Is STEX.com a scam?

[brubic]

Checked this exchange. It turns out they deleted my account. Lost all shitcoins ~50$

[brubic]

Checked this exchange. It turns out they deleted my account. Lost all shitcoins ~50$

Not everything is as bad as I thought. Support restored my acc 

[ligor]

I have been registered on stex.com since Stock.Exchange, but haven't traded in the last couple of years. Recently, after receiving a letter about inactivity for a year, I decided to trade again and replenished my altcoin account.

What was my surprise when I could not start trading, and even more - they do not allow me to return them back. Require verification. But when entering coins, they did not require it from me. Moreover, it is written that verification is only "Verification provides advanced opportunities for using the STEX platform (reduces trading fees, the ability to use advanced API methods and simplifies the recovery of a lost 2fa authentication key)" - in this way they mislead customers.

And the very procedure of verification for the Russians looks like a sham. "All submitted documents must have a mandatory English translation." Yes, and notarized. And more photos, videos (well, they don’t ask for medical tests). In general, this is a very complicated and tedious procedure (I mean notary and translation into English).

 

Sorry for google translate.

[r34tr783tr78]

stex.com has a lot of scam accusations most of them recent ones: https://www.trustpilot.com/review/stex.com. They seem to be losing the fear of scamming.  I never used them. Anyone using them currently can be at risk.

[crypto_trader#43xzEXrP]

I deposited over $1000 on this exchange, without any KYC, and traded there, and bought some shit-tokens there.
But tokens was been delisted, and I can not withdraw this without KYC. I can not exchange nothing without KYC.
Seems like scam. I do not using binance since 2018, because they disabled trading for users without KYC.
Fuck KYC, it's first alert of scam, because anonymous admins can easy stole last money from known traders.
Turn back my $1000, if stex.com is not a scam-exchange. Contact me PM.

[crypto_trader#43xzEXrP]

This rats from scam-exchange want KYC from me, and stolen my money.
I deposited over 1000 USDT on this scam-exchange without any fucking KYC,
I even recevied withdraw of 195 USDT, without fucking KYC.
Then I bought some Ethereum token - ProVOCO, and price on this asset was been low for a long time.
I waited price up, but VOCO was been delisted.
I did not log-in on exchange for a long time, and when I signed in there,
I saw my VOCO on account balance, but I could not trade this asset.
I did try to withdraw VOCO, and I see there need pay fees for ETH.
I deposited USDT to buy ETH, but I see there is impossible to trade - without fucking KYC!
I wrote an email for support-team, and they said me need to process fucking KYC.
KYC is not anonymous action, crypto created for anonymous, so I disagred with this shit.
After some time of correspondence, I see VOCO was been just dissapeared from my account balance.
It's scam-exchange, with dirty rats, who are stole just $1000, and ask motherfucking KYC, then.
Turn back my fucking $1k, or VOCO, or fuck this scam-exchange - stex.com .

[duke59]

This exchange went down completely over the past few days with this error message:

Force Majeure statement
Due to unknown reasons, we suffered data loss. In result, we have very fragmented and non-consistent data regarding balances, transactions, etc. We cannot continue any business operations.

Trying to recover any accesable assets we kindly asking for your help. Please send any related information about your transactions and account to recovery@stex.com. We are sorry for the inconveniences.

Definitely few like a scam. I don't use this exchange but know someone who has some funds stuck there. Does anyone know there's a way to get this recovered? Emailed recovery@stex.com but they didn't reply.

A couple of Google queries found the following information:

Founder: Vadym Kurylovych
Crunchbase profile:

Vadym is a blockchain visionary and entrepreneur with experience of 15+ year across products. He is currently the CEO, Founder at Stex which is a crypto exchange with best in class security. Prior to this, he was the CTO of Paragoncoin which was one of the most successful ICOs of all time. Vadym also serves as an advisor and board member atCryptonomica, a global attestation platform. A true believer of decentralization Vadym has mentored many upcoming entrepreneurs in the domain in Ukraine. He is a human rights activist and has been a part of many campaigns in the past.

[Potato Chips]

This exchange went down completely over the past few days with this error message...

... I don't use this exchange but know someone who has some funds stuck there. Does anyone know there's a way to get this recovered? Emailed recovery@stex.com but they didn't reply.

Oh jeez. I'm not saying I buy their excuse but if it is true they have poor cybersec as they seem to not have backups/enough backups.

As for recovering, your friend's coins sits at STEX's wallets hence their hand is needed.

Some suggestions:

1. Try to reach out and follow up thru their other channels - perhaps their social media are still active or you know other email address. Side note: i think it's not a bad idea to send another email to recovery@stex.com
2. Make noise in crypto communities - I would target the popular places first
3. Lawyer up - expensive and complicated. also know that I'm suggesting this without knowing your situation e.g. how much have you lost, where you're from etc.

In any case, whole situation is vague and sus. I've no idea how are they gonna verify information from users... for starters, screenshots can be manipulated... perhaps signed messages from a user's known addresses (judging from their deposit and withdrawals)? but that would require enough user data from STEX.

I wouldn't be surprised if they went, "sorry we can't verify this from the scraps of data we have, it is out of our hands"