Bitcoin Forum

Hello there,

I've been doing business on a bitcoin classifieds site and recently I sent bitcoins to a user who was selling a Motorola Xoom. He claims that I never sent him the bitcoins but I have 261 confirmations now and I've even got the block explorer pages pulled up detailing his shady behavior. He received the bitcoins and two hours later sent them to another address.

What can I do to prevent this kind of thing from happening again? What do users typically do? Are we reliant on an honor code here?

Thanks for any input you have.

Trade with users with a reputation, and use escrow services such as clearcoin.

Sorry that you got scammed, that's pretty bad :(

 I saw the same post. I contacted that seller and I offered to use some kind of escrow, but he said he didn't trust them. RED FLAG

  You just need to watch out for scammers. Really to me this is the biggest downfall of Bitcoins, is there is way too much scamming going on, and it could potentially ruin the whole economy.

  Sorry you got scammed.

I wish I had known about clearcoin before I started! 25BTC for a brand new Xoom just seemed too good to be true. Well, I'll make sure to leave nasty feedback for him ;)

His feedback page is here: http://www.bitcoinclassifieds.net/feedback/227/

There are other seller profiles I have seen on other sites with the same style of feedback. e.g. "fast! I got my confirmation in minutes."  With offers that are just almost on that border of being too good to be true. This is likely the same person. They have a method that's working, getting bids on bidding pond, selling on other sites, so he switches up the story a bit and throws a little salt in the feedback but that's it. Long winded feedback that sounds like the buyer got a free bj out of the deal is likely fake.

Follow the guide here: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Secure_Trading

This guide describes a way of trading that makes it very hard to scam.

:) Thank you.

the escrow system is really the best solution for this kind of transaction, especially on the internet with the number of dishonest person

Next time google his btc address first, usually scammers are so idiot enough for not changing the BTC address. They dont know that their shady behavior can be traced by making Google queries.

Use an escrow, once you send the money to someone else that person may try to scam you, so you use an escrow with good reputation, both parties need to agree with the escrow but if the person selling refuses, that is a clear sign that his intentions were to scam you from the beginning.

The only way to prevent is to use a middleman, Bitcoin isn't a type of currency that you can get back in some way. You really can only hope that a person's reputation is worth more to them then whatever your buying from them, if you think it's worthless then just use a trusted escrow who's independent and hope that they don't just run away with both sides stuff.

It's a tough world here, I hope we have some sort of centralized services to ensure that people aren't scammed to hell on crypto.

It can not be a centralized service if it was then it will be attacked by governments and we will need to comply once again with KYC policies and the like, so it seems we are going to be stuck for quite some time with finding independent escrows like some of the forum members that have proved they are above stealing and have gained a huge reputation as a result.

Unfortunetly the amount of dishonest bitcoin users is very high. People believe they are anonymous and are out for a quick buck.
They come up with all sorts of ideas and scams in order to receive more BTCs .. and most of the times they get away with it. That keeps them going and lurrs further of this kind into Bitcoin  and co..   

In our country as well their are people who runs the ponzi scheme in the name of btc bu luring that they will provide huge gains in less time as btc have given last year.  And after some time they gets vanished or say that they do not have any money left etc and such cases records are getting higher thus government have started taking action by arresting such fraudsters now.

Unfortunately cryptocurrencies are not refundable (although I personally prefer them this way), so you must be extremely careful with them...

My recommendations:

- Use a escrow if possible.

- Convince the other party to go first.

- If the guy doesn't accept to go first, try to break the deal into smaller parts. You send 1/10 of the bitcoin, he'll give you 1/10 of his thing, and so on and so forth...

- be careful about scammer signs: Unrealistically cheap price, being in a hurry to do the deal sooner, not enough rep or fake rep, nervous behavior, ...

There are only few options in that case. First you should check reputation of person you wish to trade with, if possible of course. That way you will minimize percent of shady people. Second, you can be the one who send after you receive what ever you should receive. And last and maybe best option, find third party which will garant success of trading.

The best way is a trusted escrow with a detailed reputation if dealing with someone without a positive trust record
There are even escrows offering a free service and you can tip them if you want.
Sorry you got scammed.
What is it with crypto and scammers?
I know its different but i have over 600 positive points on ebay as a buyer and seller and never had anyone saying they never got their items and anything i paid for i always got and also most items are posted by regular untracable post.

Will in that situation its hard to dealing those dishonest person who always looking for fishing and scamming there
co-human being,they didnt realy know that things doing bad that they do to there brothers will return back to them.so we learned to your experience,that not to trust in doing bussiness in online transaction, because maybe we next victim of scamming.If now that situation happen to me i must  prepared to deal it personaly and finding there company address if it is legit and always be careful with dealing online  transaction bussiness.

never trust someone online , maybe next time if you have the fund to spare. You can avail of escrow service from different reputable people , though it's hard and some of them has high fees for them to escrow that little amount. Don't trust your bitcoin to anyone. Learn from it.