Bitcoin Forum

Betnomi scam story (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5461815.0).

Betnomi team run 8 rounds of raffles with cold wallets for winners.

[FREE RAFFLE] Betnomi Cold Wallet - 8 round 🦊 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5441706.0)
[FREE RAFFLE] Betnomi Cold Wallet - 7 round 🦊 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5437695.0)
[FREE RAFFLE] Betnomi Cold Wallet - New Year's round 🎅 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5430126.0)
[FREE RAFFLE] Betnomi Cold Wallet - 5 round 🦊 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5425228.0)
[FREE RAFFLE] Betnomi Cold Wallet - 4 round 🦊 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5422130.0)
[FREE RAFFLE] Betnomi Cold Wallet - 3 round 🦊 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5419733.0)
[FREE RAFFLE] Betnomi Cold Wallet - 2 round 🦊 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5419307.0)
[FREE RAFFLE] Betnomi Cold Wallet - 1 round 🦊 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5415096.0)

Are those wallets distributed by Betnomi are genuine?

Is my Ledger device genunie? (https://support.ledger.com/hc/en-us/articles/4404389367057-Is-my-Ledger-device-genuine-?docs=)
Is there a backdoor in Ledger hardware wallets? (https://decrypt.co/140364/is-there-a-backdoor-in-ledger-hardware-wallets)

If you can not verify genuine of your wallets received from Betnomi team, it's safer to move all your coins in it if you have ever stored any coin in it, then wipe out that wallet forever.

With their scam exit plan, I think they probably set up some backdoors to plan stealing more coins from more victims.

Probably? More like an unsubstantiated rant and a very unlikely scenario. There is absolutely no evidence to support such claims, and Sorsis had much more convenient ways to steal other people's crypto. I'm not saying that he wasn't a very shady character (due to his alleged hacking and carding history), and many people warned about it from the very beginning of the Betnomi saga, but this is going to extremes. Not that I would use a Ledger device anyway, but that's for a completely different reason.

This is highly unlikely to happen, although the possibility will not go down to zero. Those HD looks like a customized ledger nano x which is partnered with Ledger. I never heard a stealing backdoor inserted to a hardware wallet, most used are social engineering tactics, phishing websites and already used HD after opening the box, means the seed is backup somewhere already.

Unlikely? Betnomi getting shutdown was unlikely as well until they actually did. What evidence do you need to believe that a proven scammer may have something installed on the device to steal crypto? Well I'm not really much informed about whether Ledger can be tracked in such way or not; there's nothing wrong to be secure. No one should use the wallet; in fact, it was a big no from the beginning.

First of all, The raffle is random so they don’t know exactly what’s the bankroll of the winner. There’s a possibility that the price of the ledger is higher than the winners crypto balance. The device is completely seal and officially customized by Betnomi to
Ledger. The winner can easily check whether their hardware wallet device is compromised if the seal is already tampered.

Betnomi has a lot of of promotion aside from that giveaway so I really doubt that this accusation is possible.

It seems to me very risky to use Ledger wallet gifted by Betnomi as they have scammed their customers now. If they backup the information of this wallet in advance then it seems to me a highly insecure wallet to hold coins. So those who got these wallets should really think seriously about how they will deal with this situation and whether they will trust Betnomi again or not. Let's see what those who received these gifts decide on this matter.

The word "customize—was it just the name that was customized? Will there be no possibility of other things being placed in the wallet? Did the Betnomi contract ledger reflect the name custom on the wallet? I'm just asking, as there could be a lot of possibilities to consider when thinking about security. Well, everyone can't just leave by assumption. Maybe a few of the members who won the raffle are not newbies, and I believe they will have an idea of how to verify if a wallet has been compromised or not, and if yes, they could have possibly raised an alarm here on the forum, unless they are not being used, as many people will probably have other hardware wallets already in use excluding that one.

The article in reference is about Ledger's latest feature to opt-in for a pass-phrase recovery through a joint custody service and claimed that there isn't any actual back door to the hardware wallet itself from the said new feature. Given the keyword here is "joint custody" --where the process can only be done through three different custodians, to be precise-- I don't think it's a matter to be concerned about, as not even one entities on that service has the actuall pass-phrase.

So suppose Betnomi --without naming any individual from Betnomi that's hypothetically will try to pull this stunt-- tried to remotely "recover" and gain access to those ledger by utilizing the feature on that article, they'll need all three fragments from all three of the custodian companies to give their part [with Ledger themselves as the final party].


And I don't think the two appointed entities are likely to willingly give the passphrase to Ledger [as the third and final custodian] to complete the pieces as Betnomi is not the one whose ID authenticate and opt-in for the said feature, suppose the winner of the ledger opt-in for that feature. And suppose they're not even subscribing for the service, then their pass-phare were not even split and partially-shared to those three entities, so the concern of Betnomi taking a backdoor is even less possible.

How exactly do you think they could 'backup' the information of the hardware wallet? Do you have any idea how hardware wallets like Ledger work?
Of course, I'm not saying that a hardware wallet can't be tampered with, but when you leave comments like this, it would be helpful if you provided at least a little explanation.

---

Yes, "customized" means that you get a Ledger device with an engraved custom logo or some other text/graphics on the device. Anyone can order such a customized device from the official Ledger shop, although there are minimum order quantities, making this service more suitable for businesses. However, the device is still ultimately packaged in tamper-evident packaging by Ledger before reaching the end user.

There is a risk with all hardware wallets sent by Betnomi for several obvious reasons, but I also don't trust ledger either and I am not sure if all modified devices can easily be detected or not.
I hope nobody received any devices with previously generated seed words written on paper, that would be obvious way to scam someone, but I don't think they would try using this trick.

Best thing is to stop using all ledger devices and switch to Open Source alternatives like Passport, Keystone, etc. but for people who don't want to do that can visit this links to check hardware integrity and if devices are genuine:
https://support.ledger.com/hc/en-us/articles/4404389367057-Is-my-Ledger-device-genuine-?docs=true
https://support.ledger.com/hc/en-us/articles/4404382029329-Check-hardware-integrity?support=true

I won a ledger wallet with the Betnomi raffle, and it's a little hard for me to believe in such a scenario, but I couldn't guarantee that there is no possibility. I remember taking a good look at the package and not noticing any signs that someone had opened it before me. But again, I wouldn't guarantee that it didn't happen.
There is only the Betnomi logo on the metal part of the housing and I didn't notice anything else. I don't use that wallet at all, only for a couple of tests, so I didn't even try to determine if there were any unofficial changes. Originally it was supposed to be a gift, but after the "Ledger recovery drama", it ended up in a drawer.

As far as I remember, apart from these raffles that the OP mentioned, another amount of Betnomi wallets were distributed to the winners of the Bitcointalk Community Awards, so the list is bigger than 8 raffle rounds.

When a gambling site scammed their customers out of thousands of dollars. They have prepared in advance to succeed in their activities, so every thing they have done must now be brought under our suspicions. I know how Ledger wallet works. I mean if Betnomi unofficially makes some kind of change in that wallet then think how dangerous it can be. We must not forget that the Betonmi site admin mentioned hacking as a skill, we can argue here again that a hacker can be both good and bad, but his activities do not look like a good hacker.

I feel suspicious about their gifted Ledger, not only me but many members find it suspicious. Nothing happened yet so we couldn't go into it, if something unexpected happened to some users it wouldn't be good at all. So is it not better to be careful in advance?

When a scammer want scam someone,he would build trust first. This was what Betnomi built in the forum and they gave out hardware wallets as gift. Nothing is impossible, it might be that they have plans to use the hardware wallet to scam the winners or they did it to gain trust from the community.

All winners of this wallet should just abandon the hardware wallet and save their coins in some other trust wallet,to avoid any regrets later. I know that it is impossible to put a backdoor on a hardware wallet but prevention is better than cure.

There isn't any thing else to warn ppl about because they've built trust before. Prevention is 100% better than cure for hardware they've received from Betnomi. If it's compromised they'll have theft of their cryptocurrency savings so they shouldn't use gifted ledgers from Betnomi.

I am glad to see a topic about it.

Why it will be an unlikely scenario? Good luck using the Ledger if you already have one from them.

People don't trust Ledger, the forum don't trust the Sorsis guy and Betnomi brand anymore. Even after all that happened with Betnomi, do you still put your trust in them?

You can buy a seal packager for less than $10. Does this sound too costly to you. To alter an embedded device you can pay a programmer and they will do it for you. It's not impossible. If anyone wants to reach bitcoin users then the best place is this forum. It does not if matter you are targeting random users or not. Those who were winner for bitcointalk award are not random people at all.

It all sounds impossible, unlikely but I suggest not to take a little risk if you have the amount of crypto that is life changing. Scammers are creative and very friendly.

It is a possibility so probably will happen or won't happen.

I don't have evidence but I don't take risk to use those gifted wallets if I have big fund than prices of those wallets. Should I risk my $1000 fund with only $100 or $200 hardware wallet which I don't know whether it is safe.

Thank you.

I don't know if users following this topic are also following the one about their exit scam (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5461815.0) so I'm posting this, in case not all users from this topic are following the other one.

I performed 2 days ago a hardware and software integrity check on their Ledgers and they are not tampered. Those interested in more details can check this post (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5461815.msg62694410#msg62694410).

No need to think too much about how to deal with these issue, just don't accept the wallet or not participate at all, the possibility that the wallet is already tampered is already high considering Betnomi is confirmed to be a scam already. The only problem now would be for these people to continue to trust them which none of us can't stop but at the least we've warned them about this. From what I can deduce from all of this, I will be predicting that we will see someone post a topic in this board about how their funds are stolen from their Ledger wallet and then will say that it's a gift from Betnomi.

Three things. One, no one can "not accept" the wallet as it's been sent months ago, the receiver already received the wallet, it can't be undone. Two, no one can participate on the free-raffle/giveaway anymore as it's been done months ago, the events are no longer exist. And three, if you bother to read at least one or two latest posts --if not few more-- to get a better grasp of the latest situation and development of a case before posting, you'll see GazetaBitcoin Grizzly-ta-Bear-coin gave a very nice summary of his very long and extensive due dilligence (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5461815.msg62694410#msg62694410) on the other thread about the ledger.

As I said already, no one should trust Betnomi to avoid being scammed again. They have scammed their customers like this, and no customer will take the risk of using a gifted ledger wallet from them. So I think those who got the gift wallet are aware enough that using this wallet is risky because they are experienced enough. There has already been a lot of discussion about this, all the members who received the gift also belong to this community so they also visited this thread.

Aside from having a printed already recovery phrases and having some chip tampering, I don't think that there will be other way for them to make owners of it worried. But I guess those that have been worried about the winners of their giveaways need to see what Gazeta has said and what he has done to prove whether they're tampered or not or been modified for their own sake.

The promo was already done and they've sent it already and it was already received by members who have won there and all of the details about it have been linked by Gazeta so, it's really recommended to check it out since the post is just above yours.

Have you read the thread where they've opened Betnomi's ledgers? The story of Betnomi.com (Exit Scam)  (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5461815.msg62694410#msg62694410)

Suuuuuuuo holydarkness O0


Lol! Doesn't it feel sometimes tiresome to state the obvious? :)


Blushing  ::) ::) ::)


Following the great imagination of the remarkable saxydev (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5436291.msg61751340#msg61751340) and Rizzrack's alt shitcoincollector12 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5439659.msg61815094#msg61815094), it seems that you developed a great imagination as well O0 ;D ;D ;D

It is a big helpful test but how do we know all gifted Betnomi's Ledger wallets are safe?

This one is safe but I can not assume all rest Betnomi Ledger wallets are safe. If we can not test those wallets and be sure they are safe, we should not use those wallets.

Thousands of XRP transferred from a Ledger wallet purchased from a reseller!! (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5463620.0)

I hope no one will report the same with accidents from Betnomi Ledger wallets.

All those interested to check their Ledgers for hardware integrity can do it following the steps I already provided. I have one more Ledger from them but I won't bother to unseal it and check it and I am sure I'll find the same result.

fillippone, for example, said that he will also check his Ledger (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5461815.msg62712711#msg62712711).


Why do you care so much about what others do? Are you the owner of such Ledger? If yes, then check it yourself. If no, then you can't coerce all the owners to check their wallets, right? Some don't know how to do it (if they did not see my post) and some may not even care. Some may not even use the wallets, keeping them only as collectibles.

After all, the main problem with Ledger wallets is the one determined by Ledger themselves (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5452900.0). That should worry all Ledger owners, not just those having a Betnomi Ledger.

Betnomi returned, logged in account, edited trust list (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5461815.msg62826588#msg62826588) but did not answer any question from community to clean their case.

Be careful with your gift from Betnomi. You can save it as a collectible but to use it for storing your cryptocurrency, please don't take this risk.

I think it's been quite established that the ledger is not tampered? GazetaBitcoin GrizzlyBear had put an extensive effort to carefully dismantle that thing to help the community see what's inside of it, and it's pretty much the same as other ledgers, no evidence of it being tampered. Or do you have a proof that they're tampered? You recently dismantled one of your own from Betnomi, perhaps, and found something strange?