Was Paymium really hacked? Or are they running a scam? Latter appearing likely.

[Herodes]

It's almost dumb not to seize such an opportunity.

No - it's not. Doing so is criminal in each and every jurisdiction.

Yeah, but it's the perfect crime. If they manage to buy back at lower prices, there's not even any basis for a criminal complaint, you have your coins back. If questioned they will tell the police they covered the coins "that the hackers stole" out of their own pocket. Maybe some civil liability for not being able to access your coins for an extended period of time is it's not already covered in the TOS.

Gambling with client funds is not the perfect crime. It's extremely risky and could put the ones responsible in jail for a very long time. Of course, if it was never discovered, then it could be 'the perfect crime', but what if they sold off, then price made a U-turn, and they couldn't buy back all the coins, then they would've been in deep shit, and could've claimed another hack, but trails would've shown the truth as to what really happened. Anyway - all of this is mere speculation.

[Phinnaeus Gage]

https://paytunia.com/

[Apr-01 10:30PM CET]

Bitcoin-Central and Paytunia update: Our customer's bitcoins and euros are safe and will not be affected by the security breach. We have taken the websites off-line for proper investigation.

The address 1LrPYjto3hsLzWJNstghuwdrQXB96KbrCy is under our exclusive control.

We thank you for your patience and will provide updates exclusively on this page as they come in. We are committed to resuming service as soon as possible. Expect normal service to resume within 48 hours.

A couple days later they no longer were using that one address because they split up the funds into a myriad of wallets.

Now, who has exclusive control of them?

[Phinnaeus Gage]

I bet you can't guess which one of GRANDVAL Gonzague company's he's trying to pass off this woman as being on its staff. Hint: The other three images of staff are also public domain images.

I'll make it easy for you: https://www.google.com/search?q=33.786541133&aq=f&oq=33.786541133&aqs=chrome.0.57j60j62l3.24792j0&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

These fuckers are beginning to truly piss me off.

[Phinnaeus Gage]

http://web.archive.org/web/20120609071056/http://paymium.com/

The three founders of Paymium, Gonzague Grandval, Pierre Noizat and David François, have a cumulated experience of over 30 years in payment solutions, software development and computer security.

With all that experience, nobody was able to hack our sites, so we opted to do it ourselves, blaming it on outside forces because you fucktards would believe it. Besides, we offered a free service and even warned you bastards to not leave your money with us, but you didn't listen, so we are going to teach you ANOTHER lesson.

And about that police report number: Fuck all of you, for you're not getting it. How do you like them apples.

Team Paytunia, et al.

esad

[Phinnaeus Gage]

Welcome back my friends to the show that never ends
Only One, Only One

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wG-Wt0dAm_U

Sometimes, you just can't make this stuff up.

[jonytk]

Well, as a bitcoin-central client, i hope this is fixed for good.

I have suffered huge losses and i'm starting to think there's too much insider trading here. Notice the huge lag in bitcoin-central? Don't tell me is the bots because they have no api.

The hack, if it's true, were very simple: database of url stolen.

The question about if they are going to profit: They profit from the dust of coins never reclaimed and from playing with your coins in the mean time, and there's nothing we can do about that. I'm talking about "dust" of milibitcoins that were sended there and could not get out, since the minimum amount to withdraw was 0.1 or 0.01, and many services like https://coinad.com?r=7084 and others pay 0.000001bitcoins for viewing advertising and browsing pages.

they think, "mehh nothing is going to happen, we can control the server from some beach in thailand..."

They are like a bank in regard to bitcoins, so i will advise them against doing anything illegal, just look at what happend to bitcoin-24, first of all starting verifying all their costumers, look for multiple accounts from the same ip with 500E withdrawalls etc. If there's money laundering going on, anyone of us can close their bank account right now.  So they better explain what happened.

[Phinnaeus Gage]

Does anyone have a copy of the original "term of use" of Instawallet ?

Bump.

I can try to look how a letter should be written but I first need the ToS of the web site justbefore it was closed. In french or in english (or both so that I can check if there are differences).

The ToS is the "contract" between the user and the company running the site so I first need to see if it was a breach of contract (civil lawsuit possible) and/or if it is only a penal (not sure this word exists in english) lawsuit.

I tried looking for a cache, but to no prevail. I'm pretty sure it's going to be similar to what they use on their only sites.

[Phinnaeus Gage]

Does anyone have a copy of the original "term of use" of Instawallet ?

Bump.

I can try to look how a letter should be written but I first need the ToS of the web site justbefore it was closed. In french or in english (or both so that I can check if there are differences).

The ToS is the "contract" between the user and the company running the site so I first need to see if it was a breach of contract (civil lawsuit possible) and/or if it is only a penal (not sure this word exists in english) lawsuit.

I tried looking for a cache, but to no prevail. I'm pretty sure it's going to be similar to what they use on their only sites.

Yep, it looks like this will work: https://a.bitcoin-central.net/s/terms_of_service

The services offered by Paymium include, but are not limited to, the use of the following web-sites and platforms, hereafter referred to as the "Service" :

Bitcoin-Central.net
Paytunia.com
InstaWallet.org
InstaWire.org

[crazy_rabbit]

If they really did run a scam- why didn't they return the BTC yet? It was 'hacked' before the collapse- and they had plenty of time to sell everything before it hit the bottom, buy back and keep the profit.

That would have been the perfect crime really. I'm sure there was enough in there to send the market in a death spiral. But if thats what they did- why not return the funds? Just insane greediness? Not willing to get out with less money but no legal repercussions?

Even though they said the way their database was accessed means they can't come back online, doesn't mean they couldn't refund everyone. So strange.

[pyedpyper]

Thanks for this ghdp

Was very interesting to stumble across this thread as well https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=86278.0

Instawallet being sold very hard it seems. It does raise a question as to what the motivation would be for that?

Boussac has already made much of that Instawallet was a free service and therefore no revenues earned by Paymium etc etc.

So why sell it so hard? A possible case for premeditation here I think...

[Phinnaeus Gage]

Hello all !

Posting here for one of the first times, got really interested in the whole bitcoins community a little less than a month go.

As always when I discover something interesting I feel the urge to develop something revolving around it using the wonderful Rails framework.

So I've started developing something that would look like MyBitcoin but having in sight to add lots of interesting features and try out some economic models...

Features I'dd like to add :
 - Improved address books and transfers to e-mail addresses
 - Interfaces with other bitcoin services
 - Open and powerful API for other services and merchants
 - Facebook integration (that would be opt-in )
 - More generally speaking, enable people without any bitcoin knowledge or curiosity to open an account

Economic models that could be interesting :
 - Interest for your deposits
 - {insert interesting idea here}

So what I'm posting here for is basically :
 - Gathering interesting ideas and comments from the community
 - See if it would be a smart move to open the code in order for anybody to look for security breaches and therefore harden the bank safe

Dear God! He succeeded. The first Bitcoin entity to do what they set out to do in their mission statement.

[pyedpyper]

Boussac,

And just for the record...

Please state who the "independent auditors" are that are conducting "computer forensic analysis" on the alleged "hack".

And please state what they have discovered so far. I'm sure your clients are interested.

I need confirmation of your refusal to answer this (another) direct question as well for my statement...

Have a nice day

[nellybear]

Does anyone have a copy of the original "term of use" of Instawallet ?

Bump.

I can try to look how a letter should be written but I first need the ToS of the web site justbefore it was closed. In french or in english (or both so that I can check if there are differences).

The ToS is the "contract" between the user and the company running the site so I first need to see if it was a breach of contract (civil lawsuit possible) and/or if it is only a penal (not sure this word exists in english) lawsuit.

I tried looking for a cache, but to no prevail. I'm pretty sure it's going to be similar to what they use on their only sites.

This isn't a proper ToS but AFAIK these were the only terms visible on Instawallet: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=122677.msg1320842#msg1320842

[Phinnaeus Gage]

Boussac,

And just for the record...

Please state who the "independent auditors" are that are conducting "computer forensic analysis" on the alleged "hack".

And please state what they have discovered so far. I'm sure your clients are interested.

I need confirmation of your refusal to answer this (another) direct question as well for my statement...

Have a nice day

Surely, this is not their "independent auditor": https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=6125.msg89874#msg89874

http://web.archive.org/web/20120116132913/http://www.amivulnerable.com/

http://web.archive.org/web/20111113122934/http://www.amihackable.com/

[glub0x]

Boussac,

And just for the record...

Please state who the "independent auditors" are that are conducting "computer forensic analysis" on the alleged "hack".

And please state what they have discovered so far. I'm sure your clients are interested.

I need confirmation of your refusal to answer this (another) direct question as well for my statement...

Have a nice day

this.
I'm not sure the bitcoin business ecosystem have really understood the difference between cash and bitcoin.
With bitcoin unlike with normal cash, when you got a troube YOU are the main suspect. Because YOU are the one that has the biggest incentive to profit out of this hack. This imply that you have to be cristal clear about any move you do mainly in crisis time because otherwise it s gona look suspicious.

i believe they are honest for some reason now i also believe this all shit was not handled very professionally and i vastly support op. Not being clear in a bitcoin business is VERY unprofessional.

It's not innocent until proven guilty it's the other way round.

[Phinnaeus Gage]

This is Boussac's response when you ask for a police report number:

Unignore

I see how the game is played now: Hack your own sites, claim money was stolen, claim to fill out a police report, ignore all requests from those who entrusted you with their assets, then call them trolls for requesting a simple number to set them at ease.

You sir, are one sick mother fucker!

Couldn't agree more...

All ease aside, the one hint is the lack of a police report number (and possibly them being one sick motherfuckers).

Ignore

[brickhouse464]

I'm sick of all this bitcoin scamming!  I still expect to get my bitcoins back from Instawallet but I try to keep a positive outlook.   It's not much but at least somebody is admitting that they received our bitcoins and claims that they will eventually be returned.  Many supposedly reputable businesses will just steal your money and lie to your face and even call you a liar and claim you are trying to steal from them.

[Phinnaeus Gage]

It's not much but at least somebody is admitting that they received our bitcoins and claims that they will eventually be returned.

I don't care for going another round, for this time I have real money at stake.



I asked for a simple police report number and what do I get? The current owner of my bitcoins, in no uncertain terms (maybe even certain), tells me to go fuck myself by sticking it up my ass.

I got an idea. I can start a bit stating that he'll pay, and when he doesn't deliver I'll be the one who'll get the scammer tag.

This is fucked up on so many levels, I'm beside myself.

[crazy_rabbit]

Quick question- why doesn't someone just go find the guy? Paris isn't very remote. If people care- they should just go there.

EDIT: Or at least hire a private detective. There are plenty in Paris.

[naphto]

He showed that file, but I can't tell if it is a real one or not...


http://www.e-ducat.fr/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/recepisse-declaration-Paymium-BEFTI-avril2013-4.pdf