Bitcoin Forum

Hello,

18 June 2012 I transfered 100 euros to my Mtgox EUR account.
Today I got a letter from my bank wich said that I recently made a transaction of 100 euros to a foreign Polish bank account which has been blocked. The made payment to the blocked account will be transferred back to my account in a short period of time.

Here is the proof:  (in dutch though)

https://i.imgur.com/y4aoI.jpg

I had the same issue back in November and December, they actually blocked my account and I had to reactivate my TAN function. Just a heads up: Intersango uses the same bank account, and is also blocked by the Dutch ING.

They still piss me off, tbh. The German branch of ING only gives the user a call to ask if they're sure, but doesn't meddle any further.

Funny how I already made tons of tranasctions to intersango and never had a single problem.
Now my first time to mtgoxEUR and all goes wrong.

EDIT: Called with the ING bank. They said my bank account isn't blocked but the tranaction IS rolled back since the Polish account IS blocked.
I need to call the bank tommorow since the department that has all the info (about why the tranasction was rolled back) doesn't work at the evening.
Will keep you guys posted. :)

That was back in November... Maybe intersango switched banks? Not sure.

Are you sure Intersango use the same polish bank account as MtGox? I transfered euros to Intersango yesterday, and they arrived today.

Intersango also uses Bank Zachodni WBK, BIC WBKPPLPP.

^This. They also claimed I had a virus/rootkit. The first time I was sceptical but hey, who knows. I ran every tool I deemed useful, but found nothing. It didn't make any sense anyway, because the moment it was blocked was as soon as I hit the final button for the transfer, not as soon as I logged in or anything.

Anyway, when I got that resolved, I wanted to use intersango instead, and got the same bloody thing! I talked to this guy on the phone, and his argument was that even those tools "can't guarantee there is no rootkit." Oh, and your bloody system can bloody do it from bloody halfway across the country!? Idiots.

I never managed to get transferred to someone with a smidgen of intelligence :(

The distance is not the problem the speed is. In 1 second it decided I have a virus? Even if they could I would sue them for criminally breaking into my system. I told the first guy I phoned he was a fucking idiot, but phrased it nicely. It's a bit like talking to a four-year-old.

Oh well, he likely even believed his own mumblings, people in call centers aren't the worlds brightest  :-X

Its actually understandable. If some hacker compromised your system, sending money via homebanking from your bank account to MtGox and convert the stolen funds to btc is the smart thing to do. Frustrating as it may be to someone who actually wants to send money to gox from a clean system, I suspect this measure has prevented more fraud than it annoyed actual gox customers.

So let me write down and see if I understand your statement right.
Cause thiefs comprise computers and convert the money of its victim to bitcoin, banks are preventing transactions to bitcoin exchanges cause of this reason?

Not sure about you, but if more banks are gonna do this, alot of Mtgox customers and not only Mtgox customers will be annoyed since they will simply not get there money into any exchange easy as nowadays.
I also don't think banks did blocked Mtgox EUR for this particularly reason you stated. But we will hear when I make the call tomorrow.

Its the same reason just about any antivirus will flag cgminer as malware.  It isnt malware if you knowingly installed it, but for most users, it will indeed be (part of) malware.

Now the bank should make it easy to let you do the transfer anyway, after checking with you that you knowingly transferred it to mtgox, but that they flag the transaction as suspicious and even block it, I can totally understand. Banks are liable for losses due to fraud, its in their interest and actually in the interest of 99.99% of its customers who dont trade on mtgox.

You might want to let your bank know that there is a less disruptive step they could take than feezing accounts.  Ask them if they know of Yubico's Yubikey.

ING uses a card reader, which requires the reader, your ATM card and code. I dont think yubikey is any more secure than that. But that doesnt prevent hackers from letting you sign your transactions with the card reader (or yubikey). You are just signing a different transaction than you thought.

Then call me and ask.

Also, they wouldn't allow me to transfer even after a phone call. Isn't it MY money?

You guys should all be happy about this.  Crap like this happening is exactly why Bitcoin is made useful.

"But not to me!"

Made the call.
ING is blocking all suspicious forgein transactions cause of all the skimming that is happening the last couple of years.
So, Mtgox doesn't have any problem with there bank. Only other banks have problems with shady polish bank accounts.
Though, if you confirm that the transactions is valid via phone, it's okay.

So it's not already there blocking transactions cause of Bitcoin.
Will happen soon though.   :-\

They would not allow this for me.

Indeed. The German ING Diba solves it that way, they call their user, and he verifies that he wanted to send, and then they get out of the way.

Yes, bank account DO get blocked when they receive fradulent transactions.

There are several methods by which unscrupulous individuals can initiate fradulent transactions and cause problems for an exchange or a fixed rate exhanger.

I think one of the dumbest things an exchange can do is to just open a single account, and then let all funds flow in through this account. There should be several bank accounts for one exchange, and there needs to be done measures to try to fight the fraud, some sorts of fraud is very hard to fight, and once the bank sees that fraudulent transactions is entering a particular account, they're often very quick to just close that account. As far as the bank sees it, this is a troublesome account, and they want to get rid of the problem.

When an exchange opens a bank account, by default, it has to be expected it will be closed down at some point, unless there are talks with the bank and the bank understand the kind of business the exchange do and is willing to work with it, also when problems occur, because problems WILL occur.

Banks can always reverse a transfer, but bitcoin transactions cannot be reversed, so it's always the exchange or the fixed rate exchanger that gets shafted.

SEPA debit transactions cannot be reversed either. And yes, exchanges do talk to banks, and switch banks when those talks amount to nothing.
The current issues seem to be only with the Dutch ING branch though.

Removed the [URGENT] tag.  ::)

Same thing with some large German bank. Someone wanted to buy some bitcoins and I told him to send EUR to that Polish account, then his bank told him that they wouldnt know that Polish account. (?!)

I hope MtGox gets a new one soon!

Replace it with a [FRAUDSTERS] tag  ;)

And what happens in the cases were fradulent transactions have taken place ? Will the banks reinstate the unlucky consumer from their own pocket, or will the bank of the orginating transaction make a reversal of the transaction ?

Ie. what happens in real life, when we have a situation like this ? Anyone with experience they'd like to share ?

They can't be automatically reversed, not even by the bank. The sending bank can ask the receiving bank for their money back. It's probably up to the receiving bank to honor that request or not. I know of one instance where the receiving bank asked the account holder about it, and the account holder convinced the bank that it wasn't fraudulent, so the receiving bank didn't give the money back. The sending bank may have insurance against these cases. The sending bank may then be pissed about it, and maybe won't send money to the receiving bank anymore.

Thanks for the explanation. I will see if I can find any whitepapers about SEPA to learn more about it.

I too have had an absolutely miserable time doing SEPA with MtGox.  It simply does not work.

Made a transfer on 29th of june. Still hasn't appeared on my account.

Same thing here. Even the same transfer date. And "surprisingly" they aren't answering support ticket messages. Would be nice to know what's causing the delay and some estimate about when the funds should be on my account. Hell, it would be even nice to know that they're still (actively) working on it. "We will check and update you on the status". Bullshit.

How long other forum members have had to wait in a worst-case?

I was informed that there was an AML (anti money laundering) issue taking place. I was asked to send scanned copies of my transfer to them?! They're definitely not communicating enough regarding this. It's been 8 days now since my transfer, and I still have no idea where my money is and when is it going to appear on my account.

If they have problems with the authorities, why not state that on their site? Why not warn people not to transfer money, if it will get frozen by the investigation? What are they thinking of achieving by this conduct?

Received my funds yesterday - didn't expect that to happen on saturday.