My bitcoins have been stolen

[Dedrater]

*snip He brought over his 3 year old daughter too and my son played with her while we did the transaction.*snip

I'd check your little 'uns money box too if I were you.

[JoeChmoe]

A harsh harsh lesson.

[tahar]

Simple golden rule. Never trust anyone anywhere with Bitcoins. Chances are, a very large percentage of people 'invested' (in time and / or money) in Bitcoins are out to make a quick buck if they can.

[edd]

so he's returning the card out of the goodness of his heart and despite the fact he lost not only what he paid for the card but also money from his own wallet.

If I believed the other person needs it more than I do and was not responsible, I would.

Besides, if he was the thief and he returns the card, what has he gained? Just the BTC, right? They would both be back to where they started - Kennji would have his card back and the thief would have just stolen his own bitcoins back.

He's only returning the card because he was caught.

I can't believe how people on here seem to want to go for the most elaborate scenario possible when it's obvious what happened. Anyway good luck to the op.

THIS. The whole "oh some malware got on his USB stick and it autoran on your computer" is sooooo unlikely, that is not how most malware is spread whatsoever, and most people have USB autorun off, I think it's off by default in most modern Windows installs.

The argument of "he didn't do this scam in the same way that many thieves do scams!" is just silly, there are tons of novice criminals, dumb criminals, etc., and it's even possible that he had only vaguely thought of it before, but once he was there and you left the room, he went "ah why not".

Anyhow, if the guy claims he ALSO had coins stolen at the same time, I'd like to see him prove that, show a transaction at the same time from an address he can prove is his. THEN maybe I'd start to believe him.

gl OP

I believe the least likely scenario is that he infected the computer with a wallet stealer via the USB stick. It is more likely that there was already something present on Kennji's computer, especially considering his naivete toward security, and it was just triggered by the additional BTC. If that was the case, it most certainly would have transferred itself to the USB and infected the other person's computer as well.

Of course, the most likely and simplest scenario is that the wallet.dat was simply copied while he was out of the room.

[7846]

He plugged in some USB stick and sent me BTC.

He plugged in some USB stick and stole yours BTC.

[runam0k]

I can see how someone could fall for that - guy comes to pick something up in person, he's paying in bitcoin, he has his wallet on a USB stick.

Pretty ballsy move, if he did indeed snag a copy of your wallet/install a keylogger or similar.

[ravic]

this sucks now I know not to trade face to face lol.

[Anon136]

this sucks now I know not to trade face to face lol.

lol just don't let him plug anything into your computer and you will be fine 

[maxpaynebupt]

Quite sad, can the police help?

[quality_armbands]

Gotta keep your puter to yourself

[BitPappa]

This really demonstrates the problem when a hot new cyber currency expands beyond those really knowledgeable about general computer security practices. I don't know if we should blame someone for being naive and trusting.

[MadHasher]

I finally got done reformatting and reinstalling Windows on my machine.

He gave me back the card.

What a horrible experience this is\was.

I lost .5 BTC in the whole thing because the thief (whoever it is... I am so confused) got everything in my wallet and I had .5 before this entire transaction with the USB stick and the 7970 sale happened.

Do the right thing and have an old laptop or machine running linux, if you are going to store a lot of value in BTC.

[Blazr]

If the guy did copy your wallet.dat, he wouldn't be able to do anything with it if it was encrypted.

[shanonism]

sad, so sad, bad people

[lytecoin]

sad, so sad, bad people

Just have to be careful to not let people put USBs into your computer if you don't know the person.

[Ricko]

As a newb. This is very helpful for the future. *Starts encrypting wallet*

[davider]

Yes, encryption seems a good idea

[iooiville]

The encryption is of course the best way to lock your coins but a backup wallet is also a must have. If you have a offline backup and encrypted wallet you have nothing to worry about.
But seriously don't let anyone play with the host where the wallet is stored.

[saldoom]

wow that is harsh, sorry to hear about it.

[zim79]

Sorry to hear what happened dude, but I wouldn't let a stranger use your pc, especially plug anything into your computer. As for encryption, use a random string as a password like 534jgkhfgSDFGergf34£%$&%egfs so it would be hard to brute force or dictionary attack.