Davout, the new Pirate@40. Bitcoin-central.com instawallet.org scam in progress

[wopwop]

Just like pirate@40, davout suddenly shutdowns his bitcoin storage service
Just like pirate@40, davout is promising to pay back everyone 'soon' (managers love this word)
Just like pirate@40, davout is disappearing

davout, the owner, just stole everyone's balance on bitcoin-central.com and instawallet.org

50.000 bitcoin theft just happened and people here don't even know it? wtf!

glad I didn't put my money there

oh I received a message from davout:
everyone stay calm and just wait, all is good, nothing to see here (while he's booking a ticket to panama, flipping you the finger)

davout, the first bitcoin staff member to scam the community

davout's panama wallet: clicky

[1713571570]

1713571570

[1713571570]

1713571570

[becoin]

Just like pirate@40, davout suddenly shutdowns his bitcoin storage service
Just like pirate@40, davout is promising to pay back everyone 'soon' (managers love this word)
Just like pirate@40, davout is disappearing

davout, the owner, just stole everyone's balance on bitcoin-central.com and instawallet.org

50.000 bitcoin theft just happened and people here don't even know it? wtf!

glad I didn't put my money there

oh I received a message from davout:
everyone stay calm and just wait, all is good, nothing to see here (while he's booking a ticket to panama, flipping you the finger)

davout, the first bitcoin staff member to scam the community

davout's panama wallet: clicky

You must be absolutely confident that he will try to pay your bitcoins in euro. At the exchange rate when you have transfered them to bitcoin-central! That's what all scammers do recently starting from BFL, Bitmarket.eu and now bitcoin-central.net

Bitcoin is not recognized as a currency.
Therefore you never made a payment.
Therefore you are not entitled to a refund.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=137026.msg1460962#msg1460962

[Zaih]

Wow, that's nearly $10,000,000??

I guess the price rise tempted him too much. Wow

[crazy_rabbit]

Just like pirate@40, davout suddenly shutdowns his bitcoin storage service
Just like pirate@40, davout is promising to pay back everyone 'soon' (managers love this word)
Just like pirate@40, davout is disappearing

davout, the owner, just stole everyone's balance on bitcoin-central.com and instawallet.org

50.000 bitcoin theft just happened and people here don't even know it? wtf!

glad I didn't put my money there

oh I received a message from davout:
everyone stay calm and just wait, all is good, nothing to see here (while he's booking a ticket to panama, flipping you the finger)

davout, the first bitcoin staff member to scam the community

davout's panama wallet: clicky

Or they were honestly robbed. Ten million dollars is enough to find Davout, get an apartment near him, watch him, watch his friends, befriend him (or get hired by him), seduce him (James bond style), pretend to be his girlfriend (or boyfriend, you know modern world and all) learn his secrets, steal all the BTC.

crazier things have happened.

[Zaih]

Just like pirate@40, davout suddenly shutdowns his bitcoin storage service
Just like pirate@40, davout is promising to pay back everyone 'soon' (managers love this word)
Just like pirate@40, davout is disappearing

davout, the owner, just stole everyone's balance on bitcoin-central.com and instawallet.org

50.000 bitcoin theft just happened and people here don't even know it? wtf!

glad I didn't put my money there

oh I received a message from davout:
everyone stay calm and just wait, all is good, nothing to see here (while he's booking a ticket to panama, flipping you the finger)

davout, the first bitcoin staff member to scam the community

davout's panama wallet: clicky

Or they were honestly robbed. Ten million dollars is enough to find Davout, get an apartment near him, watch him, watch his friends, befriend him (or get hired by him), seduce him (James bond style), pretend to be his girlfriend (or boyfriend, you know modern world and all) learn his secrets, steal all the BTC.

crazier things have happened.

I think I'll be sticking with the 'He ran off with $10m' story tbh

[Tronlet]

Are there any actual reasons to think that davout, who provided a service that, unlike pirateat40's obvious scam, made sense and didn't have money coming from nowhere, is scamming instawallet users?

How much has actually been stolen? I was under the impression that the story was simply that a security flaw had been discovered that was such that the service could not be reopened with the same wallets without risking theft.

Presumably all that money has been moved to a different wallet to avoid possible theft from wallets that attackers stored the private keys from, but have not yet transferred the money from.

Is there any actual reason to think that there are any current problems other than uncertainty about determining and fulfilling legitimate claims?

Everything I've seen so far seems to be just as it should be. A vulnerability was discovered that meant that any wallet could have had the private key stored. As a result, any wallet could be vulnerable, even after all service was shut down. So, davout shut down the service and transferred all the coins that hadn't been stolen yet to a different wallet.

What is the problem here so far, other than the obvious problem of the security flaw? Aside from that, everything seems to be handled as it should be.

[🏰 TradeFortress 🏰]

Are there any actual reasons to think that davout, who provided a service that, unlike pirateat40's obvious scam, made sense and didn't have money coming from nowhere, is scamming instawallet users?

How much has actually been stolen? I was under the impression that the story was simply that a security flaw had been discovered that was such that the service could not be reopened with the same wallets without risking theft.

Presumably all that money has been moved to a different wallet to avoid possible theft from wallets that attackers stored the private keys from, but have not yet transferred the money from.

Is there any actual reason to think that there are any current problems other than uncertainty about determining and fulfilling legitimate claims?

Everything I've seen so far seems to be just as it should be. A vulnerability was discovered that meant that any wallet could have had the private key stored. As a result, any wallet could be vulnerable, even after all service was shut down. So, davout shut down the service and transferred all the coins that hadn't been stolen yet to a different wallet.

What is the problem here so far, other than the obvious problem of the security flaw? Aside from that, everything seems to be handled as it should be.

Yes, balances over 50 BTC may not be fully reclaimed.

IF davout pays out anything at all.

[ToWS]

davout, the owner, just stole everyone's balance on bitcoin-central.com

Strong words wopwop.
As far as I can see Bitcoin Central is once again trading normally.
My deposits, both in EUR and BTC are exactly as they were before the site was closed last week.
It's just that my (unfortunately tiny) BTC amount is now worth double what it was.

[stephwen]

davout, the owner, just stole everyone's balance on bitcoin-central.com

Strong words wopwop.
As far as I can see Bitcoin Central is once again trading normally.
My deposits, both in EUR and BTC are exactly as they were before the site was closed last week.
It's just that my (unfortunately tiny) BTC amount is now worth double what it was.

Haye you tried withdrawing BTC or EUR?

[tvbcof]

...
oh I received a message from davout:
everyone stay calm and just wait, all is good, nothing to see here (while he's booking a ticket to panama, flipping you the finger)
...

[Tronlet]

Yes, balances over 50 BTC may not be fully reclaimed.

IF davout pays out anything at all.

Balances under 50 BTC may not be fully reclaimed either. All they've said is that wallets with more than 50 BTC will be handled differently, which makes sense. They haven't released any information on how exactly they will be handled.

INSTAWALLET SERVICE NOTICE

In the next few days we are going to open the claim process for Instawallet balance holders to claim the funds they had stored before the service interruption.

Important information on claims submission:

For the first 90 days we will accept claims for individual Instawallets. Your wallet's URL and key will be used to pre-populate a form to file the claim.
After 90 days, if no other claim has been received for the same url, your Instawallet balance under 50 BTC will be refunded. If several claims have been filed for the same url, we will process those claims on a case by case basis, under the presumption that the claim we received first belongs to the legitimate balance holder.
Claims for wallets that hold a balance greater than 50 BTC will be processed on a case by case and best efforts basis.

There is are a couple of valid suspicions to hold, one of which is that it's taking oddly long to implement what should be a fairly simple claims process of "give use the details associated with your wallet and if no one else wants it you get it". However, this could be just because davout really really wants to make sure there aren't any security flaws in this claims process, after he fucked up the service itself so royally. So that's not currently a huge suspicion of mine, but time will tell.

The most valid suspicion, I would say, is that davout intentionally did this and intends to do everything legitimately from here on out, but engineered this specifically to make money off the wallets that never get claimed.

[becoin]

All they've said is that wallets with more than 50 BTC will be handled differently, which makes sense.

In Cyprus they've said that wallets with more than 100 000 EUR will be handled differently. Does it really make sense?

[Tronlet]

All they've said is that wallets with more than 50 BTC will be handled differently, which makes sense.

In Cyprus they've said that wallets with more than 100 000 EUR will be handled differently. Does it really make sense?

"We're going to be more careful giving back wallets worth 50 BTC or more, instead of just giving them out to someone lucky enough to falsely claim and have the original owner not get to it within 90 days."

Yes, that makes sense.

[brenzi]

davout, the owner, just stole everyone's balance on bitcoin-central.com and instawallet.org

50.000 bitcoin theft just happened and people here don't even know it? wtf!

I've withdrawn all my bitcoins (<5 BTC) from bitcoin-central and the withdrawal was processed today 8:00am (with >24h delay). My balance was correct and I got my bitcoins. So there is no scam at all. Please correct your thread title!

[Herodes]

90 days would be enough to buy a 'diplomatic passport' somewhere in the world, and retire to a tropic island. Nobody would ever find him. :\

[Boussac]

davout, the owner, just stole everyone's balance on bitcoin-central.com and instawallet.org

This is a false accusation, totally unfounded (no one lost money).

wopwop is a paid troll..

[Tronlet]

Yeah, wopwop's been posting a lot of nonsense around the forums, I've noticed. Was surprised they hadn't yet, but it looks like their Ignore button is starting to gain a lovely color to it.

[Herodes]

davout, the owner, just stole everyone's balance on bitcoin-central.com and instawallet.org

This is a false accusation, totally unfounded (no one lost money).

If noone lost money, why would not all instawallet users get 100% funds back ?

[becoin]

This is a false accusation, totally unfounded (no one lost money).

Déjà vu...
The owner of Bitmarket.eu says the same to his customers - Your bitcoins are not lost. They are "frozen". I'll repay them whenever I can in euro... at the exchange rate when you sent them to your account with bitmarket.

[tvbcof]

davout, the owner, just stole everyone's balance on bitcoin-central.com and instawallet.org

This is a false accusation, totally unfounded (no one lost money).

wopwop is a paid troll..

Evidence?

When it comes to unfounded accusations, 'what's good for the goose is good for the gander.'