The story about how Bitstamp steals customer’s money..
Since 2014 I had been trading at the Bitstamp. The account has been verified for several years. For the recent time, every month turnover exceeded a quarter million $, at the time this story occurred, my deposit on the exchange was about $ 40,000.
The Bitstamp seemed to me to be a serious organisation, which also had a license for its activities in Europe, so I chose it and I knew that it would not fail. How could I been wrong then.
It all started with the fact that on November 27, its representative
TOMAŽ R. contacted me with standard KYC questions, as I have nothing to hide, I do not sponsor terrorists (I think now that if I sponsored, I would not be asked any questions at all), but my money is clean (most of them, by the way, it was earned on their own exchange currencies, which they saw), I answered all his questions, but every day the questions were become more and more to me.
They demanded documents, explanations on which addresses, when and why I transferred the assets that I bought legally, then why do I go to their stock exchange constantly from a country other than my residence, etc. The questions were too much, the answers were too much!
Almost every day, when I went into the exchange currencies, I saw new questions in his ticket. And again, I patiently answered them, including the most absurd questions.
For unexplained reasons, during the period from November 27 to December 27, Bitstamp completely blocked the withdrawal of my funds from the system, but after my legitimate questions about the reason of these locks removed them. At the end of December, I completely disconnected the withdrawal of funds and even the possibility of trading. So I not only began to lose money, because of the disconnection of trade, also my deposit was completely blocked.
On the 27th of December at 10:04 (UTC, MSK + 3) I created a
ticket # 315624 where I asked a question - what the reason of the withdrawal of funds and trading on my account was blocked several times. And I explained that if they continue such "partnership relations" with me, I will have to give up their services.
After 5 hours waiting, when I checked the created ticket, I have noticed that the next to the
ID of my account, the prefix "
_deleted" appeared. Then I was seriously worried about my money, which I trusted my "partners". Then I tried to enter the exchange currencies from another browser without closing the active window. When they told me that the ID or the password is not correct, the alarm increased, because on that day I wanted to withdraw some of the earned money for organising the New Year and buying presents to my relatives.
I could still be for a while in their system, because my session was not completed. I took advantage of this and began to save everything that could be of any value. After that, at 16:58 (UTC, MSK + 3), I created a
ticket # 316764, where I asked to explain, why I have an account with all resources marked as "remote"?
I did not receive a response nor on that day, nor on the next, nor until now. The next day when the session was over, I could no longer enter the exchange currencies. Also I could not recover the password for the mail. The system promised to send it, that the account with such mail exists. Apparently, taking my money, they no longer considered me like their client. Hours of waiting some mail, and nothing brought. I did not leave attempts to contact the company further. First I wrote them to
support@bitstamp.net from the contact mail (
ticket SUPPORT-45685). In the letter I asked just one question - Why was the account with my ID deleted? Today, December 30, none of my many requests for such a serious problem, received no answers. Next, I tried to contact the company by phone in London, listed on their website at +44 20 8133 5474. I called them from 5 different countries (USA, European and Russia), for all calls, the answering machine answered that the call was not available. It’s supporting of this company.
A few of my colleagues from Russia (I can not say about other countries) working with Bitstamp are faced with the same problems, only their accounts are not removed yet. If you have big resources there, I would recommend you that they be withdrawn from there, until this situation is resolved. It’s dangerous for your money.
The result. New Years mood is failed. Trust in Bitstamp is destroyed. Every day I lose money, because I can not trade my deposit. Reflecting on the situation, I can also assume a "fantastic story" when a person wishing to unlock operations on my account, in the eve of New Year's corporate bluntly misses the button and presses "delete". But no matter how it is, it does not release from responsibility and consequences.
If it’s necessary I can provide all the evidence of correspondence and other circumstances, but I think the information will be more than enough. As the situation develops I will also expound it here. I think that representatives of the company will try to "move out". But the best solution for them is to apologise and return stolen funds at a minimum!
Topic on the Russian-language resource Bits.media:
https://forum.bits.media/index.php?/topic/63200-%D0%BA%D1%80%D0%B8%D0%BF%D1%82%D0%BE%D0%B2%D0%B0%D0%BB%D1%8E%D1%82%D0%BD%D0%B0%D1%8F-%D0%B1%D0%B8%D1%80%D0%B6%D0%B0-bitstamp-%D0%B2%D0%BE%D1%80%D0%BE%D0%B2%D1%81%D1%82%D0%B2%D0%BE-%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BF%D0%BE%D0%B7%D0%B8%D1%82%D0%B0-%D1%81%D0%BE%D1%82%D1%80%D1%83%D0%B4%D0%BD%D0%B8%D0%BA%D0%B0%D0%BC%D0%B8/Screenshot of the first ticket from Bitstamp:
UPD1 If you are in a similar situation, watch this post
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2679324.msg27676241#msg27676241
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