Bitcoin Forum

Hello ,
I'm new in this world and being scammed already.
Now I want somme more certainty and like to have somme advice from someone .
 I've have a 1.2 BTC on my Electrum account but they let me already 3600€ on BTC pay for the  " taxes" and now.
They ask me again 0.25BTC to raise my account limits in order to be able to get my money back.
Dues anyone have some advice.
the prove that I ask , I"ll never get.  
On my Electrum account I don't see any BTC or €
Thanks

Did you downloaded it from https://electrum.org ? No

That is not Electrum because Electrum gives you the full control over your coins.

It is a scam.

Electrum is a wallet, not an account. If they ask for money, you are getting scammed.

Start from the beginning: what did you do, and how did you send money? Who did you send it to?

I got contact with someone from Trade Control with the message that there is a amount BTC from my former action blocked and he will take care to help me to get it .than he connected me with someone from electrum

If you sent your coins to a fake wallet (like that), you are scammed. After, the scammers are still looking for ways to scam you more.

You got scammed here unfortunately. Electrum never blocks access to your btc as you control the keys yourself. If electrum servers are down, you can easily just export your keys to another safe wallet and spend your coins by your own. You dont need a customer support for this. Its a shame that ppl still fall for such scams. Please educate yourself more before holding any bitcoins :( Once again, sorry for your loss mate, the amount is huge (atleast for many ppl).

It's email spam. Answering it means they try to scam you You don't have Bitcoin, and chances are your computer now has malware. Backup data, wipe your computer, and start over.

This reminds me of a thread I came across a few days ago with the question, "is it possible to buy bitcoins without basic knowledge" and the OP's case was the obvious answer to that question. Buying bitcoin may not be too difficult, but holding it safe is another story. Newbies were too hasty in owning bitcoin without knowledge and fell into the trap and pay a heavy price.
Condolences to the OP's loss, I think you already know what you need, please add your knowledge immediately.

What is this Trade Control you are talking about? Why did you trust them if you never hold that much money in the first place?

Also, most decentralized wallets don't have the kind of support as Coinbase/centralized platform does (resetting your password, etc). Hopefully, you can learn from this and avoid being scammed again by someone pretending to be official support in the future. CMIIW.

It applies to most things in my opinion, especially if it is tech-related. You should never use things you have no knowledge of (even the basic ones) in the first place.

How did you conclude that you have something, and you yourself say that you don't see anything on your "account"? On the one hand, the one who deceived you is guilty, but you are equally guilty because you believed in such a foolish thing. This type of scam is one of the simplest, but it also seems to be very effective, whether it is selling watch-only wallets or paying some kind of fees to enable the withdrawal of funds.

I hope you've learned your lesson, in the end it's just money that you obviously have - otherwise you wouldn't be able to allow yourself to throw it around so lightly.

You're definitely going to have to give some more details if you want to get more help, though from what others have said and what information you've already given: you're probably already scammed.

Are you using an app? An account online?

1. Don't send anything anymore to them.
2. Report them.

The only thing I can find that matches the description of what the OP describes is the following page :


It doesn't seem very credible at first glance, and it probably isn't, considering that without registration it is impossible to find out any useful information.

How did you connect this trade control site with electrum? Electrum is a wallet, not an exchange. It runs on your desktop, you don't contact anyone about a limits because there are no limits.
Make a screenshot of the communication with that person who demanded money from you and the conversation about raising your limits and show it in this thread. It should clear things up a bit, but I'm 100% sure you're being scammed. No exchange and no real wallet will demand money from you to allow withdrawal of deposited funds.

Hay mates ,

Thanks for the advice and feedback.
Unfortunately it looks like I'm scammed .
Dues anyone know what I can do , report them ect??

regards

you can open a scam accusation providing more details/screenshots here
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=83.0
following this format report
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=260073.0

It can be useful but in the end, people that get scammed will never make any basic search about these kinds of service. Like the same that happens to you... there is no fee to pay for "unblock bitcoin" or much more, if you don't know to have bitcoin in some "random online account", you don't have it.

Not your keys, not your coins. With legit Electrum wallet, you own your bitcoins because you control its private keys.

So you are totally be able to broadcast your transactions without need to get approval or supports from Electrum team. What you actually need is confirmations from Bitcoin miners.

Verify wallets to avoid scam and phishing wallets.
[Guide] How to safely download and verify Electrum wallet (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5240594.0)

Especially if you got invitation or request from some person to ask you sending your coins first, to get credit to your wallet or account, I am sure they are scammers. Real staffs of any legit company won't go first with support in DMs or emails and ask for money.

Go first means likely scammers.
Go first and ask for money, coin are surely scammers.

For future reference can you please tell us where you downloaded this wallet from or which website you used, and also how you found it?


I see from here you stated something about "Trade Control" but I am confused how you've mistaken this for electrum.

1.2 BTC is a huge loss. You should really have checked on website/wallet legitimacy before using it or asked about it here before sending/depositing such a large amount to it :-\

As bitbollo stated, please provide all of the information about what happened in a scam accusation thread so that others can hopefully land on it before they try this service.

I am really sorry to say that you have been scammed. Electrum is a desktop based wallet which allows you to control your money. They do not/can not limit your account. You have full control on your wallet. So this is something else!

As requested by some of my fellow community members, please share full details of the incident. From where you have downloaded the wallet and what other things you have done. It will help others to avoid such scams in future.

I'm so surprised by the accusation of the OP, electum will never do that, you have full access and control of your crypto (noncustodial). This is also an open source which everyone is talking well about. Maybe the OP is scammed already by going for the cloned site, and that would be so disastrous in that sense.

Never deposit extra to get back your money, they will scam you more. The correct site is https://electrum.org, and do not follow the review sites you don't trust or the sponsored links when you search on online engines, be advised.

This is why you need to verify the Electrum PGP signature in order to know if you installed the right software or the cloned one, it's actually the most important thing for everyone who want to install non custodial and open source wallet. For future reference you can read this guide how to verify the signature [1]

The next important thing you need to avoid:
1. Don't use chrome, it's full of phishing adds.
2. Don't click random link on email, telegram etc.
3. Don't believe anything about Electrum's representative.

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[1] https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5240594.0

You can follow the steps mentioned in this thread by other members but it is very hard to get your money back. Take this as a learning and never believe blindly in anyone from next time onwards. I am surprised that still people are still getting scammed in an old-fashioned manner in 2023. These kinds of scams were quite common after 2017 and many newbies lost a lot of money at that time. If you have any questions regarding Bitcoin always check for answers here and then take a decision. 

I agree with everybody else on this topic, but i wanted to make a complete list of all advice (combined with my own) for future reference... So newbies having the same problem have all the answers in one post:

• If somebody asks you to pay money to get money (or unlock money, or raise limits) they are allmost always trying to scam you
• If you're unsure about anything, ASK FIRST and DO LATER... I'm pretty sure somebody knowledgeable is online on bitcointalk 24/7. Don't entertain advice given by new accounts or accounts with red trust (especially if given over PM). Transactions are irreversible (especially if confirmed), if you send first and ask later you're screwed!!!
• Don't keep your coins in an online wallet... As soon as you don't have full controll over your keys, you can get scammed quite easily
• Also make sure you're the only one having full controll over your keys
• Electrum is a desktop wallet (which basically means it's a program that runs on YOUR computer, not some website you have to visit using your browser). If you chose to use it, download it from electrum.org (type the domain name directly into your browser, don't follow links)
• If you download a trusted wallet, you NEED to check the signature... If the signature isn't valid, don't use the wallet.
• You might have to pay taxes on your profits... But you always pay them to your country's official tax institution... Somebody contacting you to collect taxes is a scammer
• don't blindly trust e-mails, text messages or PM's... Especially if you're not expecting the mail/text/PM and/or if you are unable to verify the origin. Your information can be sold and it can be used by scammers... it's not because somebody knows your name and your phone number/e-mail that he/she can be trusted... even if the mail they send you looks flashy!
• If you ARE scammed (or if you think you might be scammed), stop sending the scammers your money!!! you'd be supprised how many times people keep sending funds to scammers eventough they realise they're screwed... (But, but, but,... the scammer took $100.000 from me and he pinky promises he'll release my money if i just send him $1000 more)
• if you ARE scammed: go to the POLICE... Stealing is a crime! Also, if you're a decent human being, create a scam report on this forum, you might help others not to fall for the same scammer... You won't get your money back, but at least you know you'll hurt the scammer by reducing his potential income stream.

Your unto some big scam! Like what?

Electrum would never ask you for shit. It's not some investment package or something and your suppose to be sole on your own thing. No pay raise, no getting your money back and you've probably downloaded your wallet app from a shady site and that's not electrum wallet. Anything not downloaded from the official site as already sited by Charles-Tim in the first comment could be shady.

Best choice for you at the moment (OP) accept that you've already been scammed and don't add to the lose by trying to recover what is gone because, there isn't any getting back what is wrong. Just ensure to learn a thing from here and don't let it happen to you anymore.