Changelly scam? I think so

[docrodriguez]

I've been very patient with Changelly since August 5th when I submitted my first support ticket on this matter.  Now that it's clear to me that Changelly runs a drag-it-out support strategy, it's time to go public.

Is Changelly a scam?

You be the judge...  please leave your opinion in the comments.

CONTEXT

The transaction (Tx) at issue here is BTC for GBYTE (Byteball).

For those not familiar with Byteball:

Byteball has no mining; its native currency - white bytes (GBYTE) and black bytes (BB) - was created back in December 2016 and has since been distributed, as widely as possible, via ~monthly airdrops.  Every full moon since December, a "snapshot" has been taken of the balance of bytes held on each and every Byteball address, and of the balance of every registered BTC address.  Shortly thereafter, each address receives new bytes based on the balance at the time of the snapshot.

The last snapshot was August 7, 2017 18:10 UTC (11:10 PDT), and new bytes were distributed as follows:

• For every 1 GBYTE held on any Byteball address, you got 0.2 of new GBYTE
• For every 1 GBYTE held on a linked Byteball address, you got 0.4222 of new BB

One last thing: Byteball's immutable ledger of Txs is stored in a construct called a DAG (Directed Acyclical Graph), analogous in function to bitcoin's blockchain.

WHAT HAPPENED?

On August 5, two days before the Byteball snapshot, I initiated a Tx with Changelly to trade 20 BTC for ~105 GBYTE. 
Changelly took my BTC, but held on to the GBYTE, collected my Byteball reward, and then sent ~105 GBYTE 4 days after I initiated the Tx.

Changelly effectively stole my ByteBall distribution.

When hours had passed and still no GBYTE, I sent my first ticket, and support  responded:

"It seems that there could be some technical issues either with our wallet or with Gbyte network. We will investigate the matter.   We have forwarded your request to the technical department. They will push your transaction through.  We will inform you, once your issue is resolved!"

On August 7th, before the snapshot, I submitted two more support tickets.  I told Changelly that if they couldn't deliver the GBYTE before the snapshot, I wanted my BTC back.  Support responded on August 8th 2:06pm  (long after the snapshot):

"Unfortunately, we cannot refund your bitcoins since they have been already converted into GBYTE. But you will receive the same amount since your money has been already exchanged.  Please confirm your GBYTE wallet address and we will repeat payout. All the issues seem to be fixed now, so it should work."

I responded, explaining why the only reasonable remedy was for Changelly to refund my BTC.  I did not confirm any GBYTE wallet address. 

Support ignored me and sent the following on August 9th:

"Good news! We have received the response from the exchange and now everything has been delivered!"

I wrote to Charlie Shrem, an advisor to Changelly, and he forwarded my complaint to Changelly CEO, Konstantin Gladych.  I've also emailed Gladych many times directly myself.  Zero response.


CIVIL LIABILITY

Under civil law, Changelly has been unjustly enriched and is liable to pay restitution. 

Unjust Enrichment. A general equitable principle that no person should be allowed to profit at another's expense without making restitution for the reasonable value of any property, services, or other benefits that have been unfairly received and retained.

This principle is widely recognized and applies to Changelly here regardless of whether they did anything wrong.  This is essentially why Coinbase and Poloniex changed course and gave their customers the BCH that was due to them.


CRIMINAL LIABILITY

Changelly is clearly liable under civil law.
 
What about criminal liability? 

Using a DAG explorer, we can browse Byteball's immutable ledger of Txs and discover the following:

1) Changelly provided proof of payout.  We see 105.306518206 GBYTE sent from address, BRAAXVBQPDBBCUQWHW4BHBIDDKTWJYW3.
    https://explorer.byteball.org/#i/f2u2jLUmIRIpVYD+6Sav9xLayb5WpY2gn864RSUrI=

2) 8/5 11:28, Changelly and I agree that this is when Changelly received my 20 BTC.

3) 8/5 11:40, 12 minutes later, 105.306518200 GBYTE arrived at Changelly’s pay out address, BRAAXVBQPDBBCUQWHW4BHBIDDKTWJYW3.
    https://explorer.byteball.org/#Q2PTWTIHqHDUzDk3suTKtX37VN2ntKmcrUdttUG8oWQ=

All Changelly had to do was send it to me.  What happened?

The GBYTE was diverted to the following addresses, which subsequently received the airdropped GBYTE that rightfully should have gone to me:

• 31,447,997,156 to CBCYP2UY6YX2FJX6OXNDHBQO4VREDUJL
• 51,788,023,285 to QAHP5Z4P6QQV4S3MUVTOJM5D7SJDWPSD
• 21,763,859,830 to 6H5USZBXMOYUAGCYEYF7P3A6QU2EJBCT
• 306,636,259 to QR542JXX7VJ5UJOZDKHTJCXAYWOATID2

The DAG also shows plenty of Tx activity over the relevant time period, also strongly suggesting no technical issues were to blame for Changelly's delayed Tx.

Did you know…? 

Under the Czech Republic's Code on Corporate Criminal Liability both Changelly and the individual perpetrator(s) would be criminally liable.


WHAT NEXT

Changelly… fix this immediately.

Up next we’ll explore…

- how to connect employee identities to the suspicious Byteball addresses
- inner-workings of Changelly
- the Bittrex and Changelly APIs
- behind the scenes of the Changelly-Bittrex connection
- Konstantin Gladych’s relationship with the European Cybercrime Center
- presenting evidence to Czech and U.S. prosecutors
- comments from devs re: Changelly’s technical excuses for failed Txs
- similarities and differences between Changelly and BitInstant

[1715077242]

1715077242

[1715077242]

1715077242

[Patatas]

Withe advent of new scam exchanges popping up everyday,Laws are getting stricter.20 BTC isn't a small amount and you haven't really got a conclusion yet.I suggest you to find their office address,contact them personally or proceed with the law suit for stealing your bitcoins.As far as I know,you haven'y really broken any of their TOC and they haven't specified any reason for blocking your withholding. Take your call,contact  a local law authority.
You're just a mere case of what they might be hiding in the box.

[docrodriguez]

Thanks for your reply and advice.
If I don't receive a favorable response from Changelly today, contacting authorities is exactly what I intend to do.
Will keep this thread updated with how things progress.

[docrodriguez]

Changelly scam... I think so.

from changelly_com via /r/CryptoCurrency sent an hour ago

Dear Nttwo, once again let us explain the issue.
Your exchange was completed 5 august once we got confirmation of your 20 BTC for exchange.
We've provided that trade to about 105.68 GBYTE on Bittrex, one of our exchange partners.
As amount was rather huge, we've requested withdrawal from our Bittrex account.
Unfortunately at that moment their wallet was under maintains.
We've temporarily stopped GBYTE trading on Changelly too.
Once Bittrex reactivated Bytebal wallet, we've sent your GBYTE to the initial requested address.
Transaction hashes you can find in your exchanges history on Changelly, it was at 9 August.
We do apologies for the delay once again, unfortunately not all the things are depending on our service. Blockchain is rather new not so stable industry. And speculative trading is always risky.
During the contribution period your funds were saved on our corporate account on Bittrex, we didn't get any extra funds there. So we have nothing to compensate you, sorry.
Hope for your understating.

Hello Changelly,

Thank you for your response.

I hope you understand that due to the amount of money here, this will not go away in your favor unless a court finds in your favor.
I think it would be preferable for everyone concerned if Changelly did the right thing and issued me a refund.

I have just a few questions. If your explanation is true, then you have a great opportunity to demonstrate Changelly's commitment to its customers and the crypto world.

Before the questions, I want to make one point clear:

The problem here has nothing to do with the "risk of speculative trading", or risks associated with the nascent blockchain industry.

Just as there were no risks to anyone holding BTC on August 1st to receiving their BCH. If you had BTC, you got BCH, period.
This is no different. If you had GBYTE at the time of the snapshot, you got 20% more GBYTE - no speculation or risk involved.
Thus, at a minimum, someone was unjustly enriched by holding my funds.

Please answer the following questions:

Here is the Tx where the 105.306518200 GBYTE owed to me was first delivered to Changelly's pay out address.
https://explorer.byteball.org/#Q2PTWTIHqHDUzDk3suTKtX37VN2ntKmcrUdttUG8oWQ=

The relevant details are:

• Received: 05.08.2017 11:40:22 (about 12 minutes after Changelly received my 20 BTC)
• 105,306,518,200 (BYTES) to BRAAXVBQPDBBCUQWHW4BHBIDDKTWJYW3

1) Please confirm that BRAAXVBQPDBBCUQWHW4BHBIDDKTWJYW3 is indeed Changelly's address.

2) Is the address above from Changelly's Bittrex corporate account wallet?

3) Is the wallet in #2 the one that you claim was taken offline by Bittrex for maintenance just after you received my 20 BTC on 8/5/2017 at ~11:28?

4) Please explain why Changelly did not send the GBYTE from the Tx above to me at that time?

5) Lastly, here is a subsequent Tx that occurred ~2 hours later on 05.08.2017 at 13:35:07.
https://explorer.byteball.org/#DiHg/Sc4wtpLugwjOJMSj8NmHsEPLAw78K759PG102I=

Can you explain this Tx?
To whom did Changelly send my GBYTE?
Who owns those addresses?

Thank you for helping me to understand how Changelly was neither negligent, nor nefarious here.
Your answers should clarify who was unjustly enriched at my expense, Changelly or Bittrex, or someone else.
It would be great to know if it was Bittrex, as they're local and I can drive over to their place and speak with them directly.

[docrodriguez]

Changelly responded:

BRAAXVBQPDBBCUQWHW4BHBIDDKTWJYW3 is actually our wallet.
Next week we will check again, was your money on our wallet at the distribution period or not.
If we got any extra GBYTE, we will definitely send you a compensation.
In other case we will redirect you to Bittrex.

I replied back:

BRAAXVBQPDBBCUQWHW4BHBIDDKTWJYW3 is actually our wallet.
Next week we will check again, was your money on our wallet at the distribution period or not.

12 minutes after Changelly received my 20 BTC, you received my 105.306518200 GBYTE in your wallet BRAAXVBQPDBBCUQWHW4BHBIDDKTWJYW3.
Proof is HERE

But then, beginning about 2 hours later, your wallet - BRAAXVBQPDBBCUQWHW4BHBIDDKTWJYW3 - sent my 105.306518200 GBYTE to the following 4 addresses:

   1.   CBCYP2UY6YX2FJX6OXNDHBQO4VREDUJL

   2.   QAHP5Z4P6QQV4S3MUVTOJM5D7SJDWPSD

   3.   6H5USZBXMOYUAGCYEYF7P3A6QU2EJBCT

   4.   QR542JXX7VJ5UJOZDKHTJCXAYWOATID2


The proof is HERE, HERE, and HERE.

If Changelly owns the 4 addresses listed above then, YES, my money was in your wallet during the snapshot for the Byteball distribution. 

If you claim that Changelly does NOT own the 4 addresses above then:

   1.   Why did you send my money to these addresses?, and

   2.   Who owns these addresses?


[betudontbet]

If they claim these aren't their addresses that means someone had access to their wallets or they decided to scam  20 bitcoins is roughly 80k usd

[jogoma12]

Interesting find, thanks for posting.

[docrodriguez]

If they claim these aren't their addresses that means someone had access to their wallets or they decided to scam  20 bitcoins is roughly 80k usd

Yes, it's not an insignificant amount of $ by any means.

Because Changelly CEO, Konstantin Gladych, has failed to chime in, Changelly appears to be the scammers.

Changelly advisor, Charlie Shrem, didn't help their case at all either.  Charlie pushed a silly red herring argument - i.e. blaming Bittrex - rather than advise Changelly to answer:

Who owns the addresses that held my GBYTE?

On Wed, Aug 23, 2017, Charlie 'Charles' Shrem wrote:

First,

1- Stop including me in this emails.
2- AFAIK Bittrex wallet was under maintenance, which happens frequently. If you give me the exact timeframe I can even get proof from the CEO (Which you have failed to you as of yet)

To be clear, whether Bittrex's wallet was under maintenance or not makes ZERO difference with regard to the fact that my GBYTE were being withheld at the addresses shown in the DAG Explorer evidence.

[Slow death]

...

It is very clear that they are not serious, you already know who are responsible for this company, besides they are based in Czech Republic,

Founded: 2013
Headquarters: Prague, Czech Republic
Products: Smart Payin API and exchange widgets
Website: changelly.com

then you should report them to the competent authorities.

You have already contacted them several times and the answer has always been the same at no time do they show that they want to solve your problem. Do not beg anymore, do not humiliate yourself anymore... denounce them to the police and let them answer in court. Use all legal means for them to return what you think is yours.

[Changelly]

Hey guys!

Unfortunately we've missed that topic. But need to clarify. After the investigation we've realised that funds were on our wallet during the distribution. We've got extra GBYTE and sent them to the docrodriguez requested address:
https://explorer.byteball.org/#E2yT+hk7Gsu4u0LsFVzqlAyi/w6EcuujnsfKE+trV94=

[byteball3r]

I have used Changelly a lot to exchange 50+ BTC and they have been reliable and honest.

[salakka]

so this case is already closed or still open??

[3DBrushes]

I used changelly yesterday for exchanging Bitcoin cash to Bitcoins initially after depositing bch to the given address the screen did not change for an hour and later it started showing waiting for deposit. Later everything went fine and my transaction got confirmed. I think they set high amount of confirmations for BCH transactions which delayed my transaction time.

[U2016]

I think OP Account is hacked.
He came back from 2013 to 2017 just to post this.
I am sure bought Account.

[monkeydominicorobin]

I've been very patient with Changelly since August 5th when I submitted my first support ticket on this matter.  Now that it's clear to me that Changelly runs a drag-it-out support strategy, it's time to go public.

Is Changelly a scam?

You be the judge...  please leave your opinion in the comments.

CONTEXT

The transaction (Tx) at issue here is BTC for GBYTE (Byteball).

For those not familiar with Byteball:

Byteball has no mining; its native currency - white bytes (GBYTE) and black bytes (BB) - was created back in December 2016 and has since been distributed, as widely as possible, via ~monthly airdrops.  Every full moon since December, a "snapshot" has been taken of the balance of bytes held on each and every Byteball address, and of the balance of every registered BTC address.  Shortly thereafter, each address receives new bytes based on the balance at the time of the snapshot.

The last snapshot was August 7, 2017 18:10 UTC (11:10 PDT), and new bytes were distributed as follows:

• For every 1 GBYTE held on any Byteball address, you got 0.2 of new GBYTE
• For every 1 GBYTE held on a linked Byteball address, you got 0.4222 of new BB

One last thing: Byteball's immutable ledger of Txs is stored in a construct called a DAG (Directed Acyclical Graph), analogous in function to bitcoin's blockchain.

WHAT HAPPENED?

On August 5, two days before the Byteball snapshot, I initiated a Tx with Changelly to trade 20 BTC for ~105 GBYTE. 
Changelly took my BTC, but held on to the GBYTE, collected my Byteball reward, and then sent ~105 GBYTE 4 days after I initiated the Tx.

Changelly effectively stole my ByteBall distribution.

When hours had passed and still no GBYTE, I sent my first ticket, and support  responded:

"It seems that there could be some technical issues either with our wallet or with Gbyte network. We will investigate the matter.   We have forwarded your request to the technical department. They will push your transaction through.  We will inform you, once your issue is resolved!"

On August 7th, before the snapshot, I submitted two more support tickets.  I told Changelly that if they couldn't deliver the GBYTE before the snapshot, I wanted my BTC back.  Support responded on August 8th 2:06pm  (long after the snapshot):

"Unfortunately, we cannot refund your bitcoins since they have been already converted into GBYTE. But you will receive the same amount since your money has been already exchanged.  Please confirm your GBYTE wallet address and we will repeat payout. All the issues seem to be fixed now, so it should work."

I responded, explaining why the only reasonable remedy was for Changelly to refund my BTC.  I did not confirm any GBYTE wallet address. 

Support ignored me and sent the following on August 9th:

"Good news! We have received the response from the exchange and now everything has been delivered!"

I wrote to Charlie Shrem, an advisor to Changelly, and he forwarded my complaint to Changelly CEO, Konstantin Gladych.  I've also emailed Gladych many times directly myself.  Zero response.


CIVIL LIABILITY

Under civil law, Changelly has been unjustly enriched and is liable to pay restitution. 

Unjust Enrichment. A general equitable principle that no person should be allowed to profit at another's expense without making restitution for the reasonable value of any property, services, or other benefits that have been unfairly received and retained.

This principle is widely recognized and applies to Changelly here regardless of whether they did anything wrong.  This is essentially why Coinbase and Poloniex changed course and gave their customers the BCH that was due to them.


CRIMINAL LIABILITY

Changelly is clearly liable under civil law.
 
What about criminal liability? 

Using a DAG explorer, we can browse Byteball's immutable ledger of Txs and discover the following:

1) Changelly provided proof of payout.  We see 105.306518206 GBYTE sent from address, BRAAXVBQPDBBCUQWHW4BHBIDDKTWJYW3.
    https://explorer.byteball.org/#i/f2u2jLUmIRIpVYD+6Sav9xLayb5WpY2gn864RSUrI=

2) 8/5 11:28, Changelly and I agree that this is when Changelly received my 20 BTC.

3) 8/5 11:40, 12 minutes later, 105.306518200 GBYTE arrived at Changelly’s pay out address, BRAAXVBQPDBBCUQWHW4BHBIDDKTWJYW3.
    https://explorer.byteball.org/#Q2PTWTIHqHDUzDk3suTKtX37VN2ntKmcrUdttUG8oWQ=

All Changelly had to do was send it to me.  What happened?

The GBYTE was diverted to the following addresses, which subsequently received the airdropped GBYTE that rightfully should have gone to me:

• 31,447,997,156 to CBCYP2UY6YX2FJX6OXNDHBQO4VREDUJL
• 51,788,023,285 to QAHP5Z4P6QQV4S3MUVTOJM5D7SJDWPSD
• 21,763,859,830 to 6H5USZBXMOYUAGCYEYF7P3A6QU2EJBCT
• 306,636,259 to QR542JXX7VJ5UJOZDKHTJCXAYWOATID2

The DAG also shows plenty of Tx activity over the relevant time period, also strongly suggesting no technical issues were to blame for Changelly's delayed Tx.

Did you know…? 

Under the Czech Republic's Code on Corporate Criminal Liability both Changelly and the individual perpetrator(s) would be criminally liable.


WHAT NEXT

Changelly… fix this immediately.

Up next we’ll explore…

- how to connect employee identities to the suspicious Byteball addresses
- inner-workings of Changelly
- the Bittrex and Changelly APIs
- behind the scenes of the Changelly-Bittrex connection
- Konstantin Gladych’s relationship with the European Cybercrime Center
- presenting evidence to Czech and U.S. prosecutors
- comments from devs re: Changelly’s technical excuses for failed Txs
- similarities and differences between Changelly and BitInstant

Unfortunately for you. When you used changelly you automatically agreed to their terms and conditions. And why did you transact with that huge amount of Bitcoins. That's a hundred thousand dollars worth of Bitcoins.

[Nomteck]

op I used ithem couple of ties all went smooth.

[capensis]

I have used Changelly dozens of times with no major issues but will not use them again after my experience yesterday.

Just go to their Facebook page now or Google Changelly Scam and see the many hundreds of folks are saying that have been ripped off in one way or another within the past week. I was one of them without going into details. They will not even reply to emails sent.

This is an old thread BUT there are a large number of people calling them SCAMMERS now. Probably thousands of people involved in this and who knows how many millions of dollars have been lost in one way or another. They are taking 30 minutes to many hours to do an exchange.

CHANGELEY ARE SCAMMERS !!!

You have been warned !!

[preshpresh]

found this page after waiting over an hour with 'waiting for deposit' only showing.

tx was btg to sys.

not much but enough to warrant a campaign of warning others.

need sleep now, perhaps in the morning its finalised...

[larmando-55]

Last Friday morning I changed BTC by ETH through CHANGELLY.
They received my BTC but I still did not receive the ETH. We are talking about 72 hours.
No response from them so far. Is this a normal situation?
I checked one thousand times and all the addresses are correct.
They are still processing my payment: "Message: Sending to your account".
I believe this is unbearable. What is your opinion?
I will update my experience.

[TheCryptographer]

Last Friday morning I changed BTC by ETH through CHANGELLY.
They received my BTC but I still did not receive the ETH. We are talking about 72 hours.
No response from them so far. Is this a normal situation?
I checked one thousand times and all the addresses are correct.
They are still processing my payment: "Message: Sending to your account".
I believe this is unbearable. What is your opinion?
I will update my experience.

any update did you get your ethers?

Same is what happened to me in the past week, I wanted to change eth to nlg(gulden). I sent changelly the eth to their address and on etherscan it shows that the transaction went through yet they didn't recieve the payment, I had to keep the window open for about 2 days and they still didn't recieve the payment. I emailed the support centre and still haven't got any response. the price of nlg has gone up and so has ether's price and I'm worried.

[zeusk]

I tried to do a Bitcoin to Litecoin exchange today through Changelly.com, and this is how it went.
Changelly received my Bitcoins within a few minutes but yet their system was saying "Awaiting payment". Which i thought was weird. So I waited for a couple of more confirmations. At this point on the blockchain, my transaction had 4 confirmations, so i proceeded to contact their support team.
Their response was there was a technical issue. I asked them what the issue was and they used the "there is a technical issue with Bitcoin" excuse, which is impossible because the mempool is clear and Bitcoin transactions are working flawlessly. I got freaked out and asked for a refund because i checked the google reviews and there were tons of "Changelly is a scam" posts across the net.
At this point the support team asked for my Bitcoin address, which i gave them. But it has nearly been 24 hours and nothing has been refunded.
They are now ignoring all my support tickets and the more i read online, the more i realize changelly is a scam. I trusted Charlie (Shrem) because he recommended this company to me personally (his cousin is a good friend of mine). It's a shame they are tarnishing so many good peoples names over a few bitcoin here and there.

TLDR : Changelly have scammed me for a considerable amount of Bitcoin and are now ignoring me.

PS. I will update this community as soon as i get an update. If im mistaken, il admit it. But as of now, Changelly.com is 100% a scam.

[Changelly]

Hello,

Did you recieve you refund? If not, would you please be kind and let us know your transaction ID so we could find out what happened. We respect our customers and we wouldn't scam anyone.

Thank you!

[allahabadi]

Hello,

Did you recieve you refund? If not, would you please be kind and let us know your transaction ID so we could find out what happened. We respect our customers and we wouldn't scam anyone.

Thank you!

I sincerely think you should PM the individual too.