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September 20, 2013, 05:54:13 PM |
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I have two stories; I've been scammed for a little under $900 at the spot price of bitcoin (worth more now but I replaced used coins with new coins). Both stories are documented on the forum.
First time
When I first started getting interested in Bitcoin, I was hitting all of the faucets and free bitcoin sites that I could, including BitVisitor. One of the sites advertised on BitVisitor was btctock.com, and they had an "in stock" BFL 5 GH/s unit (quantity 1). I'd read about BFL's shipping problems, but didn't realize the extent of it, and I was not yet a member of the forum, so I placed an order. In my excitement, I quickly placed an order and then acquired the bitcoin to pay for it on LocalBitcoins (they gave 24 hours for payment). Now that I was in the game, I decided it would be a good time to register for the forum. Upon seeing threads about the BFL shipping problems, I searched the forum for btctock and lo and behold, there were two scam accusation threads, one in the regular forum and one in Newbies. The newbies thread claimed my first post, and the other thread claimed my second once I'd waited the sufficient period. Needless to say, they ran off with my 4.05 BTC.
Second time
The second time I got scammed was selling bitcoin on LocalBitcoins for Paypal (at a premium on the Gox price, which was higher than the Bitstamp price). I was fully aware of the possibility of this happening, but thought that I could just use a little common sense and stick to people with positive reviews and stay clear. I wanted to make a profit by giving people the availability to use Paypal, and having used Paypal to purchase most of my coins prior to getting a Tier II Coinbase account, I knew that there was a dearth of sellers selling for Paypal but a high demand.
I started with just 2.5 BTC to two buyers, and these transactions were without issue. I then added another 4 BTC to my LocalBitcoins account, and they got scooped up quickly by one of the first two buyers. RED FLAG: Buyer used a different Paypal account for the second transaction than the first. But again, this buyer had a 100% positive rating on 20 or so transactions, so I released the coins. One day later, there was a chargeback, and Paypal made me verify all of my shit to get my account back to normal. I contacted the buyer and LocalBitcoins simultaneously; buyer said he'd resend payment, and he did, from a third address. He overpaid, and I stupidly sent the balance to him at the same price. I was able to transfer the funds out of Paypal before the second chargeback a week later, making my Paypal balance negative. I've contacted the buyer to resend again, but he blames me for his poor feedback (even though I changed his feedback to reflect his resendng of the money and let support know as well) and has told me that he won't resend.
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