0.73BTC stolen by Localcoin.is

[Flangler]

What happened::
Back in December I deposited some BTC into localcoin.is DEX to trade XMR. I went to withdraw 0.73BTC in December and the transaction never broadcast. After 2 weeks @localcoinA on telegram responded saying the Bitcoin node needed a resync after saying "still resyncing" for a further 2-3 weeks @localcoinA finally came clean. Apparently his exchange is insolvent and he doesn't have the BTC to send me anymore. Instead and without my permission he issued me with 13,000 LLC tokens and said if I help him they will be worth something. They are currently worthless.

After days of telegram chats he is refusing to return my funds. I am making this post in the hope that it saves someone from losing their funds too.

I know it was stupid of me to deposit into an unknown exchange but I got greedy because there were (probably fake) good trading opportunities.

The whitepaper list a bunch of people from a web dev company called nineseven (nineseven.by). The main person listed is Dmitry Khorushko. I spoke to him and he denies any involvement apart from being contracted to develop the localcoin.is exchange. He claims some anonymous person who goes by "Fluke Hawkins" is the person behind it and the person in control of the wallet/gateway. I am incredibly skeptical of this claim and I do believe there is a chance that Dmitry Khorushko is simply using this so called anonymous person as a front. This is despite his company github account making a commit on the localcoin.is github project as recently as 10 days ago.

I have attached some chat logs below, it's only partial because I have been mostly talking to myself for days. They are definitely worth a read, at one stage he whinges about "centralised" exchanges scamming people, the irony of someone saying that to a customer that they are currently in the process of scamming.

Scammers Profile Link: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=2556732

Reference Link: localcoin.is DEX
Amount Scammed: 0.73BTC
Payment Method: BTC

PM/Chat Logs: https://imgur.com/a/ZfIWAcF

They took your money as compensation for their work. I'm eager to believe that they put a lot of work in this project but the mistake which they make on the beginning by buying/ plagiarizing whitepaper has doomed them  On first look their wallet/exchange is looking really good but the bad start was following them to to the very end, and now this. I hope you will get your money back, 0.73btc is not a small amount. I'm not defending them, rather I'm trying to say that there are always two sides of the coin.

[jayrubil]

They took your money as compensation for their work.

Are you for real? They stole my money as compensation for their work? Maybe you should go and donate 0.73 to some random person then if you're so kind. What an insane justification.

It wasn't a nice exchange - it hardly worked and was almost a carbon copy of the bitshares code, just rebranded.

[JollyGood]

You are alluding to there being more to this than meets the eye but there is not much movement on the fact that they are scammers and they have created their so-called business with the explicit aim to scam.

The notion you put forward claiming "the scammers from localcoin.is stole money belonging to users in lieu of compensation for their work" is nothing short of being utterly ridiculous. There is no justification for them stealing anything from anything. You really should have used better terminology to explain your views because from where I stand right now it seems you are defending the indefensible.

They took your money as compensation for their work. I'm eager to believe that they put a lot of work in this project but the mistake which they make on the beginning by buying/ plagiarizing whitepaper has doomed them  On first look their wallet/exchange is looking really good but the bad start was following them to to the very end, and now this. I hope you will get your money back, 0.73btc is not a small amount. I'm not defending them, rather I'm trying to say that there are always two sides of the coin.

[Flangler]

They took your money as compensation for their work.

What an insane justification.

It wasn't a nice exchange - it hardly worked and was almost a carbon copy of the bitshares code, just rebranded.

Yes, I think the same. I came to this conclusion by looking at the conversation which you uploaded. The scammer tried to justify his action at the end of that conversation, this is why I wrote this, but I never said that it is ok.

[jayrubil]

I have set up a website for the guy responsible so when people google his name they will know he is a scammer.

Dmitry Khorushko will try to tell people that he is just a dev and isn't the owner of the project but that's just a lie so that people dont hold him accountable for his actions.

https://jayrubil.wixsite.com/dmitrykhorushkoscam

[mikeoneal]

The website shut down so long time ago. I would like to know if they scam all their custumers

[geelyaut]

I have set up a website for the guy responsible so when people google his name they will know he is a scammer.

Dmitry Khorushko will try to tell people that he is just a dev and isn't the owner of the project but that's just a lie so that people dont hold him accountable for his actions.

https://jayrubil.wixsite.com/dmitrykhorushkoscam

I'm Dmitry Khorushko, an it's an official response to blackmailer Jayrubil. So if people will visit this page, it can read the answer of the opposite side.

Jayrubil doesn't provide any proofs that i've scammed him.

He tells facts that Localcoin was built by our developers. These is nothing criminal behind that fact, because we are an outsourcing company, and we develop online projects, and localcoin was one of them. Me and my company members was listed in whitepaper, and i was listed as tech lead. Because i was.
You can look at out work in https://github.com/LocalCoinIS, there is hundreds of commits for 1.5 years. It's all public and there is no secret here. We, and i'm personally, doesn't have any connections with localcoin exchange cashflow.

I've already mentioned before, that Localoin is Fluke project, to other people when they were asking, you can look it here https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5135210.msg50911740#msg50911740
After Jayrubil email in january 2020 we finished any cooperation with Fluke, because we don't work with scammers.

If Jayrubil has complaint that we had stollen his funds, he can go to the court and we can deal it in official way, because i have nothing to hide.

The problem is that Jayrubil doesn't check information before investing his money, and he is the only one who responsible of his funds. He couldn't reach Fluke, and trying to blackmail us without any proofs.
If he doesnt stop spread this fake news about me, i will contact the police.

[jayrubil]

Dear Fluke/Dmitry,

If you are happy to be the main contact of a project in the ICO whitepaper and on numerous websites then as far as I am concerned it is your project. What kind of person would let their name be plastered all over the whitepaper of a project where the leader remains anonymous? That's insane, no one would do that.

As far as I can tell this idea that it was "fluke's project" only came to light when people found out that you plagiarised your whitepaper. I have only had to go as far as I have because I haven't had my funds returned to me, you stopped responding to my emails at the same time that "fluke" did. It's clear to me that fluke is a pseudonym created for you to claim that you haven't scammed anyone. If either of you actually communicated with me and promised to return my 0.73BTC all this would be over.

I will reiterate that I will not stop until my funds are returned to me. Once that is done I will drop everything and we can move on with our lives.

I would like to propose a thought experiment:

Imagine you are a developer and someone anonymously approaches you and says "I will pay you to build me a DEX, but I wont tell you who I am and I will not be on the whitepaper and I will remain anonymous, you need to put your name and photo on the ICO and I want full control of the wallets". If that's the story that you are trying to tell us who in their right mind would agree to do that? No one, that's who which is why Fluke/Dmitry's claims are just completely implausible.