Bitcoin Forum

Thanks for the comprehensive list.

Might want to include hacker caught / law enforcement involved category.

I wanted to do a list like this myself but never had the time.

Can you also maybe do a total of how many BTC have been "stolen" / "lost" / "tainted" / "scammed" !

I'm not sure how to do a total of the amount of stolen coins, because they are always constantly recycled and restolen. If the hacker is ever caught in a major theft, I will be sure to add a category for that.

Everyone forgets that Bitcoinica has actually been hacked 3 times.

http://bitcoinmedia.com/bitcoinica-vulnerability-discovered/

I don’t know how much exactly has been stolen in Feb, but it was a few thousand.

To be able to include it, there needs to be a good enough estimate. I'll put it as an unknown with the range 2000-9000 for now.

On a side note, does anyone know more about this?

If this is true, then that is ~20000 BTC, which would rank fourth in the list.

Could you do it in chronological order?

Done. The by BTC severity list remains, and I think I'll do a by USD (wt. avg for the long-period scams) list too soon.


Still need confirmation/more details for this.

I can't wait for The Crypto Network to come out in theaters:  http://www.imdb.com/title/tt12850160/ (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt12850160/)  ;)

I wanted to make such a list myself too for a few days already but glad someone else wasn't as lazy as me.

You forgot to add moonco.in and a few more probably ;)

Does anyone have a better estimate of moonco.in's theft amount? Using SC/BTC parity, and the valuation of SolidCoin at 0.006, and CoinHunter's value of 800000 SC stolen, I think 4800 might be a reasonable estimate. To veer on the conservative side, and to avoid any false precision, I'll use 4000 BTC as a weak estimate.

The guys name was Tony. I read about 30 or 40 pages on the Silk Road forums. I'll see if I can dig them up.

Now, someone make a list of all USD heists, thefts, hacks, scams, and losses resulting in loss >$5,000.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=65867.msg923845#msg923845

Good list - I would suggest a 1000BTC minimum to get on it, otherwise there would be a number of other, smaller and less relevant losses.  Would Shakaru qualify?

I should probably make this more clear. I will wait a while on Andrew Nolan if he reappears. Otherwise, this is a very well defined scam with >1000 BTC.

While this is a very significant bitcoin-related "theft" (by the banks?), I take that no bitcoin was lost, and the losses were actually in AUD. Is this correct?

I am guessing the majority of losses will be AUD losses (around $26000), but depending on recovery, there are likely to be people over 1000 coins out of pocket.  It might just sit here in the thread as a footnote/cross link.

I listed WBE in a new section. This section is broad enough some others may qualify.

TradeHill should probably be in this section too as losses due to fraud were the primary reason they stopped operating.  I think don't think Jered posted final figures on how much user fraud cost TradeHill overall, but I seem to recall him talking about specific amounts in relation to some of the earlier incidents which affected them and the amount being in the tens of thousands of dollars.

Although both TradeHill and MtGox covered the losses so users weren't affected, the Bitcoins which were bought and then sold through fraudulent deposit schemes should probably count as "stolen" or "scammed" as they were never paid for by the users who laundered them.

That happens? I'm still using dollars for some things, is it safe?

I think he mentioned $100k somewhere but I'm not 100% sure.

P.S. Add shakaru too, about $22k in dollars and bitcoins

Great list. You could add Goat's loss of 400 (recovered) coins.

Good lord.  That's, what, almost 250,000BTCs lost from hacks.

its your thread but it seems to me your intent was to identify the more nefarious times and examples of Bitcoin history.  I may be wrong.

If that was the case though you should remove both Stefans and goxes self destruction examples from the list.  If not there is a huge list of self erased bitcoins to be added mine included. :D

How many bitcoins did you erase? The goal was to enumerate not necessarily the nefarious times, but all losses for users and businesses of Bitcoin. Erased bitcoin is identical to a theft of ones bitcoin, with the market principles of supply and demand eventually distributing them across all holders.

Quarter of a million BTC? Small peanuts I say. Only $1,2 million at current rates.

I like these heists better:



Brinks Mat warehouse (1983): broke into warehouse to find ten tonnes of gold bullion worth US$45 million

http://www.2spare.com/_media/imgs/articles/a31_BrinksMat.jpg

10 Greatest Robberies of All Time. (http://www.2spare.com/item_60496.aspx)

well, i erased 12 btc once.  i also had 800 btc stolen from me by cuddlefish aka Nathaniel Theis of the now defunct Ubitex (http://volatiletechnology.com/police/wiki/index.php?title=Ubitex)

Yeah, I had my stupid learning mistakes also.  I am interested though to keep track of this list and to see how this progresses.

1000 BTC for Ubitex is a significant amount! Are you sure this money was stolen? No scammer tag is present on cuddlefish.

Isn't there already a thread dedicated to the number of bitcoins lost and/or destroyed, but not stolen?

yes, by SgtSpike.

yes it was stolen.  he walked off with the money.  to be fair he spent some of that on web fees, hosting, development, Red Bull, etc, but the majority he walked off with. 

there are several other ppl here on the forum who got hosed too but not as much as me.

if he is not tagged as a scammer please tell me how to do that since that's exactly what he is.

His identity is known to Nefario as far as I know, info on whois and quick google search give some results too, how come no one managed to extract the money. 
He ran with 1000 BTC last summer, so the amount owed could be around $10k. Not bad for a 14 year old.

What was promised here? Was any of Ubitex actually delivered?

I added the "2011 Ubitex Scam" with a scam amount of 1138.98 BTC, but added a note saying that 1000 of those were spent.

Be nice to put this on the wiki at https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Main_Page (https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Main_Page)

Toby.

That's a pretty significant percentage of the existing bitcoin supply and even the total possible bitcoin supply.

Terrible idea. This is the last thing bitcoin newbies have to see when getting to know bitcoin. Wallet security already implies enough.


Considering that most loss the BTC lost/stolen were from summer last year when BTC was worth 2-3x as it is now, the actual amount people lost is substantially higher.

I hereby release the content in the OP, with the exception of the introductory paragraphs, into the public domain. If this is not legally permissable, I hereby license the content for usage as liberally as permissable by law.

(aka I'm too lazy to put it on the wiki myself, but feel free to do so).

It also serves as a warning, so users take due diligence before MyBitcoin 2.0 gets hacked.

Maybe lower than the percentage of gold supply in the course of history that was once smuggled, robbed, lost, buried, confiscated until resting where it is now.

Exactly. +1

New heist (June 20, 2012): Bitcoin Savings and Trust scams over 20,000 BTC.

Edit: new platform (http://hyip.com/)

I see what you did there....

You forgot that one where that one guy scammed his business partner out of 300,000 bitcoins for $5000.  Maybe it was 100,000 bitcoins, I forget now and can't find the post.

I was debating whether to add that one (it was knightmb's "purchase" of 300000 BTC). However, the business partner did receive what he was looking for, which was $5000.

I remember his name was knight something...


knightmb's business partner was an idiot, but since the business partner was relying on knightmb expertise on bitcoins I consider what he did fraud.  It would be like a bank being stupid enough to give the only keys to the vault to their security guard and the guard stealing all the cash inside.

Who here would do business with knightmb after knowing what he did to his business partner?  From other forums (http://endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=30632&sid=2d29e2990f0a2afbc9f069a3783476b2) it seems to be a personality trait of knightmb.

I feel rather sorry for the employees who were duped. I suppose those men and women didn't have it as bad as those who were duped like no other. (http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?threadid=150282)

I don't think they were employees, I don't think his project ever got that big. I think they were employers, or more likely business partners, possibly even a bank or (small scale) vulture capitalist. Whoever it was, they really should have sought a valuation of what they were selling independent of the person they were selling it to!

Anyway, fascinating though the story is, I don't think it was a theft, hack, scam, or loss. Knightmb paid $s for his BTCs, he just managed to strike a once-in-a-lifetime bargain!

Toby.

+1

I think you could also add in parenthesis how much were the Bitcoin in each case worth at the time of scam/theft/loss

I added shakaru's scam, due to popular demand and the fact that it has been a month since the last communication. It ranks as the 13^th largest scam of all BTC history.

Hi, I am going to use the OP's post as a source for an article I am working on. It will be more comprehensive and detailed, and the OP will be credited.

New: July 2012 Bitcoinca Theft (ranking #3).

impressive!

It's sad that so many "reputable" (or formerly reputable) Bitcoin websites are on this list along with the scammers... gox, bitcoinica, etc.

Notice: this post is outdated and kept for archival purposes. The hack has been roughly added to the chronological history of the OP. Do not trust what you read.

New hack in progress: BTC-E.com

I'm actively monitoring this right now. This looks like it will be a disaster.

So far, the fraudulent volume is 61196.73 BTC. This is all the fraudulent volume (it's all the "extra" BTC poofed into the system). The attack is still ongoing, but more BTC poofed into the system will likely never make it out of the exchange.

This fraudulent volume, or official figures on how much was withdrawn, will be the value listed for amount stolen from btc-e. I will also list the amount btc-e did not compensate its customers for, as the amount stolen passed on to customers.

Because the attack was through a modification of USD, it was likely a SQL injection (or possible something more severe). Expect a database leak.

A lower bound has been established based on blockchain activity: 20000 BTC. The upper bound of around ~60000 BTC in volume remains. Either way, this hack would be a disaster for Bitcoin, easily ranking in the top ten.

The hacker is unknown. A character by the name of MrWubbles, claiming to be supa, someone infuriated with the BTC-E exchange, claims responsibility. This point is disputed, as MrWubbles has almost certainly lied about being able to delete the database. The most likely entry point was a SQL injection.

For all victims of the hack, I sympathize with you. Although security should have been higher, the BTC-E team will still likely absorb much of this loss (as well as lose their past profits), and deserve sympathy as well.

Instructions for best recovery:
1. Sell ALL USD immediately. There is definitely not enough USD to pay out.
2. Withdraw ALL BTC immediately. Unless fractional reserve or cold storage was employed, there should be enough. This is confirmed by one of DeathAndTaxes's experiments.
3. Change passwords for other websites immediately. The database is likely to leak, if a SQL injection was the culprit.

Best of luck to all victims.

Links?

Here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=96802.0;topicseen
Also, check chat: https://btc-e.com

This needs its own thread.  A lot of people don't read the Speculation forum and posters need to be aware that this is happening now.

New: July 2012 BTC-E Hack (ranking #11).

Trying out a new navigation system using links, hopefully this will accommodate the huge volume of thefts. I would appreciate it greatly if anyone could fill me in on the thefts that don't have commentary (you will, of course, be listed in the credits section).

Also, retroactively added the Betcoin Theft (#13).

I like how comprehensive the list is, as well as having several lists with different focus.
Well done! :-)

Ohe hint: With these large numbers, it does not really make sense to give the full decimal number. It just makes it harder to read. In most cases, the numbers are estimates anyway.. I would suggest to cut off the decimals or round to nearest bitcoin, depending on number.

Noting better than waking up and reading through that list, to get your bloodpressure up, right? heh

Ente

I made the decimals smaller when exact, and put them to the side when it is a lower/upper bound or about. The numbers now have descriptors now (l.b. = lower bound, u.b. = upper bound, a. = about, est. = estimate).

While reviewing the list, I revised the Bitcoin7 estimate down 4000 BTC (from 15000 BTC to 11000 BTC) after using a new rationale. This may be either too high or too low, but should be better than the previous value (which is now listed as an upper bound).

Also added a table of contents to organize the list better.

I just wanted to give my thanks for this list. Everyone should read it over once.

I'm at odds about how to handle the recent occurrences. Please read this (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=83794.0#post_pirate_default) and offer suggestions accordingly.

he actually "stole" much less than 500,00 BTC. Nice thread, btw.

Could you please elaborate? I am trying to collect as many sources as possible to provide an objective but accurate estimate to the extent of damage.

New source states 500000 BTC stolen: DailyTech (http://www.dailytech.com/Pirateat40+Makes+Off+56M+USD+in+BitCoins+From+Pyramid+Scheme/article25538.htm). Uncited, though.

Ah, found the citation (it was from the Verge, which cited Maged's post containing Pirate's own words). This thread (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=101339.0), if anyone is curious.

It is a guess though a pretty accurate number could be had if all of the pass-through published data and you added that to bitcoinmax and gpumax.

You do have to figure that the interest is not real though. If you deposited 100 BTC in the beginning and it compounded to 300 BTC it should be counted as 100 BTC.    Pirate may have lied to you , but he did not take 300 BTC. 

I prefer to stay away from reconstructions expect as a last resort. Do any Pirate insiders have a more accurate number?

If none of these numbers are available, interest can be estimated by estimating growth, which can be inferred from GLBSE passthrough volumes.

In a ponzi scheme, investors are paid out with other investors money.  The operator never has enough money to cover everyone withdrawing at once.  So while there is BTC500k on paper, much fewer real coins exist if in fact pirate was running a ponzi.  

Basically, the investors had built their accounts up to over 500,000 BTC collectively via compound interest, so they feel like they lost more bitcoins than they actually had. Those bitcoins never existed. Only the principle deposited and whatever pirate made from his market shenanigans were available to the fund.

I think nanotube has access to all account information? maybe I'm wrong.

Okay, I understand what you are saying. Before I doze off (it's late here!), I will publish my thoughts on a ballpark guess (not an estimate, just wild speculation).

Let T be 500000 BTC (the total amount in the fund), I be the total interest credited. As the scheme was not 500000 BTC from the start, there must have been a growth. Assume that growth started April at 10000 BTC. This works out to 25% growth in the scheme per week, which is reasonable. The geometric sequence based on this growth extrapolates to 140000 BTC interest, which we can round up to 150000 BTC. This is reasonable, and implies the total amount stolen is near 350000 BTC.

That's probably a good ballpark. I think over the next few weeks we will have a lot more details on the deposit specifics.

Update! Some accounts have been repaid. Looks like calling the default was uncalled for.

No proof of that unfortunately.

Also, it doesn't matter if tomorrow he pays back every last bitcent.  It will still have been the case that he was in default.

This is assuming that Pirate isn't understating the total paper value of everyone's balances at BTCS&T. Some have theorized that the paper loss is much higher than that and that just the actual principle lost alone could reach 500,000 BTC. Maged seems to reckon based on blockchain analysis (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=94900.msg1140191#msg1140191) that Pirate alone made off with about 200,000 BTC from this, not counting the money paid out as interest, though sadly he doesn't seem to be able to publish details of that analysis.

200000 BTC is an even lower estimate than 350000 BTC I gave, but I figure also more accurate. If worse goes to worst, then that is the figure I may preliminarily use.

Keeping up with this list is getting to be a full time job lately.

Thank you.

New theft: Bitfloor (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=83794.msg923918#post_bitfloor_theft). Ranks #5 (preliminary, not including Pirate).

A quarter million dollars worth of funds gone and it only ranks fifth?

Incidentally, the list ordered by USD is missing a few ..., this BitFloor event and also the Linode (Bitcoina, Slush and Faucet), Bitcionica (May) and Bitcoinica (June) events.
 - http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=83794.0#post_sect_listby_usd

The USD list is missing a lot, most of them. I will fix that.

On a related note, this thread has just gotten slashdotted or something, because it jumped from ~5000 views to ~8000.

thanks for keeping this list up to date. very good to have this info compiled here.
do you have a donation addr?

I will accept donations at 1MLSW1nmYkHqaHWNNkHSAHct6exd8fYYLX (bitcoin:1MLSW1nmYkHqaHWNNkHSAHct6exd8fYYLX). Thanks!

Well, that estimate's going to be quite a bit lower than the actual total loss because it's based on the assumption that pirateat40 was paying out interest using other investors' deposits. So on top of that 200000 BTC loss, investors will also have lost some of their initial principle in the form of profits gained by other investors.

wait, so what % of the total bitcoin has actually been stolen? :-)

This is nearly impossible to know because most BTC has been stolen not once, but many, many times.

Understood, but some (wide) estimate would still be useful. We can probably assume that a good deal of stolen coins were cleaned and then hoarded or converted to fiat, and thus not subject to resteal.

I think it's important to have some sense of the total # of coins likely still in the hands of scammers and thieves. The idea of bitcoin becoming increasingly value when such people own a significant percentage of all coin is quite distasteful. I think I could live with 5% of all bitcoins in such individuals' hands. Over 10% and I start to consider that a huge negative in the economy.

(edit: just shipped you a tiny donation....appreciate the comprehensive list)

Around 300000 BTC have been stolen in total (the list lists much less than that, but many thefts are undocumented/unknown). If Pirate is included, this number increases to 500000 BTC, which is your 5%.

Thanks for the donation!

May want to add a total to all thefts in your OP.

This may be an interesting indicator as to what amount of bitcoins are in the hands of the rest of the community.

Theft bitcoins are, for the most part, in the hands of the rest of the community. The coins from the largest thefts have been redistributed. Look in your wallet, and you will find MyBitcoin coins, allinvain coins, Linode coins, and probably BS&T coins as well by now. While it's true that Mt. Gox has frozen some funds, the amount is insignificant.

This is not to claim that tainting is not an issue, but it is true that it is no longer feasible to assign special status to robbers.

Similar to the method in which I am treating Pirate, thefts of vapour-Bitcoins cannot be included.

You might want to add the Long-Term Offers forum (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=88.0) to your list at some point by the way. Yes, all of it - pretty much every scheme in there has now failed, defaulted or otherwise imploded.

Excellent list. Thank you!

I have a proposal on how to try to stop bitcoin thieves after the fact. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=110749.0 Please discuss / give input there.

I know the proposal is not new in principle. If we want to implement it or something like it, we need to get the community talking about it and asking for it.

Thanks.

After some time has passed, you are right. But let's be ready for the next theft and act quickly. See my post here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=110749.0

I have a plan for improving this list in the near future. First, I have to sort out the BS&T mess and the Kronos.io hack (which, by the way, I still do not have a date for). After that, I should begin some systematic reanalysis of each theft to revise the estimates into better ones if possible. To aid this, I am planning on an accuracy scale for the estimates:

Scale Category	Definition
Level 0	Exact amount given by official source, third involved party, or blockchain analysis; almost universally accepted. Appropriate references must be included: One reference from an official source, third involved party, or blockchain analyst revealing the approximate amount. One reference from that source, could be the same as the previous, mentioning the exactness of the amount. If the source is a blockchain analyst, two additional reference from a third party confirming the blockchain analysis. Depending on the reliability of the main source, a third party confirmation could be required. This can be one reference from another type of source, types given below, that outlines a value confirming or supporting the main source. Official source Third involved party Blockchain analyst
Level 1	An approximate amount obtained from official source, third party, or blockchain analysis. Amount should not be, within a reasonable doubt, off by over 5%. The following references must be given: One reference from an official source, third party, or blockchain analyst revealing the approximate amount. One reference from that source, could be the same as the previous, mentioning the level of error expected should be low. If the source is a blockchain analyst, one additional reference from a third party confirming the blockchain analysis.
Level 2	Both a lower bound and an upper bound obtained from official source, third party, blockchain analysis, or my personal analysis. The upper and lower bounds should be, within a reasonable doubt, absolute. The upper bound should not be more than three times the lower bound. The following references should be given for each bound, unless it is determined through personal analysis, in which the appropriate references backing the personal analysis must be given: One reference from an official source, third party, or blockchain analyst revealing the bound. One reference from that source, could be the same as the previous, mentioning the absoluteness of the bound. If the source is a blockchain analyst, one additional reference from a third party confirming the blockchain analysis.
Level 3	Only an estimate is obtained from the official source, third party, blockchain analysis, the media, or my personal analysis. Up to one absolute bound is known, but not two. The upper bound should not be more than three times the estimate, or the estimate should not be more than three times the lower bound, if a bound is known. The following references should be given for the estimate, unless it is determined through personal analysis, in which the appropriate references backing the personal analysis must be given: One reference from an official source, third party, blockchain analyst, or media source revealing the estimate. If the source is a blockchain analyst, one additional reference from a third party confirming the blockchain analysis. If an absolute bound is known: One reference from an official source, third party, blockchain analyst, or media source revealing the bound. One reference from that source, could be the same as the previous, mentioning the absoluteness of the bound. If the source is a blockchain analyst, one additional reference from a third party confirming the blockchain analysis.
Level 4	No reliable estimate is known, so one is calculated through a third party or personal analysis. Up to two bounds are known, but they may be far apart. No references are required, however, methodology should be present if no references are included.

Thoughts?

It is a small detail but I think it is important because Google indexes it: his last name is actually Nollan.

One of his emails that I know of (he uses/used it for Paypal) is andrew.nollan@gmail.com

Done.

Add GLBSE. Closed down issues because of dislike of issuer. Now BTC and shares are lost to holders.

Possibly JRO and his two great vapour-ware assets Rebate and ZIP.A could be included.

Here's a self-report of a loss from the massive Reddit thread. It wasn't substantial then, but is now. http://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/14nwsx/what_is_bitcoin/c7f7g0v (http://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/14nwsx/what_is_bitcoin/c7f7g0v)


EDIT: Just re-read the first post, and though this wouldn't qualify for inclusion based on the year and severity, it's still good to include it in this thread for safekeeping!   ;)

Add BitMarket.eu to the list.  From another thread:

  [Edit: Fixed the link to the quote.]

Will do. I'm a bit busy right now, and there are a few more to catch up on, but this seems like a huge mistake so it will be prioritized.

I do wish people would get the quoting right on that; those are M4v3R's words, not mine.

Apologies for how long it's taking, Christmas holiday was yesterday where I live. I will catch up shortly.

Take your time  ;)

So I'm a bit confused here: did the theft happen at the time of Bitcoinica's shutdown? If it did, why wasn't it discovered earlier? You would assume that given Bitcoinica shut down after the Rackspace hack, the lack of funds to withdraw from would be obvious.

AFAIK it was discovered only after people requested more money to withdraw than bitmarket had. Some people may have kept their BTC on the exchange for many months before and after hacks and admin's gambling. After the Bitcoinica hacks the balance was only fictitious but no one knew about it so as long as more BTC being was deposited than withdrawn.

2013 has arrived, and we're off to a clean start thus far. The last theft (aside from the December revelation, which was actually a May theft) was an almost 10000 BTC theft in late September, so we have had a quarter of a year without terribly bad news.

With every new year, the cutoff value for significant thefts changes. While the total bitcoins in circulation has increased since 2012, there is little reason to increase this cutoff value based on this result alone. Although an increase would not be ill-advised (after all, the Bitscalper scam last year has already faded into obscurity), I feel that ignoring potentially devastating thefts based on an arbitrary number is ill-advised. As a result, I am preliminarily keeping the cutoff at 1000 BTC, which has served quite well the previous two years.

Ideas?

Just some Fun Facts for you all...

BTC-e is founded by 2 men who stood trial for 17 counts of fraud.
BTC-e has relations with mafia organizations all over the world.
BTC-e has been known to close accounts and hold people's funds indefinately.
BTC-e has known to lie about the security of their site claiming it's more secure then it actually is.
BTC-e conducts insider trading constantly and trades funds that do not belong to them ie funds from closed accounts that they then spend.
BTC-e is not registered at all in Russia and all the American Servers the site is hosted on require them to abide by US law which they do not do.

Well, that hadn't lasted long.


Though losses were absorbed by the exchange:


But the severity hasn't yet been disclosed:

Scammer... Pathetic

Source? for the people who own BTC-e?

Its shocking to see just how much money has been scammed off Bitcoin users in its short lifetime.

I was just saying the same thing to myself  :-[

Why is this such a shock? The global GDP in 2003 was some 70 trillion USD. [Source] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_economy) Global Cybercrime alone cost the economy 336 billion dollars. [Source] (http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/cybercrime-costs-338bn-to-global-economy-more-lucrative-than-drugs-trade/57503) That's about 0.5% of of world GDP. Considering bitcoin is a new experiment with growing pains, and bitcoin transactions are irreversible, (often no way to fix mistakes, pseudo-anonymity, poor government/law enforcement support) it may be argued that fraud and theft losses should naturally be higher.

Indeed. Anyone claiming BTC fraud is significant has not really any clue about what happens in the fiat world.

Wasn't ASICs the huge thing coming out in December, what happened to all that? Another scam to be revealed in the near future...?

Apparently a nasty trojan went around in 2012. I've added that to the list, ranking 15th.

@Vircurex: any evidence amount stolen > 1000 BTC?

So:

Looks like I forgot about the MyBitcoin mass withdrawals following the Mt. Gox theft. Coins were all funnelled to 1MAazCWMydsQB5ynYXqSGQDjNQMN3HFmEu, it seems. This is now added.

I also bumped Pirate down to first (it stood awkwardly at zeroth before).

May as well add the bASIC to this list, I got scammed out of roughly ~230 BTC which is a big chunk of money for me, especially since BTC value has doubled since I placed the order.

BitLC.net
Feb 13, 2013

- https://www.bitlc.net

FXBTC.com (exchange in China):

[Google Translate]

 - http://www.btcbbs.com/forum.php?mod=viewthread&tid=227

Nice find, but the 200 BTC estimate does not meet the barrier.


Thanks for reporting, but the amount is too small. The list would become worthless if these small-scale scams were included.


Good call. I'll put this down with a 2000 BTC estimate.

And the hits keep on coming!

- http://blog.bitinstant.com/blog/2013/3/4/events-of-friday-bitinstant-back-online.html



Losses of $8K USD are immaterial?  I suppose "Major" means something different nowadays.   Does BitInstant's $12K loss even qualify then?

Ubitex, Andrew Nollan, the Mt. Gox gaffé, and Bitscalper were technically all smaller, so I wouldn't say $12K is "immaterial". However, I risk saturating the list if I add too many of these smaller-scale thefts. What I'll do for now is hide these 4 thefts from the severity listing, and maintain the current 1000 BTC cutoff (which I hope to replace with a USD cutoff sometime in the future.

I agree. While painful 333 BTC is only symbolic, compareed to the total business of Bitinstant. i wish them best luck in securing their site further and possibly prosecuting the thief.

I was just thinking about Pirate and his 500K BTC at $46..........*sigh*

If he actually has any reasonable size of coins left he could sell today and pay everybody back at the dollar value of btc  when he shut down.  I'm sure everyone would take that with open arms and get off his case....

Please stand by.

There was a past event yesterday that may be added to the list. The recent chain fork has not only affected miner revenue, but may also have caused double-spending attacks.

Mining cost: 748.18715667 BTC
Double-spend:

• OKPay: 211.9093 BTC

Preliminary total: 960.09645667 BTC

Final update: No other double-spend attacks have been reported. The event therefore does not qualify for inclusion.

Shouldn't TORWallet be on this list?

There was a discussion on IRC and on these forums regarding if the fork made double spending possible and I was refuted and plainly lost the argument. No the fork did not enable the possibility of a double spend

It most certainly did.  The OKPay double spend was an intentional double spend (performed by manually constructing and broadcasting a transaction that re-spent previously spent funds) and was successful due to a combination of factors.

There still are even more double spends that can be performed (as they are still unconfirmed and not yet spent) but simply haven't (yet):

Bitcoin Central & Instawallet security breach. More info (http://bitcoin-central.com).

Instawallet and Bitcoin Central are currently down. They are reporting a security breach. Below are a link to BitcoinTalk threads covering this event:

• https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=164126.0
• https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=164143.0
• https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=164132.0
• https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=129461.440

Update:
Bitcoin Central has released a statement claiming all funds are under their exclusive control.

Transactions of interest: see 1LrPYjto3hsLzWJNstghuwdrQXB96KbrCy (http://blockchain.info/address/1LrPYjto3hsLzWJNstghuwdrQXB96KbrCy)

I have been speculating over the list for quite some time, this should be mandatory to read for every bitcoin website owner as the barriers are quite low these days.

I had 160 coins stolen recently.  I posted the details on reddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1czrua/just_lost_160_btc_from_address_managed_with/

The thieving transaction was https://blockchain.info/tx/5abb271eb6e2d0da1855b06282c84dcf7467dda9da6da9090cad10ddae957fc7

Approximate value at the time of theft: $22000

The coins began moving roughly a day later.  I'm presuming they were laundered through a mixing service though I haven't done an analysis or attempted to trace them.  https://blockchain.info/tx/c751475e90f0747295794fdfa4aad8556dda24f3b50b932322fd25422c6cf507

Thanks for compiling this list, has been quite an interesting read. By far the most peculiar scam I've seen however has been pirate's ponzi scheme. The fact that someone managed to scam 5% of bitcoins in circulation and crash the market is jaw dropping. Also it is crazy to look back and see all the people who supported/defended him back then.

I remember a good real life friend of mine was telling me about pirate before he scammed everyone and wanted to invest all his money with the guy. I was a non-bitcoiner then and to me it just sounded like the most obvious ponzi scheme, so I will never understand how people fell for it to such a great extent.

My current view is that Bitcoin is and will forever be public property and anybody who is able to make the transfers (by being in possession of the private keys) is allowed to do so.
Unless you scam people in making transactions while making false promises or you break the law while obtaining the private keys, I don't think there is any legal system protecting someone against you transfering all the bitcoin to another address. Which effectively makes it legal to take any bitcoins you want as long as you are able.

The only way I see around this is having an international institution like the U.N. attaching your name to a private key.

Is there anybody who can provide a source for a single conviction or legal action against a person that comitted a Bitcoin "heist" or "theft" (not "scam")?

Uhm..
"If someone has your private key or your Bitcoins, and didn't do anything illegal, it' not illegal".
Wut?

An example would help me here..

I don't see where Bitcoin is any different to money or apples. I am not allowed to steal neither of them.

Ente

Man so many unfortunate events. So much Bitcoin my brain can't comprehend.

It's impossible to steal information, only to copy it.
Unless you take away one's ability to access that information, I can't see it as stealing.
Bitcoins are public information, because they are stored on the blockchain.
Maybe you want to protect private keys with intellectual property laws, but that would require some kind of proof that you were the only one to have access to them in the first place.
I don't see any other way to make "bitcoin theft" illegal.

Thanks for putting this together. It is a great reference.

Sorry, but it's theft. If you take, spend, or block access to someone else's Bitcoins, it's theft. I believe a US Court would agree if you could bring a good case. Research common law.

Not a single "thief caught" in all that list.

:(

Aah, I see where you are getting at!
Yes, makes sense.

Not sure if "sense" applies to laws, though ;-)

Ente

Which court in which country is going to decide who is the rightful owner? Based on what evidence? And where should the "thief" be tried?
I'm sure that in common-law jurisdictions it can be considered stealing if the judges feel like it. That doesn't make it just according to other law-systems.
If you know how Bitcoin works technically, you can only come to the conclusion that it's not stealing because everybody already has full access to the entire blockchain.
Remember: There is no End-user license agreement on the blockchain. It's basically free to manipulate any way you can. People put their trust in math, not in protection by the legal system.

Trendon Shavers caught, charged for Ponzi scheme.

See reference. (http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-07-23/texan-charged-bitcoin-denominated-ponzi-scheme)

Updated status of Bitcoin Savings and Trust accordingly. Also updated upper bound from 500000 BTC to >700000 BTC. (I consider "upper bound" to mean 90% certainty, not 100% upper bound). Added lower bounds at 150649 BTC, 192852 BTC. (latter as the differences don't add up). Deleted the estimate, which is almost certainly too low. The new information seems to indicate that a lot of redistribution occurred—some profited greatly from the scheme, so Pirate's profits alone do not indicate the entire lost.

way too many thefts! too many digital assholes

OP undergoing restructuring

The OP previously used BBCode to do all its formatting. While this was acceptable when the list was small, it has now grown unwieldy. References were in 50 separate formats, hard spaces and regular spaces were intermixed, broken tags piled up on the bottom, etc.

Luckily, I just recently developed a new tool to compile a simpler markup to the unwieldy BBCode. This tool, BBC++, is a superset of BBCode that allows one to automatically generate tables of contents and reference lists. In addition, it has built-in features for representing Bitcoin quantities with a narrow hard space.

However, BBC++ does not automatically convert "old" code to new code. Some conversions are obvious. For example, all instances of "old quotes" have been converted to typographic quotes. However, some are harder to find. If you see any stray "old-style" references in the descriptions, please notify me.

Just-Dice.com Incident added

After some deliberation, I concluded that the Just-Dice.com Incident met the definition of "major theft", as over dooglus suffered damages of over 1000 BTC, albeit temporarily. Consequently, the Just-Dice.com Incident has been added as the 9^th largest theft when measured by USD.

There have been way more than I expected...

I was caught in a couple of these scams. Seeing them all together in one place is frightening. The amount of funds stolen in Bitcoin has to be proportionally larger than the combined thefts in any world currency. It has to be like 5-7% of all Bitcoins in existence have been stolen. It makes Bitcoin look like just a mind-boggling perverse stream of thefts since its inception.

The reason is simple: we're not prepared. The digital world is relatively new to us all. But few of us worked in online banking. Few of us gave background checks for securities or traded penny stocks. The ones that did were drowned out.

The fact is: Bitcoin is not special. Just because someone deals with Bitcoin doesn't mean they can write a website in a week (Bitcoinica), give 7% interest per week (Pirate), or hash passwords with MD5 (Mt. Gox). Until the community realizes that this is still the real world, that work is needed to make a successful company, that "too good to be true" implies untruth, that backups need to be made on many media, that Murphy's law applies more often than not, and that security audits are all too important, this will keep happening. Luckily, we are learning.

Great list!

Point taken. But the nice thing is, it doesn't matter even if 90% are stolen. Bitcoin would still be usable. Furthermore, much of the stolen btc may well be put back into circulation at *some* point.

How much gold was robbed, taken, seized or lost in 5000 years of history? How many cultures were dizimated?

Since the 1900s the U.S. Dollar has lost 90% of its value through inflation, some people believe this is theft, also.

Most these bitcoins not gone and will  as eventually re-enter circulation once being laundered.  Bitcoins will become safer with time as the technologies surrounding it improve.

Just so you know, your "more info" link points to a .com site while bitcoin-central is .net.

Also, since you were very prompt to include me (I am a co-founder of Paymium) under your strange "hacks , scams" title (banks are hacked all the time unbeknownst to you yet you do not call them a scam), it would only be honest to report the refund operations for instawallet and bitcoin-central.

You can find a handful of peole moaning on the forum but you will not find the hundreds that got their money back..
Transparency is good as long as positive information is not filtered out to leave room only for the bad press.

Can you calm down? That text is not in the OP; it is in one of the live updates that are preserved for history. When the instawallet breach was first reported, there was mass panic. After it turned out that the breach was not severe and no funds were lost, everything calmed down.

Also, the intent of this thread was stated right in the OP. I will give you the benefit of the doubt here and chalk the misconception up to English being a second language. This is purely an informational thread. There is no need to report the refund operations because no money was stolen.

What?

The quote from Boussac isn't even in the OP. He's complaining about something that's not there.

It is a great reference!
Thanks for keeping this list up to date...

 ;)

I would add Patrick Harnett ponzi to the list of thefts and schemes.

In am very calmly telling you that your highlighting in red the headline is only aggravating the situation.
If no money was stolen why is it that you are listing our site under this calomnious thread title ?
If there was "mass panic" acccording to you, why would you add to the panic by listing us under the thread ?
Anyway your thread is bliss for our competitors (by that I mean mostly banksters).

No. This is truncated information amounting to libel. As an amateur journalist, you should check the "press" thread to read more professionnel versions of the same shit.

Where is this red headline? Oh, look, not in the OP.

The OP is the only thing you must read. All else is discussion about the OP. You are not talking about the OP. Therefore, your post is off-topic.

Wow, the amount of coins lost to scams is unbelievable

Here's a tough one: the Ross Ulbricht seizure. It doesn't fit any of the words in the title, but it seems similar enough in that it was a forced transaction to which the sender did not consent. I'm thinking of listing in on the list and making a note that the seizure was authorized by US law. Does this make sense to everyone?

As you said: it doesn't fit any of the words! But it might be interesting to start a new thread: List of Major Bitcoin seizures/confiscations by LEAs
That would be interesting, it won't be the last one.. Why don't you? I would not have the time to keep it updated, but you seem good in that! :) Cheers!

I think you can safely add this to this thread. Some of the transactions that were occuring on SR were legitimate in the eyes of law (even if they were a minority).

There is also the word "Losses" in the topic title, so yeah, I think it's a great loss (>$3M) to people who stored their BTC there.

I agree too, Ross lost a huge pile of Bitcoins. Sure, we can still watch them in the blockchain, and there are people with access to them - but it's not that much different to the other cases at all.
Well, of course the 27k seized Bitcoins aren't strictly and solely Ross'. Still worth an entry.
You might even count the 111k somewhere in the list. Just because Ross might never be able to practically access them, and with such a huge number that is of interest. It still teaches readers a lot about security, backups and inheriting.

All this is too crazy to not put on the list, somewhere! :-)

Ente

Yes I'd also include DPR's 26k into this listing.



However I'd remove the losses from this thread. There's another thread for that and the fact that coins are permanently lost is different from all the other cases here.

I added Silk Road. There will be some tweaking to the list in the near future. Right now, the "severity" lists are terrible because of how volatile the BTC price is. Consequently, I will likely be adjusting the lists to order by June 2013 BTC (which seems to have stuck as a good baseline, because price was similar to today in June and in addition price was particularly stable).

You guys are missing the bitcoinrain/mercadobitcoin 10~15k btc theft.

bitcoinrain was basically a ponzi and mercadobitcoin(one exchange donator to bitcoin foundation) used adulterated fiat balance to gather coins. The operator of both sites excuse was this: he put all coins of bitcoirain in one account of his exchange www.mercadobitcoin.com.br because he though it was safer this way so he could go in a trip but unfortunatelly the website was hacked in his absence.

guess what, the "hacking" event occurred during the bubble. withdrawals from his ponzi(bitcoinrain) were already halted many days prior the hacking event.

After the heist of his exchange account that also held his ponzi coins no addresses were made public and since we is a known person and already threatened by government he tries to keep this as silent as possible, thus he aims at trying to keep everyone that had coins with him under control. His is promissing one payment plan pricing the coins at 180 brazilians real, about 80USD.

He also held hostage any fiat balance people had on his exchange for more than 3 months after bubble popped, which is the reason I say he used to manipulate the sellings.

profile of the suspect: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=10275

Every coin sent to bitcoin rain accounts would first go to this address:
https://blockchain.info/address/1FuiZdyNvJPy5pPdJMSNSoUhme3D6FmPpp

I just found this thread and will compile a more detailed version of the facts later.

Also missing aethero defaulting on his Ziggap loan from BTCjam, currently has about 900BTC outstanding and also he stole some cash from someone that was supposed to be trading for BTC?

FBI seized 144336.39449470 BTC from Ulbricht's wallet, over $28M at the time of the seizure:

https://blockchain.info/address/1FfmbHfnpaZjKFvyi1okTjJJusN455paPH
http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2013/10/25/fbi-says-its-seized-20-million-in-bitcoins-from-ross-ulbricht-alleged-owner-of-silk-road/

Should be:

FBI stole 144336.39449470 BTC from Ulbricht's wallet, over $28M at the time of the theft:

I was hesitating how to word it exactly but I decided to stay a bit more neutral this time ;)

To you and me this is considered a theft but to most people it's a seizure or confiscation (because FBI was operating within the law).

Ya, keep the term 'seized'.  The body of work is interesting enough to be discovered and evaluated, and it's in the community's interest that 99% of the general public does not see the community as consisting of foaming idiots.

agreed. i personally don't consider confiscation of a high tech drug dealer's bitcoin to be a theft, i consider it a lawful seizure of money gained through illicit and prohibited behavior.

Yep, there's a lot. I will go through the new ones and add them once I have the time (which will be this weekend I hope). Keep the reports coming!

1170 BTC stolen from 50BTC pool. It happened in 2012 but I couldn't find it in the OP.

https://50btc.com/news/status_update_en

https://blockchain.info/tx/9dfdb24667657365c469ff20568fcc820f6f028a125d9c22dc521ae44dcf7c5e
https://blockchain.info/tx/bd2ad7b49c22d12cf2f8f12ef601952aed2a96907af4df732156fd90165b5ef5
https://blockchain.info/tx/d0035ad189634e90239cca82eb53f78e08c0179620b2bd24e2cb291478c7d57a
https://blockchain.info/tx/a2b642bafea45bc128d81314ef33542bc807811ba066329eaa1306bd62bec075

Has been added. Others coming soon.

judging from this list, does anyone have suggestions for whats currently most secure online wallet?

There's no such thing as a secure online wallet, and there never will be due to the nature of Bitcoin.

At best, there's blockchain.info. It's the least insecure of all of them due to how it is designed.

Anyone know if anyone ever got any bitcoins/USD from the bitcoinica fiasco?  I had 150BTC in bitcoinica, but unfortunately missed the deadline earlier this year to submit my claim.  Ooops.  Just curious if any bitcoin/usd ever materialized for anyone, or if they remain "locked up" in Gox.

I've already accepted that I won't ever get any of those coins back, and at this point I consider Gox at least as responsible for that as everyone who was involved in bitcoinica.

Are there any possible legitimate reasons for him to behave this way?

This should be stickied to the top of every forum.  When in the hell are we going to get our cash + coins back?

Just as a reference point for this comment: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=248803.msg3504172#msg3504172

BTC4100 has apparently been "stolen" from Inputs.io. Not much information yet, but it still needs attention.

The backlog grows...

A weekend is coming soon so I will add the missing thefts then.

Don't forget inputs.io

It's on the backlog, of course. Not easy to forget about this one because of its relative size.

Stolen my eye. He just left over a million dollars in bitcoins on the server, after all his talk about security?

Very true, and updated my post to reflect the funds being..."stolen"...

There's not enough information for me to make an informed opinion yet...but seriously, who keeps BTC4100 in a hot wallet? It seems like criminal negligence at that point...

Yes the Inputs.io Hack will rank #1 or #2 on the all time list.  :(

Going to need to agree with Korbman why was their so much in the hot wallet it should have been in a cold wallet, the talk about security systems from a few months back is also a point. Although I recall TF did say it was not his program still.

I have added the ZigGap incident. Coming up are Silk Road v2, 50BTC, and Inputs.io. Hopefully I can get most of these done today.

bitcash.cz got hacked
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=331725.0

looks like several hundred BTC

I came across this today, but haven't seen much information about it.

http://www.coindesk.com/4-1m-goes-missing-chinese-bitcoin-trading-platform-gbl-vanishes/ (http://www.coindesk.com/4-1m-goes-missing-chinese-bitcoin-trading-platform-gbl-vanishes/)

The related thread (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=217454.0) has people claiming it's a scam from the start.

Add BFL and maybe keep an eye on inputs.io

Man, it's getting hard to keep up! I'll add the new ones after the ones already on the backlog.

News on the hack of Bitcash.cz

http://www.coindesk.com/czech-bitcoin-exchange-bitcash-cz-hacked-4000-user-wallets-emptied/

These keep adding up very quickly. I just don't understand why those exchanges don't spend enough money to fully secure their exchange. It seems like they aren't that hard to hack.

None of them even take the minimal steps that I do to protect my own stash.  And they are running a business?  In the notably hostile world of Bitcoin?

I'm sorry, but one needs to be a world class simpleton not to suspect that most if not all of these things are straight-up thefts.

I wonder what the security level is on btc-e, bitstamp and such. They're among the ones with the highest volume.

The thing is, a lot of new users to bitcoin are going through the same painful education the rest of us got a few years ago.  Bitcoins are digital property.  Don't trust 3rd parties with them.

I wouldn't worry about BTC-e. I lost coins when they were hacked and they credited my account for the lost coin four days later. Good customer service too but there can be a communication problem sometimes.

Yeah communication problems happen there.
Good then, thank you for sharing this with me.

You people don't get it, do you ? The majority of events listed here are not due to lack of security, just some internal job. It is irrelevant how many security layers the service supposedly has, all it takes is a dishonest operator.

True.  IIRC, the MyBitcoin theft had not gone down by the time I got interested and I believe that was one of the first.

An interesting difference is that I don't think anyone was really buying 'Tom Williams' story even though it was a lot more credible and inventive than what the current crop of scammers bother with.  Now adays a scumbag can write off a theft to an old e-mail account and a lot of people buy it, although I suspect that there is more sock puppetry going on these days.

That makes it even worse.

highly recommended labcoin on the list..fucking Alberto scammed the community again again again!!!!

I don't see any mention of inputs.io / coinlenders BTC4100 coin loss in the OP. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=328053.0

The community isn't that smart then.

Done. I am moving through the backlog, so please excuse the current lack of inputs.io (it's on the list).

This was really quite interesting to read, it certainly educated me a lot on bitcoin. I'm fairly new to them, only started out a few months back and this really helped me with catching up :) thanks!

You always have to keep an eye out.

Why isn't inputs.io in this list?

This needs to be added ^^ .

2nd biggest Polish exchange hacked:

http://bidextreme.pl/

Some people say they were "hacked", though, because they didn't see their bitcoins change addresses.


tl;dr: fiat money is safe, all users' BTC and LTC were stolen, should we manage to get it back, it will be returned to the users.

Really? You are going to list the SR Seizure as a heist, theft or scam? Its legitimate evidence of supporting Criminal Enterprise. Its not theft, its siezing funds from ill gotten business. Along with arresting DPR who is a criminal that belongs in prison anyway, and I would like to see the FBI use its new found evidence to track down and lock up every single dealer that used SR. Its an awesome bust. It needs to be shown in its proper light of good police work and law enforcement!

I am not confused at all. Running a business purporting drug sales, illegal weapons, and murder for hire is a crime, regardless of success. If you don't agree with me, you are probably criminal scum yourself and belong in prison right along with him. GTFO!

Actually SR did all three, and i made it clear it was illegal weapons, which is bad. Law Enforcement and police work to catch criminals has nothing to do with the slavery or concentration camps you are implying, whats wrong with you? I make a strong point and you try and defend it with conspiracy nutjob theories....whatever bro.

"List of Major Bitcoin Heists, Thefts, Hacks, Scams, and Losses"

FBI seizure #1: SR users lost their BTC
FBI seizure #2: SR admin lost his BTC

Sure losses, but I dont find it relevant. It was criminal enterprise being shut down. Its not an undue loss thats for sure.

Fortunately for those of us who aren't paid propaganda agents, this does not exist to serve your personal preferences.

If you don't like it, don't click on the thread.

I am not in the business of propaganda. Actually I clicked the thread on the purpose of learning a bit more about whatever people have lost to scams and thieves on intent of finding ways to bait and catch thieves and scammers, and upon finding the SR seizure among reported thievery puts one off, but I suppose all of you advocate criminal activity unless it directly affects you.

My time is better spent updating the list to finish the ever-expanding backlog than resolving contentious topics such as these. A footnote will hopefully resolve this dispute. It will probably come in the next update.

...and coinlenders :(

Better just add TF and the services related to him.

Add http://bitclockers.com/ (http://bitclockers.com/) to the list.

They closed up shop and walked off with a ton of coins.

BIPS hacked (1295 BTC stolen):
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=252308.msg3675013#msg3675013

Thanks to those of you who are helping me keep things up to date. It's been a busy time for me, but at last I have some time again! I will work on incorporating the rather large backlog tomorrow.

Didn't think there were this many heists with BTC.

Bitcoin to Cash hacked (or "hacked") — 100 BTC lost:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=344143

Who thought that it is really profitable to get "hacked"  not to hack somebody else account.

There will always be someone who will have innovative ideas in the scamming field.

Added. Will continue to update this post as I complete the backlog.

Edit: Inputs.io is added too. The list is full, unfortunately. I'll PM theymos to see if any posts can be created; if not, I'll start a new thread.

You might want to include (at least until its found (if its found)) and if we can find the guys wallet address
James Howells Loss (lost wallet) 7500BTC lost.
Believes his wallet is currently sitting on a hard drive in a British land fill and is trying to search for it.

Without any proof, OP shouldn't add this.

I have lost a USB drive with 1,000,000 BTC please help me find it.  ::)

Thus the mention that if his wallet address etc can be verified. More effort than its worth for outsiders to randomly look for unless someones bored but still a significant loss if it's verified :)

Another one? How many were in November alone?

Looks like 96 000 BTC were stolen from SheepMarketplace:

http://www.reddit.com/r/SheepMarketplace/comments/1rvlft/i_just_chased_him_through_a_bitcoin_tumbler_and/

(this figure might not be 100% accurate)

wow, i thought it was 40k.. well, he's been doxxed. he's probably got a lot of people after him. he's gonna have to pay a lot of bitcoin to get someone to protect him, otherwise this guy is gonna get killed.

btw, these bitcoins were lost/scammed, but they're not out of circulation.

1295 "stolen" from or by Bips on November 17th ish..

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=341682.0

This is an impressive list, thanks for compiling it.

Was already mentioned:

bitcoin-24 - millions seized by the German and Polish authorities in April - now apparently in the process of being returned https://bitcoin-24.com/


FBTC scam - http://kuttler.eu/post/fbtc-exchange-closed/

The list is still full and I am going to PM theymos again. If it's not possible to add more posts, I'll start a new thread. Apologies for the delay in updating.

I also PM'd theymos, maybe just wait a bit, until the weekend at least. It would be more convenient to have everything in one thread instead of having it scattered among a few.

Thank you for posting this work! So far I understand BTC is more traceable in the chain than cash in global circulation. What's to be done to improve security?

On a side note, if the heists are trackable, has anyone done any crunching to see how many bits of coin are lost or floating around? From lost wallets to abandoned fractional mining payments. Curious what this sum is worth and whether anything can be done - Also how this affects the inflation/deflation value of the coins.

Security is a personal thing like it is with cash. You don't ask what can be done to a dollar bill to make it more secure in your wallet. Just don't carry very many in your wallet at once in case you lose it.

Thank you, I understand that 'eggs in a basket', I was really trying to understand the 3-way security used like escrow, I don't understand it properly. I have a lot of application for this if I can understand it?

Oh, I don't think most of these scams happened because of failure to use escrow.  The people that were scammed sent their coin to a service and the service didn't secure it or failed to properly secure their wallet. Here's a method for securing your wallet if you need one. https://bitcoinpaperwallet.com

As far as using escrow, there are fairly simple ways of doing it being developed. Not all of them are completed projects.
https://ggdice.com/webescrow_nm#
https://crashcoherency.net/multisig/

Woooow, i will have so nice weekend reading that all.

I remember a good real life friend of mine was telling me about pirate before he scammed everyone and wanted to invest all his money with the guy. I was a non-bitcoiner then and to me it just sounded like the most obvious ponzi scheme, so I will never understand how people fell for it to such a great extent.

We need to inform even more people about security of Bitcoin. This will block bad news in the future.

Yesterday morning my cex.io account was hacked and also my email. The hacker sold the GHS I had and withdrew the funds. I had deposited 10 btc into my cex account. My cex account is now frozen by cex and they are investigating – whatever that means. Does not cex have the obligation to make this right??

2FA should be mandatory, not an option. In addition, they need tighter security for withdrawals.

I wouldn't worry about it. I'm sure CEX will pay you back. It's only $10,000 after all.

I have a hunch visacoin scam is going to be listed here :)

List of Major Bitcoin Heists [...]

edit: lol, is it something like mastercoin lite?
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=384097.0;all

Yes , it is the ultra lite version.
Get the money , run. =)))

Now really , can you do something about this amount of coin scams that are popping everywhere?
Some trust feedback , anything ?
I know that people who trust scammers are idiots but still , I feel sorry for some of them and possible future victims

9.17 bitcoins were hacked from my account at cex.io. I am seeking an experienced investigator to help me retrieve the lost coins.

A rapidly expanding market, me thinks!

Rule No.1, always transfer your bitcoins from any online service to your cold wallet. Since if the online service is compromised, your bitcoins are gone.

Rule No.2, always use a unique strong password. Unique means, use the password only for the bitcoin. Also, use strong password for brute force attack. Third, protect your email account, since if your email account is compromised, also your online service.

Rule No.3, use anti-virus on your computer and update software with security pack.

 

Does anyone see a pattern here yet? There are reasons that the protections exist with Visa and Western Union. The transfer of wealth is very prone to fraud.

A chargeback-free system will take some getting used to, but we have to remember that the protections have not existed forever. Hundreds of years ago, cash was chargeback-free; fraudsters could theoretically scam hundreds of pounds from whole villages and then run to the next village. The villagers were prudent enough to exercise good judgement and this was never a great concern. Today, we must relearn that skill.

I understand but Bitcoin isn't attempting to be a local replacement for cash. It's trying to be a long distance value transfer system that's faster with a lower fee. If you lose your money who gives a shit if it's free or fast! That's why I said it's got a long way to go to replace Western Union or Visa. I've had Visa save my ass from an online scam purchase multiple times. The only time I've lost money online was using Bitcoin. Sad but true.

Where is the BTCitCoin donation address for all this hard work and effort ?!

Just out of curiosity how do you see using western union as being fraud protected?

Because funds can be tracked. https://www.westernunion.com/track-transfer?2 (https://www.westernunion.com/track-transfer?2) Most of the money pickup and drop off locations use video recording of transactions. To collect transferred money you need a government issued ID and an MTCN tracking number given to you by the party that sent you the money. What kind of fraud prevention is built into Bitcoin? I can't even count the number of threads I've read where some idiot sent his Bitcoins into outer space because he couldn't figure out how to work the client or fucked up the key while typing. You don't even need fraud to lose a shitload of money. All you have to do is lose your hard drive. How much money did that dumbass throw away again, $7.5 million? I bet his ass wishes he had a tracking number and could research where it went!

What happened with the Sheep Marketplace heist? Anyone have a link to updated info? Haven't heard anything about it since.

All bitcoin transfers are fully traceable through blockchain.  All current exchanges require you to verify your government ID before getting out fiat.  Bitcoin addresses have checksums.  You should at least read up on bitcoin before comparing it to western union.  Western union is a scammers best friend. 

Person to person transfers of Bitcoin use no ID. You will be transferring the Bitcoins to someone but you will never be able to tell who. You can trace the transaction in the blockchain but that info will do absolutely nothing for you. Don't believe me? Ask anyone that used Inputs.io, MyBitcoin, Bitcoinica or any of the many other scams listed here. Western Union if used properly avoids fraud. I do agree Visa is better and insured/capped for liability but you can avoid fraud better if you take their advice. http://www.westernunion.com/sites/us/consumer-protection/FraudTypes.  This page reads like a Bitcoin business directory.

I'm not comparing it to Western Union at all and I understand Bitcoin and all it's flaws quite well. I've been using it for three years now. I'm saying Bitcoin will never compete with Western Union or Visa for international funds transfer unless it is drastically improved. The only two benefits I ever saw to Bitcoin was the ability to transfer large amounts of money over great distances securely with the absolute fungibility of cash and (taking the proper precautions) with relative anonymity. Blacklisting, red listing and the current pool of exchanges are threatening to destroy that concept. The other one is micro payments (tips) to people online. The current difficulty obtaining Bitcoins without thousands of dollars of mining equipment or an account at an exchange make that hardly worth the effort just to give someone a quarter because you like what they said in a post. The big problem that I see with Bitcoin today isn't the scams surrounding it. It's the fact they most people mining it or buying it are using it as an investment vehicle hoping for extreme profit in a short time instead of using it as the functional currency that it is. 

100 years ago: why do you rob banks, that is where the money is.

today: why do you rob computers? That is where the bitcoin is.

inputs.io - Well, I can't say I am surprised - It seems TF's technique or pretending to be hacked and then pretending to give some money back worked a treat!

Some users didnt get a single penny back (most) and nobody seems to mention the 10,000 / 20,000 coins he "forgot to pay back" from his other site coinlenders.com

Anybody?

No?

How come the Polish scam Maciej Trębacz aka "M4v3R" is not on the list. He lost  18787.72139217  BTC  (110.9 of mine) of users bitcoins as admin of the exchange BitMarket.eu Most likely was his buddy and founder of the exchange "Mahkul" involved as well but handed over all dealings before the shit hit the fan.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5441.msg1413156#msg1413156
How did that not even make it onto the list of scams and losses?

It's mentioned:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=83794.0#post_toc_34
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=83794.0#post_ref_24

Though there is no evidence Makhul took any part in this.

Because he jumped ship before any of it was know to BitMarket.eu's customers. The exchange basically run a fractional reserve system for almost half a year until the price went to high and it was not possible to continue.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5441.msg1088253#msg1088253 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5441.msg1088253#msg1088253)
Bitcoinica got hacked in May 12 and lost money again on July 13 well before Makhul distanced himself from the exchange (August 9).
Most likely did he kick it of to start with, but then left "M4v3r" with the mess knowing he hat no assets to go after.
Paweł Makulski aka "Makhul" was in charge of the exchange at the time and should sit in court getting sued.

Yeah, I know he was jointly running it with M4v3r at the time, and him leaving probably had something to do with the BTC being lost, but the way it happened suggests that M4v3r was gambling with the users' funds without Makhul's knowledge. Why else would he take the blame only upon himself and make (as lousy as they are...) efforts to repay his creditors? It's not like the BTC ended in his pocket.

They both gambled with the users funds, but "M4v3r" has got nothing so no point to suing, whereas "Makhul" has assets so they made the deal that "M4v3r" takes the blame for it sorely.
Interesting now "Makhul" found the time again to be involved in another exchange. Stay away at least two known fraudsters at at work there.

Please add the coinlenders scam. 20,000 BTC.

Leaving a note here just so I don't forget: Silk Road 2.

How could you forget?  :D Is there an official number on how many coins went? I've seen several massively different figures.

Are we going to add Mt.Gox to this? Oops, sorry, foreshadowing. Let's wait for the official announcement :P

lol, I wonder if they have lost any coins. Are peoples coins still not being allowed to be withdrawn from there?

I wonder if the recent theft of my coins qualifies for this list. The combined value at time of theft of the BTC and LTC was ~333 BTC (149.34 BTC, 7397 LTC). It was stolen via the ElasticSearch API. More details over at https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=485194

The majority of events listed here are not due to lack of security, just some internal job. It is irrelevant how many security layers the service supposedly has, all it takes is a dishonest operator

This needs to be updated.

Disagree; there has been no statement from MtGox regarding the funds, and it's too soon to write them off. You wouldn't even know what number to put for the loss yet.

(I do think near-total loss is the most likely outcome though)

The Counterparty project (similar to Mastercoin) uses "XCP" as its currency. The only exchange that deals with XCP is www.poloniex.com

Last week, Poloniex users have had 115 BTC stolen

The story is (supposedly) someone found a bug in the Counterparty protocol and was able to double spend 35K XCP for 115 BTC, and withdrew the BTC.

Here is the 114.9996 BTC stolen:  https://blockchain.info/address/134V1Rt8tBtz7RuydzBtvfuNNfyHmDCHSp

Details are here:  https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=395761.msg5307430#msg5307430

Update OP with Mt.Gox.

We know nothing certain about mtgox. for now, the coins are in limbo.There are enough threads to speculate about the situation, lets keep it to the facts here.

This is the major problem with Bitcoin. Hacking and theft.

Goat, lack of quality communicattion from MtGox and halting trades indicates that what you say is correct, but let's wait for things to become more clearlier. It is a matter of hours or days perhaps.

You have unfinished business with Mark (they neither apologized nor compensated you for reporting as a terrorist), but let us just wait till we have something more objective than ''leaked'' documents to which Gox has not reponded / which Gox not commented.

The oldest and founding exchange for Bitcoin is a scam! It's easier to list the businesses that haven't scammed someone using Bitcoin. It's a very short list. How many failed exchanges are we up to now? 5-6? I know it's more than the number of years that Bitcoin has been around.

Is Karpeles going to be added to this incredibly long list of thieving fuckheads yet? Trusting BTC-e and cashing out over 800 was the best move I could have made.

It'S official now http://bigstory.ap.org/article/japan-minister-calls-bitcoin-collapse-expected

OP please list Karpeles as scammer.

I doubt (HIGHLY DOUBT) he lost the coins PURPOSELY. He is only human you know?

At least he allowed people to trade on fake data. People thought they were trading real BTCs, while in fact they were playing a video game* (vaults were empty). People were lied to point blank for a long time.

If that doesn't deserve to be called a scam then tell me what is a scam.


* I admit it was a high quality game though  ;D I even managed to make a few profitable (on paper) trades.

recent updates should mention.

not 1000BTC but worthy of mention
http://www.coindesk.com/bitcoin-bank-flexcoin-close-600000-bitcoin-theft/ (http://www.coindesk.com/bitcoin-bank-flexcoin-close-600000-bitcoin-theft/)

and the pony botnet
http://www.coindesk.com/pony-botnet-virus-steals-220000-30-digital-wallets/ (http://www.coindesk.com/pony-botnet-virus-steals-220000-30-digital-wallets/)

And the one that personally hurts

bASIC Mining Creativex has not been seen since last october company valued at approx 14000BTC at the time
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=130982.0 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=130982.0)


and just while i'm here this from further back. I didn't see GBL mentioned.
http://www.coindesk.com/4-1m-goes-missing-chinese-bitcoin-trading-platform-gbl-vanishes/ (http://www.coindesk.com/4-1m-goes-missing-chinese-bitcoin-trading-platform-gbl-vanishes/)

Thanks for helping me keep this thread updated! Unfortunately, as specified earlier, the thread is full. I am working on a new thread that will contain updated information (with a few more reserved posts).

Thanks for working on this project and keeping it updated. It's a tedious task to keep it updated and accurate. I, and I'm sure many others, appreciate your hard work.

Maybe this should be moved into the wiki (https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Main_Page)?  I'm sure there's a spot in there for it somewhere.  It might be easier to find and you shouldn't run into the issue with threads filling up.  (Which, sadly, the new one likely will too.)

I don't even know how it is possible to steal Bitcoins. It's not like Bitcoins are something you can grab.

I'm absolutely all for transferring this to the wiki. There is so much high quality work in here!

Excuse my ignorance, but how can a thread be "full"?

Ente

SMF has a post size limit. To keep adding to the OP you need to have reserved space right under it. That's why you see reserved as the next post in some threads. There is a way to overcome the limit but theymos would have to be willing to do it.

I can't edit on this wiki for some reason. Everything is licensed properly to be transferred, so if someone with editing rights has the time, that would be great.

I just created an account on there with my username to figure out why it wasn't letting you edit the wiki.  And I found out why, and unfortunately, it's going to take someone with wiki privileges on there to fix it.  They have a payment interface (https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/BitcoinPayment) that requires a small amount of bitcoins be sent to an address to enable a wiki account.  Unfortunately, and this is why someone who currently has wiki privileges will need to edit it, the API it uses to generate a bitcoin address is using MtGox.  Since I'm sure by now we're all aware that MtGox went belly up, by definition the API that is generating the bitcoin addresses isn't going to work any more.  

So unless there are any forum users around who have wiki privileges over there and are able to fix this, it looks like my idea isn't going to happen.  I would suggest switching to a Coinbase API if there's anyone out there who can do that since Coinbase seems quite stable to me, but I don't have the ability to do it myself.  I'm going to bring up this issue in a new thread in the hopes that someone will be able to fix it though, since it'd be nice to be able to actually edit that wiki again.

The recent eligius NMC wallet hack was worth "11 BTC" and should be listed.

sminers.com was a ponzi scheme that ran from Jan  2014 to March 2014

I read on the bitcoin-development mailing list recently that the wiki is actually still hosted by MtGox (or Tibanne, or Kalyhost, or whatever) and there is work being done now to change its hosting arrangements. Hopefully they would fix that at the same time.

Maybe we can get Mark to give up the hosting when he hands over the patent for Bitcoin. lol

I guess the Flexcoin Hack should be listed

http://www.torontosun.com/2014/03/05/canadian-bitcoin-bank-flexcoin-shuts-after-hacking-theft
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/economy/currencies/police-investigating-after-canadian-bitcoin-bank-folds/article17341622/

Would be under Borderline Minor

The Edmonton-based company reported the theft of 896 bitcoins on its website on Monday and said it “does not have the resources (or) assets ... to come back from this loss.” It blamed the attack on hackers who had targeted its online wallet.

Dree just post a link to the new thread when its up

Oh, I didn't realize this was hosted by MtGox as well as them using their API.  Yeah, I'd love to change the hosting agreements so we could have it more a community wiki rather than one controlled by MtGox.

Vircurex was hacked and lost 1454 BTC in May 2013.

(they also lost 23400 LTC and 225263 TRC)

They also lost some on AurumXChange, and are currently short of about 1200 BTC:

https://vircurex.com/Reports/2013-11.pdf
https://vircurex.com/welcome/ann_reserved.html

Cryptorush got hacked twice and is out of 950 BTC.

Thanks. I know I've been delaying this, but I'll try to get an update up this weekend if possible.

What about the mtgox incident?

Noting down so I don't forget:

Heartbleed vulnerability

Confirmed victims:

• BTCJam (http://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/uncategorized/btc-stolen-btcjam-ongoing-heist/2014/04/08) [returned?]

I hope this one doesn't impact to many users in Bitcoin but we will see interestingly enough if a lot of little ones are affected it could join the list so also noting it down in case

must keep this thread saved for research purposes, apparently people need multiple examples for why they should be careful

I will lock this thread in preparation for the new one.


Dear reader,

This thread has been superseded by a newer thread (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=576337) due to character size restrictions. A copy is left here for archival purposes; however, this copy is significantly out-of-date.