Bitcoin Forum

Hi,

I got scammed recently by splashdash, who appeared to be trustworthy at first as he had a account here since Feb with no negative feedback. I lost 80USD to him after he agreed to send me 0.23 BTC.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=237311

He used this method to steal my funds:

- Cease all communication as soon as payment sent through Paypal (Streak email tracking shows all subsequent messages were viewed) (Bitcointalk forum recent posts also shows he had been active and commenting even though he ignored my private messages to him)

- Refund the funds as soon as I sent it to him, resulting in a pending refund for a week.

- At the last minute cancel the refund, saying I "received" my item.

I opened a dispute hoping Paypal will return my money. He even responded with a "tracking number" during the claim instead of returning my money immediately.


- He could not have sent Bitcoins to wrong address (I realised his BTC address was empty)
- He could not have accidentally refunded (He intentionally waited until the last moment of the refund before cancelling it)
- He could not have not viewed my messages, emails. (Email tracking, recent activity)
- I would like to Emphasise that all communications from him ceased the moment I sent Paypal payment.

His personal info in case someone wants to give him a call or a knock on his door

Name-Aliases - Danny Birkie, Peter Brune, Brandon Belle
Emails: motogrove@gmail.com/cleverterk@mail.com
Phone number - +44 7475632587
Residence - 64 Park Lane, Hull, HU5 2UX, United Kingdom


If you request specific screenshots I will be happy to add them. (There are too many emails to fit in a few images)

Beware of him!

If you have any info on how I may win the Paypal claim from scammers please let me know by private message.

Thank You

Zachery

Bump

His post history is all one word, and in giveaways, which looks like he set up the account back in Jan just to scam someone.
You mentioned that he sent you a tracking number, can't you prove its wrong and win the claim on Paypal?

But there's no tracking number for Bitcoins. I mentioned that to Paypal.

I lost the claim as BTC is not a tangible item. Just my luck...

This is exactly why paypal is not safe for either party to trade with when dealing with bitcoin.

If one party is honest and end up getting scammed then they will lose a dispute as paypal's protections do not cover non-tangable items like bitcoin, which you will have to admit was a part of the disputed trade when filing a claim. On the other hand if you are selling bitcoin for paypal, the bitcoin buyer can be dishonest and lie about what was being traded in order to get the payment reversed

Thanks sergvec, I will probably take a break now from Bitcoins. Perhaps when I get back I will be more cautious and only trade with more reputable persons like you. I didn't think much this time as I needed Paypal quickly for the Black Friday sales.

Yesh, its best to be careful, and never trade with new sellers for any amount larger than 20$ to be safe.
I recently required 50$ WMZ as well, and sent bitcoins first to a member account here. Luckily, I didn't agree to sending all the amount at once, and did it in 12.5$ increments.
He ended up scamming me for that, and never responded. But even if you did this, in your case it wouldn't help much due to paypal being involved.

this has to go down in history as one of the most crafty ways to scam someone out of a measly 80$ from uk lollolol

im sorry about your losses..

I laughed especially hard when you said he sent a tracking number after you opened a claim. lol. and when he said he rec. item right when it was about to time out lmfao.
at the very least bitcoin has taught us all how to dodge a scammer lol

Not really, there are just too many ways you can get scammed of Bitcoins. The only safe way is to trade with trustworthy members.

Call then back and explain that you were supposed to have received a .25 BTC physical coin.

Only safe way of two strangers using PayPal to trade is actually quite common on lbc nowadays which is the seller demands photo id of your name that's on both lbc and PayPal account laid down on a piece of paper and having the buyer and seller put pen to paper following the sellers trade requirements that being your ID with " I John Hancock are buying Bitcoins with my PayPal account REFERENCE NUMBER OF LBC TRADE HERE and have the Bitcoins of which I am paying for sitting in escrow guaranteed to be of no possible attempt to claim nothing received and then the finished transaction which holds the reference numberNumber has a impenetrable defense of online history if challenged.


Yup

As a person who makes most of their income selling virtual goods via Paypal (I run some private servers), I would never do a private BTC transaction with Paypal funds. The only way I would buy BTC via Paypal funds is from VirWoX. I know, they have bad fees. Are their fees worse than losing all of your money?

I think not.

There are plenty of ways to buy BTC, if you really want to use Paypal, get a VirWoX account. At least to have it there when you actually need it. I would sell BTC via Paypal but I don't sell BTC at all.

Chargebacks on Paypal are too easy. I'm actually pretty surprised that they didn't give you the chargeback since the item was virtual goods. We lose chargebacks all of the time to people who actually received their goods, and we end up having to ban them for it. Usually, from my experience, Paypal will side with the buyer in these kinds of cases. I believe you can escalate a chargeback, I wouldn't let it go so easily.

Sorry you lost your money, but don't give up on Crypto just yet. There may be criminals out there, but there are plenty of good people too.

Perryl,

Thanks for your reply. You've mentioned that you sell virtual goods and receive Paypal as payment. May I know how you win a chargeback against fraudulent buyers considering your virtual goods are just as intangible as Bitcoin.

We don't, well, we rarely do. That's why I said I was surprised Paypal didn't take your side. They seem to pretty much always side with the buyer.

The information we provide is just some logs proving that the item was delivered to the person who purchased it, but it only proves that it went to an account registered with the same email as their Paypal email, assuming they even used the same email as their Paypal email to register for the site in the first place. There are a lot of variables to consider, but in the end we just throw everything we can at them. Sometimes we win, but we usually lose. On the ones we have won there is no consistency. Some cases we provided a ton of information, and others we provided very little. Information consists of things like sql logs and email conversations, anything we can come up with really.