Bitcoin Forum

The story about some alleged evil doer who managed to withdraw money from mybitcoin using a double spending method - it was all bullshit and we can prove it today.

I have been monitoring some of the addresses owned by mybitcoin, to which I used to transfer my money.
Some of them still had some coins, even after they allowed people to withdraw the "remaining" 49%.
That was weird already back then...

But recently they started spending the remaining 51%.
Check out these few - they used to belong to my old mybitcoin wallet:
197oprrx1H4u6dNSDCavhB247YmBwGuWa8
1Fv74A11EWzekD5g1oWEdKkBvm6sAvJEuN
1Ae2JQxADft9J7tvHJoc46es2z6SLSfVCV

Interesting, hmm?

I'm not defending mybitcoin.com AT ALL... but your logic is flawed. You can't determine, with only this information, who is actually spending the Bitcoins - hackers or site owners.

I can, basing on the official explanation from the site owners of how the money was stolen:
If it was stolen like they claim, these addresses would be empty before the service got shut down, or at least after people took the remaining 49%.
Only the owners of mybitcoin have private keys to these addresses and only they can send money from them.

The bullshiting time is over.

Uhm... you actually BELIEVE the official explanation????

Can you read? Or maybe you don't understand simple sentences...?

I dunno... I'd have to ponder it more... but if they used a shared wallet, like instawallet, Bitcoins in your mybitcoin.com account might have actually been stored in another bitcoin address. What address you put in to is not necessarily what address you get out of.

OK - let me just make one remark here.
This topic is only meant for people who understand what I am saying.
All the rest: just shut up, please - I'm not going to explain it to you, if you haven't got the point by now.

Uh, piotr... maybe if you could express yourself a little bit better. Until you learn how, perhaps you should go back to the sandbox, ok?

I believe I expressed myself well enough - if you don't get it, I'm sorry, I cannot help you further, perhaps you should go back to the sandbox, ok?

I understand!

If hackers withdrew 50% of the coins, and the other 50% were given back to the victims, then there should be 0% left in ANY MyBitcoin addresses.  The fact that the coins still exist in the original MyBitcoin addresses proves that the MyBitcoin story is completely false.  Also, the fact that this is the first time the coins have moved from MyBitcoin means that whoever owned MyBitcoin is the one who moved them, which makes it all the more curious where those coins went.

It's probably too late already but if you still have your old mybitcoin addresses, maybe we could make a list of those that still own some coins.
Maybe one day they will make a mistake and withdraw them to an address that we can identify a real person by..

Yes, SGT, we all know what he's trying to say (not that he's fantastically clear about it), but it's fairly well established that not everyone got the 51% back. The general assumption since last summer continues to be that MyBitcoin was a massive con job, most likely from the start, but certainly from the moment the "hack" took place.

As others have pointed out, the addresses don't prove anything in this particular case.

I, for one, am quite convinced that the MyBitcoin coins were dumped as part of the massive decline from about $17 down to $2 over the last five months or so. That and the allinvain coins.

Still, no way to know for sure, regardless of what the rather unlearned piotr claims.

Yeah, I suppose that's true.  If the MyBitcoin story was true, and some people didn't claim their coins, and the MyBitcoin owner decided to just give up on tracing them down, then they could still have some coins left in old addresses that they are now moving.

Not only do you understand, you're eloquent in your explanation. Unlike some other people around here. Thank you and Fuck MyBitcoin.com.

That's what I've believed as well.  Perhaps this is showing that they're now cashing out the remainder of their stolen coins.  Maybe this is the cause of the giant spike down this morning?  If so, I think that would actually be a bullish development for BTC price.

I'll buy this.  I was wondering the same thing when I saw the sell volume and this post.  If a decent percentage of old addresses can be found and shown to have recent activity, I don't think the unclaimed coins story will hold.

Even if they are spending the unclaimed coins (which I don't believe) it's still stealing our money in a daylight, isn't it?

I can acknowledge that.

After mybitcoin "hack" some of my users told me that they accidentally sent their rewards to mybitcoin addresses that they can't access anymore.
Today I checked those addresses and found that at least some of those TXes were redeemed at 07.01.2012

Yup, pretty obvious that the "hack" was really a con job. But that was fairly clear from about a week or two after it happened, not much new to see here.

Yes. Do you have the time to track all the addresses and hope one lands at an identifiable source? I don't.  And I doubt any law enforcement agency has the time and knowledge.  But if someone here has the time and can collect enough information, maybe it can go somewhere - finally?

I didn't loose that much, no :)

Those with enough vested interest but not enough time or skill could always put up another bounty.

There probably won't be any way to prove the identifiable address is the thief (and it might not be), and at best you would just have to hope the owner would be willing to tell who it was "up the chain" that transferred the coins to him.

Still, there is a possibility that any revealed info might prove useful.

I only had a couple coins there and may still have an address - I'll have to check later.  I never thought to check the balance after the "payout".  Maybe there is a way to start a somewhat anonymous collection of know addresses and check the activity?

MyBitcoin having been a scam was obvious, but it's good to finally remove all doubt. If MyBitcoin really had been hacked, there wouldn't be any old coins stored in their receiving addresses; they would've either been transferred to a different address by the attacker, or transferred to a different address by MyBitcoin's operator, a long time ago. Unfortunately, this transaction probably involves coins being sent to a coin-mixing service, rather than directly to something linked to an identity.

(Also interesting: those addresses weren't completely cleaned out; they still have a few coins in them, after the recent withdrawals.)

Keep at it.

Some graph analysis people might be able to find irregularities, even in coin mixing services, that can be tracked. Also, it would be good if exchanges comment whether any target addresses proven dirty are theirs.

I never had a wallet with them, but that doesn't make me a bit less angry about it. Tracking down these MyBitcoin operators would make a good example and possibly reduce the incentive for fraud. It's a real service to all of us.

These people are the real enemies of the Bitcoin community. Get them! >:(

Problem is, not much tracking can be done without cooperation of some of the major exchanges and retailers, and none of them will participate or it would alienate a large part of the Bitcoin crowd from their customer base (too many people here who are absolutely paranoid about their privacy).

But, I'll still cheer on any efforts in that area!

let's face it. the guy who invented mybitcoin and later turned it into the scum is not stupid, so i wouldn't count too much on him making a stupid mistake.
at the other hand, if he was perfectly smart, he'd have cleared all the addresses before shutting down the service.
so he obviously makes mistakes from time to time :)

Nice sleuthing!

There was a podcast on agoristradio a while back where one of them discussed knowing some of the mybitcoin developers.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=40417.msg506485#msg506485

Now that there is more solid evidence that the official version is a lie (as opposed to everyone just 'knowing' it)
.. it seems worthwhile pressing this guy for what he knows. 

Someone with a direct stake in the issue first - but potentially police should be asking him for information I think.

As far as I'm concerned, MyBitcoin never had any stolen BTC.  The operator had BTC that a bunch of people gave him thinking that he would give them back.  Poor judgement and/or laziness and/or lack of understanding of Bitcoin/money/human nature.

'jav' has got some coins I gave him using  his instawallet.org service.  If he walks off with them, sad day for me, but I'm certainly not going to go crying to the police or bitcointalk or anyone else.  Nor am I going to hunt him down.  I've put a significant amount of thought into how to protect various of my assets, and those who cannot stand the heat should stay out of the Bitcoin kitchen until the system develops more in my opinion.

Unfortunately we are in a phase now where it is becoming less practical for people to protect themselves in the 'real' way (by running a bitcoin client) due to bloat, but as far as I am aware there are not any on-line wallet services which allow the customer to control their private keys.

Bullcrap, of course. If mybitcoin had billed itself as a site that might walk away with your bitcoins, you'd have a point (and they would've had no customers).

By your faulty logic, if my bank decides one day to not return me my money, I'd have no recourse. It is ONE way in which a society could be run, but it wouldn't be a very good place to live.

Never trust companies to hang onto your bitcoin!  This was lesson #1 and a lot of people learned it with this fiasco.  The administrators of mybitcoin should lined up and shot.

Then let it be the poor judgement of the mybitcoin operators if they think all people are as lacking in balls and sense of fair play as you are.

Even if your vapid 'tough luck' sentiment was a reasonable one, it is astonishing that you'd advocate resigning yourself to being the victim before all avenues have been investigated.
It is not 'crying' to the police - it is using the tools at your disposal to protect and pursue your interests.

My logic is fine...MyBitcoin.com patrons willingly sent their BTC to an address they did not control.  I'd question your logic, but you've not tried to produce any that I can see.

Your bank actually probably is walking off with your money, but in such a way that you do not recognize it.  When they do in a more noticable way (a-la MF Global) you have full recourse to whatever services are offered by the justice system in your jurisdiction.

I am attracted to Bitcoin because it does not rely on such organizations as the SEC and justice department for protection my assets.  The main thing I need to trust is verifyable source code, and that a decent majority of the user base choosing the right version.  I feel that I have much better visibility into and control over this than I do with more traditional monetary solutions.  In short, Bitcoin and various developers in the open source community have already given me (and you) much more reliable tools to protect ourselves than has our government...one just has to use them (or, again, stay out of the kitchen.)

I distinctly do NOT want state sponsered enforcement to be involved with Bitcoin, and if anything pisses me off it is that so many users were so nieve that they got themselves ripped off by MyBitcoin and put the system in danger of such things.

I think if I was involved with mybitcoin and had just been caught in another lie, I would be posting something like how everyone was stupid and there is no place for law enforcement in Bitcoin. I'd really hate to have people talking about perusing legal action for me not stealing the coins they have given to me, which I clearly spelled out on my con website that they were just donating for my vacation in Fiji.

Mental note.  Include tybcof in my personal list of potential scammers.

tybcof what is next?  Rationalizations on how rape isn't exactly rape?

She deserved it I tell you!

That's your right.  I encourage you to consider everyone a potential scammer.  I do...and I very rarely get scammed unexpectedly.


You go right ahead and rely on any government to protect you and your Bitcoin habit.  Lemme know how that works out for ya.

'fair play' could include a bullet in the head for 'Tom Williams'.  Aside from a small amount respect for his technical skills, the majority of the respect I have for him is that he had big enough balls to take that chance.  I would be saddened to see that happen mainly because it would reflect poorly on the Bitcoin community and draw extra attention to the negatives of it.


Here's where I'm coming from on this.  The only way it is realistic to expect public resources to be sunk into getting people back the money they gave to MyBitcoin would be if we also invite (and demand) that they set up a regulatory framework to make sure that such a thing won't happen again and again and again.  I am sure I wouldn't grovel for this even if I had lost money on that scam.  But that's how I roll I guess...I am unusually prone to taking responsibility for my failures.

How many of you have anything resembling a legal receipt from MyBitcoin.  None?  Funny that.  Now you want Big Brother to have your back when you wouldn't take an interest in helping yourselves?  I bet a majority of the losers in this thing are Libertarian types who thought it was a really great thing that Bitcoin was not regulated.  Ironically I'm actually generally a big government socialist Liberal type.

How many of you feel that the government should spend a lot of resources trying to make whole all the people who handed over their life savings to the Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh to buy his 80 Rolls Royces?  I would argue that it made more sense to fork over one's money to the Bhagwan than to 'Tom Williams'...at least people knew where to find him.

You've made it clear you want no government involvement. Personally, I feel the same.

I still don't see how that prompts you to act as if neither fraud nor theft occurred here.

Just to get a hold on your complete view, what's your stance on, specifically, the legitimacy of voluntary options (like a bounty to out the owner of Mybitcoin?)

I suppose that what 'prompts me' to act that way is to capture the attention of anyone who might be tempted to trust more than they can afford to lose in the future.  I can just about promise that as long as Bitcoin survives in it's present form, 'Tom Williams's will be out there and particularly well represented in the Bitcoin community given the features of the solution.  And when they succeed, it is bad for Bitcoin and for me as a holder of them.

Beyond that, I honestly feel that it was indeed very negligent for people to lose more than a few BTC.  I was around at that time.  I was devising a deep storage solution which necessitates my traveling to another state to even get access a bulk of my BTC.  From the time I understood Bitcoin, there was no way I would have used on on-line wallet for anything but a bit of spending money.  There's a happy medium between my level of paranoia and a more reasonable level of care, but anyone who lost anything significant at MyBitcoin was way on the wrong side of caution.  Those who lost a 'reasonable' amount really should have half-way expected it and should shrug it off.  I say that only because I am damn sure that is what I would do.

So, although I do believe that what MyBitcoin did was both fraud and theft, I really don't see it as much more significant someone stealing someone elses open wi-fi simply because of the negligence.


If somehow 'Tom Williams' ended up getting in trouble for generalized wire-fraud, I would welcome it.

If the guy ended up with a double hemispherectomy on account of 'fair play' meaning different things to different people from different parts of the world, I would have pretty much the same amount of sympathy as I do for those who lost money in his scam.  Once again, one should understand what they are getting into and stay out of the kitchen if they cannot stand the heat.

There are several online wallets now that allow you to control the private keys. blockchain.info is one and bitaddress.org another (without transaction abilities). Also some new "light" wallets apps allow use without blockchain bloat.

These are good if you verify the javascript and save local copies to use. But using the online javascript without code signed verification on each use leaves you open to similar problems of trust. A typical web user doesn't have a simple way to know that the javascript hasn't been changed and hence the confidentially of the keys maintained.

Is there a Firefox plugin that would allow storing signatures of site content and verify any changes on each use? That would be a good thing for people using browser based wallets.

There are several such services.
Checkout BitcoinSpinner (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=52674.0)

Thank you for that clarification!

  I was a little miffed at some of your earlier statements as well. Make no mistake that a large portion of the user base agrees that we don't want big brother to come wipe our asses. Sadly, unless we would like for Bitcoin to forever remain the domain of anonymous geeks, we will find some necessity to 'trust' third parties. Meaning that the majority of mainstream people are going to want as much familiarity in services, like banks, as they have now.  I believe Mybitcoin was in the rare position then of having been around for a while already and having the 'trust' given to them because of that. I would think, or atleast hope that now people will demand more transparency from those they entrust with their funds. Some good has come, as others have pointed out, in the newer services that allow the end user control of their priv keys, etc. People are also much more cautious about who they are dealing with.

 That said, LE is obvisouly not what the majoirty of people want who were defrauded here. There is no reason however that we should discourage them seeking alternative means of recourse....  On that same note, you can bet your sweet ass, that the perps are reading here. And any information given publicly will be used to better hide themselves and their actions.

 A bounty for investigation is an excellent idea. Though not a victim to Mybitcoin, I will gladly donate some bticoins, time, travel, etc to aiding that cause. Just pick yourselves a few trusted people to consolidate information with and move on from there....

cheers,
  Derek

I agree that a significant amount of good has come out of the situation and have stated it.  I just hope that the people don't forget the lessons or that the lessons escape new users.

There are a variety of ways to cut 'trust' out of the equation, and that is the direction I'd like to see things move.  I will be attracted to any solution which ensures that dishonesty harms both parties.

The amount of engineering required for an on-line wallet service to provide receipts for incoming and outgoing funds would not be huge, and they could be structured to provide legal cover under most jurisdictions.  The fact that Bitcoin is the underlying asset becomes irrelevant since our legal systems are supposed to protect anything which is appropriately structured.  I pay my taxes to enjoy this service.  If an on-line wallet service is unwilling to provide all of the tools which could protect their customers, the customer should satisfy themselves over why this might be the case.

I hasten to add that I vastly prefer a solution where I am my own wallet service for my own personal use (by running a full client) and when that becomes untenable, Bitcoin becomes a much less compelling solution to me.


I personally have no interest in being involved in any vigilante actions.  Foremost because I was not directly harmed, but secondly because it would put myself at significant risk under ordinary laws in the society in which I live.  Chicken-shit?  You betcha!

I've no idea how much 'Tom Williams' took from whom, but if Bitcoin continues to rise in value, I suspect that those who were robbed will remember the theft ever more acutely.  If I were 'Tom Williams' (who's identity is pretty well established as I recall), I'd be scrambling to amass enough coins to pay off the counter-parties plus a little extra should they demand it for their troubles.  The guy probably has many years of worry about everything which 'goes bump in the night'.

This is getting beyond interesting. MyBitcoin con job now results in community working hard to find innovative ways around the presumed (pseudo)anonymity of the system.

Tinfoil hat on...

YOU GUYS NEED TO SEE THIS! HTTP://MYBITCOlN.COM (http://MYBITCOlN.COM)

Nice.

Interesting indeed.

I wouldn't have expected a scammer to continue defending himself at this point after such a long period of silence, which almost leads me to believe that there is something to what TW says.

"The government's secret service".  Which government?  If the US, aren't the secret service only responsible for protection?  Not for fraud/theft/virtual security investigations?

I am pretty certain it is a joke, what with the fresh prince lyrics and all...

i can smell his fear of having a whole bunch of bitcoiners hunt him down for what he's done. I didn't have anything to do with his service but he can be tracked for sure. Would be nice to have affected people post some addresses where they sent their coins to and track them down with the help of the exchanges. They could hold the coins like mtgox did and force the person to identify too.

I know this is not very much possible at the moment, giving the lack of communications between ex-changers, but I will keep dreaming it would be accomplished one day though.

lowercase 'L' instead of uppercase 'I' in the domain name.

hehe. Party pooper.

Trolololol

Lol'd.

I got taken.

Oh snap..major trolololol :) Well played Sir.

Seriously, anyone who trusted mybitcoin with significant amount of coins deserved to lose them. Online wallets are good only if they are backed by a known company, and even then, I'd still use local wallets whenever possible.

I've always been a bit confused about how exactly MyBitcoin did its marketing... they didn't have a forum presence, and they had been around since 2010.  The first mention of MyBitcoin on this forum was by Satoshi.  Did it spread through word of mouth? 

FYP.

The odd thing is the coins are not being sent in the way a normal Bitcoin client would send them, the address balances are being nibbled at and combined with other small payments from other address to new addresses, like here: http://blockexplorer.com/address/12ViYXgordxUkmPhN5PAU9vJRHwc8jftfQ. The coins are sitting in that new address. Now the question is, is that a MtGox address or still the BitThiefs? If MtGox is willing to lock accounts because coins were long before used to scam MMORPG money, they should at least be willing to find, flag, lock, and IP log coins sent directly from mybitcoin users' addresses to the exchange, disclose that those are MtGox addresses if requested, and respond to subpoenas to the identity of the thief (for private action or to be handed over to the prosecution arm of juristictional law enforcement).

Along with the magical re-appearance of "Tom Williams" at the same time, we know it's the site owner, and I have a feeling they are being transferred to the exchange for quick sell, huge sells happening right after these transfers.

Nice research!
I don't even think the service owners should be disclosing their customer data in such case - even if we prove that this money come from the stolen mybitcoin deposits.
Stealing some suckers money is bad, but there are also other important principles, which I prefer.
Like: I don't want any bitcoin service to disclose any of my data to any other entity - ever. I'm not an evil person, but still if they could that - I'd appreciate it :)

Which doesn't mean that I don't want the guy who stole my money to by miserable - what else can I feel? :)
But that's fine - it's only some pity money; don't let your dogs eat him - that could look much worse :)

They weren't sent to MtGox. If they were, they would have moved already. I have no idea about that weird consolidation, though. Luckily, it was done so poorly that we can now trace a very large amount of funds. With a script, you could trace each input, as well as the change, to find all spends out of what is known to be mybitcoin from the input and change information. It'd be cool to get a final number, too.

If Mt. Gox is forced to reveal info due to governmental demand, well, that's that.

But I personally would rather them NOT just step into a policing role in this matter. I already have my concerns with using their service... for them to do that would just cinch it.

If individuals discover the output of the funds themselves, then good for them, hopefully they can resolve their losses in a peaceful manner.

will see about how peaceful they are when find out where that guy is, will be like next Osama

Damn, someone REALLY needs to run a script on this. I barely scratched the first connected transaction, and I've already found over 500 BTC in 21 addresses.

Where are you getting the addresses from? And how much did that phony release say they "lost"?

From the non-change of the inputs to the change of the transaction from the OP's first address.

With a script (since I won't do it by hand), we could do some accounting on those numbers. Additionally, we'd be able to gather up a large number of the addresses and start tracking them. Thanks to his stupidity, we might eventually be able to track good 'ole Tom down.

I am trying to follow this, but to simplify it, a Bitcoin business of some kind would have to be involved to confirm the identity of a person who is trying to spend the Bitcoin?    Is this where Mt Gox comes in?   I figured a person would be smart enough to spend the coin on goods and services rather than try and exchange it out for cash in front of everyone's face.  Or it is done little by little daily or something. 

Someone call Bruce or the Bitcoin Police?  Or were they doing more damage than good for this cause? 

I just realized why we are seeing that consolidation...


Someone, somewhere, restarted the MyBitcoin engine without realizing the implications. Thanks to that process, just about the entire MyBitcoin inventory is clearly visible to us.

You pretty much have it down. We likely won't be able to find much, but he might slip up. He just needs to slip up once.

Would the list of addresses that sent my payout help? I dug into an old wallet and found the transaction.  I had more there than I thought.

Actually it looks like they are all empty, but I'm fairly certain this is the wallet address 1CQJMVXcvUNfu9TiZuz9UDEZUtvbiGPWBi  no activity from Aug 8 2011 until Jan 7 2012

We have a match! If anything, this shows how completely we could script the accounting. That address is used in the same transaction as 1Fv74A11EWzekD5g1oWEdKkBvm6sAvJEuN in these transactions:
http://blockexplorer.com/tx/3b9c6d77b0015f25093b4233fe06a116bd19e157e1442f99f0010dbe28c34093
http://blockexplorer.com/tx/c1590040871443e884d9c14e7cc6a4fed57bc942ec68eaab67e3dfee9cdd9b6b

Maybe it would be possible to identify more addresses based on activity.  OP's addresses show no activity from Jul/Aug 11 to Jan 12 and mine was the same.  How many other addresses would coincidentally have the same activity? Aug 8 for the latest inactivity, and Jan 7 for the earliest new activity.

Not necessarily. Coins seem to be swept out of MtGox deposit addresses after 1-4 days, although it was faster months ago.

Has anyone gotten Bitten (https://github.com/dirtyfilthy/bitten) to work, or does it do what it does well?

You're smart - you figure it out!

There sure are funny comments on the commits: "something works", "miscellanous processed meat", "bunch o work".

Looks like the kind of comments I use, I just looked through some of my pre-public code for my comment goofs: "'term for crapping on cache server" (add query to url to bypass stale cache), "I could take a URL from the command line, but fuck you" (framework for future command-line options), "fill array with crap for debug" (preloading array on instantiation)...

But I'm not smart, and I haven't figured it out. :'(

Would bitlaundry be effective at anonymizing these BTC ?

http://app.bitlaundry.com/about

The owner should be contacted not to accept these BTC.

I don't think bitlaundry was ever very widely used. Silk Road would probably be the most effective laundering method, and I doubt you'd be able to get them to reject the coins.

In case it's of use to anyone; I looked at a few (incomplete) notes I had and found some information:

From a mybitcoin withdrawal to an address I controlled, the following must be under the control of mybitcoin:

• 1gvbrPhzqq2LAx1VqGwU9ieeMY9ATH1jK
• 1K47fYMcWnPQSEezEiQfhHQhxZzvJUniyE
• 17gXCG8q8Vs5cCxR4nHaj7Fg47TmuWGzLz
• 16kLncD6PHbJaFURf5cbvK2ySxudXCryfV
• 1MgrcvVZXno3h2NLfqPTXRyeHHfU5otA4R
• 1FJg5v7xxw9P8XCH7TJGGhysuRVbycXtxB
• 1JzTpamrSGM5kiyDUqmBpUSaB51Amhr9UA
• 19NuD3VsicyCUCQ7VTZxhCxnFTFz21ffuc
• 16Chb9iUhH2mtqrrGAVu8XohLPTLGqmosA
• 1C384ycmwGRPNf1muyiaZbmNfGnA1Bn4pP

From a deposits I made to mybitcoin, these addresses must have been under mybitcoin's control:

• 1ANqs2jiTrR9SokCBmxqkaeCCvrPddHeXR
• 1Jcjh6t5qiiykbveCtcxSvZZ9XKrAmAWeu
• 1MYKeZkH8NJNx5d3xvcS6U1FEqaNfg14hX

Annoyingly, I had a few more withdrawals, but I didn't keep notes.

Hope the above is of some use though.

Bruce Wagner was head marketer http://buttcoin.org/has-bruce-wagner-pulled-off-the-financial-biggest-scam-on-the-bitcoin-community

It seems those BTC were sent to Gox in April this year, nice exchange rate at that time. Yep, this is an epic necro, but I thought it could be fun to track some more of the mybitcoin stolen funds.

Now that a Bitcoin prediction market is popping up, perhaps some will place bets on whether or not the proprietors of MyBitcoin.com are able to survive the year.

People can even bet on the exact day.

So the thief waits a mere year, then dumps the coins into a Mt. Gox account that will almost certainly be linked to his real-life identity? Hmph. Either someone was just framed; or the thief has an unusual level of trust in Mt. Gox keeping his identity secret; or he gambled that no one would notice, and lost.

You don't NEED to give MTgox your details if you pull out BTC...

So all they have to do is 'trade' pull out.... put back in..'trade'.... pull out.. put back in.. 'trade', all to different accounts.
Then Finally  start re-trading back to USD.

Mtgox will act a a complex mixing service purely because of the number of clients it has..., and that is before they even begin to use other external mixing services....

Hmm. Great, I had about 100 bitcoins on MyBitcoin.

If I ever meet this Bruce Wagner guy..

I thought if I responded to your post maybe you would come back to the forum and tell us about your arrest and conviction.

OK - reading this was quite interesting.

And to be honest it gives me a new appreciation of FinCEN.

It looks like this Bruce Wagner guy was involved and has been involved in several other financial scams before, including legal judgements against him. It thus seems unlikely that if he operated an exchange instead of an web wallet, he would have been able to get FinCEN approved.

So even though I don't like a lot of the bitcoin regulation crap, what I'm taking away from this is that if you are going to use a web wallet, make sure it is at an exchange that has the FinCEN paperwork in as well as any state MSB paperwork in. That reduces your risk of being scammed like this.

This is why I did such an awful thing as it is necroing the thread. This deserves it I think, it's a good read for the noobs.

Agreed

This is why I love Bitcoin, where else can someone track down and prove a scam was a scam... and then again, which versions of bitcoin accept multi-signature default spending  so If you give it to someone they can't do anything with it until the second signature signs the transaction?

Its not like that , it work here in bitcoin with strenuous and persevering mind at no point.and I try to get my coins out of nothing that all I have worked for you that there is nothing to do with that no one else but the scammers who did nothing but steal them not .and I started spending the coins I'm sure that I'm good work and my good bitcoin points are in my good coins when I spend time with bitcoin.

I’ve witnessed auto posting bots that can create a more intelligible paragraph. ROFL