Bitcoin Forum

Earlier this month I deposited some money in my intersango account and traded it for BTC. Soon after that I couldn't send bitcoins to any of my perfectly valid addresses as I kept getting an "incorrect address error". "What on earth?" I thought so I go to their support staff who either ignore me or act completely ignorant all "well your addresses are perfectly valid" (what a brilliant way to respond).

A couple of days later my account gets sealed off and I'm told I somehow breached clause 5 of their T&C ("potential" illegal use of intersango).

Now they refuse to even tell me HOW I breached their clause and completely stonewall me on Skype and on their ticket system.

My account is now locked and they havn't answered any of my tickets from the past few days.

I have been scammed basically.

i hope this resolves.

You've not been scammed, Intersango have a process for dealing with issues that come up, some of them are fast to resolve some are not.

Just give them some more time, I'm sure it will get resolved.

Me too. I don't have anything in there now but I could in the future.

I thought they were spotless ... till now.

*monitoring*

I'd like to hear from Intersango on this.

I'm not familiar with your particular situation, I'm sure our support will reply within a reasonable time frame.

The title of course is unappreciated and defamatory. We operated as a free service for the greater part of a year. We developed open source exchange software. We wrote the first full reimplementation of bitcoin entirely at our own expense (an 8 month project) and while we aren't operating at a loss anymore, we are not operating at much of a profit either. Still we maintain the best security and support.

While I'm not familiar with your situation - perhaps you could tell us the particulars - I know that accounts will only be restricted if there is very direct proof of illegal activity or a direct admission of intent to do something illegal.  Of course we are not an illegal operation; we are not and will not be complicit in any illegal activity.

It's unfortunate that there will of course be some people that attempt to use our services in ways which violate UK law. I'm not saying this is the case with you, however our policy at Intersango is to act only in the event of real proof of a crime or intent to commit a crime. We would never take action without proof and I know my partner who deals with this would not waiver from these principles.

We take great steps to ensure that our users' funds are safe, never discriminated against and that accounts are not restricted unless we are certain people have operated outside of our terms and conditions.

If you wish to waive your rights under our privacy policy my partner can respond publicly in this thread.

Unsuccessful troll is unsuccessful :/

I agree. I will stay away from intersango now that this person with 2 posts has called them scammers

OP, did you start a new forum account just to post this? 

Well the supposed evidence is from when I asked your guy on Skype how long would it take for funds to be received at the Silk Road if sent. Is this enough evidence that I've been using your service for illegal purposes? Your meagre 42 word provision certainly doesn't exactly draw a line as to what "may" constitute to a contravention of the law and what may not.

However when you first put your restrictions on my account (which you never notified me of until I constantly asked your guy on skype later on who stonewalled me straight after) I made a deposit on my account which of course went through no problem as originally I tried to make a small withdrawal but because I was assuming that I was getting the error because I had too little funds I decided to make this deposit (your support didn't even answer me when I asked). Once I traded my deposit to bitcoins, not knowing that my account was in fact restricted from making any withdrawals I tried to withdraw my bitcoins and got the same "invalid bitcoin address" on each of my different addresses. A few days later I can't log in and you have my funds locked up. Your skype guy stone walls me and I get no true response from the guy on the tickets who earlier couldn't tell me why I couldn't withdraw my bitcoins.

If this is not part of a little scam then this is surely not evidence of the "best" support being maintained. After all your support was so poor I decided to make a forum account here where I've had a better response than from your support team.

But does this not sound like a scam to you? IF my account was closed because I was using your site to send bitcoins to the notorious Silk Road to be used for illegal purposes then why was I allowed to deposit to the account whilst these restrictions were in place? Yet completely restricted from withdrawing anything before and after the deposit? Why couldn't you originally shut my account instead of having these odd effects in place? Why when I asked about these effects I couldn't get an answer? Why couldn't you even tell me about my account being sealed off and/or why I couldn't send bitcoins?

Why am I having to resort to posting on a forum as your support team are providing anything but the "best" support?

Firstly laws are many, and complicated, laying out exactly what is not allowed according to every law under the sun Intersango operates under isn't really possible.

Secondly, you asked them about how long it will take to get your bitcoins to SilkRoad?

Not  the smartest thing in the world to do.

Thats like going to a bank and asking them how long to transfer funds to your dealers account (not that I'm calling Intersango a bank, but you know what I mean).

I'm not exactly sure if SilkRoad is illegal or not (probably is in the US, again I don't know IANAL), but I am sure that if it wasn't running on Tor then it would be shut down pronto, and all the information on it would be used to arrest as many people as possible.

Sending bitcoins to SR itself isn't illegal, but the only things you can buy there, generally are illegal, so it seems not only did you violate the TOS, but you went and told them you did.

Word of advice (to all) don't tell your exchange you're sending bitcoins to SilkRoad, or anything even remotely illegal, it's a bad idea.

Seriously? "Remotely illegal" ?  ::)

Well I don't know, like I said, IANAL

Better safe than sorry.

I would have thought it was obvious that it's not an exchange's place to police trade. I am sure they were not responding to a court order.

SR sales are legal in many places and for some of the items on the site the sales are definitely legal in the US.

If they're locking accounts because someone might use the bitcoins for something illegal in the future, might as well lock every person's account.  :P

Know-your-customer laws require that money transfer agencies (that might wish to deal with Americans) respond to suggestions of illegal activity.  He might have thought that you were a fed trying to entrap him, because most anyone who would really ask how long it would take to transfer wouldn't mention a well known black market.  Transfers in bitcoin take roughly the same amount of time regardless of the intended recipient.

That was incredibly stupid.

There are a good few items which are 100% legal in the UK on the SR.. And it's not like that at all it's more like asking a bank how long til I can withdraw some of my funds in cash at a branch which happens to be in an area notorious for the sale of illegal items. In fact I think I even asked how long would it take for bitcoins to get to the SR not even mentioning anything about sending MY bitcoins to the site which supposedly makes up at least 1/4 of the bitcoin economy. But the 42 word provision 5 isn't exactly clear as to what "may" involve illegal activity and what doesnt so how can they enforce it?

But this is not the point IF I was going outside their T&C by using the SR then they shouldn't have allowed me to deposit in the first place just as they didn't allow me to withdraw at the time. By their terms and conditions my account should have been closed off and not not displaying incorrect messages when I try to withdraw whilst letting me deposit as much money as I like. They didn't even tell me that I couldn't withdraw because of me going against one of their provisions. In fact when I asked about the error messages they couldn't even give me a proper answer and I only found out when I repetitively asked after I couldn't log in.

Interesting thread.

The situation once more shows why we need bitcoin: for freedom.
We aren't even free to send our btc to an address now  ::)

Then we have the intersango guys who of course says the thread is defamatory...

It's not the mission of an exchange to proactively try to detect potential illegal usage of Bitcoin.
Entrapment concerns are irrelevant, if I go to my bank, withdraw cash and tell them that I'm going to use it for shady purposes they won't freeze my account.
They *might* report me to the police, but they wouldn't be entitled to freeze my account.

The only actual requirement financial institutions have is to report suspected money laundering, and suspected tax evasion in some places.

Either way, I'm sure that this story isn't as simple as it looks.

The way it should be and the way it is are different things.

Obviously the OP shouldn't have discussed the silk road with intersango, but even so, intersango have no right to freeze the account when the silk road is not in itself illegal. It is not a crime to access the silk road. It is not a crime to send bitcoins to the silk road. As has been pointed out already, the silk road is a marketplace for both legal and illegal products.  Intersango are going well beyond their legal duty in freezing this account - with disturbing implications.

I think I can understand intersango's motives here.  Firstly there's the valid entrapment argument.  Secondly, they could be charged with knowingly aiding and abetting an illegal act if somehow OP was busted for buying drugs - I'm not saying OP *was* buying drugs, but *if* he was, and LE followed the trail, they might find that intersango knowingly allowed a client to use their services for transferring funds to a known drug trading website.

If bitcoin is ever to be widely accepted as a mainstream currency, it would be better that the critical nodes (exchanges, online wallets etc) stay above the law.  Intersango closing OP's account will present absolutely no problems to OP if he wants to continue trading on SR (apart from the immediate problem of getting his money back).  It's like Intersango is wearing a halo and saying "See, officer, we stopped *that* bad guy, aren't we nice and oh-so-legal." while really everybody knows it's bullshit and there's nothing anyone can do to stop people trading on SR.

I think the implications are more "irritating" than "disturbing".  OP shouldn't have mentioned SR.  I wouldn't be surprised if the guys at Intersango rolled their eyes and thought "Damn, why did you mention *that*, now WTF do we do".  They're playing ball in two courts at once and OP crossed the line.

edit: I think OP should change the title of this thread (if possible). Calling something a scam just because it steps on your toes is an overreaction, and, in this case, has portrayed OP in a much worse light that he was trying for with intersango.

No, it wouldn't.

I suppose I can understand their stance from a certain point of view but how they went about closing off my account is what I think is wrong for sure. They never told me when I broke their T&C they never told me they made my account unable to send bitcoins whilst I was perfectly able to trap my funds with a deposit this so called A* support team didn't inform me of anything during this period, all I got from Intersango was an email letting me know that my deposit just got added to my account. How charming. As well as this the customer service has been a joke and I STILL haven't heard a word back from them.

But if they want to enforce that silly meagre 42 word "provision" then fair enough! But by the same terms of service that very provision comes from, my account should have been closed off, just as they jolly well did shortly after I deposited. I should not have been able to make any deposits let alone trade my deposit for bitcoins whilst only being unable to do one thing (which was of course to withdraw the exchanged funds).

Why, Intersango, did I have this silly period where I could deposit but not withdraw before they decided to simply shut down my account completely? Since I haven't heard a word back from your so called brilliant support team.

I didn't deposit much at all but It's my hard earned money none the less and they have absolutely no right to simply steal it from my very hands.

Well it sounds like a scam to me, freezing my account AFTER I made a deposit during this bizarre period where I could deposit, exchange but most certainly not withdraw? A period where I couldn't even get an answer as to why I couldn't withdraw my coins? Not a proper word back from them since this started?

It sounds to me like Intersango should get their account-blocking procedure fixed.  It does not sound like a scam.  Calling it a scam would imply that they are *deliberately* trying to steal your money, and by extension, others' money.  Your over-hyped over-reaction does no good to anyone.  And it's not just you - this behaviour of prematurely shouting SCAM SCAM SCAM at the top of one's voice seems all too frequent in the bitcoin world.

Note that I'm leaving aside the question of whether blocking *you* was justified or not; I'm just talking about the technicalities of how to go about blocking an account once it has been determined that an account should be blocked.

Right well I can't see under what sort of circumstance you would know if someone is being scammed; where someone is clearly stating "I am swindling your money" perhaps? In most cases one can only assume if someone is scamming you.

Anyhow if your so certain I havn't been scammed and this has just been one big silly error then why have I STILL not had ANY response from them?

Any updates?

This is worrying.

I'm also having problems with the Intersango group :

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=60943.msg881128#msg881128

I bet they would love this thread at the SR forums ;D

OP: That was a stupid thing to say...

Any updates? I guess Intersango fixed it. I have done two BTC to SEPA transfers which where carried out fast.

Intersango is a bunch of scam artists.

I always hear to stay away from them.

Says the guy who buys bitcoin with paypal...

Are those paypal accounts phished? ;D

So I guess no updates on this, very annoying to leave it like this.

If you start it, end it, its like watching 50% of a movie.

If that guy dissapeared, maybe intersango could update it I guess, so we know whats up with the money.

Mentioning SR was pretty stupid, but without actually purchasing drugs, or doing something illegal, it is just a simple transfer to a bitcoin address, so I do not see any reason for locking the account. The law needs to handle this, not the exchange service. I hope intersango does not start mtgoxing people, if this story is true of course.

wow... never using intersango

+1

The chances that something illegal will happen might be slightly higher when withdrawing to a SR address rather than to some other address. Then again, I didn't have my credit card issuer freeze my card because I used it to get cash from an ATM, even though cash also creates a higher chance of something illegal will happen, when compared to using the card to pay in a store.

I think it is no surprise that people get upset and talk about "scam" since it seems to become common practise among exchange operators to let all deposits go through and to only disclose the fact that an account was frozen when someone tries to withdraw money. This policy creates money for the exchanges by withholding important information from customers. Something like this is commonly called "scam".

I'm interested in seeing if experiences like this will also come up on non-newbie forums...

Well to end the storyline: In the end they recently (few days ago) traded my bitcoins at the current market price for GBP then asked me for my account number, sort code etc. Then once I gave the details they sent me my total account balance back to me. 

So I would say the bitcoin exchange is probably safe. But should something go wrong (because of you being a bit of an idiot or otherwise) then I doubt you can rely on their so called excellent customer services.

Sorry to Intersango for being a bit of a dick about this issue. .

I won't be visiting here again, I just felt I had a duty to clear this up as opposed to what I see many arseholes do: not bothering because there is no personal benefit to gain from it.

Very glad you at least got your money back in the end.

I transferred 125€ and after 9 days still nothing. I opened i ticket, customer support said admin will have to look at it. Then 2 days passed and still nothing. Within EU, SEPA does not take more than 4 days (Max!) my bank says. They keep referring me to some "administrator" but that's it. Nobody has contacted me or told me when will the question be resolved. This kind of "businessmen" are very bad for BTC future. Now im buying only from another person and via escrow, so everything is traceable and legit.

I would not recommend using their service, nor will i EVER use their services. Today i sent them a reply, that if  i wont get an answer what is going on and when will money be transferred then im going to police. Its a fraud!

If they cant handle their business (delays, problems with IT or whatever then just return my money).

update: Chris from Intersango let me know today that they have a major backlog, because of some sort of problems with UK banks. Seems i have no other alternative- just have to wait.. and hope.

update 2: Ok, after the cage rattling i finally got my money on the account. Will try to retrieve it now, so nothing else wouldn't go wrong. Would i use them again? I think no.

In conclusion: if you want to buy or sell BTC, use some other site that provides fast and accurate transactions o buy/sell on person to person basis.

Hi Patrick! My account has been restricted for some time, and according to you, I must be doing or intending to do something illegal.

How exciting! What is it I'm doing?