmsNdE5itum459dkNp2pnW.  Actually, doesn't prove much, just that 1768 coins are owned by someone.  So around this time tomorrow I'll move them all to 1DodGYjF5LFoKg186jANZV9U8znXjagSzS.  Perhaps someone could quote this bit before I do so.

3. On March 15th I noticed that I could no longer log in to the WBX web host.  I don't know if Andre has changed the password, or if it's a technical problem of some kind.  Each time I attempt to log in, I see:
  "Received disconnect from [IP Address]: 2: Too many authentication failures for [username]".
I immediately emailed Andre asking for clarification, but have received no response so far.

4. Also on March 15th I received an email from Andre asking me to send him the 1768.0540 BTC he thinks I am holding so that he can start returning them to the exchange users.  I suspect the 0.0540 discrepancy is due to network transaction fees.  I replied saying that I have been returning the coins as and when they are requested for withdrawal by the exchange users, but that the most recent withdrawal request looked suspicious, and that I was awaiting his decision about what to do about that withdrawal request before returning funds to the exchange that would allow it to go through.  I received no reply to that so far.

5. Although my login to the web host is no longer working, my login on the exchange is still an administrator account.  This is confusing; if Andre was trying to lock me out of the exchange then leaving me an account with admin privileges seems like an oversight.  Using the admin account I am able to see that nobody has attempted to withdraw any Bitcoins since before my login stopped working until just a few minutes ago.  Now another user is attempting to withdraw Bitcoins, but again it looks suspicious.  If Andre was reachable I'd recommend that he try to get further ID from the user, since PDF mobile phone bills are pretty easy to edit and so aren't much good as a proof of ID.

I don't want to be holding these Bitcoins any more, but I do want them to go back to their rightful owners.  This leaves me not knowing what to do for the best.  Does anyone have any words of wisdom?

i have a comment:

the burden of this disaster should not fall solely on those who's lost funds were denominated in AUD.

i think any type of capital available to WBX should be distributed among all creditors, not just go to those who were lucky enough to have a BTC balance at the right moment.

Quoted and witnessed for you.

If you are happy to do so, I think you should keep managing the bitcoin return process rather than Andre, especially since he has stated this in his message. Having a (somewhat) third party manage it is a better look, especially when many here are already suspicious of Andre's actions. I am not suggesting or accusing Andre, but returning the cold-stored bitcoins to him could lead to suspicions of him doing a runner.

I'm not sure about payb.tc's suggestion of spreading the burden between AUD and BTC holders. I think it would be complicated. I also have a conflict of interest in that I have already withdrawn my BTC, leaving me with only AUD funds remaining.

Dooglus, are you able to see the total balance of AUD funds still held? We would need to know the proportion of BTC to AUD if losses/delayed withdrawals are spread between BTC and AUD.

Thanks.


I'd really like to hear Andre's take on that, but he's so hard to get in touch with recently.


I'm not sure about payb.tc's suggestion either.  I can see that people with AUD balances will be likely to want that, and people with BTC balances won't.

I've no ability to see anything about the WBX bank account(s) themselves.  All I can see is what the admin view of the exchange shows.  I can see the AUD held in accounts, and the AUD pending withdrawal.  What I can't see is whether any AUD has arrived in the bank account(s) but not made it into the database, or if any withdrawals have been marked as "processed" in the database, but never entered into the banking system.  Either of those scenarios would add to the amount of AUD outstanding.  Both of these scenarios are something that AUD depositors to the exchange would have a better idea about.  I also don't have access to the WBX support emails other than those that Andre manually forwarded to me when asking for help, so have no idea how many users have been complaining about payments going missing in either direction.

Andre really needs to take ownership of returning funds whether AUD or BTC to their rightful owners. Until he can show the ability to do that, then you should not return the BTC to him.

I have a lot of AUD in the exchange pending withdrawal for a long time now which I am very concerned about.

normally when a company is shut down, no creditors are unduly favoured.

if wbx has to sell it's furniture to repay creditors... does he sell it for AUD or BTC?

this is why i say any capital, whether it's btc, aud, or furniture, should be liquidated and distributed proportionally.

I (like others) have done a lot of trading through the exchange.  Several thousand BTC and several thousand dollars.  I was unlucky that I deposited AUD and needed to withdraw it almost immediately, and I'm stuck with $3000-ish in limbo.

I agree that all creditors should have equal shares/rights to the assets of a failed exchange, and I also acknowledge the potential for bias in that call.  But the law allows for voidable transactions to prevent undue enrichment of one creditor over another. 

I also appreciate the position Dooglus is in and admire him for sitting on the funds as they stand.  At some stage a register of claims should be made if Andre is not going to make an appearance anywhere.

I agree with Patrick. In insolvency cases all creditors share equal rights. So we should make a list to see how much AUD are outstanding, add the amount of outstanding BTC (I assume 1768) multiplied with current BTC price on the time of payout. Then we take the amount of "assets" (BTC in AUD) and divide it by it's creditors.
There should be a certain deadline (e.g. End of April?) until when everyone would have to enter their claims and then the BTC get divided among the creditors.

I would heavily suggest to NOT send him or the website any further BTC. To me it still smells like a scam so I would be worried that he uses his own admin rights and grants himself BTC which he withdraws. Plus: it should be clarified how the BTC are split.

Thanks a lot for your efforts so far, dooglus. highly appreciated. I can understand that you want to get rid of the burden. Potentially we could identify someone respectable from the forum (e.g. phantomcircuit, nefario, theymos...) who would be willing to take care of the BTC, temporarily. Any suggestions?

I just sent them.  You can see the transaction here:
  http://blockchain.info/address/1DodGYjF5LFoKg186jANZV9U8znXjagSzS

It's currently unconfirmed.

It looks like I'm about an hour early - the forum is telling me it's 04:25 PM when it's really 5:31 PM.

Certainly looks like a move of coins.  I'm assuming that is an address you have, rather than sending to some random location.

Indeed.  I'm simply demonstrating that I really do have control of the coins I claim to, by announcing the move and the new address a day before the move happened.

Yes, I thought that was a useful mechanism.  I forgot to check yesterday about the receiving address.

I just received an email from Andre.  It doesn't address any of the flags I raised about suspicious looking accounts on the exchange with positive BTC balances, and doesn't answer my question about my access to the web host no longer working.

All it says is:


I replied asking if we could discuss it in this thread:


Andre, can you address the concerns I and others have raised please?

1. Is there any news from the bank about when you can expect to have access to the WBX accounts again?
2. What happens if the bank never releases the frozen funds.  Will you be paying their balances back in full?
3. If not, should you not wait before allowing users to withdraw bitcoins, since the assets of WBX should be divided equally between its creditors.
4. Did you intentionally lock me out of the hosting account?  I'm no longer able to access the code or the database.
5. I've emailed you about several accounts on the exchange which have suspicious trading patterns, but you've not commented.  It seems you want me to return the bitcoins so that they can withdraw them - have you thought that through?

Hi Chris,

to answer your questions

1. No i have no indication when this issue will be resolved, when my accounts were first frozen they did give me a time frame of 6weeks to 6months

2. Yes i Intend on returning all funds once i have access to these funds but unfortunately i can't guarantee it.

3. If this is what the clients of WBX want then yes i am happy to comply and listen to the responses.

4. Yes i locked you out as i had to minimise further risk to the Exchange Database and code, sorry Chris its nothing personal i am just protecting my self and WBX client information.

5. Yes i have returned correspondence on these issues and these accounts have been locked (unverifiyed).

6. Chris you have full control over the 1768 BTC as they are in your possession  if you want to handle returning these BTC to clients then i am happy for you to do that, I have other major issues do deal with at the moment, i just want to know that WBX users BTC is safe and will be returned its one less problem for me to sort out.

message to all..... Yes i could have closed down the site and vanished but i didn't, i can't help the fact that I've been scammed through my bank accounts and now have no control over these accounts, these scammers new that the exchange was solid and secure so they attacked me via the banks knowingly that they will get away with it, i am honestly sorry this has happened and you the user has been caught up in this mess, i have lost a lot of personal money through this but i still intend to continue the fight in returning your Funds, what else's can i say.

please be patient.

Andre 

Andre, thanks for responding.  I think it's best that this happens out in the open so people can see what's going on.


As you can see from this thread, at least some of the clients want it done this way.  Some even suggest it has to be done this way.


OK, I thought you must have.  Just so you know, I have backups of the site from shortly before you locked me out.  As you know, the hosting company hasn't exactly had a good track record of looking after the server themselves, so I regularly made offsite backups.  That includes encrypted backups of the exchange's bitcoin wallet.  The wallet has a large keypool, so I will have access to any funds that are deposited into the exchange wallet for some time to come.  To properly minimise risk to the exchange I would advise you to transfer the remaining funds from the exchange wallet (less than 1 BTC I think) then start from scratch with a new wallet.

I also still have admin access to the WBX site, so can see client information.  Disable that by setting "is_admin" to 0 for my row in the users table:
  UPDATE users SET is_admin=0 WHERE uid=1001;
or use the web interface to the database.


I have the 1768 BTC and will keep it safe until it is clear who it should be given to.  I've proven in this thread that I have it, and everyone can watch the address where it is being held to make sure it isn't being spent.

It seems to me that we need to find out how much of the frozen AUD will be returned by the bank before we can know how to split up the BTC.  Do you agree?

Hi chris,

Thanks for the transparency i appreciate it, please return users BTC using this forum or however you think is a open way in doing so safely, You still have Admin access to WBX and i will not change this until all BTC is returned also you can view the user database i left that open for that reason.

Andre

Andre, the problem is that until you know how many dollars you are going to be able to get back from the banks, you don't know what the total assets of WBX are.  And so you don't know what percentage of the liabilities you will be able to repay.

I propose holding on to the BTC until the situation with the bank becomes clear.

Do you agree?

Chris,

I agree, this is worst case scenario and i would like for everyone to receive a full refund of there funds but unfortunately i cannot guarantee it at this stage, as soon as i get a clear conformation from my bank what is returned then the process of distributing assets will commence, I will keep you updated here.


Andre

It is for this reason that I advised you privately not to distribute the bitcoins in any way that was related to the AUD. Due to the price fluctuation of bitcoin, waiting on the AUD is the only reasonable way to combine the remaining funds and distribute them evenly. Of course, it's not my call.

Given the dollars at stake, and the threats for legal action for recovery that are mentioned elsewhere in this thread, no funds should be distributed, BTC or AUD. 

I know the cost of legal work in Australia and am currently awaiting advice from my lawyers there on a similar matter.  Also, I know how the Corporations Act and other statues operate, so commend Chris on the stance taken to date.  More communication is better than none.

+1 to all quoted threads above.

As I have a large AUD stake, I think it would be unfair for BTC to be returned to 'forum members who request it' without the full picture from the bank being understood.

Also I traded quite frequently before WBX shut down, I'm happy to clarify my actions if my account was flagged as suspicious.

In the US, I believe it is a requirement for a bank to provide you your funds by cheque if your account is closed or suspended for any reason. Is this not the case here?

Not sure if that's only in the US. I know for sure that whenever Paypal closes your account they'll send you a cheque with your remaining funds 180 days later to your registered address. Even in the EU.

so, when the doj freezes your assets, they cut you a cheque to cover it? someone should let kim dotcom know.

Were his asset frozen by the government?

kim's or andre's?

i realise now that you must have meant 'for any reason other than the government'.

Andre's. And sorry for not specifying that ;D I guess it was assumed.

Was just reading some of the terms and conditions - without knowing the status or reason for the account being blocked, there are too many possibilities.  if the account was simply closed, they would have mailed a cheque.

Andre I'm glad you resurfaced and answered some questions.

At this point in time I hold you personally responsible and liable for all client funds in the exchange. You no doubt have your own advice on that, however I point out that you accepted deposits and made withdrawals in your own name and from your personal bank accounts. Furthermore you knowingly traded while the company was deregistered.

You have exaggerated or been untruthful on the phone and on the site. One example is Chris is not your "Technical Lead", another is there is not a "WBX Team" behind WBX news - it's just you. Lastly you told me on at least two occasions that my AUD withdrawal had gone through. I am not the only person you said that to.

Your selective response to questions, your extended periods of silence on email and forums, and your refusal to answer phone calls further exacerbate your personal liability in this matter.

I offered you a recapitalization option which you ignored.

Yes you haven't done a runner with the remaining BTC, but you have not been open and honest with your customers and clients. Especially as many of us have a vested interest in helping you sort out the mess with your bankers. Many people can research and pressure the banks to release some of the funds. Unless that too is an exaggeration or untruth.

Even if the worst case is that you've been scammed and intend to earn the money to pay everyone back, the only way to do that is to be honest about the situation.

Do you really want the pain of a fraud investigation or a series of small claims court claims?

+ 1 and extremely so via email.

For your information i did offer chris 5% and he accepted(i can back this up with IM conversation through gmail), https://www.worldbitcoinexchange.com/?page=help ABOUT US SECTION this statement has been untouched and is it original form from day one chris at no point has asked me to remove it and he also proof read it for me this is why i trusted him to handle a major part of the BTC component of the exchange which didn't give the power of the exchange to one person, he can confirm this ask him.

I take your point on trusting what i post here to be an exaggeration or untruthful, i just can't confirm anything until the investigation has completed  for me it's now a legal matter that is out of my hands now and i am restricted in what i say here.

Finally i got myself in this mess and thank you for offering to bailing me out,(I am no bank and thats exactly who got me into this mess) but id like to fix this myself it's how i work, mate i don't know where exactly you are digging this crap up!!!!!.... but please do some research before you decide to  defame my already depleted reputation.

I had to respond........it just pissed me off.

Andre

 

Because of sealed court orders, or because of your lawyer's recommendation?

On 28th July 2011 I was offered 5% of incoming commission fees:



I proof read for spelling, grammar, and punctuation, not content.  After having read the help page I did question the "partnering" text.  I think the following made it clear that I didn't want 5% of the business, although I didn't explicitly ask for the text to be removed from the help page.  On 2nd August 2011:


I never received the confirmation or any kind of a contract and never again heard anything about this "5%" until now.


I understood that holding the site BTC was a temporary measure until Andre set up a more permanent store since Andre's home computer at the time was running Windows.  It was never brought to my attention that this was about sharing "the power of the exchange", but rather a temporary measure to prevent the bitcoins being stolen from the shared hosting.

On 15th August 2011 I brought up the subject of how it's not a good idea to leave bitcoins on a shared host:


On 22nd August 2011:


On 29th August 2011 I was asked to hold Bitcoins for the exchange temporarily:


On 9th October 2011 I tried again to suggest using a paper wallet for cold storage, but it never happened:

Andre why are you still offering up sad pathetic lies? You know exactly where Paul is digging this up, your own emails. I'll bet you dollars to donuts or something similar that a lot of the other posters in this thread have a views and experiences very similar to Paul's on this issue.

Furthermore, I find it rather interesting that a lot of the people here who're owed money aren't physically located in Australia as that would make what Paul so eloquently says here A lot harder for them to put into effect. You're not exactly helping your own cause in anyway with your handling of this matter.

Could a moderator or admin please consider tagging Andre until this issue is resolved? As he hasn't shown any kind of interest or willingness towards resolving this matter. Furthermore he's taking more than a few liberties with the truth, which is effectively demonstrated by Chris's posting of logs I can offer similar proof of such dishonesty should it be required by admins or mods as I believe can several of the other posters in this thread.

There is a "thing" I recall was introduced about five years ago.  Can't remember exactly the reference but it had name like a "section 19" order.  The lay version is:
 - you're under investigation, but not charged with a crime.
 - you can't tell any one why you're being investigates, or even that you are subject to a S19 order.
 - if you do, we can lock you up

As for the location thing - Australia is only 4 hours away and a couple of hundred dollars for a ticket.  Running claims isn't a hurdle.

No. Everything he has posted has a logical explanation that doesn't involve fraud. Sure, I wouldn't trust him with additional funds right now, but I also don't have any reason to believe that he is trying to run with the money.

So telling people withdrawals have been processed when in fact they haven't doesn't reek of scamming/fraud. And asking people for non existent information in order to process withdrawals doesn't reek of fraud either. You sure have a funny definition of logic.

Andre was even offered a bailout by Paul backed by me amongst others, this line from Andre doesn't exactly hold water in the light of something like that, as his main responsibility is to his customers in a situation like this.

Furthermore Andre didn't actually halt trading on WBX Chris did, which I applaud him for, as Andre lacked both the balls and simple honesty to do so.

Andre has even stated via email that he isn't willing to even hold any kind of dialogue on this issue. And that this supposedly has been an ongoing issue since November last year just further proving that he can hardly be considered honest on this matter as that would mean that he has been A) putting in own funds and B) playing ponzi like games with client deposits in order to process withdrawals (Paul has at least circumstantial evidence of this as do I).

Maged, how can you seriously claim to be acting in any kind of good faith and with due diligence on this issue in view of these overwhelming and repeated shows of blatant dishonesty? I wasn't asking for a permanent tag, simply for tagging until this matter has been resolved, as Andre's currently lack of honesty on this matter as a whole is extremely disconcerting.

Andre's posts imply insolvency which would make you flying out here rather pointless.  When a liquidator/trustee is appointed, claims will have to be made with through them and final distributions (if any) will be made by them at a time determined by them.  If there are any applications in progress for involuntary winding up of the company subsequent to statutory demands or Director Penalty Notices, it is possible for other creditors to join those actions.  It's worth remembering that those with Bitcoins and currency on deposit with the exchange are unlikely to be the only creditors and that any transactions during the "lookback" period prior to insolvency can be clawed back by the liquidator/trustee.  If user funds deposited with the exchange were not quarantined from operating funds, there are other legal implications involved for the exchange owners.  At this point, it would be extremely unwise for Andre to do anything other than maintain a holding pattern without solid legal advice.

I wish people had taken a bit more notice when I commented on the strike off action by ASIC last year and the fact that the company had failed to lodge a change of details with ASIC when they relocated from Victoria to Queensland.  There were a lot of red flags regarding this venture, including them not having a financial services licence (something a supposed investment company - which is what they held themselves out as having been prior to their entry into Bitcoin services - most certainly requires) and not being registered for GST (what investment company for targeting high net worth individuals would have a turnover of less than $75,000).  "Goldcoast, Queensland" is not an address, and their unwillingness to put their actual business address on their website should have been a huge warning sign.  It's like putting your business location down as "West Coast, USA" and should be especially troubling when the official records for your business have your company as being located somewhere else entirely.

Patrick.  As you are owed more than $2000, issuing a statutory demand is an option for you.  The options for responding to a statutory demand are very limited and winding up proceedings can be started if the company does not respond in the required manner and prove its solvency within 21 days.  A statutory demand must be served to the registered office last listed with ASIC.   If the demand is not satisfied within the 21 days or the company does not apply to the Supreme Court to set the demand aside within that period (the period is set in stone by statute and cannot be extended) a legal presumption of insolvency then applies.  Although the company no longer exists as a legal entity, winding up or other insolvency proceedings may not be in progress yet.  If they are in progress, the identity of the liquidator/administrator/trustee must be disclosed to creditors.

People need to stop seeing what they want to see when it comes to Bitcoin ventures and they need to stop ignoring things which should raise huge red flags.  Stop taking bullshit excuses for things sketchy shit at face value.


Are you thinking of the provision applying to financial service providers which stops them from being able to disclose that they are co-operating with an investigation into suspicious activity (and actually allows them to deduct an hourly rate equivalent to that charged by liquidators from the client's account for any staff time spent on co-operating with the investigation)?  WBX doesn't have an AFSL, but I'm pretty sure that the provisions themselves come from AML/CTF legislation so they can probably be imposed in the absence of a licence.

Hi David,

Im allowed to answer this one, You received the deposits via Paul Zigoridis account at your request, please give me other times this has happened please again stop defaming my already crap credibility here.

Here is the Log: David to myself

That's be fine m8 if it's doable on your end.

Or I can just give him codes if you'll bump up his limits so it doesn't cause hangs on his end.



On Sat, Feb 11, 2012 at 9:04 AM, WBX Support <support@intersango.com.au> wrote:
Hi david,

Sent through the funds mate as re quested reference N02112051695 paul has the same bank as I do so he should see it tomorrow. If you want to process more funds will it be done through this method?

Andre


Support



David Owen Morris <morris.davidowen@gmail.com> wrote:


-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Hi Andre,

I have an alternative solution for you. Could you please deposit these funds asap into accounts belonging to Paul Zagoridis another customer on the exchange. He's willing to help out on this issue and I've included him in this email.


-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v2.0.17 (MingW32)

iQEcBAEBAgAGBQJPNQt0AAoJECuWECqljbocVNkH/2N23tydHPObCWskyQ2z4va0
pl4haNusqYivZob7Hkhh2VwBP0QUlK8VDq74PKQZ8aHlkdr+LvOsSW7U4Sycic1P
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=PIoh
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On Fri, Feb 10, 2012 at 9:16 AM, WBX Support <support@intersango.com.au> wrote:
mate can you ring me personal number +61412185693 i am away from my office

On 10/02/2012, at 11:13 AM, David Owen Morris wrote:

Hi Andre,

Bank of China have no such thing and have made no such request I've just check this with their head Dalian office. This has worked just fine on prior occasions and should still do so.



On Fri, Feb 10, 2012 at 9:07 AM, WBX Support <support@intersango.com.au> wrote:
Hi david,
Mate we have had a problem with transferring the funds to your account your bank rejected the funds, your bank and our bank have requested a "Account Identification Number" we are trying to transfer the funds to your bank  in CNY , this will save you on fees on your side and so intermediary bank gets involved, all you have to do is ask your bank for this number so we can try processing it again sorry for the delay mate.

Andre

On 03/02/2012, at 4:38 PM, David Owen Morris wrote:

Thanks m8,

That's great news.



On Fri, Feb 3, 2012 at 2:00 PM, WBX Support <support@intersango.com.au> wrote:
Hi mate,

We have now processed your withdraw requests sorry for the delay mate, dam banks are causing me a lot or problems. I wont charge you the transfer fee.

Andre

Here is the Log:Paul and myself

I have a deposit of >$1200.00 the details will not be available until tomorrow.

Andre can you confirm the amount you transferred to my westpac account for David?

Regards

Paul

On Sun, Feb 12, 2012 at 10:24 PM, Paul Zagoridis <paulz@zagz.com> wrote:
Thanks Andre

I'll look out for it tomorrow (Monday)


On Sat, Feb 11, 2012 at 12:08 PM, WBX Support <support@intersango.com.au> wrote:
Hi paul,
I have done a transfer to your account for david owen.

Andre

Thanks for Clearing things up Chris.

Andre

Andre,


Please take careful note of what I've put in bold in the quote.

You got pissed off? Imagine how I feel and the rest of your clients.

You accuse me of defaming you. Please specify where I have done so in any of my postings. I will readily post a retraction, clarification or apology.

The last conversation I had with you was (I think) Thursday 16 February when you said my transfer had gone through (I can check and confirm the actual date but it was before 24 Feb). Since then it is impossible to talk to you via phone or email.

The only response from you has been identical cut and paste nonsense to (what seems like) every email in your inbox dated 12 March 2012.

What crap am I digging up? 1) Chris denied being your Technical Lead; 2)there is not WBX team; 3)you told me on the phone, you'd transferred my other withdrawal requests to my Westpac account when you had not.

If you are talking about a fraud investigation or small claims. I'm not digging those up. They are actively being considered.

What I'm trying to do is work out how to get some advocacy and communication going. We aren't talking sheep stations here*. But there are enough people saying you have their money and you are not giving it back to them. Worse you are not telling me enough information to encourage me to wait quietly (or come to your defense).

Andre as you know I am in Australia. I can coordinate the "disgruntled clients of Andre Jensen". I thought you would want to avoid creating an angry group of clients, and instead pursue an orderly resolution of affairs.

I don't think you are a crook or a scammer. I think you ended up in a bad place as the meat in the sandwich. Personally I suspect criminals used EFT to transfer more AUD into the exchange than you have admitted to me. But nothing you have said or done encourages me to hope for an orderly resolution.

*for non-Aussies "sheep stations" are huge land-holdings in the Australian outback - some are bigger than small counties. "Playing for sheep-stations" means playing for big stakes.

Worth noting a couple of things.

As the company was struck off, Andre was operating as an individual and has the liability personally.  The protections of the Corporations Act and the provisions of insolvency don't work the same.

Issuing a statutory demand (or similar) is relatively cheap, but enforcement gets expensive.  In the other case I'm running in Aus, I've spent roughly $5k on background, and an uncontested (non-court) result should come in under another $5k.  If I have to do the full court stuff, that's $20k, and I still won;t get funds back - but it will at least shut down the guy I'm dealing with.

Not being GST registered is not a flag as getting that much from a start-up exchange on the fees they were charging is unlikely.  You would only go that step if it needs to.

Received 7 hours ago via email from Andre:


I don't know if that means I won't be able to post about this in the future, but if I stop responding here, that may be why.

Don't talk to someone else's lawyers without obtaining legal advice of your own - they're acting in the other party's interest which may conflict with your own.  

"Taking full responsibility" would mean appointing a qualified third party to sort out this mess in a transparent manner in accordance with well established legal requirements.  That the company did nothing to stop its deregistration despite being well aware of the strike-off action by ASIC doesn't reflect well on their intention to follow established procedures for winding up a business and paying creditors.  That people have not been advised of the name of a liquidator/administrator to contact regarding the money they are owed is of concern - this should have happened even if the company is solvent and going into voluntary liquidation/administration.


The point is that the exchange was a start up but they claimed that the holding company itself had been finding investments for "high net worth" individuals a number of years prior to that.  That they weren't registered for GST in that capacity implies that they had a turnover of less than $75,000 pa and so weren't very good at their business - or they failed to register despite having a turnover of over $75,000 which would mean that they weren't operating legitimately.  The holding company should also have held an AFSL if they were in the investment business and them not possessing one was a red flag regardless of the issue of whether exchanges should hold one - a legitimate investment company requires one.  Andre's LinkedIn profile describes the company as offering financial products and services - something which absolutely requires an AFSL (I screen-capped it just in case he decides to edit it).

Andre does have personal liability, but the question is to what extent.  It's possible for companies to be deregistered prior to liquidation (it's not usual) but there's still a formal winding up process which needs to be followed before ceasing business altogether or operating as a new entity and it appears that process wasn't undertaken.  Liability in respect of that process doesn't fall solely on Andre - if the company was not wound up properly, the other directors are also liable.  Andre is certainly responsible for his actions as a sole trader as well as for his actions as a director of the company, but for those who deposited funds prior to the company being deregistered, the issue of whether to seek recompense from the company during the wind up process or from Andre personally might not be so clear cut.

It's not yet clear whether the as yet unwound up company is insolvent and it's not yet clear whether Andre the sole trader is insolvent.  The fact that the assets and liabilities of the company appear to have been transferred to Andre the sole trader without the proper legal processes being followed makes this messy and it should really be sorted out by an administrator/liquidator.  Andre the sole trader cannot disgorge funds from assets he was never legally entitled to possess - the question of whether any of WBX's current assets belong at law to the as yet unwound up company needs to be determined before the true financial state of WBX in its current form can be worked out.  It's almost certain that this will not be resolved without the actions of the company, the other directors and Andre personally during the lookback period being taken into account.  We don't know the date when Andre began operating as a sole trader.  It may have been before the deregistration date.

I'm not suggesting that people don't pursue their money.  People should be pushing like hell for the appointment of an administrator/trustee even if it means taking involuntary insolvency action.  I'm just cautioning that getting money back could be a hell of a lot more complicated than getting a judgement and filing a bankruptcy notice against Andre personally (a creditor needs to be owed $5000 or more in order to do this).  Lookback may mean that some people will have a cause of action against other directors of the company, too.

Just on a seperate note: Andre's lawyers  were not able to talk to a lawyer of my own choice. I several times asked him to give me the contact details of his lawyers but he never sent those. I wouldn't bet that there actually are some lawyers.

I suspect that there are lawyers, but that doesn't mean they've been retained to help sort out the financial mess - they could well be advising him in respect of breaches of the Corporations Act, the fraud issues and other matters.

The most troubling aspect of this is the failure to appoint an administrator/liquidator/trustee - something which would halt civil legal action and put control of WBX's financial affairs in the hands of a third party.  I'd have done it in a fucking heartbeat in Andre's shoes, if only so that someone else was putting legal pressure on the bank to release the frozen funds.  If the frozen funds are the only thing putting financial stress on the business, then I'd want my creditors to know that and a formal statement of affairs and creditors' report from an administrator/trustee would prove it.

The most surprising thing of all in this is that Andre is still making personal statements about any of the issues involved.  This is one of those situations where lawyers usually tell you to shut the fuck up before you make things worse and make no statements not approved by them.

He has with at least one of these posts been so good as to provide proof of his own fraudulent conduct.

I've screen-capped some stuff.  I suggest others do the same, and not just stuff on these forums.

For the record, here's a link to Andre's bullshit response to the question I asked in October about the strike-off action by ASIC.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=47071.msg561244#msg561244

ASIC does not initiate strike-off action when a company relocates its operations (the circumstances under which they initiate it are quite specific). Andre was lying through his teeth when he wrote that response but the fact that he wrote it proves beyond doubt that he was aware the strike-off action was in progress at least two months prior to the company being deregistered and that he was actively lying prior to the company being deregistered.  

It's possible to stop deregistration of a company that is in strike-off status and doing so should have been a simple matter for a solvent company.


http://www.asic.gov.au/asic/ASIC.NSF/byHeadline/ASIC%20initiated%20deregistration%20of%20a%20company

I dont do much on these forums but have been into bitcoin for a long time.

I had just put $500 AUD onto the world bitcoin exchange and a few days later all trading stopped. I really want my cash back Andre. Please be an honorable business man.
You will only be successful in anything that you do in the future if you are honorable with your decisions now.

If you are thinking of running off with the relatively small amount of cash that was at your exchange then you will be sorry for the rest of your life because your name will be dirt online. And any future businessman doing his/her due diligence will come across threads like this and more and will most likely not do business with you.

But if you choose to be honorable and pay everyone back then any other business ventures you do in your life will start off with trust as you have shown that you can be trusted and success comes from trust in contacts.

Do the right thing mate.

So you're basically asking him to take a loan out to pay back whats owed?
I'm not sure there is a single bank on earth that will provide a loan to him at the moment, what with his assets frozen and a potential upcoming investigation.

I'm in precisely the same position as you jaminunit, but be realistic.

No I dont buy that his assets have been frozen. I see no proof of this/ I would like to see a scan of the paper work sent to him from the bank that froze his account and posted on the forum. I'm guessing it's the commonwealth bank because I think that's the bank I put money into to fund my account.

Andre,

I understand your predicament and am sorry you got scammed, however this doesn't detract from the fact that you have your clients money. You have the responsibility to pay it back regardless of the mess you're in.

The whole situation is bad, everybody will agree. But it will get worse and you have authority to change this by simply arranging to pay back the disgruntled clients that you can for now, and assuring others that they will get their money back in due course.

Many of us now have no further option the longer you make us wait then to raise lengthy and expensive legal action. The choice is yours. In the mean time I will be seeking legal advice.

If he is insolvent he cannot do this without the agreement of all of his creditors - he'd be committing an offence under insolvency law if he did and the payments would be subject to clawback.

A clear statement from Andre about whether he intends to seek the protections of insolvency law would be useful but he's certainly not obliged to provide that information in advance.  While it's not especially costly to pursue money through Qld's Small Claims Tribunal (they deal with claims of up to $25,000), a judgement needs to be enforceable to have value - voluntary or involuntary insolvency proceedings would affect the value of any judgement obtained.  Bear in mind that a debtor can ask the court to order that the judgement be paid in instalments so obtaining a judgement does not guarantee getting the total amount you are owed quickly.

A few people have posted the amount of money they have tied up in WBX in this thread.  If more people did that, it would be possible to get a clearer idea of whether individual actions are worthwhile or whether Andre's creditors' interests would be better served by initiating insolvency action against him now rather than hoping the situation will improve.  Of course Andre may owe significant amounts of money to other creditors too - it's impossible to know that without some kind of action which forces disclosure of his true financial situation.

I received an email from Bradley Elmi, a WBX customer who's unable to post here for himself on account of not having enough posts on this forum.  He asked that I post it here, so here it is:


I replied:

Edited quote:


As it is a legal mater now (as you say), can you provide the names of your lawyers so my lawyers can talk to them?

Patrick

I would also like to see some scans (with private info blured out if you want) of some of the the letters from banks and such.

Would you really trust an uploaded image, because I sure as hell wouldn't - it's way too easy to fake documents.

Does anyone actually have a physical address for Andre?  Is he even answering phone calls or emails from anyone any more?  Has anyone actually lodged a complaint with Qld Fair Trading?

Hey everyone, just got whitelisted so I could post my situation.  (thanks forum mods)

On the 24th February I deposited $180 cash into the WBX commonwealth account.  At the time it did not occur to me to check WBX for any problems. I couldn't believe it when I read the site news the next day and never did I think it would drag on this long.

Andre, what is the point in having a business phone number if you're never going to answer the phone or return calls? Your customer service certainly has room for improvement.  It has been too long since you last frequented this thread and posted anything.

We need proof as your legitimacy is questionable for me right now.  I want your lawyers contact details asap to confirm this is not some cock and bull story. If i don't see these details by the weekend I will be contacting qld fair trading.

For those filing various cases. I think it'd help if we all posted the info we have for quick reference. From the website:

Contact info

Call: +617 3102-9666

Name: Andre Jensen
High Net Worth Property Pty Ltd
Trading As: World Bitcoin Exchange
ACN: 61 131 700 779
Gold Coast
Queensland
Australia
4208

Unsure:
Personal contact details
Email address
Personal Address
Lawyer contact details

Also, does anyone have the dates that the company was de-registered?

The Australian Securities & Investments Commission's Index of corporate and business names (http://www.search.asic.gov.au/cgi-bin/gns030c?juris=9&hdtext=ACN&srchsrc=1&acn=131700779) says:


... and a bunch of other stuff.

EDIT: Dooglus beat me to it.

For $18, you can get a copy of the last change of registered address form submitted to ASIC. It's from 2009 though, so probably still have the Victorian address, rather than the Gold Coast one.

Probably best not to crucify the exchange operator. From the looks of things the site fell victim to scammers that transfered money from phished Australian bank accounts and used that money to buy bitcoins.

Obviously account verification should have been introduced much earlier but that is not infallible as accounts could still be verified with stolen identities.

While I sympathize with people who have lost money you probably should have seen this coming. He had to change banks accounts several times because of these problems and Mtgox faced the same issues with their technocash account when they stupidly allowed direct bank transfers.

Why the fuck not he's the one that started playing ponzi style games with customer deposits trying to cover up his own incompetence?


Still making that the owners responsibility, which atm he seems to be trying to shirk out of.

It's bullshit when people jump on a bitcoin site operator whenever they are getting pushed around by the banks.

The exchange operator gets scammed, and people blame the victim? You have to wonder if the people complaining are the same ones who used the phished bank accounts.

I mean, if I was part of the established banking system, I would use phished bank accounts myself just so that I could reverse the charges later and screw over the exchange, then I would get on here and bad mouth the exchange operator.

The issue at the heart of the matter is the same as its been from the beginning: How do you reconcile non reversible BTC payments with reversible fiat bullshit controlled by TPTB??

SOLUTION: If you start such an exchange, run your bank accounts as dry as possible. Withdraw extra funds and trade a portion of it to gold (pecunix accounts?). Have as many possible accounts under different names and corporations as you can. Don't let the banks know that the different accounts are all yours.

Bottom line is, if you're going to succeed as an exchange that trades with bank deposit money, you're either going to have to completely sell out to their rules, or go to great lengths to fool them.

"Getting pushed around by the banks" might explain a lost payment or two or the temporary inability to process payments. It doesn't explain losing client funds.

Nobody blaming the operator for getting scammed, as far as I know. They're blaming the operator for losing client funds. The operator's primary responsibility is to secure client funds so that they don't get scammed. When it comes to client funds, an exchange operator is the security guard. You certainly do blame the guard if the thing he's guarding is stolen.

I can't imagine why any rational person would wonder that. When a person makes an argument, I wonder whether the argument is sensible or not. To answer that, I reason out the logic behind it. It really doesn't matter whether the argument is made by a good person or a bad person when you're considering the validity of the argument. Usually such vague accusations with no evidence are used to distract people from a logical argument.

Okay, so you're a bad person.

Simple. You pay an exchange a high fee to take that risk for you and you rely on them to have sufficient reserves to protect client funds. That's their job.

I think that's a very bad strategy for reasons I've detailed elsewhere. Implementing strategies that hinder reporting or obscure connections are good ways to get yourself in trouble very quickly. But you are definitely right that you have to have "hot" and "cold" means of storing cash just as you do coins, so that interruptions in your operational accounts don't affect client funds you hold. It helps to be totally up front with the banks, actually.

The former is the much more sensible strategy. In any event, the reason you get paid such high fees is because it's hard to protect client funds -- but that's your primary responsibility.

NO.


Andre, the "site operator" in light of the scams could have this situation resolved. Instead he has taken and refused to return the hard earned funds of all of his remaining clients. Its been months with little/no contact and what could essentially be misinformation.

Your post is not particularly useful.

I do not use stolen bank accounts.  My funds were not actually being used for trading and were caught between a deposit/withdrawal cycle - nothing to do with non-reversible BTC payments.  I am prepared to take the issue further with the Australian authorities because I'm not keen to lose $3k and as it was all clearly AUD denominated it's a simple complaint to spell out WBX was holding my AUD and failed to release it.  My transactions record that in a very straight forward manner.

+1

The address was never updated.  I looked up the registration when it was still in strike-off status before ASIC deregistered the company.  And of course "Gold Coast" is not an address.

The lack of proper contact details and the lack of GST registration is what made me suspicious of the company late last year.  They should have had a licence for the activities which Andre claimed the company was engaged in prior to opening WBX.  They should also have been turning over more than $70,000 pa for those financial years and therefore registered for GST.

There is absolutely no good reason for Andre not to have provided the name of either an accountant or a lawyer to WBX users by now and there's no guarantee that he' that is still in Queensland or even Australia.

I'd be interested to learn who the other director/s of High Net Worth Property were - I believe this information can be obtained from ASIC for a fee.  I don't believe the story as told by Andre.  He was aware of the strike-off action and did nothing to stop the company being de-registered which suggests that there were problems long before he claims to have been screwed around by the banks.

I doubt Fair Trading Qld can do a whole lot to recover money with the scant contact details available, but if enough people lodge complaints they may do an investigation or at least advise what other options for redress are available.  I'm also not sure how people will go with serving a summons without an address.  There don't appear to be any public records for Andre as a sole trader, and although the big guys like the ATO use the last address registered with ASIC when serving legal notices, only the deregistered company seems to have been listed with ASIC and it's Andre the individual people are looking at taking legal action against now - at law, they're separate entities so service could be a problem.

The Qld Fair Trading complaint form is a simple one, so it's probably the best starting point.  I'd definitely put the historical information about the company being de-registered by ASIC in the complaint. 

Of course, before you can take action against someone, you first have to locate them.  Good luck with that.

At the moment, Andre isn't listed on ASIC's banned or disqualified persons register, which leaves him free to register another company.  There are certainly a number of things people can do to fuck up his shit if he doesn't start being responsive soon.  It might also be worth doing a search of the National Personal Insolvency Index to see whether Andre has recently filed for bankruptcy/had bankruptcy action taken against him.

Hmmm. The phone number is a Brisbane number, not Gold Coast.

Search for "High Net Worth Property" comes up with

http://www.business.com.au/high-net-worth-property-pty-ltd-/


Obviously not updated since the move north, but it could be a start for investigations.

https://creditorwatch.com.au/express/asic/organisation/131700779

For $30, we might be able to get his birth date.

well, even if we dont have his personal details, the bank has :)
Does anyone still have his bank account details for his priavte account and received some money from it? If so - could you please post the details here?

I dig some digging around ...

ASIC Gazette advising of company deregistration: http://www.asic.gov.au/asic/pdflib.nsf/LookupByFileName/A081_11.pdf/$file/A081_11.pdf

Social Media:

Linked In: http://www.linkedin.com/in/gorkalitus
FB: https://www.hs.facebook.com/gorkalitus
Twitter: https://twitter.com/#!/gorkalitus
Google: https://plus.google.com/118402445473214777477/
YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/user/gorkalitus
Wordpress: http://gorkalitus.wordpress.com/

His common nickname, gorkalitus, used to have a website (also listed on his LinkedIn profile), gorkalitus.com. It's no longer there, but here's an old snapshot: http://web.archive.org/web/20110203093148/http://www.gorkalitus.com/

It also still has an FB page: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Gorkalitus/313640667659

He has a Yahoo Questions account (http://answers.yahoo.com/activity?show=V8DvbOgFaa), in which he has asked questions about his daughter being injured at day care and what to do about not being able to pay the mortgage on his house in Victoria!! (http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=AslIquUYUaC9sWZEU0pHK_nsy6IX;_ylv=3?qid=20110522042232AA5bkZu)  :o

There is a photo here (https://www.hs.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=106283996057507&set=a.103987846287122.7771.100000277203901&type=3&theater) on FB of a website mock up with an address matching the previously registered company address.

He made a tweet (https://twitter.com/#!/gorkalitus/status/85342350313918464) about a fan page for a Kiwi Food online store. (It links here: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Kiwi-Shack/115106271912363#.TgiI0Tx5Abg.twitter). It appears to be run by Andre's wife (https://www.hs.facebook.com/marieannyork?sk=info) at an address: Eagleby, Eagleby, QLD 4207. Phone number: (07)38076011. His wife also appears to work at Makarni Colour Studio, 16 Main St Beenleigh, which is close by Eagleby and has the same phone number as listed the Kiwi Store (https://www.hs.facebook.com/MakarniColourStudio).

This research is getting addictive ...

WOW man amazing!
Thanks for all the great research.

Can people grab screen grabs. I cant at the moment


Here is a picture of him on his facebook
http://www.hs.facebook.com/gorkalitus?sk=photos

Thanks. Tip welcome: 1TipMEDeqWT1VUmmhH3rmkVrkA4KYRk2C  ;)

I've also been looking into the procedures for complaints to the Office of Fair Trading and filing claims with QCAT. Claims to QCAT cost $95 for dispute amounts from $1,000 to $10,000. My amount is just over $1,000. I'm not sure if you can group claims, but the maximum claim they deal with is $25,000. Claims over $3,000 are referred to mediation first. To achieve economy of scale, I will point out again that I am willing to buy WBX debt. Contact me or look for my other thread on it for details.

Hats off to you brendio.

Great work. A generous tip will be on its way to you when I get home.

I was about to file a case at the office of fair trading: http://www.fairtrading.qld.gov.au/online-complaint-form.htm

Would it be better to file one at QCAT?

Can you point me to the details of buying WBX debt. I'm interested as I'm fairly busy, however I'm still happy to go ahead and file an independent claim, if I go down this route, happy to work with you. My claim amount is substantial.

The bank won't disclose those details over small claims stuff - it takes a pretty heavy duty court order for them to divulge information about their customers.  The account details would help with getting a point in time garnishee order against the bank account after obtaining judgement, but anyone with an ounce of sense would either close the account or leave no money in it.  It used to be possible to take a scattergun approach to garnishee orders and send them to the big 4 banks in the area where the person lived or worked but online banking makes it much harder to locate a bank account that way and you need to get the identifying information right anyway (you'd need DOB or TFN plus the right account name).

It should be possible to test whether the account is actually frozen by going to a branch and trying to make a small deposit to the account.  If it's actually frozen, it shouldn't be possible to deposit into the account.


Do both.  QCAT is Qld Fair Trading's small claims tribunal and you need to go through them to get a judgement against Andre which can then be used to pursue bankruptcy proceedings or take other recovery/enforcement action (different creditors can combine to force bankruptcy as long as the total owed exceeds $5000).  Fair Trading tries to mediate disputes and will investigate a business if they receive enough complaints about their unfair business practises - they may be able to find out what is really going on with WBX, but I wouldn't count on it.  What they may do is suggest a more appropriate agency for people to contact regarding WBX.

As Andre couldn't afford the mortgage payments on the Victorian house 11 months ago, I wouldn't hold out much hope of him having much in the way of assets which can be liquidated to satisfy any judgements or claims in bankruptcy against him.  I'm still not convinced that the other directors of HNWP are beyond reach.  Although the company has been de-registered, it doesn't appear to have been wound up and at least some clients of WBX may be entitled to some payment during the winding up process.  While the company probably had no assets at the time it was deregistered, the actions of the directors prior to the deregistration influence whether they have any personal liability for money owed by the company.

Andre's comments on the Kiwi Shack FB page make it clear that he's involved with the business too, not just his wife.

Do we have any evidence that High Net Worth Property Pty Ltd has/had anything to do with Andre?

I've not been able to find an official list of the company directors.

You'd be able to get the ASIC extract if you are prepared to fork out the fee for it.

Dooglus, are you able to provide records to substantiate account balances should this go to court? I have screenshots, but given that these can be photoshopped, it would be good to have more substantial evidence. Also, I am looking into buying other peoples debt so that it justifies the cost of pursuing legal action. I need to make sure that I can collect on debt obtain through voucher transfer subsequent to the halting of trading. Again, I am keeping screenshots, but the definite record of this is run by WBX.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=70147.0

I'm still unsure of my pricing. It may be crazily too high if the frozen bank account funds disappear and Andre has not other major assets, or it may be a bargain if the funds are released next week and we all get back the full amounts.

Good money after bad or not? Hmmm.

official statement:

i am selling my total WBX funds to brendio.

i have sent him a WBX code for a little over $497.33 and brendio has agreed via PM to send me 11 BTC for it.

edit: i've now received the 11 btc.

Confirmed.

The account listed on the website is:


Account title:   A R JENSEN
Bank:   CBA
Account number:   1249-6599
BSB:   062-000

confirmed your confirmation.

That's the Commbank Martin Place  in Sydney BSB number.  It's not the online services BSB, so the account may have been set up in person.


There's online stuff linking him to HNWP prior to the launch of WBX, but that doesn't guarantee he was still associated with HNWP when WBX opened though.  There's not even any evidence that HNWP ever operated as a company selling financial and property services.

I'm sorry to say that I no longer have admin access to the exchange.

I don't know when my account stopped being an admin account, but I just logged in to check that I could still see balances before telling you that I could, and found that I no longer can.

The most recent copy of the statement for all users I have is from "2:14:54pm 20-Mar", server time, and the most recent copy of user balances is from "2:13:48pm 20-Mar" server time.

So some time in the last month my account was downgraded from an admin account to a regular one.

Dooglus (Chris right?),

Assuming you still have FTP access to the server, you can get a copy of the SQL database which it runs off. This will have all the information you need. If you can view the files assuming you programmed them, look in the config or the database class for the username and password. Then run flat selects from all of the main tables into flat file dumps.

Happy to help with this as the code is all opensource and as you know I'm a developer.

As shown here, I was under the impression that I would be left with admin access until the BTC I'm holding were able to be returned to users.  I've not heard anything that contradicts this, but yet here's my account as it looks today.

http://i40.tinypic.com/rcltzr.png

An admin account would have a red "unfreeze" link in the header and would have the option of allowing me to see any or all user statements not just my own, like it did last time I saved a copy of it back in March:

http://i44.tinypic.com/2r5ujoh.png

It's Chris, yes.

As I wrote before, my login access to the exchange's web host was disabled some time ago, but I was left with admin access to the exchange webapp:


which Andre confirmed here:


I have dumps of the database content, the most recent of which is dated 5th March 2012.  After that I could no longer log in to the web host to get access to the database, but I could still view and save user balances and transaction statements using the admin interface of the website itself.

Thanks, Chris,

So I guess it would be good for those transferring debt to get a separate confirmation statement from the seller, as well as the voucher code.

A useful thing to do, if you have not done so, it log back into the site and print your entire profile and trading history.  I have these safely stored in pdf files covering 15 pages.  I would not like to see other people lose access to their information when (rather than if) the website is removed.

p.s. did a little search on Raetihi because it's a tiny town - Andre went to pre-school there around 1985-91. 
Also, my Commonwealth a/c didn't show anything useful on the corresponding Martin Place account.

https://twitter.com/#!/gorkalitus/status/21884519681 (https://twitter.com/#!/gorkalitus/status/21884519681) roughly gives us a birthday:

http://i41.tinypic.com/2wpmaf4.png

Given that Andre couldn't refinance the mortgage on his house because of dings on his credit, it might be worth pulling a credit report on him to get an idea of how much he owes other creditors and what action they've taken against him so far. 

I don't think can easily be done without Andre's consent:

I just got off the phone with QCAT. Debt claims to be heard by the court cannot be grouped. Each applicant needs to lodge their own claim. If the business is not registered, documents will be served on the individual. Otherwise, they are served to the registered business address.

QCAT application fees:

They can be grouped after judgement if you collectively want to force someone into bankruptcy though.  Andre doesn't seem to be registered as a sole trader (he's not required to be if he's trading under his own name).  As the last known address was the registered address for HWNP, I'm not sure whether service to that address would be regarded as valid as the company is no longer a legal entity and people are proposing to claim against Andre personally, not the company.

I really don't see this ending with anything other than insolvency proceedings.  WBX are unlikely to be Andre's only creditors and it's highly likely that other creditors will seek to obtain judgements and enforcement orders.  I believe that it's worth taking action against Andre even if there's little prospect of any financial return because doing so will restrict his ability to operate another business for a while and make him subject to penalties if he leaves the country without permission.


I know that at least one of the companies which does searches of the National Personal Insolvency Index offers a credit report for an additional fee.  They'll get you copies of all ASIC documents as well.  I'll try to track down which one does it.  As they're credit reporting agencies in their own right, they can obtain the information.

This place does it but it's not the one I was thinking of.  Obviously, it would be advantageous to know who the other directors were and their current credit worthiness.

http://www.credisearch.com.au/html/credit_reports.html

Here's another.

http://www.pacbis.com.au/businessreporting.html

Any ideas of the fees? Would it work out any cheaper than just getting the ASIC reports directly?

This is the one I was originally thinking of.  It's $41.90 for the ASIC documents plus a report on any credit defaults.  It's cheaper to obtain the ASIC documents yourself, but you won't be able to get a credit report without using one of the credit reporting services and some of them only cater to subscribed members and don't do one-off searches..

https://creditorwatch.com.au/express/asic/organisation/131700779

One you have the full names and dates of birth of the directors, it's possible to get other reports done.

how lovely... glad i'm out... coz i wouldn't even do that to an enemy.

Plenty of sketchy operators (and WBX was sketchy from the outset) are serial offenders.  I have no problem with the brakes being put on their ability to open new businesses for a while.  It's not in the interests of the Australian public that people whose businesses are de-registered and not properly wound up and who don't pay their creditors be free to simply open new businesses at will.

There's little point in people going to the trouble of obtaining judgements against Andre if they're not going to enforce those orders.

It's a few bucks, and I know someone who can do it for me - I'll hunt some details.

(also watching to see my case in NSW hit the web - as far as I know papers were filed last week)

perhaps, but in my mind restricting movement is a bit immoral without any proof of wrong-doing.

No proof?

oh, i haven't seen any. apologies if there has been some.

I dunno, I figured all the shouting and hand waving from defrauded users that want to chase Andre with pitchforks was enough.  ::)

yeah i figured that might be enough for some people, but i was talking about actual proof.

Date of birth and full name (two hits):

17038302   JENSEN   ANDRE RONALD TAWHIAO   21/08/1978     NEW ZEALAND   
18352632   JENSEN   ANDRE RONALD TAWHIAO   21/08/1978    RAETIHI NEW ZEALAND

I have also paid for the ASIC company extract so have several addresses (in Victoria) to cross-reference and have done a PPSR search on Mr Jensen.

Good work. Donation address?

?? donation address ??

LOL

Lol to you Patrick...

I'm guessing some of the info you've found and shared you had to pay for?

Yes - I paid for two things today - the ASIC search, and $4 for a PPSR search that turned up nothing.  Doing some other things today before I do some more tracking, and pin an address on the claim I'm going to make.  If I can get enough, I might be able to simply sell it to a collection agency, otherwise I'll be heading to (probably) Melbourne or maybe to the Gold Coast and the disputes tribunal.  By June I think my brother will be back in Brisbane, and sure he'd like an easy grand making a debt collection visit.

I think it's pretty clear (or should have been) that taking action against the company is incorrect - it's a personal activity.

Update: I decided during the weekend I would like another house.  Although I am unlikely to get it, Mr Jensen is unlikely to have it either.

As this is one of the few places where information is able to be exchanged, I provide the following:

I will be taking legal action against Andre Jensen.  This may range from simple debt collection, dealing with his bankers, ASIC (including financial services division), through to a simple bankruptcy proceedings.  One of the positive things about having money is being able to spend some in pursuit of some justice.

However, as this course of action is not available to all of the people that have money tied up with Mr Jensen (due to cost) if you wish to join the deal is 50/50.  i.e. you get back half of what you are owed, and the other half (if recovered) goes to offset costs.   You can pm me with basic details (an email account, and value currently owed).

What if you only recover 50% of what is owed?  Do you get it all, or is anything you get back split 50/50?

Sounds interesting. Let's discuss in detail but I'm most likely in.
On a seperate note: I was thinking about claiming internet fraud with the state police. All of you were talking about claiming to the trade authorities - why not just state police? I would say he scammed us, so its Internet fraus as well, isn't it? After all he was not a registered exchange with an exchange licence.

I should have been a little clearer on the 50/50 (sorry).  I am after the recovery of approximately $3,285 plus costs.  That would sit as #1 ranking as that's how it would work if I was running this solo.

If you add another $1000 to the value attempting to be recovered, and I am successful at obtaining that full amount, you get $500, and it scales back from that.  Certainly if I'm only able to get half of what I'm owed, it'll be unlikely there would be any other money for any of his other creditors either. 

(As a variation, if someone wanted to contribute directly to costs, then that would change their position in a distribution.  I think that would be fair.)

If I make a claim to the police, and they prosecute, my current view is that I'm unlikely to get any money out of that, but that's why I have legal advisers.

So, let's assume I add another $1000 into the claim and noone else joins. You get $4000 back. This would mean that there is an access of $715. I would get 50% of those $715 = $357.5.

On a seperate note regarding the cost: would it be possible to get an official (tax-deductable) bill for the costs?

If your funds were provided by an entity entitled to claim, or you wished the expenses to be billed to a tax registered entity, then yes (I don't see why not).  The tricky thing in that is that each case/circumstance is going to be slightly different.  Mine is fairly simple as I can show money flow between CBA accounts without any coin trading, so it's a simple cash debt that has not been repaid, so the absence of a written or signed contract is less of an issue.

As for recovery, it might be easier to cover costs first, and then pool all claims, but the basic idea was that if you don't or are not able to contribute to costs, then you could receive up to 50% of your losses back.

Y'all going to take this man to court?

Owing someone money is generally a civil matter and the remedy is seeking a judgement against them which can then be enforced through a number of different ways.

You can certainly make a report to Queensland Police Service, but fraud is a very specific criminal offence and it's a lot more complicated than failing to pay people you owe money.  Yes, WBX was operating without a licence but 1) that was disclosed to customers on the website and 2) the police are not the entity which deals with breaches of licensing requirements.  They are responsible for investigating fraud - including online fraud - but it's not clear that WBX's activities would meet the legal benchmarks for being classified as fraud.

If you believe that WBX was a scam from the start, then Scamwatch is the federal body with whom you should file a report (they're part of the ACCC).

https://www.scamwatch.gov.au/content/index.phtml/tag/reportascam/

Here's a brief summary of Qld law in relation to fraud.


http://www.australiancriminallawyers.com.au/web/page/QLD_Law_Fraud

If you believe that WBX constituted a financial or investment scam, then an ASIC report would also be appropriate.

https://www.moneysmart.gov.au/scams/report-a-scam

Who you report to really depends on what you believe happened.  Do you believe that Andre has misappropriated user funds for his own use or do you believe that he had a bad business model which was doomed to fail from the start?  Do you believe there are any assets which may be available to people owed money by WBX or not?  Do you believe that Andre could pay people but is simply choosing not to?  Intention is extremely relevant if you're going to start throwing around words like "fraud" and scam.

I have no intention of throwing words around, nor will a police complaint achieve the return of funds.  It is a civil matter, not a criminal one.  (However, Mr Jensen may have engaged in criminal activity, but I am not able to make that statement.)

I'm still in need of an address. Anybody have this? What is his wife's business address?

...aaaaaaaaand worldbitcoinexchange web site now down.   Hope you all archived your records.

And its back again. 

Wonder whats going on there...

I checked when you wrote that it was down, but it was still up for me.

Site news for this year is missing....
Come on Andre, what's going on?

The orderbook is completely empty too:
  https://www.worldbitcoinexchange.com/?page=orderbook (https://www.worldbitcoinexchange.com/?page=orderbook)

I think last time I looked, it wasn't.

Edit: my account still exists, but the "you are logged in, but need to become VERIFIED before you can withdraw or Deposit funds" at the top is new.  I used to be "VERIFIED".  So it's not that the database has been completely reset.

The info about it being connected to High Net Worth Property Pty Ltd also seems to have been removed as does the information referring to Andre and Chris and the reference to their location as being "Gold Coast".

And in the links down the right hand side, where it says "news what's new", etc., it's all bold.  It used to be that the "news" was bold and the "what's new" subtitle wasn't.

This is just weird.  What's going on?

The home which was the registered address of High Net Worth Property Pty Ltd prior to its move to the Gold Coast - almost certainly belonged to one of the directors and probably Andre - was sold in June last year.  

http://www.business.com.au/high-net-worth-property-pty-ltd-/

http://www.realestate.com.au/sold/in-badger+creek,+vic+3777/list-1

Hi All

I no longer have full control over the exchange site, a update on the recovery of all exchange member funds, recent correspondence with our banks and the banking ombudsman is the bank is entitled to hold all exchange funds as they were fraudulently taken from bank accounts across the country and deposited into my exchange account, the source of the fraud activity came from Germany a i can't tell you much more than that. 

This being said Chris has the only funds (assets) of the exchange, they will need to be returned to the exchange members.

Thanks Andre   

I will be online for the next hour to answer any questions

I can prove my funds were not fraudulently taken, and simply deposited with you (as you were operating as an individual and not as a company).  I have requested, and do so again here, for contact details with your lawyers or other advisers as you are reluctant to provide information directly.

You will also note I have issued you a notice requiring you to repay the Australian dollars that you hold, or I will  pass the debt to a collection agency as you are personally liable, and the funds involved are not related to bitcoin trading, so easily verifiable.

If you consider this hostile, it should be understandable that across this community there is a lot of money at stake, as I am sure you are aware.

Patrick

Hi PatricK


To be honest mate i have no money to pay you the scammers, banks have taken it all, please provide your lawyers contact details here and i will contact them unfortunately i can't afford to have lawyers represent me anymore.

Thanks Andre

Andre, when you want me to pay out the remaining bitcoins, please take down the site to prevent further trading of balances between users who have apparently been trading their WBX balances between themselves using "vouchers", then send me a final database dump so I know how much to pay everyone.

Since you revoked my admin account I've been unable to see user balances, so currently have no idea how much each person is owed.

I'll set up a claim site so users can log in with their OpenID and specify a bitcoin address for me to refund the coins to.

Thanks.

Hi All,

I would like to remind you all that i was advised by my lawyers(insert: when i had money) to reframe from making any comments in public, this is why i have kept silent until now i am very sorry and it was frustrating for me watching my personal details get posted by users here, some also have mentioned my family which Im not at all happy with you wouldn't like it if i posted your personal info here. ( remember I have your personal info)

Thanks Andre

So will you be able to provide a database dump so I can pay your users back a part of what they are owed?

Hi Chris

I have no control over the exchange site any more i do recall you doing a database dump when this all happened do you have those files?

Thanks Andre

I have those files.  They're out of date now.  People have since sold their balances debt to other users.

Who currently has control of the site?

OK, I thought you must have.  Just so you know, I have backups of the site from shortly before you locked me out.  As you know, the hosting company hasn't exactly had a good track record of looking after the server themselves, so I regularly made offsite backups.  That includes encrypted backups of the exchange's bitcoin wallet.  The wallet has a large keypool, so I will have access to any funds that are deposited into the exchange wallet for some time to come.  To properly minimise risk to the exchange I would advise you to transfer the remaining funds from the exchange wallet (less than 1 BTC I think) then start from scratch with a new wallet.

I also still have admin access to the WBX site, so can see client information.  Disable that by setting "is_admin" to 0 for my row in the users table:
  UPDATE users SET is_admin=0 WHERE uid=1001;
or use the web interface to the database.



Hi Chris,

You do have backups right?

Thanks Andre

I have a backup from before you locked me out.

I don't have any recent backups, since I no longer have access to the database server.

User balances have changed since my last backup.

Who currently has control of the site?  If you put me in touch with them, I can tell them how to get me the information I need to pay people back.

What I'm trying to work out is who I can contact to get information.  You say it's the bank and banking ombudsman, and refer to what your lawyer said, but then say it's out of your hands.  If the banks have taken "it all", how much, what's their process for the claim.  The wall and exclusion isn't helpful, therefore, there needs to be someone I can deal with (or have my lawyers deal with).

Again, in the absence of any better resolution, I can just throw this to a collection agency.

Patrick

Again post your lawyers details here so i can contact them.

Andre

I'd contact both the Qld and the Federal Financial Services Ombudsman.  They can at least investigate and confirm that the bank confiscated money from the account in question.  It's also possible that any residual funds in the account were transferred to one of the "unclaimed monies" funds by the bank.  This is what FPSs often do when an account is closed due to suspicious activity (places like PayPal and Technocash explicitly state in their ToS that they will do this).  The Ombudsman would be able to tell you if this is the case and which fund to contact (there are several).


If it's Intersango/Bitcoin Consultancy then they need to make that public.  Their deception regarding their stake in Bitcoinica has generated an enormous amount of ill-will and distrust.  While references to other parties (including Andre and Chris) have been removed from the WBX webiste, references to Intersango and Bitcoin Consultancy remain.  Right now, two businesses with which Bitcoin Consultancy and Intersango are associated have had their databases deleted recently and in both cases the presumed owners of those businesses no longer have operational control.  In both cases, the transfer of control was not disclosed until after it occurred.

You might want to contact Andre's lawyers before making any refunds and get something in writing from them authorising you to do so and outlining the return process (ie, whether everyone owed money will get a percentage of their account balance paid out as BTC or whether people whose accounts show a BTC balance will be paid out in full and those who had dollar balances will be SOL).  


I suspect people would like more information about how this came about and who had control of the database when it happened.

Hi Chris

Please use the data base you have as i have been advised the current database has been erased this happened last week.

Andre

I would prefer you were able to deal with me directly (and you know how to contact me either pm or email), and as my Sydney based lawyers are $375/hr I would prefer not chew through a few thousand dollars on that at this stage where it is unnecessary.

This stuff doesn't "just happen". I would recommend you be a bit more up front and honest about what the fuck is going on. Were you hacked? Is someone forcing you to withhold information? You have stated that you can no longer retain lawyers because they are costing too much, so I assume now that you may speak freely. If not, I think it would be a good idea to out the puppetmaster that is screwing you over as well as everyone else.

I deposited cash into your wbx account and have the receipt for that transaction. If all fraudulent activity was bank transfers then no one has the right to hold my money. There is no way my deposit would be considered fraudulent.  Who can I contact? This should be a straight forward and easy refund. You should at least enquire on my behalf as I do believe they should only be concerned about bank wire transfers!

If the matter has been reviewed by the Financial Services Ombudsman then that is who you need to contact.  You need to remember that the WBX bank account would have been hit twice - by the fraudster to fund transactions on his WBE account before the fraud was detected and then by the bank reversing the deposits.  Poor risk management protocols essentially meant that "your" money and that of other customers is what the fraudster used to conduct his or her transactions.

Hi Andre,

All of the personal information on you that was posted was already publicly available (as opposed to the personal info you have on us). If your website had the correct company and contact details, we would not have had to go digging. Could you please PM me your current business address (in Qld, not old one in Vic) for further correspondence on this matter.

I truly and deeply feel for the stress you are going through with this, but in my opinion the fact that you have been defrauded does not give you the right or excuse to defraud legitimate users of your exchange.

Regards.

Interesting that Andre claims that the database has been erased but also claims to have users' personal information.

I see, thanks for clearing that up. It's all a bit confusing for me.

Andre, I can still see my statement on your site.  This is proof that the database hasn't been deleted.  All the other users will also be able to log in and see their statements.  If the database was empty we'd not be seeing statement entries.

Please, get me a database backup and stop this nonsense.

That's very unlikely.  The Bitcoin Consultancy made the Intersango (version 1) code open source, and WBX used that source code.  Other than that, the Bitcoin Consultancy is in no way related to WBX as far as I know.

That's a good idea.

Andre, do you have any comment regarding this?  I read above that you no longer have lawyers, so I guess it's entirely up to you how you want me to refund the BTC to your customers.

I think your suggestion of using the outdated database backup is unworkable, since that would result in sending the wrong amounts out.

Hi There

I said i don't have full control of the site at no point did not say never had access to the data store. but thanks for your input.

Andre

No bitcoin consultancy dose not own WBX.

Would the last log on the statement help chris?

This is all i could get sorry

08:40pm 22-Feb-12   1559   Withdraw 21.4377 BTC      
11:22pm 22-Feb-12   1018   Create voucher: 1.00 AUD      
11:23pm 22-Feb-12   1018   Redeem voucher: 1.00 AUD      
09:29am 23-Feb-12   1440   Withdraw 100.0000 BTC      
12:24pm 23-Feb-12   1273   Withdraw 4.6568 BTC      
01:58pm 23-Feb-12   1273   Withdraw 12.0000 BTC      
08:09pm 23-Feb-12   1544   Withdraw 14.2607 BTC      
10:02pm 23-Feb-12   1505   Withdraw 28.2348 BTC      
10:32am 24-Feb-12   1018   Withdraw 50.0000 BTC      
10:46am 24-Feb-12   1294   Withdraw 40.0000 BTC      
11:25am 24-Feb-12   1440   Withdraw 35.4539 BTC      
06:06pm 25-Feb-12   1171   Withdraw 12.4598 BTC      
02:29pm 29-Feb-12   1429   Deposit 0.4100 BTC      
03:22pm 29-Feb-12   1126   Withdraw 40.4835 BTC      
02:42pm 05-Mar-12   1206   Withdraw 21.5360 BTC      
09:30pm 05-Mar-12   1300   Withdraw 42.5281 BTC      
01:45am 08-Mar-12   1364   Withdraw 100.0000 BTC      
10:45am 08-Mar-12   1429   Withdraw 0.5000 BTC      
10:46am 09-Mar-12   1364   Withdraw 100.0000 BTC      
10:17am 12-Mar-12   1364   Withdraw 100.0000 BTC      
05:07pm 13-Mar-12   1364   Withdraw 100.0000 BTC      
01:05pm 14-Mar-12   1364   Withdraw 62.9782 BTC      
10:09am 21-Mar-12   1018   Create voucher: 1.00 AUD         
10:10am 21-Mar-12   1018   Redeem voucher: 1.00 AUD         
11:43am 19-Apr-12   1006   Create voucher: 497.33 AUD         
11:48am 19-Apr-12   1018   Redeem voucher: 497.33 AUD   

Andre      

Say what?

First you comment that you cant afford having lawyers represent you then you post that your lawyer advised you to refrain from making comments?

Right thats why I'm commenting on stupid comments like this.

Andre

Ah I see, being a scammer gets to make you cocky right?

Bahahaha I hope someone actually goes through and take you to the cleaners, these activities is disease ridden filth.

The information was correct all along
[/quote]

I truly and deeply feel for the stress you are going through with this, but in my opinion the fact that you have been defrauded does not give you the right or excuse to defraud legitimate users of your exchange.

Regards.
[/quote]
We have both been defrauded, if i had the money to repay you i would but i don't please accept what chris is offering he holds whats left of WBX.

Understand

I suppose it's time for you to get a scammer tag.
One more thing, why are you still advertising your "exchange" in your signature?

I have already been taken to the cleaners, so i don't know what your going on about?? its people like you that make me want to leave this forum and not come back.....but everyone looses then, thats why I'm sticking around.

sorry to offend you i have now removed them

Andre

Where did I say I was offended?

I still think you should get a scammer tag.

What you dont understand is that if you operate a business and take a loss due to negligence/scammers then you dont simply come to the forum and try to be part of the users losing funds.

You are no better than the bailed out banks, they ran a profitable business and it meltdown then cried wanting people to also feel sorry for them.

No, plain and simple, you still owe people money and whatever you personally lost is none of their concern. You have an obligation to find money somewhere or liquidate legally else its well within their right to press charges wether you think its somehow unfair or not.

You are the holder of their money, you either take risk insurance in case of fraud or you dont and cover fraud yourself.

I did laugh at your comment about leaving the forum, thats exactly shakaru's last comments on this forum. I dont think your word means much either, if you want anyone here to actually believe you lost everything and didnt take the money/coins somehow yourself then provide statements to account holders showing verifiable proof that what you say is indeed true. Just because you state it doesnt make it true, and even less so with bitcoin related businesses.

Bitcoins will take forever to get taken seriously if we consistently feel sorry for the poor companies who got defraud/scammed or even self-incriminated themself. Every case of fraud/theft is somehow handled like a porcelin doll, enough with that.

That's a great start.  Thanks.  It looks like only one user sold their balance of around $500.

I expect you also have access to https://www.worldbitcoinexchange.com/?page=users

Can you visit that page then hit control-S to save it to a file and email me the result please?  That will list balances for users and give the totals for BTC and AUD owed.  Then I can cross-check with my most recent backup.

Thanks.

Chris.

watching

I think he's saying that he was at one point retaining lawyers, that the lawyers told him to keep quiet, and that he can no longer afford the lawyers.  There's no inconsistency there.

As long as he's refusing to provide contact details for them or himself then yes there is.

I'm not saying that anything he has said is true.  Just that "I used to have lawyers" isn't incompatible with "I don't have lawyers now".

Using the numbers that Andre recently provided, on top of my most recent backup shows that WBX should currently be holding
1,769.0417 BTC and 25,779.49 AUD.  If we assume a price of $5 AUD/BTC then that's a total of 1,769.0417 + 5,155.898 = 6,924.9397 BTC.

I have 1768 BTC (here: http://blockchain.info/address/1DodGYjF5LFoKg186jANZV9U8znXjagSzS) and according to Andre that is the sum total of the exchange's assets.  The other 1 BTC plus change was left in the 'hot' wallet and is presumably still on the server.  Ah - I have a backup of the server wallet.  I'll check what's in it.

[...]

It contained 0.9876932 BTC, which I have just sent to the above address.  The shortfall will be the result of the exchange paying Bitcoin transaction fees.

So I have access to 1768.9876932 BTC out of 6924.9397 BTC.  That's 25.545%.

That number will change based on what AUD/BTC rate is used, but it looks like users will end up getting around 26% of what they are owed.

I have included the commission collected by the site in the assets of the exchange.  I don't know what should happen to that.  Options:

* Andre gets 100% of the commission, and the users get what's left after commission
* Andre gets none of the commission - it goes towards reimbursing the users
* Andre gets 26%, just like everyone else
* something else

I've not yet received a copy of the user balances page from Andre which would confirm the above.

Disclosure: I have no funds tied up at WBX, and so have no financial interest in how this is done.

Comments?

I just noticed another change to the WBX site:

http://i49.tinypic.com/2j3kths.png

So it's possible to get verified to withdraw without providing ID so long as I send you $249?  Is this a loophole in the KYC(utby) regulations?

Who has control of the site now?  Could it be that they are planning to relaunch?

I don't see why else anyone would be changing the site now that it has been closed down.

It would really be a good idea to shut the site down fully before I start paying your customers back.  Because at the moment it is still possible for them to exchange balances with each other without me being able to see that they are doing it.  Or at least take a final copy of the 'users' page and then wipe the database so they don't have balances to trade, if that's not possible.  And it really would seem to be best to wait for the current mess to be cleared up before starting out on a new one, don't you think?

Actually, that is not good enough - you are liable and held funds and have a duty to make good.  Even if Chris's suggestion is implemented, you don't get to simply walk away without making good the losses of the people that have placed trust and funds with you.

Nope, you can't get around Australia's KYC/AML/CTF laws by paying a fee.  While they could technically charge to expedite processing of ID documents, they're still required to ID their customers properly - a receipt number for a cash deposit alone puts them in very dangerous legal territory.  Of course there is no information about who is now operating WBX (why change the website if it isn't going to relaunch) or any guarantee it's being operated by someone in Australia.  There are also laws which make operating an insolvent business an offence.

Are the bank account details still the same as before Chris?

Chris, make sure you get written authority from Andre to distribute the Bitcoins you have in your possession and written instructions about how they're to be distributed.  The legal responsibility for any decision to use Peter's money to pay Paul should rest firmly on Andre's shoulders.

People should also be aware that in the absence of formal insolvency, they can't be forced to accept 26% of the amount they're owed and that accepting a partial payment at this time does not bar them from pursuing recovery of the remainder.

I thought not.  My question was kind of rhetorical.


Nope.  But the account name is "WBX".  Looks like a work in progress:

http://i46.tinypic.com/1623ew4.png


That makes sense.  I was certainly going to wait for his agreement to my proposed terms here.  I don't know what effective difference it would make to have it on a piece of paper with a signature on it, when I've no idea what Andre's signature looks like.  I don't even know if the person running WBX was really called Andre, or whether that's just the name of the director of a company he decided to use the name of.  This forum is probably the most secure way I have of communicating with him, since at least here he has to log in to post.  Perhaps having it on paper makes a legal difference.

Andre, please can you read my proposal re. returning the exchange assets and either agree or propose changes?  I'd still like a copy of the 'Users' page from WBX, and for the WBX site to be taken down or cleared out to prevent further balance trading on it.

Andre, if you still have a house,car and some financial aid then you are still in a position to pay back every single cent/bitcent that you had in your posession for legit clients.

Simply stating you cant pay since you were scammed is bullshit, then sell your car or morgage your house or whatever as long as you pay back what you owe(currently stole) from the legit users.

Its as simple as that, you lose their money then you lose your property.

Just coming back to this, managing to lose $25,779?! That must have been pretty damn obvious well before you pulled the plug of people's accounts.

(observation - my account now tells me I have a zero balance)

What I find amusing is how he managed to lose the money of the non-scamming legit users. Andre, please enlighten us how a bank can hold onto legit deposits ? Be honest, you started to live of the money and when people started to scam you there wasnt enough money left for the legit deposits? Correct?

Thats assuming you didnt just use the scamming argument to try and wriggle your way out of this.

Provide your clients with police reports of theft/scam/stolen money reported by the bank.(yes if the bank seized the money they have to file it with the police unless you live in some backwash lawless country)

Please note that the numbers I posted are based on my most recent backup, and the statement entries that Andre pasted in this thread.  It may be that he honoured AUD withdrawals which I don't know about, in which case the outstanding dollar balance will be less than I posted.

I have requested the information I need several times now, but so far it hasn't been forthcoming.

It's interesting that Andre hasn't chosen the route of bankruptcy or a personal insolvency agreement, both of which would limit his liability to pay back creditors.  I suspect it's less an "honour" thing (after all, he's not making any promises that he'll attempt to pay back the remaining balances in the future but pretty much saying "26% is all you're going to get) and more to do with having his financial affairs subjected to scrutiny and the restrictions which would be placed on his ability to operate another business and to travel overseas in the short-term future.  

The current insolvency income thresholds are quite generous - a person with no dependants can have after tax income of ~$917 per week before they are required to make payments to their creditors.  The thresholds are higher for those with dependants and non-taxable income is excluded from the calculations.  There are also thresholds for assets and some types of assets are protected.


I'm aware of at least one way that the bank account could be emptied of legitimate user funds due to fraudulent deposits (there are others, and many involve multiple deposits and transfers using different identities but the basic strategy is the same).  Let's say there's $10,000 in legitimate user funds sitting in the account.  Fraudster deposits $5,000 and WBX allows him to trade to the value of $5,000 before those funds are properly cleared (so it's the legitimate money in the account which is used for his trades).  Bank then detects the deposits as fraudulent and reverses them - which leaves no legitimate funds remaining in the account.  By the time the fraud is detected, the legitimate funds have already been laundered in a series of irreversible transactions.  The bank isn't "holding onto legitimate funds" because there are no longer any legitimate funds in the account.  Many Bitcoin businesses do allow their customers to trade using deposits which haven't been fully cleared - it's an inherently risky thing to do so if you're going to allow it you need sophisticated risk management processes.

Andre claims that this incident has been investigated by the Financial Ombudsman Service.  There should be no problem with him giving people the reference numbers which allow them to contact the FOS office and find out whether the bank transferred any legitimate funds in the account to one of the unclaimed monies funds (this is exactly what services like PayPal and Technocash do when an account is closed due to fraudulent activity).  Of course it's not unreasonable to assume that funds were being co-mingled and that user deposits were not being quarantined from the operational funds of the business or Andre's personal funds.  A fee-free model was clearly never going to be sustainable and it's likely that the business was operating at a loss prior to the claimed fraud.

Unlikely - I was having enormous trouble getting money out and if it had been $500/day like it should have been, I might now simply be an interested bystander.  From discussion in this thread, it only takes three or four people to get to half of that total.

Andre still has the option of making a payment arrangement to cover his debts, and I still have debt collection services at my disposal.  One way keeps people happy, the other will screw up his life more than mine.

So the theft with illegal money is again due to his own incompentence. If he allows to clear funds that isnt cleared in his bank account he chose to practice a risky business. Again the problem I see is that he seems to just try and pass the buck to his clients and his reasoning seems like he thinks its the proper way to do things.

I'm pretty sure that all of the major exchanges have admitted to being hit by similar frauds at some point (MtGox, TradeHill and CryptoXchange have all admitted being hit by similar frauds) - some of them have been able to cover the losses and some haven't.  But yes, it's a known risk and it's one which should absolutely be taken into account when deciding how soon after depositing you will allow your users to trade.  You also need a process for flagging high risk transactions and not letting high risk account trade until those transactions have been investigated and it's possible that WBX didn't really have that in any meaningful sense.

Given the relatively small amount of money owed to WBX customers, it's disappointing that Andre is not making an offer to repay the shortfall over time.  Of course it's possible that he owes money elsewhere as well and that paying back WBX customers wouldn't make a substantial dent in what he owes (he could also be avoiding making such an offer because he's expecting legal action in respect of other matters which would make giving WBX customers priority for payment inadvisable).

It's probably worth reminding people what Andre posted only a couple of weeks before WBX announced freezing the exchange.


https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=37079.msg713074#msg713074

The whole post is probably worth quoting:


Were details of the investigation ever made public?

I'm not sure whether they were separate incidents relating to different banks, but Andre stated in this thread that he was unable to give details while the investigation was in progress due to legal reasons.  It sounds like the investigation is now complete.  While the banks may still refuse to divulge any details to WBX customers, if the Financial Ombudsman truly did review the case then their office should be able to confirm the basic details and it would certainly be in Andre's interests to facilitate communication between his customers and the Ombudsman.  Andre could also provide the contact details of any law enforcement officers who worked on the investigation.

Someone in Australia must follow up on this, if it didnt happen then I can assure you that everything Andre said was all simply to stall users from making more noise early on and no one should trust even one word coming out of Andre's mouth.

It probably needs to be someone who actually has funds tied up with WBX.

I would strongly suggest that people don't accept Andre's word for anything at this point.  He's been extremely reticent to disclose useful information and his reluctance to say who now controls the WBX website is very suspicious.  I certainly wouldn't take his word that it's not someone who was previously associated with WBX and/or High Net Worth Property Pty Ltd and I wouldn't take his word that he has no income or assets which could be used to repay WBX customers.  I wouldn't trust any such claims unless they are verified by either a court or an insolvency trustee.

It may well be worth someone who is owed a significant amount paying for a skip trace given Andre's refusal to provide an address for the service of legal claims.  Some local companies provide this service on a "no locate, no fee" basis.

I received a private message:


I don't know if that 1500 AUD is just the extra that's owed to one customer, or whether that's the total, but if true, then that will reduce the 25.5% even further.  Also, it may be that the 1500 AUD withdrawal was left in a 'pending' state, in which case it will have been included in the amount I wrote here earlier, since I cancelled all pending withdrawals in my backup copy of the database, causing the pending withdrawals to be added back to the account balances.

Andre: do you have a complete list of the exchange's liabilities?  I was assuming that the outstanding customer account balances was everything, but apparently that's not true.

And please address my other recent questions to you in this thread.

I suspect he has gone again.  I have not heard anything via my lawyers despite his asking for contact details (and my providing them), and I don't think he is interested in providing any answers to some quite reasonable questions, let alone meeting any of his obligations. 

That leaves me in an awkward position.

I have the remaining Bitcoin assets of the exchange, but neither the authority nor the necessary information to distribute them to their rightful owners.

i wouldn't rush it. you don't want to be in a situation where you've distributed funds and then find out 3 months later that it was done incorrectly.

Thank you payb.tc, that is a very sensible comment.

In other liquidations, there can be a liquidator appointed, and that can be from the business or from the creditors.  A file of creditor claims would be made, and paid on.
For now, I'm comfortable with Chris just holding onto things.  If he is agreeable, we could provide evidence of claims over the next three months (say to 1 August) and if nothing else happens before then, he would distribute on that basis. 

I would even be comfortable contributing some coins to him for his efforts/troubles.
(does the database scrape you have include client contact details?)

I'm OK to keep holding the coins for now.  I've published the address they're at, a couple of times now, so you can see they're still there.  I can provide a signature proving that I have control of the private key if anyone would find that useful.

The exchange never asked for contact details other than an OpenID string and scans of ID documents, and so I have no way of contacting all the exchange users.  Andre probably has emails from lots of users, but I was only forwarded the ones that he needed my technical assistance with.  A few users have contacted me privately after seeing my email address in the 'news' section of the site, but there are many users I have no contact details for at all.

i'm not familiar with OpenID... what does an "OpenID string" look like? is it just random characters, like a hash?

It depends which OpenID provider you use, but it always looks like a URL.

If you use https://www.myopenid.com/ as WBX recommends you to, your OpenID string is:
  http://xxx.myopenid.com/
where xxx is the username you picked when you signed up for your myopenid account.

If instead you click the 'google' or 'yahoo' links, you get an ugly OpenID string containing a hash.  I've found no way of getting from the hash to the real google account name; there probably is no way to do it.  Examples:
  https://www.google.com/accounts/o8/id?id=AItOawnltTjfGlqy1qsZr-pG-EdT46q4r0rfS0g
  https://me.yahoo.com/a/C9b5H60e24bhpJpUve31fJIsCQpQkcqR#232f1

Edit: I believe WBX shows you your own OpenID string towards the top of your profile page.

From memory, when you sign in with OpenID (even if you do it through Google or another service) it asks you whether you want to share your email and your username for that service with the site you're signing into.  It's possible that at least some users elected to do this and so they might be contactable in a roundabout way if that information can be retrieved.

I looked into that at the time.  It turned out that I had the option in the code of either:

* only accepting users who check the "let them see my email address" box, or
* never getting email information from any user

I couldn't find a way of allowing users to decide whether to send their email or not, and still having them be able to register even if they decided not to share their email address.  So it ended up just not asking for the email address.

I think you'll find that if a site that uses OpenID ever has the "share email?" option and you don't check it, then your sign-up attempt will fail.

There's no field in the WBX database for email addresses either.

That was mine, yes. Actually it is additional ~1900 AUD that Andre still owes me. Please find below the original mail from him. I can also forward the e-mail to dooglus (for the header or whatsoever) please give me a shout and I will do so, potentially also witht he complete discussion with Andre.
Attached his mail:

Couple of comments:

1) If he owes you an extra 1900 AUD alone, who knows how much extra he owes to all his other customers.  I was naively thinking that if the database showed a payment had been made, then the payment had been made.  Sounds like that's not the case.

2) Unless Andre steps up with a full list of liabilities, what's to stop anyone from claiming they are owed a similar amount?  I'm not at all saying your claims aren't honest, but the next guy's might not be.

Andre really needs to make the total level of liabilities be known, else there's no way to fairly distribute the remaining BTC.

UNfortunately true. If Andre is not stepping up I only see the possibility to set a deadline until where people have to hand in claims. If no claims were handed in we would have to assume tehre is nothing else.

I thought about this one, as well. There is no easy way for me to proove this. I see two possibilities: 1) I can forward you the complete mail correspondence with Andre incl. headers
2) I can prove on my account that the money never arrived. I'm not sure whether the Database stored to which account a payment should have been gone. if it's the case, it is easy to prove. If not, I can only show, that all payments went always to the same account, except for those mentioned above.

How many customers need to be paid out Chris?  If it's substantially more than the number who've contacted you through this thread, then maybe there needs to be a thread on reddit or some other places so customers who don't frequent here have some idea of what's going on.

I'm also comfortable with Chris managing the resolve of this. I've also offered a donation for his continued efforts in the resolve of this. Much less can be said for Andre's efforts in both managing this situation to resolution and providing clear updates.

The problem with this is that it's quite possible there are customers who don't know about this thread.  I have no way of communicating with them.  I don't have contact details for most WBX customers.


I do have all the withdrawal request details, so that could work.

85 accounts have more than 0.1 BTC or 0.5 AUD
65 accounts have more than 1 BTC or 5 AUD.
50 accounts have more than 10 BTC or 50 AUD.
13 accounts have more than 100 BTC or 500 AUD.

I've not counted the participants in this thread, but would guess it's around 15 or 20 at most.

It's a shame that Andre has somehow lost control of his website.  That would be the perfect place to announce what's going on.

I know when I started trading WBX it was a pretty small group, but it is only 85 that's still pretty small.  Also, the total below 10BTC/AUD50 is 35 accounts and would be a pretty small proportion of the total funds to deal with.  (One of the businesses I worked with last year we dealt to all the small accounts first, simply to make the more serious accounts easier to deal with without the noise of very small overdue ones.  It was an efficiency thing.)

It's a real shame Andre didn't handle this better from the outset.  Given the relatively small total amount involved, it might have been possible to put together a rescue package which ensured users had most of their funds returned and Andre was able to walk away from WBX with no further legal liability.

Andre was offered that option but chose not to respond to it.

I suspected that might have been the case.  Good to have it confirmed, though.

I believe a number of people offered to help offer assistance or even take over the exchange. I know that for a fact as I was one of them.

I received a PM from a WBX user:


I hadn't thought of these kinds of liabilities.  So not only to we have BTC and AUD balances on the site, we also have withdrawals that were never really paid out, and now deposits which were never credited to the WBX accounts.

I've no idea how it's possible to get an idea of the total liabilities when I don't have any handle on the total amount of unpaid withdrawals or uncredited deposits.

Andre, you really need to step up and provide this information at the very least.

Chris, it might be worth you making contact with ITSA for advice on how to proceed.  Explain to them that you have control over the only known assets of an insolvent sole trader although you were not involved in operating the business itself, that adequate business records for establishing the amounts owed do not exist and that you do not feel comfortable making any disbursements without appropriate authorisation.  Make sure you explain that you have no reliable means of contacting those who may be owed money.

They have a toll-free number which some overseas callers can use.

http://www.itsa.gov.au/dir228/itsaweb.nsf/docindex/Contacts-%3EContact%20us#overseas

You can also make an email enquiry.

info@itsa.gov.au

It's possible that they may not be able to assist you, but even a "can't help" from them establishes that you tried to seek appropriate guidance on how to proceed.

get this "can't help" in writing.

Yep.  While I don't think Andre would have a hope in hell of shifting legal liability to Chris if refunds were made in a manner not consistent with legal requirements, I'd still like to see Chris as protected as possible regarding the disbursement process without him having to shell out for legal advice.

yeah, completely agree. If I ever get some money back, I'll definitely donate a fair share of it to Chris for his efforts. I still feel somehow troubled by the amount of work/issues/trouble he now has, only because he programmed for a (seemingly) guy who seems to have no interest whatsoever to treat his customers fair.
Especially taken into account that some people (e.g. Seal) offered to take over the exchange, others offered legal help (e.g. myself) but not a single answer to those offers...

You guys can talk about doing something all you want, and point fingers and scream and yell too, but I predict that next year at this time the same exact shit will still be happening, and Andre will still be coming back every few months to post an insincere update. Just like he has been doing recently, just posting often enough to make people think he cares.

I'll ask again: why doesn't Andre have a scammer tag under his name?

Apparently, those are only for repeat offenders or those that may be likely to do the same again. At least according to the administration here, from what I understand. I guess that goes to show why quite a large number of scammers don't get tagged.

Excellent. So if I vanish for a month do I also get the tag removed automatically like a boss ???

Loving the hypocrisy on this here forum mates ...

Who the hell made the assessment that he's not likely to do it again?

No idea. I made that statement based a wild guess, since the actual policy doesn't exist as far as I know in writing. As far as we can see here, he appears to have disappeared. I'd guess that if he popped up somewhere else with the intent to run another business, he would get the label, but it's hard to tell when existing applications are so inconsistent.

Andre's opened a new business.  He's now "CEO" at Progressive Security Services Pty Ltd.

Here's the ASIC details.

https://connectonline.asic.gov.au/RegistrySearch/faces/adf.task-flow?adf.tfId=panelSearch&adf.tfDoc=/taskflows/panelSearch.xml&searchText=progressive%20security%20services&searchType=OrgAndBusNm

Note that the company was registered before the deregistration of High Net Worth Property Pty Ltd and before the collapse of WBX.  Andre is a director of the new company.

http://www.mysecurity.com.au/company/Progressive%20Security%20Services%20PTY%20LTD/609.html



For those wanting to serve legal papers, the business address is helpfully listed in the White Pages.

Mobile Service
208 Herses Rd
Eagleby QLD 4207

It's a residential property which was bought for $235,000 on 15/08/2011.  I'll see if I can track down who the buyers were.

It goes without saying that if Andre has taken the route of personal insolvency in order to become judgement-proof in respect of WBX, then he is prohibited from acting as a director of a company while bankrupt.

The company is offering on-line security certification, among other things.

More info here.

http://an6102.wix.com/progressivesecurity#!about (http://an6102.wix.com/progressivesecurity#!about)

Some Google bombing might be in order here in order to make potential customers of the new business aware of Andre's track record.

Good on him.  >:( Just like I predicted, scammers scamming again and again. :-\

I wonder if some scam for a living and if you can make a decent $$$ that way :D

The security courses they're offering come at over $600 a pop, so if they can suck people in with their "premier security service" and "high profile clients" bullshit, then it's certainly possible to rake in some dollars - especially seeing they're offering online courses.  

Somewhat ironically, security licences (I checked - their licence is valid until December this year) in Queensland are issued by the Office of Fair Trading - the same government body which investigates scams and fraud.

So much fail on that site, spelling errors all over the place and built with WIX? Seriously?

Unfortunately if they are anything like the equivalent Office of Fair Trading in Victoria you'll likely get no help from them at all (they basically don't take the consumers side but instead are on the side of the businesses).

They probably can't help directly beyond logging complaints and informing people about their legal options at the moment.  It's definitely worth those who believe that WBX was operating as a Ponzi scheme lodging a complaint.  People who have a history of failed businesses also tend to come under closer scrutiny, so it's worth getting the WBX debacle put on record for the future.

This morning I accidentally spent a little of the WBX funds I'm holding.  I replaced the funds as soon as I noticed.

See http://blockexplorer.com/address/1DodGYjF5LFoKg186jANZV9U8znXjagSzS for details.

It appears nobody noticed my slip-up, but I thought I should mention it anyway.

Just as a quick update, I've just finished a lengthy call on another matter with my lawyer in Sydney (another $200), and we finished up quickly discussing Andre.  Some time ago, Andre asked me to provide details so his lawyer could talk to my lawyer.  As expected, that was simple bullshit.

Not real news, but for interest.

Did your lawyer talk to him or did you just give your lawyer's details to Andre via his current contact methods?

Also not real news, but I noticed yesterday that I am no longer Andre's "buddy" on google talk.

I've apparently not seen him online for 59 days, so I guess that's roughly how long ago I stopped being authorised to see his online status:




https://i.imgur.com/GgBI0.png

His forum profile says "May 26, 2012, 03:45:57 AM".  That's about 50 days ago.

On a positive note, the BTC Chris is holding have increased in value so if they were to be liquidated and distributed now, people would receive a greater amount than they would have a few months back.

unless a few months back they were able to invest them at 7% per week.

Any progress on the address check? I'm in the process of seeking advice to serve legal papers.

I have the address of Andre's new business.

Progressive Security Services Pty Ltd
208 Herses Rd
Eagleby QLD 4207

I think he's running it from his home.

Do you have an email address for him?  He's not replying to any of the ones I have.

Wow, what a hovel of a place. If someone wanted to, they might be able to social engineer some info out of the business that has the sign out front in the picture. However the image is from 2010 so it may not be the same owner/renter.

https://i.imgur.com/qIdTZl.jpg

It was sold in August last year.

http://www.onthehouse.com.au/buy/property/50263142?PageNr=1

The mobile number listed for Progressive Security is listed in the white pages as that address and the address is also given as the business address of Progressive Security on one of the websites I found.  Andre is a director of Progressive Security so any legal notices served to that address will be classed as being served, whether or not that is his home.

It's like a drug!

After awhile, you start seeing things. Like how I found this post while Google-searching for wild mustangs in Montana.  ;D

~Cackling Bear~

Does someone with a reddit account want to let this guy know what's going on.

http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/x4h2o/has_anyone_had_any_dealings_with/

Thanks for pointing that out.  I don't often look at reddit.

I posted the following there, pointing him to this thread:

Anybody made any more progress on this one?  is it time to call it yet and just divide up the BTC ?

I have a suggestion. Given the appreciation in value of BTC. If the current holdings are liquidated at current price, can everybody be paid back at the rate/price it was when WBX stopped trading?

I didn't get a useful response from the agency I contacted last month, so checking an alternative.

On the price appreciation, that sounds nice for those out of pocket $$, but those out BTC might be less happy.  I don't think there was ever a comprehensive list of creditors available either.  Given six months has passed, some pro-rating payment might be easiest to put the whole thing to rest.

I did consider that Patrick, however the opposite would be true if the value of BTC went down since then. Having through about it carefully, repayment amounts for the purpose of paying back customers should be calculated as of the rates at the time WBX was shut down.

Happy to hear recommendations though. I agree that something should be done given the time that has passed.

Has anyone made progress from a legal front?

Dooglus, whats your stance?

Yes, the opposite would be true - people tend to look at self interest, and if 1700BTC or what ever it is is was worth only $1700, the BTC holders would be pissed off and the $$ holders out of luck.  (hmm, nice asymmetry)

Anyway, I'm still looking at recovery although my progress is slow - but that only addresses one person, and not the actual number of WBX scammed people.  Andre should have some shit land on his doorstep for this mess, but certainly there are many people involved.  It have been six months (or so/or nearly), so some division seems sensible.

either way, it's messy - if I ended up with 1/2 of what I was owed, I'd be content 

Hey Patrick, how are things going on your end? Are you taking the legal route?

Dooglus - any decision as to whats going to happen with the BTC you are holding?

My stance:

* I'd like to get payments made ASAP
* I don't have a full list of creditors, so don't know what percentage I should be paying everyone
* Andre is ignoring (or not getting) my email
* I am not a lawyer, and don't know what I am allowed or required to do with the funds I'm holding.

I don't know how to proceed from there.  I still have the 1800-ish BTC safe and sound.

As for what rate to use when paying out, I have been thinking about that.  Here's a simple example to try to make the picture clearer:

Suppose there are 1 customers.  A has $1 in his accounf and B has 1 BTC.  At the time trading stops the price is $1/BTC.  The $ goes missing but we have the 1 BTC still.  Then the price goes up to $10/BTC before we pay out.  I see two cases, X and Y:

(X): If we pay out using the old $1/BTC price, total debt = $1 + $1 = $2, we pay out 50%.
A gets 0.5 BTC = $5 and B get 0.5 BTC.

(Y): If we pay out using the new$10/BTC price, total debt = $1 + $10 = $11, we pay out 90.9%.
A gets 0.091 BTC = $0.90, B gets 0.909 BTC.

In X, where we use the old price, the dollar holders end up with more than they were owed, while the BTC holders end up with less.
In Y, using the new higher price, everyone gets the same fraction of what they were owed.

Y looks like the fairer case to me.  What does anyone else think?  Can someone make a case for dollar holders to be making a profit on the dollars they were holding when the price of BTC goes up?  Maybe I'm missing something.

Quick update - I contacted an organisation that claimed to debt collection, but really they were more interested in charging for legal letters.  They didn't respond particularly usefully with any real information.  Andre never contacted my lawyers - they were waiting for his call.




Commenting on Dooglus's proposal, I don't see why a dollar-holder should be making a profit, option "Y" (and I'm in the dollar holding category).

As for what to do next, from a legal standpoint, we've had six months pass, and have some information of creditors.  Creditors are entitled to appoint a liquidator, and as Andre refuses to communicate, it is reasonable for as complete a list as possible be compiled and pay on that.  In the real world, requesting creditors to submit claims sometimes results in some missing out and I expect something similar might happen here.

Given the time that has passed, my proposal to move things forward are as follows:

1. We appoint a creditor to manage this process
2. We set up a list whereby creditors can submit claims
3. This list is held open for an agreed period eg. 2 months or so
4. Claims are reconciled with the most recent backup Dooglus holds (where reasonably possible - I understand there has been some sale of debt and the backup isn't the very latest, I believe a reasonably accurate job can be made)
5. Payments are made following the claim period.


Acknowledged, some people may miss out however in the real world, some creditors will have already written the loss off given the period that has passed. Other people simply will not care as their loss may be nominal.

Dooglus, to repeat a point that PatrickHarnett made in an earlier post, option Y wouldn't look as fair if the price of BTC dropped. The increase in price makes option Y look fair today however if the price dropped, option X would look equally as fair.

My recommendation combines both of option X and option Y. After the creditor picks a final payout date. We take the price of BTC on that given (agreed) day and:

(Z): We pay out on an averaged price basis. ie. Take the price of BTC when trading stopped. Take the current price and average the two. Use this averaged price to calculate payments using the same method as above.

This will not bias cash OR btc holders and losses will be equal for all parties. (regardless of if the price moves above/below/ends up the same as before). Happy to hear feedback on this one.

I was in a hurry yesterday when I posted.  There are more options, including the one Seal proposed.  He suggested converting BTC into AUD at the current price, but allocating it to creditors at the old price.  Let's call that option Z.

In Z, we sell the 1 BTC for the new price of $10, but use the old price to calculate the total debt ($1 + $1 = $2).  So we can pay everyone out 500% of what they're owed: A gets $5 and B gets $5.  Actually that seems to be exactly the same as (X) above, except that everyone is paid out in dollars, not bitcoins.

From a practical point of view, I'd rather pay out in bitcoins.  Then I don't have to work out how to make international bank transfers, etc.  Paying Bitcoins is much easier.

I agree with Patrick that (Y) seems to be the fairest option.

I suspect that if put up a claims page, some percentage of accounts will remain unclaimed.  I have no way of contacting account holders; WBX never collected email address (although I expect Andre has a significant number of emails from disgruntled customers in his inbox).  It seems likely that the amounts in unclaimed accounts could offset any new creditors which come to light.  But that's just a guess; I have no way of knowing for sure how many customers made deposits which never got further than Andre's bank account, and never touched the WBX database at all.

Apologies dooglus, I think I may have confused you with an earlier suggestion in an older post (which i see now is heavily biased towards option X). Let me re-explain my option z which should take the middleground of X and Y:

(Z): Pay out using an averaged price of the old price and current ($1+$10)/2 = $5.5/BTC, total debt = $1 + $5.5 = $6.5, A gets 0.154 BTC, B gets 0.846 BTC.

Fairer?

p.s. Agreed, paying back using BTC makes sense.

Well, A gets 0.154 BTC which is $1.54, but he was only owed $1.00, so he's made a profit on the deal which doesn't seem right.  I don't see why anyone would be entitled to get more than 100% of what they're owed, unless everyone does.

I guess at the end of the day it doesn't matter what "seems right", it matters what's legal.  There must be laws about what to do in this situation.  Maybe not about bitcoin, but what if it was gold, or some other commodity.

I was reading the BitFloor thread yesterday.  The situation there is the exact opposite - the BTC are missing, but the dollars are whole.  There's lots of argument there.  The people with dollars on deposit argue that they don't want their dollars being used to reimburse the BTC holders, whereas the BTC holders argue that if the company is insolvent then its assets need to be distributed proportionally to all creditors.  Others say that it would be illegal to distribute any assets at all without bringing in a liquidator, and are telling Roman that he must seek legal advice before doing anything.

In the WBX situation it's more complicated I think.  I don't know if there was ever a company registered that owned the exchange, or if it was all a scam from the beginning.  Even if WBX was owned by High Net Worth, it seems the company registration lapsed while the exchange was still operating, and so some claim that Andre is personally liable for the debts.

So do I need to speak to an Australian lawyer about how to proceed?  I don't want to spend the little remaining funds on legal expenses, but also don't want to do the wrong thing and end up in legal trouble as a result.

I'd just contact ITSA for advice.  There's a toll-free number residents of some countries can use or you could email them if you want stuff in writing.

http://www.itsa.gov.au/dir228/itsaweb.nsf/docindex/contacts-%3Econtact%20us

I'm not convinced that the other directors of HNWP aren't just as liable as Andre, but that's only an issue if people are lodging lawsuits.  

Thanks.  I'll do that and report back here.

Incidentally, do we have any proof that we were really dealing with Andre or High Net Worth Property and not just an anonymous Internet scammer using those identities?

He's promoted WBE on his Facebook and that ties to his past and present real life activity.  If the bank account he was using was in his name, it was established by someone with sufficient ID to convince the bank they were Andre.  Likewise any business accounts that were used - Australian banks require documentation.

I know Patrick pulled the ASIC records related to High Net Worth Property.  He didn't release information about the other directors, but it would be interesting to see if they're people connected with Progressive Security or on his various social networks.

Fair point!

And I'd rather this be settled without expensive fees being taken out by lawyers. I've already consulted one who has told me for claims any less than $40k, its simply not worth it as the costs will outweigh the potential return. Official letters have to be sent to serve as notice and fees alone for these letters to start the process are around at least in the hundreds of dollars.

I doubt anyone would have a claim which doesn't count as a "small claim".  I suspect Andre wouldn't bother turning up so people would win by default, but there's not much point in having a judgement you can't enforce, even if it's been cheap to obtain.  It would trash Andre's credit, but that's about it (and it's probably already trashed given what he posted on Yahoo last year about his mortgage problems).

Unlike the Bitfloor thread, there is agreement between the creditors here on how to proceed.  With no way to contact anyone else who may be owed funds by WBE, that's about as good as you're going to get.  The alternative would be returning the coins to Andre so that he can distribute them and no-one wants to take that risk even if it might be "technically" the appropriate course of action.  If the creditors on here represent a majority of funds owed, you're on pretty safe ground going along with whatever they'd agreed.  if people haven't taken legal action to recover their funds by now, they're not likely to do so over the manner in which those funds are returned.

Andre remains an absolute shit-heel for dumping this on Chris.

When I have time, I'll set up a claim site which will allow people to log in using their WBX openid login, which will allow me to collect bitcoin withdrawal addresses in a secure manner.  This seems like the safest way to proceed, since I have no other way of authenticating WBX user accounts - for the most part I have no details at all about the account owners.

In the mean time, I would encourage any creditors of WBX to contact me by PM here or email to dooglus at gmail giving me your WBX user ID and email address.  Then I'll email everyone when I have the claim site in place.

what about people who have sold their debt here on the forum?

iirc burtw is the current owner of my share.

That's a good point.  As far as I know, yours was the only account that was sold.  I thought I remembered Brendio buying your account, but I guess either I remember it wrong or he has since sold it on.

Looking back, I see:


so you already transferred your balance to Brendio, and so I don't need to take that into consideration - Brendio's account will simply have $497.33 more in it than it used to.  Did Brendio since pass the balance on to BurtW?  That's the first I've heard about it if that's the case.

no, it was indeed brendio, not burtw... i was just remembering fuzzy.

and also i didn't remember that i had created a WBX code and transferred to his actual account... so that's all good. i was worried that the funds were still in my WBX account, which would have made things more difficult for you.

Just checking back into this thread and confirming that I'm still the holder of this debt. I'm will PM my email addy.

I received your details, and those of 2 others.  I'm surprised to get so few replies.  I guess most people who read this thread will see any announcement I make here and so don't need to contact me directly.

That should make things easier.

Would you say the majority of creditors hold < $500 balances? If there are a lot of these accounts then my guess is at this stage, the customers involved have either forgotten or dont care anymore or have written it off as an annoying loss.

To answer your question, I went to fire up the MySQL database.

It turns out I didn't even install the mysql-server package on this computer yet.

I've recently moved into a very remote location.  No power, water, phone service, etc.  So getting online is a challenge.  I'm using computers a lot less these days generally.

When I get a chance I'll download the MySQL server package and install it - then I'll be able to let you know how account sizes break down...

Edit: So slow:

I would say, assuming 1 BTC = $11, that the balances break down as follows:


So a total of 87% of accounts are less than $500.

Thanks for that breakdown dooglus, interesting to see. As for a holding of > $5000. I thought WBX imposed a limit of $5k account balances?

Also, glad to see that the majority of customers were not affected to any significant degree (63% with balances of < $5 )

Where are you now?

Wasn't the $5k limit only for AUD holdings, rather than a combined BTC + AUD value?

Also, it's possible that at the time of closing, the >$5k account was worth less than $5k, since BTC has roughly doubled in value since WBX's closing.

I only counted accounts with non-zero balances too.  There are many accounts which were created but never had any funds deposited.

I'm still in BC, Canada.  Just out in the sticks.

It's vague on the website and I suspect that Andre never enforced the limit anyway.  He was shonky about everything else.


There's actually nothing in our AML/CTF Act which operates to limit the size of accounts.  I'm convinced he just put that there for show.

There's actually nothing in the code to limit balances either.  The per-account setting only changes the text that displays the "limit" to the user.

Aah, I personally kept to that limit as it seemed sensible for my own risk limitations. I thought it was added to prevent him from being sued by any specific party for significant amounts.

I think everyone kept to the limit.  I guess when you have $5000 on the line you don't want to break any 'rules'...

Hey dooglus, have you decided an approach or timescale for repayments to begin?

Have many more creditors contacted you?

Hi.

I've not made any further steps towards getting the repayments to happen.  I didn't have time to contact ITSA yet.  That's something I think I need to do first.  I've been very busy recently, but will get to it soon.  If they advise that I should pay back the WBX creditors then I should be able to do that soon.

In other news, I'm about to move the funds to a different address.  The address they're currently at was generated using vanitygen.  I figure it's possibly safer to use an address generated by the bitcoin client itself.

I'll be moving the 1768.9876932 BTC from 1DodGYjF5LFoKg186jANZV9U8znXjagSzS to 1BGjvqSQWgXtjZk1A8nda9b5HqBbecNHoF in the next few minutes.

Edit: I forgot to answer your 2nd question.  A total of 9 creditors have contacted me since I asked for contact details.

LOL @ the "dodgy" vanity address.

yeah I don't check back as often as I should :)
Got caught helping someone out, bought WBX code converted to btc never got a chance to withdraw
will send PM now

:)  I had pre-generated a bunch of vanity addresses and picked that one for the WBX funds.  Then after reading the recent "I've just been robbed" thread, it occurred to me that I'm not 100% certain that I've never stored the unencrypted private keys for my vanity addresses on my hard drive.  So I panicked and moved everything out of my vanity addresses.  Better safe than sorry!


Got it, thanks.

I finally got around to contacting ITSA.  I emailed them, and immediately got back a stock response saying they'll respond within 5 working days.

I'll report back here when I hear from them.

They replied:


Did anyone here carry out such a search on Andre?

I've been periodically checking the notices of credtors' meetings and he shouldn't have been able to register as a director of Progressive Security if he's bankrupt but I haven't conducted a search of the Personal Insolvency Index.  I also haven't checked whether there are any insolvency proceedings in progress against High Net Worth Property (it seems to have been a shell company so it may not have had any trade creditors).

Patrick has listed Andre's full name and date of birth in this thread, which would help if anyone decides to do an Index search.

I believe he was a director of Progressive Security before WBX ran into trouble.  I remember seeing a weird entry in the WBX server's .htaccess file which redirected some WBX URLs to a Progressive Security site - probably before he got a separate domain registered for Progressive Security.

I assume it would cost money to do the search that ITSA recommended.  I'm guessing that if Andre isn't bankrupt then ITSA would recommend that creditors sue him for the missing assets, though they didn't explicitly say as much.

Does anyone have any kind of legal action in progress against Andre?  I know several have mentioned it in this thread, including Patrick.  Is there anything to report?

I'm still at a loss of how to proceed.  I would happily just split the remaining bitcoins between the creditors proportionally, but apparently that may be legally dangerous for me to do.  I don't want to spend the WBX coins on obtaining legal advice, or before I know it there won't be any left to divide.

Suggestions?  Please?

I did start work on something a while ago, but found the person I was dealing with was a bit dodgy and wasn't actually doing anything.  Then I had to concentrate on some bigger issues so dropped it.

dooglus, you're not in Australia, are you?

If I was you I'd just split the Bitcoins based on the information you have available.  You have no way of getting better information.  Even if you technically distribute them wrongly, they're not being held in Australia and an Australian insolvency trustee isn't going to pursue overseas clawback for the amount involved - it would be too costly and not result in a substantial benefit to creditors.

Also, if Andre has declared personal insolvency, then he is the one who should have notified his trustee of any assets so that the trustee could take possession of them as well as providing the trustee with a list of creditors.

I'd just keep a record of how you've distributed them.  Yes creditors can take Andre to small claims if he's not insolvent.  That's really his problem and not yours.  He explicitly told you to distribute the BTC so if someone doesn't get paid he's still responsible for whatever's owed to them.  How he pays any judgement against him is his problem.

+1.

My stance: redistribute. If anyone was going to take any major legal action. They would have by now.

+1

WBX is still open sucking people in!

I'm surprised to see the site's still up.  That must mean someone's still paying the hosting bill.

I don't know if it's actively scamming people.  The trading is "frozen", and I'm not allowed to deposit:

"Please identify yourself or pay a fee to remain anonymous. before initiating any Deposits"

I guess it's possible some people might pay the fee.  I am curious to know what's going on with WBX now though.  My guess is that nothing's going on, and that the fee is paid by some automatic payment that's been forgotten.

He still owes me the $500 I deposited just before he scammed everyone. and somehow he can still pay for hosting. what a tool.

Although Andre said that he no longer had control of the site, information was stripped from it over a period of time rather than all at once so it wasn't just abandoned.

If I had to guess, I'd say that Andre's hoping that someone will want to buy the domain and the site - or if not Andre, then whoever now controls the site.

I wish I could be bothered setting up some kind of Google bomb so that Andre's actions regarding WBX come up every time someone does a search on Progressive Security.

Any movement on this Dooglus?

--EDIT--- this is not well thought out, see later post for revision----EDIT---

Ok, I recommend we all cut our losses and get this done with : distribute the bitcoins as fairly as possible to each person owed money in proportion to exactly how much they were owed as of the date WBX ceased trading.

The value of bitcoin rising should ensure that we come close to giving the $AU people back close to what they lost, and the exact amount of bitcoins for the bitcoin people, right?

ie if I had $A600 owed i'd get close to $A600 back, in bitcoins  (ie ~47BTC at todays rate)
if I had 23BTC owed i'd get 23BTC back

simple.   Keep everything in BTC so it never touches AU laws, to prevent legal complications.

The $AU people would lose out here (I'm in this camp), but breaking even is a good outcome IMO.

Are there enough bitcoins to go ahead with this dooglus?
Is there enough info in your copy of the mysql DB to fairly distribute funds?

I'd be happy to send in a signed guarantee that I wont sue, to make this happen, If everyone is in aggreeance.

What do people think? In my books, it would end this debacle on a positive note.

If there's not enough BTC for that to happen, how much would the exchange rate need to rise before it could?

Something needs to happen, too many of peoples BTC are stuck in "failed" Bitcoin ventures, this one has gone on too long.

OK i've just realised why that wont work.

OK how bout just an even split then proportional to whats owed:

BTC_owed = 1768.9876932
AU_bitcoins_owed = Convert all AU amounts owed to BTC as of todays rate, and add them up

payback_ratio= ( BTC_owed + AU_bitcoins_owed )  / 1768.9876932

Howmuch_you_get_back = your_amount_owed * payback_ratio

BTC people should still be "up" even though they're getting less bitcoins than they put in, due to the rise in value.

A$ people will lose out a bit, but will still come close to breaking even.

Threadbump... anyone there?

Yep, I check in every few days.. I would have thought that people interested in getting some of their money back would be a bit more involved here tbh..

I'm still here, and still have the bitcoins.

I still don't have a complete list of creditors and have had no luck in contacting Andre to obtain such a list.

In short nothing has changed recently.

I can't in good conscience divide up the bitcoins to the creditors I know about since there may be some I don't know about, so I don't know how to proceed from here.

If any one creditor is owed over 100 BTC you could perhaps arrange to be sued before the Rota (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=128397.0). With a little luck/if at all practicable you might be ordered to follow some program, follow that and be off the hook.

Dooglus, I thought you had a backup of the site's SQL database?  Could we not use that as a guide for what is owed?

When is the point when we decide that nothing more is going to happen about this and the remaining funds should be distributed as fairly as possible?  Another year from now? 5 years?

I guess I'm in no rush really. At least bitcoin is most probably going to be higher in value in 5 years time.

I do have the SQL database.  The problem is that the database doesn't necessarily reflect reality due to the following two scenarios:

* Some people claim to have sent money to Andre's bank account but never had it show up on the site.  The database won't have any record of these deposits.

* Some people claim to have made withdrawals from the site, but never had them show up in their bank accounts.  The database records that the withdrawal was made when it wasn't really ever carried out.

It's possible that some people fall into one of the above two cases but didn't yet tell me about it too.  They may later come forward claiming that they are owed money too.

The generally increasing value does help to make the eventual payouts bigger for everyone, since it causes the missing dollars to become relatively less significant compared to the Bitcoin that I'm holding.

As impressive as the improvement of the bitcoin exchange rate has been, we can't count on that forever.

As far as I understand, it sounds like the dollars are still there, just frozen because they're fraudulent. My understanding is that the dollars are a completely separate issue to the coins, as the path for getting the money back is through the Australian court and/or by registering yourself as a debtor.  There is also other procedures to help people find lost money.

By sitting on them, you're essentially making or losing people money, as some people have them as investments. Currently its fine because youre making people money. Would you still be doing what you're doing if it fell to $2 again though?  I suggest you seek legal advice somehow, or just bite the bullet and divide them to who you know needs to be owed.

My suggestion (Assuming you have enough bitcoins): For each account, get the bitcoin address that deposited the coins (if available), and use the last known balance to deposit back into that address.  If there's coins left over then you're still where you are now, but with hopefully so few it doesn't really matter.

If people have been dealing in Wbx vouchers since then, it's really irrelevant, as the exchange is frozen/closed. It's more of a tech glitch that they were able to do that at all.

I'm not privy to any extra information, but as I understood it Andre pretty much told us that the dollars were gone.


Given the recent price rises it would be possible to pay everyone back a much higher percentage of what they're owed than I previously calculated.


I have exactly the amount of bitcoins that are owed to WBX clients, and none of the dollars.  I can pay back all the coin holders in full, so long as the dollar holders are happy to lose all their dollars.  I doubt that's the case.  I expect there are some bitcoin holders who never deposited, and only ever obtained their bitcoins by exchanging for dollars on the site, although I've not checked that.

Even if I could find an address for each bitcoin holder, it's not safe to assume that (a) they owned  the address that was used to deposit (they could have deposited directly from mtgox, say) or (b) they still controll it now (perhaps they made a new wallet on a new computer, transferred over their balance, and deleted the old wallet).

What needs to happen is for Andre to respond to my attempts to contact him with clear details of exactly what dollar transactions did and didn't really happen.  I have the WBX database, but it includes dollar withdrawals that were never actually put through his bank account, and doesn't include dollar deposits which did actually arrive in his bank account.  Without knowing the details of these I can't divide up the bitcoins correctly (although I can probably get reasonably close).

Well, I think the chances that Andre actually responds to anything are nearly zero. So, I'm not too much in favour of waiting for that reply. Hence, I'd propose to do the best approximation possible. As in regard to wires: one possibility is for instance that someone proves with a live show session of some remote client (e.g. teamviewer) that he wired the money / didn't receive the wire (or the bank confirms it never received / did send the wire). I would rather go with a reasonably close division than with no division at all. We are currently waiting for already one year without having anything happened. So rather do it reasonably close than in 10 years :)

Cheers,

sonba

My concern is that you use the bitcoins to pay back the dollars, and then they manage to get the dollars back through the courts. You would then have a bunch of people with too much aud and not enough btc.

I understand that you're between a rock and hard place, but something needs to be done, and if Andre won't reapond, I would figure you need to either A: find a way to contact him, B: seek legal help, or C: do something.

A year with zero progress is a bit ridiculous.

Debts are debts - no matter whether its BTC or USD. You can go to court for either one. However, as this thread has shown: so far noone has gone to court as lawyer costs are too expensive in relation to what people lost (plus: even with lawyer its not clear whether you get anything back). Hence, any debt should be treated the same.

Just in general: please don't blame dooglus - if it wasn't for him, we would have lost pretty much everything, I assume. Seeking legal advice for him is in that respect difficult that you need to pay for that. How do you pay for that? WIth the remaining money. Makes it kanda tough for him to spend our money for this. I wouldn't mind if he spends a little part of our money for it but what with the others? And I'm highly against him spending his money for it. He is already doing all of this without any monetar incentive so we cannot expect him to pay for it itself. One alternative is that if someone wants legal advice (you?) he pays the lawyer and asks the lawyer to forward the findings to dooglus.

Just out of experience I would assume that this won't happen. Hence, I still vote to pay out the money pro rata after 1 year has passed of Andre telling us about his exchange being closed (see 1st post).

Thanks for your words of support sonba.


This seems reasonable.  I can't keep holding the BTC indefinitely, and one year seems like long enough for Andre to have responded to my attempts to contact him.  After a year I can only think he has abandoned the exchange and its users.

Here's the email announcing WBX's shutdown.  That seems like a good time to count as the official end.  I'll note the last traded price on the USD MtGox market at the first anniversary of that time, and use the mid-market AUD/USD exchange rate on http://www.xe.com/ucc/ to convert to AUD to get the rate at which I'll calculate the percentage of balances to return.

Note that the timestamp quoted below is in the PDT timezone, so I'll be using the price at 3:39pm PDT, Monday 11th March 2013.

I'm also in support of this action and share similar views to XTremeEd. With the days and months going by, the chances of hearing back from Andre are going to reduce. This'll also depend on how good his record keeping is, which I do not have any faith in given how he handled the situation.

The one thing I am most grateful for is your call dooglus to hold on to the BTC when Andre asked for it back. Good call  :). Given I get a semi-decent amount back eventually, I'll be sending a few btc your way.

Thanks Dooglas.  I'm fully supporting this move and it will be good to have some closure after this long year!  
Fingers crossed the exchange rate doesn't crash when the Asic's come out!

What are the thoughts on how things are going to be distributed? eg.  Where to send the bitcoins?

I'm thinking I'll put up a very cut-down clone of the WBX software which will allow you to log in using the same OpenID credentials as you used at WBX, and will ask you for a bitcoin address for the funds to be sent to, and will allow you to make additional comments about your account, and upload supporting documentation.

What's not clear is how long to wait before distributing the funds.  I guess the first set of funds can be distributed immediately upon the 1 year anniversary, which will be calculated with the assumption that everyone will put in a claim.  But I doubt everyone will, so there will be some funds left over - and I don't know what to do with those.  Some people will presumably find out about the repayments late.  I want to still be able to refund them up to some point in time and not have to tell them "sorry - you're too late".  But I don't want to be holding funds indefinitely hoping for claimants to come forward.  So I guess some kind of cut-off date is needed.

Ideas?

Honestly, it's being over a year and most people have less than $5 worth. I'm pretty sure that after the first week there's going to be zero new claims anyway.

How about distribute as if everyone is going to make a claim.  Then 6 months later whatever is left over is distributed between those that claimed to make up what was lost with some reasonable amount given to Dooglas for his hard work and honesty?

Also, it's quite likely that some of the funds are in scammer accounts.  People who made fraudulent bank deposits which were later reversed.  I guess those people shouldn't be able to get any of their funds back.  There are some users who never uploaded identity documents and so didn't get their accounts verified.  What happens with their funds?  Chances are some of them are fraudulent accounts, and some belong to people who just want to remain anonymous.

Because the original site required the uploading of identifiable information before any cash withdrawal.   My opinion is it should be fair enough to request this information if you the user had cash sitting on the site and had not previously provided this information (I had a very small amount of cash and had provided this information, and would be happy to provide it again if required).

I think WBX required your account to be verified before you could make any kind of withdrawal (cash or BTC) didn't it?

Well then it should be fair enough to request everyone to provide these details to help prevent anyone who tried to scam deposits from receiving funds.  Should you want this extra authentication Dooglas I guess it's up to you, or if someone wants to chime in and have a definitive opinion?

- Set up the site, give everybody x months to place a claim.
- Make payments
- Job done

* Make it very clear that those who do not submit a claim will lose out. This is as similar to a real liquidation process where the information of debtors is not readily available.

The choice is yours dooglus, but something tells me you'd rather be rid of this mess sooner rather than later.

Additionally, I'd like to add that given so much time is passed. I'm after quick action to be taken and a shorter 1 month claim window to be used.

So your saying make the calculation and payment at the end of the month (or time chosen)?   I guess this does make sense and resolves things for everyone in a much shorter time frame and if people agree would allow a fee to be taken by Dooglas for his time.   
I am also all for getting this resolved sooner rather than later.  I signed up for this site for the sole reason of posting to this thread.   Also it was fairly easy to find this thread with a quick google search so anyone who cares about the money they had in WBX has had a year to go looking and keep an eye on this thread.  Dooglas has also previously posted his email address in this thread to have people contact him so even if people haven't posted in the thread they should have made contact if they cared about their account.

I've been putting the claim site together.

It's not finished yet, but you should be able to log in, check your balances, and upload ID documents if necessary.

I think I managed to retrieve the old WBX "duo" API keys, so those users who have 2-factor authentification turned on should be able to log on too.

Please let me know of any issues, and I'll finish the claim page real soon now.  You can PM me here, or use the 'contact' page on the claim site.

WBX Claim Site:  https://dooglus.com/wbx/

Edit: I'm using a self-signed certificate, so your browser will probably complain that it can't trust the site.

The certificate's sha256 fingerprint is:
  5E 5C 30 C8 F5 C7 A0 0F 7A 28 0E C8 4C 87 FC 96
  4F 3C 11 08 40 4E C9 59 8D DA 60 38 5C 86 5D 2D

Edit2: I bought a proper certificate now, so ignore the above.

The claim site is up and running fully now I think.  Please let me know if you have any issues with it.

One problem I hadn't forseen is that for people using the 'google' or 'yahoo' links to log in to WBX, their OpenID strings are site-dependant.  This means I'm not able to provide the 'google' and 'yahoo' links on the claim site.  Instead you'll need to copy/paste your OpenID string from the WBX site into the claim site to log in.

This unfortunately makes us dependant on WBX staying up long enough for everyone to get a copy of their OpenID string.

WBX Claim Site: https://dooglus.com/wbx/

Thanks Dooglas.  The site looks great.  My claim has been entered for my whopping great big reward $10aud and 12.3630 BTC   :D

Thanks Dooglas, claim in.

There's been very little traffic to the claim site.  Only 3 users have submitted their claims so far, including the 2 who posted here.

Still lots of time left I guess, but I'm surprised there wasn't a bigger response.

Dooglas did many people email you last year when you posted your email address and requested people to contact you?  (I was one of those users). 
And have you notified them? (I haven't received an email).

Also is it worth PM'ing people who posted on the board at the start in case they are no longer subscribed to this thread?  (Do you have a list of those users?)

I think a total of 11 people emailed me when I posted my address last year.  I emailed them about the claim site yesterday.  Did you get my email?

I don't have a list of forum usernames, but you're right it would be good to PM them all.

Edit: I made a list of the posters in this thread:

     80 dooglus
     46 repentance
     38 PatrickHarnett
     36 Seal
     21 E&G
     21 Andre Jensen (World Bitcoin Exchange)
     17 sonba
     17 brendio
     12 rjk
     11 Bigpiggy01
     10 bitcowok
      7 paulzag
      7 mOomOo
      7 jaminunit
      7 Clipse
      6 psy
      4 scales
      3 bulanula
      2 XTremeEd
      2 R-
      2 MPOE-PR
      2 Maged
      2 JoelKatz
      2 Graet
      2 cryptoxchange
      1 TradeFortress
      1 Phinnaeus Gage
      1 cryptoanarchist
      1 CIYAM Open
      1 Chaang Noi (Goat) &#3594;&#3657;&#3634;&#3591;&#3609;&#3657;&#3629;&#3618;
      1 caston

Now to try to figure out how to mass-PM...

"You may not send personal messages to more than 5 recipient(s) at once." it tells me.  So I guess I'll break the list into groups of 5...

don't waste a PM on me... i sold my full balance to brendio. oops too late ;)

And when I try to send to the 2nd group of 5:

"You already submitted this post! You might have accidently double clicked, or tried to refresh."

you gotta wait 20 seconds i think

Turns out I can't just hit the 'back' button in the browser after sending and edit the 'to' field.  I have to click 'new message' and copy/paste the body and subject back in.  I sent them all out now (except to Andre and repentance).

I didn't realise until just now that when I use the button next to the 'to' field of the PM composer and search for a username, it tells me their original username.  So E&G -> payb.tc for instance.  Sorry I didn't see your reply in time - you were one of the first 5, since I sent in order of number of posts in this thread.