SebastianJu flaked with escrow

[nomadcrypto]

What happened::
SebastianJu has flaked with escrow of mine. He was told by the buyer to release the escrow at May 31, 2018, 06:50:25 AM UTC. He sent me a message replying to an earlier message at May 31, 2018, 09:55:20 AM UTC and has not been online since. After 50+ hours of him holding an escrow that should have been released it is starting to feel more and more like an escrow scam. So far the coins have not moved
https://blockchain.info/en/address/14D6zD1kLNZ6DdhjAqZY1sNrEkBhWGj5Tn
Scammers Profile Link:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=18640
Reference Link:
Amount Scammed:
0.02325674 BTC
Payment Method:
BTC
Proof of Payment:
see logs
PM/Chat Logs:
The deal

Hi SebastianJu and Work4crypto1,

Work4crypto1 is needing some fairly simple javascript work done and he would like to use an escrow. It is a total of 5x simple tasks for $35 each($175 total) in btc that have clearly defined specs. Assuming you are available and are still doing escrow services we would like to use you.

Thanks,
nomadcrypto

Regarding escrow, I need some info

Please ALWAYS QUOTE everything we wrote when answering! Quotes is the text we wrote before. When you answer you click on "quote" instead on "reply" (or on "reply to all" when more than one receiver) in order to preserve the quote.

Infos needed if not already given

1.) Seller Username
2.) Buyer Username
3.) Item to be traded
4.) Which coin or token is used as payment?
5.) How high is the amount of coins or token, that I should take into escrow, exactly?
6.) Please Seller provide a release address and buyer please provide a refund address in case it is needed.
7.) Please buyer and seller make an arrangement at which condition the Bitcoins should be released by me. So that everyone has the same thoughts about it.
8.) Please consider also what should happen when one party does not react for a certain amount of time. After how much time should I decide? If no negotiation is done then I have to decide what has to happen. When the seller seems to have delivered then I will release the coins the the seller after buyer did not react after a month at the latest.
9.) Also buyer and seller make sure that it is not possible by the seller to claim the item back. This is meant in case of an account trade or a digital currency that is not a cryptocurreny.

I will only hold the payment coins in escrow except another handling is needed.

In case of coins or token being traded handling depends on if the coins are already freely tradeable. In that case buyer provides the address he wants the coins transferred to. Also both provide a coin explorer that can enable each party to check if the coins reached that address.

If the coins are not live yet then we can work with safety deposits ensuring the seller goes through with the trade.

Because of very few time I ask for a minimum tip of 0.006b or 1.5% of the coin value. Whatever is higher. When a refund happens the refund fee is 0.003b or 0.75% of the coin value.
Because of the insane tx-fees nowadays this is plus the tx fee to forward or refund the coins. You can chose a proper fee when checking out the 3 block bitcoin transaction fee on https://bitcoinfees.info/

Let me know if you still are interested. I then would create the escrow details message and send you both the escrow address.

1) Nomadcrypto
2) Work4crypto1
3) I will complete 5x small javascript tasks at $35 each for a total of $175
4) BTC
5) Depends on when he confirms and sends. total is 175USD in btc
6) 1BoH6htsG6gKjD917F1DMU1mVtj17MoeH6
7) bitcoin should be released once all 5x tasks have been completed to spec
I would give a leway of say 2x days either way. Meaning if I didn't respond in two days or the buyer doesn't respond in two days release/refund the escrow. this is a very easy project for me and that will not be happening on my end.
9) NA

The buyer has a new account and as such is limited to the messages he can send daily. Which will drastically slow this process down. I understand that and will be patient.

Regarding Escrow Details for a Trade

Infos needed

1.) Which coin or token is used as payment?
2.) How high is the amount of coins or token, that I should take into escrow, exactly?
3.) Please Seller provide a release address and buyer please provide a refund address in case it is needed.
4.) Please buyer and seller make an arrangement at which condition the Bitcoins should be released by me. So that everyone has the same thoughts about it.
5.) Please consider also what should happen when one party does not react for a certain amount of time. After how much time should I decide? If no negotiation is done then I have to decide what has to happen. When the seller seems to have delivered then I will release the coins the the seller after buyer did not react after a month at the latest.
6.) Also buyer and seller make sure that it is not possible by the seller to claim the item back. This is meant in case of an account trade or a digital currency that is not a cryptocurreny.

Important!

1.) When answering PM's, please always use "Reply to all" so that all involved parties get informed. And keep the quotes so that all trading partners and the escrow know exactly what deal the pm is meant for.
2.) Because of very few time I would ask for a minimum tip of 0.006b or 1% of the coin value. Whatever is higher.
3.) Please send my fee together with the payment. I will reduce the payout to the buyer for my fee. If buyer and seller share the fee please send accordingly so that I reduce the payout for my total fee then. This helps to reduce the amount of needed transactions.
4.) Please only send payment once all points above are cleared by both buyer and seller. Also seller if the points are cleared and coins reached the escrow address (see link below) then please wait at least one confirmation before you release any product to the buyer.

Escrow details

The escrow address is:

Code:

14D6zD1kLNZ6DdhjAqZY1sNrEkBhWGj5Tn

Please ONLY send to an escrow address I sent you directly. Dont send to quotes the seller claims I wrote. Only if I send you the address directly its ensured the address is correct. I will attach a signature whose message contains the escrow address, signed with an old address of mine, I posted may 2013 on bitcointalk. See my Servicethread: [ANN] SebastianJu - Free Legendary Escrow Service - Escrowed over 8150 BTC.

Before payment I would suggest you take a look at http://www.cointape.com/ to check out if the network gets spammed again. Below the graph there is shown what amount of fee is needed to get instant confirmation for a normal transaction, which means a transaction with coins coming from one address, and going to two addresses. That would be the target address and the source or a change address where the remaining coins are sent to. Checking that page could prevent that transactions are stuck for hours or days because they dont get a confirmation. Most wallets nowadays support automatic calculation of the needed fee.

The payment of the bitcoins can be found and checked the fastest way through    https://blockchain.info/de/address/14D6zD1kLNZ6DdhjAqZY1sNrEkBhWGj5Tn

In case you are new to bitcoin trades on the forum or with escrows, please don't sit before the browser and click reload all the time. That is doing no one. Deals will take some hours, often days too. Some other escrows only log in once a day or even less than that.

In case signed messages has to be verified, then its the fastest to visit https://tools.bitcoin.com/verify-message/. Then you can check fast if a signature, given by me or the seller, is correct and so you know that the address is controlled by the one giving the signature.

Code:

-----BEGIN BITCOIN SIGNED MESSAGE-----
180529 This is the escrow address for the trade from nomadcrypto, as the seller to Work4crypto1, as the buyer and the escrow address is 14D6zD1kLNZ6DdhjAqZY1sNrEkBhWGj5Tn
-----BEGIN SIGNATURE-----
1K2UFGCKyNQNx4h2m5ZRCaw9BWHTBcCZAA
G5rzHqrwMC424HzF9nOnXo0Huu0UoDmB/9RniMsGPVnoe/avU2wlpUg9+28qEicbakfslyGDlr+5cPdjaR8lEJ8=
-----END BITCOIN SIGNED MESSAGE-----

Message signed with an old address of mine, that I posted may 2013 on bitcointalk. See my Servicethread: [ANN] SebastianJu - Free Legendary Escrow Service - Escrowed over 8150 BTC.

Buyer sent payment

Sent

I later messaged asking for another method of contact

Is there another method the buyer could contact you for releasing the funds? He has exceeded his pms

Buyer releases escrow

Please release escrow

SebastianJu responds to my request for another contact method

No, he must contact me. Anything else would be too risky. He should stop sending pm's until he sent me one in case he want's it to be released.

Additional Notes:

His message was sent after the buyer had said to release yet he did not release before flaking off. I would like to think that he is busy with real life but after 50+ hours of not releasing an escrow this is feeling more and more like a scam.

[hilariousetc]

I doubt he's scammed you for a measly 0.02325674 as he could easily take more than that if he wanted (though maybe there's others as well, but I doubt it). I think it's probably more of a case of him being busy or whatever. It's only been a couple of days and SJ doesn't seem terribly active these days so that could be why. Probably not acceptable for an escrow with ongoing transactions but I doubt he's done a runner for such a figure.

[nomadcrypto]

I doubt he's scammed you for a measly 0.02325674 as he could easily take more than that if he wanted (though maybe there's others as well, but I doubt it). I think it's probably more of a case of him being busy or whatever. It's only been a couple of days and SJ doesn't seem terribly active these days so that could be why. Probably not acceptable for an escrow with ongoing transactions but I doubt he's done a runner for such a figure.

I completely agree. He has escrowed larger amounts than this for me and I have seen him escrow much larger in the past without issues. Which is why I said "flaked" instead of scammed in the inital post. I would gladly remove this post and the negative feedback if/when he comes back and releases. Having said that, if it is a scam we'll probably see a lot more victims in the coming days as it would not make any sense to scam only my small escrow.

[hedgy73]

I doubt very much he is trying to scam you I'm sure this will be resolved soon .

[pawel7777]

You haven't agreed on the response time with SebastianJu. It haven't even been 2 days, so you rushed a little bit with starting this thread.

Remember he's just a human being after all, he might have went out on Fri night or whatever. You can't expect him to be glued to the screen 24/7.

Daft question, are you sure the buyer sent his message to both of you? If SebastianJu, replied to you after buyer's "Please release escrow" pm, there's a chance he didn't receive it or somehow missed it. Have you asked him whether he got it?

[timerland]

He's online right now, it seems: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=18640.

I definitely find it hard to believe that he would just scam for $120 when he has been escrowing so much more. Perhaps he's busy, but I'd definitely echo the sentiment that he's still legit and there is probably a miscommunication somewhere.

I feel like that he hasn't received the message from the buyer to release the coins, based on the quotes.

Tell the other party to send SJ the confirmation message again, he may have missed it or your buyer may have directed the message to you instead of him the first time he sent the message. But I'd remain calm about the situation right now, there is no reason to think that he would all of a sudden turn scam.

[nomadcrypto]

He came back online and released finally. Overall I am extremely unhappy with the service he provided. The escrow cost $60usd. Obviously that is my fault for not fully reading the message he sent with those details. For $60(out of $175 total) I expect fast responses and not a almost 60 hour delay in releasing escrow. Needless to say I will never use his service again.

[pawel7777]

...I expect fast responses and not a almost 60 hour delay in releasing escrow. Needless to say I will never use his service again.

Maybe next time you should just ask what's the expected response time. What's "fast" can be pretty subjective. To you, 2-3 days is extremely slow, to someone else - it's acceptable, especially when it's the weekend.

Good to see it's all sorted out though.

[Joel_Jantsen]

He came back online and released finally. Overall I am extremely unhappy with the service he provided. The escrow cost $60usd. Obviously that is my fault for not fully reading the message he sent with those details. For $60(out of $175 total) I expect fast responses and not a almost 60 hour delay in releasing escrow. Needless to say I will never use his service again.

That is definitely over-pricing for the service delivered.No doubt SJ is trusted and your money was safe with him but delaying is definitely not professional.Also brings us to one more conclusion while using escrows - > Make sure they're very active on the forum on a daily basis.

Having said that, I can understand if they were really busy and they could have compromised for the inconvenience caused.

[magneto]

He came back online and released finally. Overall I am extremely unhappy with the service he provided. The escrow cost $60usd. Obviously that is my fault for not fully reading the message he sent with those details. For $60(out of $175 total) I expect fast responses and not a almost 60 hour delay in releasing escrow. Needless to say I will never use his service again.

I always thought that SJ's escrow were free... Perhaps he changed that a while back?

Anyways, I still don't know if there is a miscommunication somewhere that may have caused the delay (something like the buyer not sending him the message to release directly), and I would like to hear his side of the case before jumping to conclusions.

But if he was as unresponsive as you claim, then that's definitely unprofessional. But everyone's human after all, you can't expect fast replies in all circumstances. However, charging a fee usually means that you're obliged to deliver much faster service.

[nomadcrypto]

...I expect fast responses and not a almost 60 hour delay in releasing escrow. Needless to say I will never use his service again.

Maybe next time you should just ask what's the expected response time. What's "fast" can be pretty subjective. To you, 2-3 days is extremely slow, to someone else - it's acceptable, especially when it's the weekend.

Good to see it's all sorted out though.

The length of the entire trade was during the week. I'm pretty sure that noone would ever say that 2-3 days delay in escrow release is fast and especially an escrow that cost over 30% of the total.

He came back online and released finally. Overall I am extremely unhappy with the service he provided. The escrow cost $60usd. Obviously that is my fault for not fully reading the message he sent with those details. For $60(out of $175 total) I expect fast responses and not a almost 60 hour delay in releasing escrow. Needless to say I will never use his service again.

I always thought that SJ's escrow were free... Perhaps he changed that a while back?

Anyways, I still don't know if there is a miscommunication somewhere that may have caused the delay (something like the buyer not sending him the message to release directly), and I would like to hear his side of the case before jumping to conclusions.

But if he was as unresponsive as you claim, then that's definitely unprofessional. But everyone's human after all, you can't expect fast replies in all circumstances. However, charging a fee usually means that you're obliged to deliver much faster service.

The last time I used his escrow it was free but this time he snuck in a 30% fee on me. I feel like an honest person would have said something. If you read the OP it is really easy to miss his extremely high fee. He was absolutely was unresponsive and had a lame excuse when he came back. This entire situation has lead to me no longer trusting him at all.

[MadZ]

The last time I used his escrow it was free but this time he snuck in a 30% fee on me. I feel like an honest person would have said something. If you read the OP it is really easy to miss his extremely high fee. He was absolutely was unresponsive and had a lame excuse when he came back. This entire situation has lead to me no longer trusting him at all.

His avatar and personal text clearly advertise his escrow service as being free of charge. I agree with you that this is extremely misleading, especially if you've used his service in the past without paying a fee. Have you thought about asking him for a refund? Given this misunderstanding along with the other issues you experienced, I think it is an entirely fair request to make.

[SebastianJu]

I just saw that this thread exists, even though I was told that something, which was written about the delay, will be deleted. (I assume it was this thread.)

Anyway, I agree that the waiting time was not great. I had a problem with my pc drive and between repairing and keeping my main work alive it took some time to get everything back. Of course that's just my problem.

I released your remaining 0.006 BTC to you, despite there was no rule regarding the speed. I wouldn't have accepted the escrow otherwise, since I work a lot more than fulltime and don't escrow fulltime. Except for some special cases, like humanitarian organizations and cases or high risk amount, I negate escrow requests that need fast turnaround.

I offered free service before, that's correct, however my time became too few and valuable, so that I only can accept some escrows anymore. I tried some other ways, but the minimum fee was the best way to filter out the deals I accept. I still like to escrow and the demand is high for highly trusted escrows, since security and safety is still not so much better than before.
However, I always mention the fee in the escrow contract, often also in the precheck, if one is done, like in this case. After that I ask if that is fine for everyone.

Anyway, I found that the link to my escrow thread in my profile page still contained the word free. I didn't notice that it didn't change automatically. So that's another reason to give you back the fee.

I'm sorry about the delay and the missing word in my profile page. I escrow because I like crypto and everything involved and I like to see people happy at the end, rather than anything else.

Edit: Just saw that the image also still includes the word. Will fix it asap. Edit2: Fixed, however seems the forum takes time to update.