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I've just seen 0.25 Bitcoin disappear from my wallet this afternoon! I didn't send it so I guess I've been scammed? I don't imagine I'll get it back but maybe someone can help me understand where it went.

For two months I've been trying to withdraw BTC from Poloniex but never received their withdrawal confirmation emails. I've been pestering both their support and my email ISP support without luck. Then suddenly this morning I started getting their emails again, so maybe one of them finally fixed the issue.

I clicked on the withdrawal confirmation email that came through - and that was probably the big mistake. In the two months since I originally made the request I have changed things around and the withdrawal address is in an Electrum Wallet that is no longer in my primary wallet. Specifically, the withdrawal is from before the Bitcoin Gold fork. To claim BTG I swept the private key from that Electrum Wallet into Coinomi so I could access the equivalent BTG - I sent it to the HitBTC exchange and sold it (https://bitcoin-investors.co.uk/2017/11/how-to-claim-your-bitcoin-gold/).

I still have access to the Electrum Wallet so I opened it up and this is what I see - the incoming receipt from Poloniex has an exact matching outgoing transaction for today at the exact same time - as the money was coming in it was already being sent back out somewhere:

https://bitcoin-investors.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Electrum_Wallet_History_BIUK.jpg

I am at a loss to understand what has happened.

1) Is it related to the fork? If I spent the BTG from that address, will any BTC sent to the same address now get sent automatically to wherever I sent BTG? If so that sounds highly dangerous, and therefore unlikely.
2) Have I been scammed? I exposed the private keys to Coinomi but that's a pretty respectable wallet provider so how would someone get hold of the private keys? Even if they did, are they able to send money out from my wallet even at the instant that it's being put in?

I'm very confused, and worried about my money - please help!

Feel sorry for you but a wallet should not be sending anything out unless you told it too
and i can see your are using a trusted wallet so are you sure you downloaded it from a
safe place.

I will keep an eye on this post to see what happens

Ou :/ I feel so sorry for you man ... Can i ask you what OS do you use ? 0.25 btc is a lot so why you don't have trezor or ledger wallet ?

Cuz when you are using crypto-currency is better to use some linux distribution for safety and it isn't so hard to instal some linux distribution on USB.

Are you sure that your pc was not affected by a trojan? Or did you use the private key of this address on any online website to access the funds ?
I can think of only these 2 possible ways.

Was it the whole balance or just a part of it?
Maybe you downloaded the wallet from a virused website and someone took control over it.

My advice would be to send all your remaining BTC (if any) into another BTC wallet that you trust and reinstall OS.

I originally was holding the money in a Ledger wallet but moved it out to access the BTG fork. I then recreated the original wallet in Electrum by reusing the private keys (once it was empty) - hence you can see the name of the Electrum Wallet is 'LedgerSoftwarePrivateKeys'. The bulk of my BTC is safe - but it's weird that sending BTC back into this old wallet seems to have caused it to be immediately be sent back out somewhere unknown. It must have something to do with the BTG fork?



My other wallets are fine, with more BTC in them. It's something about this wallet. As I said I swept its private key into Coinomi on my Android phone to collect BTG but I haven't used it anywhere else AFAIK. Even if I had, is it possible to set up a system so that money can be sent out from a wallet before it has even arrived in it (in other words, the out transaction started even before the incoming transaction had finished confirming).


This is a close-up of the outgoing transaction:

https://bitcoin-investors.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Electrum_Wallet_History2_BIUK.jpg

Is there maybe some significance to the outgoing address beginning with a 3 (that can mean a multi-sig or Segwit address I believe?).

Any screenshots and more details would help us to help you.

Edit- screenshot just appeared, lol

Are you sure you're not on a phishing software and what does your virus scan say? Make sure to do a system virus scan with one of the good scanners like avira, avast, or norton.

It's weird that the tx was sent away at the same time it came in....

Trend Micro says I'm fine as regards viruses - and as I say, I have other wallets that are fine it's something specific to this wallet and, I think, using the same private keys to claim Bitcoin Gold.

For those that can help with tracking transactions, these are the details of the outgoing transaction:
ID: a5e6f003bfb8f36009ea4a5a857e5607049d596cdb7a527c3d3624e3e78a69f8
Address: 3N1jdNfaNygDUqjXq5gYu7CNwoeyWjRhey

As I said, I'm not certain that it's a scam. As soon as the BTC started to come in - the same instant - a matching transaction started to go out. The incoming said 'unconfirmed' and the outgoing said 'unconfirmed parent' and they both started to gain confirmations in parallel. Surely even a scammer couldn't set that going the instant something started to be received.

It's almost like the wallet is doing it because it thinks anything in that address needs to be sent out - and I wonder if that's because on the parallel BTG blockchain that's what happened. Almost as if BTG doesn't have replay protection and so my BTC has been spent because I spent my BTG?

Is that possible?

Is your computer secured?  You need to make sure the wallet is not compromised.

chances are you are not careful, because storage like this is quite risky, so we need to be careful in storing and using it.

Who else knows the original wallet's seed or private keys?  It is certain that someone has them. They just watch the blockchain for any BTC going to that wallet or address and then send it to themselves. Did you just do BTG? What about BCH or any of the others? There are some fraudulent bitcoin fork wallets out there that will steal your coins.

There are risks, using HW wallets, you need to trust the creators and the manufacturers and the distributors. 

Sorry to hear about your losses. You mentioned you sweep in private key in your android device. Is your android device virus free? I have encountered a few incidents of virus/malware attacks in android devices.

There is a 99% chance that you got hacked.

Sorry to say, but it is true. There are countless hackers out there right now because the government doesn't care about enforcing the law when it comes to crypto. They can get away with anything without any consequences.

Just take it as a learning experience to keep your passwords and such more secure. Don't download any files you aren't 100% sure about because it's the #1 way you can get hacked.

And what about poloniex txid? Is the wallet different from them?
If yes, you probably got compromised the private key from this wallet and some  hacker has a scrypt to auto withdraw any amont that come to it.

This doesn't seem to be a Coinomi issue but we would love to help nevertheless; please open a ticket with our Support at: https://coinomi.freshdesk.com/support/ and our engineers will do their best to help you resolve your issue. Please also PM us your ticket id once you open the ticket, thanks!

I think ledger wallet have application for BTG. But it seems strange , btw what OS do you use ? windows or linux ?

flippener before this incoming transaction which is now gone your Electrum wallet is empty?I see you send all your BTC before and in that moment everything is normal-but after that did you upgrade your Electrum wallet because I see you are using latest 3.0.3 version?

I think you are download fake Electrum 3.0.3 version maybe and it is just waiting for any incoming transaction,it is happen to many others users because there is so many fake sites which pay to Google to place their ad on the top of search results.Check here : https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2660792.0

If this is not case then you exposed your private keys/seed somewhere where you did not to do that.Too bad that you did not change withdraw address on Poloniex to your primary wallet.

This is the reason why I will buy myself the hardware wallet in the future when I accumulate the nice amount of Bitcoin. The Internet is full of scammers that are destroying the community with their hackings. I feel sorry for you because that is the nice amount of BTC that you could spend on your needs. I believe it is for sure hardly earned and I wish you all the luck in finding information about the disappearance of this amount.

I feel sorry for you man. I really am so pissed with people who steal other people's hard earned cryptos. But sad to say, we cam do nothing to stop this guys but to take care of our possessions as carefully as we can.

you should've been more careful. I know the last thing you wamma hear right now is someone lecturing you but you need to hear it. So, think back. Did you just get into bitcoingold? or you also get into bitcoincash with the same address?
Also, another thing to look at is if you clicked on a phishing site. Then after that, think if there are any other people who know about your address or are there people who can access your pc. Trace every step you took amd try to get to the root of the problem.

You are lucky you didn't lose the 5 BTC you got in your wallet.
Check your PC for keyloggers and think of changing all your passwords and moving your coins to a more secure wallet maybe the hacker already has your passwords and private keys.
I don't think you will be able to get your 0.25BTC back but you can track the address where they were sent maybe you got lucky and find who stole your money.

I have come round to this view - I think the wallet was hacked and the hacker setup a script to automatically withdraw anything that was put into it.



I appreciate the offer but I genuinely don't think the Coinomi wallet was the issue - somehow the Electrum wallet was hacked.



I emptied the Electrum wallet so I could claim Bitcoin Gold without risk to my BTC. Of course, since Poloniex took 2 months to acknowledge my withdrawal I ended up in the situation where it was withdrawing to an old, and now clearly compromised, wallet. I don't know how or where I exposed the private keys but it was to claim a fork, either BTG or another one. I thought that still left only a small chance of being scammed, but clearly not. If seems that if there's even a tiny chance your wallet has been compromised, then it has been.

I have now moved all my BTC into a new Ledger hardware wallet.

I just created an account to show you my discovery, because after saw post and clicked on your nickname, I found this:
https://bitcoin-investors.co.uk
...and then I saw this:
https://bitcoin-investors.co.uk/page/3/
and this:
https://bitcoin-investors.co.uk/2017/11/how-to-claim-the-bitcore-bitcoin-2nd-snapshot-airdrop/
I think you (or somebody) published first part of your wallet globally 2 months ago.

Quote: "To claim BTG I swept the private key from that Electrum Wallet into Coinomi so I could access the equivalent BTG"

Does the Coinomi app you used have a BTC wallet too or only a BTG one?

Looks like you exposed your own wallet private key  :o