mtgox.com has blocked my account with 45 000 USD in it!

[Baron]

Where does mtgox display an IP address?  www.mtgox.com resolves to 74.52.143.58 which appears to be an ISP in Houston TX...

Because that's where the site is hosted, but the guy isn't a Texan.

maybe he is traveling.

[Mahkul]

Where does mtgox display an IP address?  www.mtgox.com resolves to 74.52.143.58 which appears to be an ISP in Houston TX...

Because that's where the site is hosted, but the guy isn't a Texan.

So where did you get the IP address?

IRC

[BCEmporium]

Where does mtgox display an IP address?  www.mtgox.com resolves to 74.52.143.58 which appears to be an ISP in Houston TX...

Because that's where the site is hosted, but the guy isn't a Texan.

So where did you get the IP address?

[00:48:19]   ===   mtgox <~mtgox@201.191.115.114> “...”
[00:48:19]   ===   mtgox: member of #bitcoin-otc
[00:48:19]   ===   mtgox: attached to brown.freenode.net “Madison, WI, US”
[00:48:19]   ---   End of WHOIS information for mtgox.

So does my site "lives" at Colorado and I'm at Portugal. Yeah, I know... hard relationship, specially because the timezone we hardly get each other on the phone  

www.bityacht.com    US    United States    CO    Colorado    Denver    

[BCEmporium]

One day someone will setup an exchange in a decent jurisdiction and will comply with all the money laundering regs and will do "know your client" BS and will take most of legitimate biz away from offshore outfits. It will be more expensive but much more safe.

You've advantage there, just pick one of the overseas British Territory... they're all some sort of "lesser-regulated offshores", but at least regulated.
Say, like Gibraltar. Many online casinos "lives" there, normally in hotel suites (strange place for working... but heck!)

[error]

What's wrong with working in a hotel? I did lots of that while backpacking in 2008 Just give me wi-fi

[BitterTea]

[00:48:19]   ===   mtgox <~mtgox@201.191.115.114> “...”
[00:48:19]   ===   mtgox: member of #bitcoin-otc
[00:48:19]   ===   mtgox: attached to brown.freenode.net “Madison, WI, US”
[00:48:19]   ---   End of WHOIS information for mtgox.

So does my site "lives" at Colorado and I'm at Portugal. Yeah, I know... hard relationship, specially because the timezone we hardly get each other on the phone  

www.bityacht.com    US    United States    CO    Colorado    Denver

If it showed you that information, then mtgox wasn't authenticated to freenode, so that may not be him. If he was authenticated, he would have been hidden behind a cloak.

[theymos]

MtGox seems to be acting to solve the case below. This is part of an email Jed forwarded to me, between the victim and Jed:

On Jan 10, 2011, at 3:26 AM, Jed McCaleb <x@mtgox.com> wrote:
> Oh jeez that's bad.
> I would go to IRC channel #bitcoin-dev and talk to theymos. He wrote a
> block explorer that you can use to possibly track where the coins
> went.
> Any idea how someone got your password?
> Jed.
>
> On Sun, Jan 9, 2011 at 11:36 PM, [victim] <x@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Somebody is conducting unauthorized withdrawals on my account.  They've
>> taken 9k in BTC so far.   I changed the password.  Please Advise.   All were
>> sent to 1DVQEpTFjxYpZMVy4Bam9MCxeGEtmMmQCh

(My emphasis -- it's Baron's address.)

Hopefully MtGox determined with certainty that the victim in the email did, in fact, have his account compromised.

[FatherMcGruder]

MtGox seems to be acting to solve the case below. This is part of an email Jed forwarded to me, between the victim and Jed:

On Jan 10, 2011, at 3:26 AM, Jed McCaleb <x@mtgox.com> wrote:
> Oh jeez that's bad.
> I would go to IRC channel #bitcoin-dev and talk to theymos. He wrote a
> block explorer that you can use to possibly track where the coins
> went.
> Any idea how someone got your password?
> Jed.
>
> On Sun, Jan 9, 2011 at 11:36 PM, [victim] <x@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Somebody is conducting unauthorized withdrawals on my account.  They've
>> taken 9k in BTC so far.   I changed the password.  Please Advise.   All were
>> sent to 1DVQEpTFjxYpZMVy4Bam9MCxeGEtmMmQCh

(My emphasis -- it's Baron's address.)

Hopefully MtGox determined with certainty that the victim in the email did, in fact, have his account compromised.

Either this plaintiff speaks the truth, or has made a false claim in order to scam Baron. As the site owner, only Jed has access to the server logs necessary to implicate anyone.

[mtgox]

wow 16 pages!

Guys I really don't want to go into details about this until it is resolved. If baron is in fact a scammer the less he knows about what I know the better.
I'm still talking to baron and trying to get to the bottom of this.

[Nefario]

I think everyone needs to relax, this speculation is going a little crazy.

This is being investigated

No action has been done except to freeze funds until investigation is finished.

There is no outcome as of yet.

So stop complaining about hypotheical outcome you might not like.

[neofutur]

aren't there any logs for the IRC channel ?

 I have all the logs ( 9MB text log ) for at least the 3 last months, feel free to come and ask me on #bitcoin-otc

[neofutur]

[00:48:19]   ===   mtgox <~mtgox@201.191.115.114> “...”
[00:48:19]   ===   mtgox: member of #bitcoin-otc
[00:48:19]   ===   mtgox: attached to brown.freenode.net “Madison, WI, US”
[00:48:19]   ---   End of WHOIS information for mtgox.

If it showed you that information, then mtgox wasn't authenticated to freenode, so that may not be him. If he was authenticated, he would have been hidden behind a cloak.

 confirmed, mtgox rarely identifies himself, and rarely have his cloak ( he should and thats why I add information here ) , and he have a dynamic ip in costa rica(   ~mtgox@201.191.121.132 ~mtgox@201.191.120.137 ~mtgox@201.191.120.108 ~mtgox@201.191.120.103 ~mtgox@201.191.115.196 ~mtgox@201.191.116.152 and many more in the same IP range )

 but yes it could be someone else if he s not identified.

 if you guys come on IRC to trade bitcoins, try to be safe and respect the #bitcoin-otc rules, register, identify, ask for a cloak for anonimity, get reputation, and trade safely !

( ah, another good thing could be to remember your own nickname, the channel you came to and the guy you traded with . . . particularly to spend thousands of dollars . . . )


Edit : someone on IRC asked me why i posted this, here are the reasons :
1 - if its the real mtgox (and I m sure he is ) he will now know why he should configure his IRC client to automatically login on connect, before joining any channel ( to get his cloak and anonimity )
2 - if its not the real mtgox,now he llknow there s someone ( a false mtgox ? ) who joined #bitcoin-otc
3- for everyone here to understand better the IRC world and and the security rules for trading $ and BTC on IRC
4- I like anonimity, but mtgox is managing something big and have the "god power" to block an account just saying "better no one knows what I know", anonimity . . . yes, anonimity for a ~bank~ . . . not sure I like it

[sturle]

Publicly accusing someone, of a crime (without solid, legally obtained, to "beyond reasonable doubt" standard, proof) may be an act of libel.

Taking someone's money based on such accusations, particularly if not proved, may be qualified as fraud.

I sincerely hope than none of these is the case here.

mtgox hasn't publicly accused anyone.  He barely made a comment in this thread.  Baron is more or less showing himself as the bad guy who can't remember a thing and is constantly changing his story to fit shown facts.  I.e:

I was trading in IRC only one time, there is no more suspicious transations involved. As I said before, it was more than month ago, so I can't remember details.

After beeing shown three transactions, he changes this to:

right, I was in IRC about 5 days, I was using same nickname and chanel, but now I can't remeber what nickname and channel was.because I don't use IRC anymore.
right, I was received money in 3 days period. where is problem?

And not remembering anything about this good source of bitcoins after only a month just isn't credible.  Not if he is, as he claims, serious about investing or whatever.

[breandan81]

I'm still not sure that it wouldn't be better to have a bitcoin exchange that was a bitcoin exchange, rather than a bitcoin exchange plus court system, and police.  I thought the whole point of bitcoin was to have a digital virtual commodity that could be traded as an actual good, no pawn shop could ever get away with taking my gold and saying to the cops "oh well, I have good reason to think it was stolen, but I can't explain why right now"

[ShadowOfHarbringer]

I'm still not sure that it wouldn't be better to have a bitcoin exchange that was a bitcoin exchange, rather than a bitcoin exchange plus court system, and police.  I thought the whole point of bitcoin was to have a digital virtual commodity that could be traded as an actual good, no pawn shop could ever get away with taking my gold and saying to the cops "oh well, I have good reason to think it was stolen, but I can't explain why right now"

MTGox's exchange is not the only exchange out there.
What he is doing with it is his personal buisness.

[rebuilder]

MTGox's exchange is not the only exchange out there.
What he is doing with it is his personal buisness.

Yes, and there are consequences to whatever he chooses to do. This thread is one. My withdrawing my funds is another, not that it was a significant sum.

Anyway, I'm done speculating here. Mt gox is currently not a place I will use to trade, and will remain so until this is cleared up. I don't see what we can do except wait until Jed is ready to tell us his side of the story.

[caveden]

MtGox seems to be acting to solve the case below. This is part of an email Jed forwarded to me, between the victim and Jed:

On Jan 10, 2011, at 3:26 AM, Jed McCaleb <x@mtgox.com> wrote:
> Oh jeez that's bad.
> I would go to IRC channel #bitcoin-dev and talk to theymos. He wrote a
> block explorer that you can use to possibly track where the coins
> went.
> Any idea how someone got your password?
> Jed.
>
> On Sun, Jan 9, 2011 at 11:36 PM, [victim] <x@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Somebody is conducting unauthorized withdrawals on my account.  They've
>> taken 9k in BTC so far.   I changed the password.  Please Advise.   All were
>> sent to 1DVQEpTFjxYpZMVy4Bam9MCxeGEtmMmQCh

(My emphasis -- it's Baron's address.)

Finally some useful information about the whole story.

My suggestions on how this could be sorted out:

- "Victim" extracts some of the private keys from the addresses used to fund these supposedly 3 MtGox addresses that funded Baron's addresses.
- These private keys are used to sign some random strings.
- MtGox does the same with his 3 addresses that funded Baron address.
- MtGox proves that access to his site which made such withdraw were not performed by Victim. This is the most tricky part. Maybe by using his logs, crossing IPs etc. If the account suffered a dictionary attack that should be easy to show.

@Baron,

If you keep "not remembering" the details of your transaction on IRC it remains difficult to trust you. As an alibi, you may want to talk with the guy there who just said he has all the logs from IRC and try to get the logs which show your transactions.

----

There something weird though. According to what I read here, it took 3 days for Baron address to get fully funded. How come a thief who just happened to get somebody's password waits 3 days to get everything out of the account?
A possible answer to this is that the thief was afraid of transferring all bitcoins to an address of his and then tried to sell them for LR, and sold them to Baron, what would make him innocent. But, still, if Baron wanted all bitcoins, and the thief definitely wanted to steal the most as possible, why didn't Baron buy everything at once?
EDIT: MtGox withdraw limits...
Again, Baron, look for the logs on IRC. This could prove your innocence.


I'm starting to think MtGox action, even if motivated by noble intentions, was too precipitated. If I ran a bitcoin bank and somebody came by saying that somebody else got his password and stole him, I don't think I would take radical actions like freezing somebody's funds unless I can be very sure that the withdraws were not performed by the true owner of the account. But how do you prove such a thing, if the allegedly thief had the correct password?

[BCEmporium]

No action has been done except to freeze funds until investigation is finished.

WRONG!
Let me tell how I would handle this, I would prevent Baron from withdrawing either BTC or LRUSD while sort things out with him. After all Baron seams to had a good load of trust on mtgox.
But, as my business is exchange, I would NEVER prevent him from trade and speculate unless I was an irresponsible child. Because when things clear out I would find myself on a position which, happening Baron to be caught in the middle of it involuntarily, and therefore as innocent, I would have then to put from my pocket the differences of the trades he would made at the such time rates.

Under such, I'd all the "weapons" and 45K USD worth way more than 9K BTC.

And, mtgox, waste a few time to write out a couple of lines for your site TOS...

Baron also seams to have english difficulties and selective memory, is true, but I also can't remember everything I did. Luckily I've logs.

[caveden]

Let me tell how I would handle this, I would prevent Baron from withdrawing either BTC or LRUSD while sort things out with him. After all Baron seams to had a good load of trust on mtgox.
But, as my business is exchange, I would NEVER prevent him from trade and speculate unless I was an irresponsible child.

It would be a better thing to do, but for that to be possible, his software should be able of doing this selective blocking. I'm not sure it is.

[ribuck]

There something weird though. According to what I read here, it took 3 days for Baron address to get fully funded.

This part is not weird at all.

MtGox has a withdrawal limit of $1000 per day. With bitcoin trading around 30 cents per coin, it would have taken three days to withdraw 9000 BTC.