Bitcoin Miners

[Easy2Mine]

This thread is the most interesting one I have ever follow on this forum.

[Cheshyr]

OMG,

http://domains-by-day.com/2014-01-24/ctsminer.com-domain-name-data.html

seems to have been removed.  It no longer shows ctsminer.com being on the IP, 185.8.106.66.  It now redirects to the their home page, at least from Hawaii.    Uhg!  I should have taken a screenshot.  Lets find another website that can check IP history of a domain. Looking now

Kind of fast don't you think? Guess the owner of CST can remove the site right away.

Or, the hosting provider takes fraud accusations seriously and disabled external access to the site while they investigate.

[wwwin]

I just received an email from "Rebecca".  Below is her email and my response:
________________________________________________

Hi “Becca”,

The gig is up. We found that ctsminer.com was associated with the IP of 185.8.106.66 when it was first registered.  That is the SAME IP address that butterflyiab.com used to perpetrate their scam.  We can only come to the conclusion that you are a part of that scam and this new scam as well.

If we have made a mistake, please provide evidence.  If I don’t hear back from you, then I will know or sure that you are the same scam group that fooled many before. 

If that is that case, you have my congratulations.  You guys are evil geniuses.  You played it so well and created a lot of data points that made it look legit. The phone number being only a single digit off of CMS was genius. And the british voice being so similar to their message was also amazing.  I fell for it hook line and sinker. I have never been scammed before and I learned a painful but valuable lesson. 

Thank you, 

Daryl


On Jan 26, 2014, at 12:28 AM, Rebecca Saunders <r.saunders@ctsminer.com> wrote:

Hi Again Daryl,

Yes, although not been accepted by the wider Bitcoin audience, sales are still going very well.
As previously mentioned, Michael (my manager) and I have decided against any more PR on the forum until we can bring some more PR material and photographs (potentially next week) as we feel this will help.
I really appreciate what you have done and of course, pass that code onto your brother!

The unfortunate thing is we are in the UK and worldwide payment methods are far and few between.
Our bank cannot accept wire transfers outside of the UK and PayPal seems to be our only option at the moment.
Because of their rules regarding pre-orders, we are a bit stuck!

David, who runs the CTS sales team, is actually meeting on Wednesday with our bank manager to see if there is a way international bank transfers can be accepted.
This could help!

Thanks,
Becca



Kind regards,

Rebecca Saunders
Marketing Manager

That is nice that you an Becca have such good rapport.

[raskul]

oh so we have to believe that the scammer is in UK because the scammer said UK company. Really???. LOL...the FBI can get involved if US citizens were scammed...and the FBI also has a field office in Hawaii, and if the Antminers bought by the scammers are to be delivered to US than that is the ticket to one successful scam bust. Would be a great victory for bitcoin community.

+1

let's help bring these people to justice. It's the ethos behind bitcoin, we pull together and the network remains stable.

[wwwin]

The cts website had https by comodo ca ltd

Edit: Actually, is it worth contacting comodo.com to see if they can reveal who paid for the https services on ctsminer.com website?

+1
I'm sure that would help with police investigations, please post the response here. (thread being monitored)

Also, yesterday the scammers had google pay per click ad showing up when cointerra was searched...google adwords has to have either a credit card or bank info from scammers in order to place the ads...then again the CC might be a stolen one. Never know, these scammers are not as sophisticated as people think, they are amateurs that left a paper trail.

[wwwin]

SCAM WEBSITE you are hosting.

Domain: ctsminer.com
IP: 199.188.201.252

http://domains-by-day.com/2014-01-24/ctsminer.com-domain-name-data.html
shows that ctsminer.com was originally associated with IP 185.8.106.66 (on another network)

THIS IS A KNOWN SCAMMER IP:
https://www.virustotal.com/en/ip-address/185.8.106.66/information/

So it is becoming obvious that you and your brother have been pumping up the sales for the fraudsters. Of course, now you and your brother have to find a way to disassociate from the fraud, so you come here and show that you found evidence which indicates they are fraudsters. But this evidence has already been presented, so you are not showing anything new. You are just throwing bullshit around in a desperate attempt to hide your participation in the fraud. You are certainly astronomically stupid to post the above information and pretend that was not uncovered before:

I agree, one thing that has been lost in their now brotherly avalanche of sleuth work, is that the brother yesterday posted an order claiming that he had paid for it and it later was posted that the order had not been paid for....something is wrong with that.

what is the explanation for this??
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=429513.msg4744506#msg4744506

 Never replied, although lots of posts now about being scammed and sleuth work.

[raskul]

The cts website had https by comodo ca ltd

Edit: Actually, is it worth contacting comodo.com to see if they can reveal who paid for the https services on ctsminer.com website?

+1
I'm sure that would help with police investigations, please post the response here. (thread being monitored)

Also, yesterday the scammers had google pay per click ad showing up when cointerra was searched...google adwords has to have either a credit card or bank info from scammers in order to place the ads...then again the CC might be a stolen one. Never know, these scammers are not as sophisticated as people think, they are amateurs that left a paper trail.

There is always a slip up somewhere along the line. Hopefully you've hit the nail on the head.

[mauiflipper]

My hat goes off to Augusto Croppo, who first pointed out this his find with the IP address 185.8.106.66 that is associate with butterflyiab.com.  The thread was moving very fast and I missed his post. Thank you Augusto, for your work and I only wish I saw your post earlier. I thought I read every post, but obviously did not.  If you still think I and my brother are involved in the scam, I will give you my BTC transaction with CTS Miner, for you to verify.  

So here is the next question.  Who here is the best expert at tracking down bitcoin transactions and finding out who is currently holding our BTC?  I can either pay you a commission on every BTC recovered or an hourly wage.  Which ever you prefer?

In fact, I am thinking about putting together a team of people and form a bitcoin security firm that performs the following services:

1.) Investigates after the fact frauds involving bitcoin.
2.) Attempts to recover bitcoin that was obtained fraudulently and stop scammers from receiving product.
3.) Alert policing authorities and removal of the scammers support base. (ie. website, etc.)
4.) Investigates companies that offer their products for sale in bitcoin.
5.) Write a "Best Practices" white paper on how to not get scammed.
6.) Offer a searchable database of:
   a.) Known bitcoin scams and their associated IPs and domains and other relevant details.
   b.) "Un-verified" companies, involving bitcoin, that are asking for payment via bitcoin, wire transfer, western union and other forms of payment that are not reversable.
   c.) Known comanies that have achieved particular levels of trust in the bitcoin community:
      • Company is verified as legit via a pre-set of criteria that we will come up with.
      • Company has shipped a product and product works.
   d.) Allow the public to submit new companies for review and other relevant data to be verified.
   e.) Mobile and tablet app version of the databse.
7.) New scam alerts available via email, notification services & sms.


This is a really good start from user dree12:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=83794.0

Anybody else have some ideas for my new business?

[augustocroppo]

I have spoken with Phoenix on Skype a few times + bought a Jupiter from him, where I trusted him by sending the coins first and then waited for the miner to arrive from Hawaii.
From these interactions I can conclude with fair certainty that it is highly unlikely he is a scammer.
I thing he just fell for the scam because greed took over and he wanted to be first in line as usual.

I agree with you that both are not scammers. My comment did not mean to imply that. I honestly think they are not conspiring with the fraudsters. What I mean is that they are terrible stupid for try to bash the people providing warnings and then later use the same warnings to pretend they did not help to pump up the sales. I hope they learn that send money to fraudsters is not the best way to prove the fraudsters are not fraudsters.

[augustocroppo]

My hat goes off to Augusto Croppo, who first pointed out this his find with the IP address 185.8.106.66 that is associate with butterflyiab.com.

Thank you. I hope you had learned a lesson here:

Do not let greed overcome your rational thinking.

[RickJamesBTC]

Where did the ctsminer website go??  lol.


Really, I'm not thinking someone who fell for a scam that obvious should be looking at starting a bitcoin security firm.

[Gamer67]

I have spoken with Phoenix on Skype a few times + bought a Jupiter from him, where I trusted him by sending the coins first and then waited for the miner to arrive from Hawaii.
From these interactions I can conclude with fair certainty that it is highly unlikely he is a scammer.
I thing he just fell for the scam because greed took over and he wanted to be first in line as usual.

I agree with you that both are not scammers. My comment did not mean to imply that. I honestly think they are not conspiring with the fraudsters. What I mean is that they are terrible stupid for try to bash the people providing warnings and then later use the same warnings to pretend they did not help to pump up the sales. I hope they learn that send money to fraudsters is not the best way to prove the fraudsters are not fraudsters.

+1

People, including myself, did try to warn them from early on. Greed got the better of them though and then denial took over.

[mauiflipper]

Where did the ctsminer website go??  lol.


Really, I'm not thinking someone who fell for a scam that obvious should be looking at starting a bitcoin security firm.

Read the posts.  I notified the hosting provider's legal department.  BTW, someone who got scammed is the perfect person to start a security firm.

[RickJamesBTC]

Yeah, read the posts. You also sent a bunch of bitcoin to them because you looked at a bad picture on google street view and couldn't read that it didn't say cambridge microprocessor.

[wwwin]

Anybody else have some ideas for my new business?

Yeah, how about not promoting a company that is a clear scam?

[augustocroppo]

The crooks are erasing their traces.
I am sure there are forum members who can assemble traces back to their origin.

Yep:

http://centralops.net/co/DomainDossier.aspx?addr=CTSMINER.COM&dom_dns=1&dom_whois=1&net_whois=1

Network Whois record

Don't have an IP address for which to get a record

DNS records

name   class   type   data   time to live
ctsminer.com   IN   NS   ititch.mercury.orderbox-dns.com   86400s   (1.00:00:00)
ctsminer.com   IN   NS   ititch.mars.orderbox-dns.com   86400s   (1.00:00:00)
ctsminer.com   IN   NS   ititch.venus.orderbox-dns.com   86400s   (1.00:00:00)
ctsminer.com   IN   NS   ititch.earth.orderbox-dns.com   86400s   (1.00:00:00)

I am sorry for anyone which send money to them. Now you will need a miracle to recover the loss.

[Gamer67]

I might get flamed a bit for this or I might not but I don't give a shit either way.

Sorry but I still think Mauiflipper is shady as hell. Phoenix is a bit shady too. Something does not sit right with me on this whole thing with these two.

Now before anyone goes off and tells me how trustworthy any of the two above are just let me say that there have been much more trustworthy members on these forums who have scammed people in the past so it is not impossible.

I have the benefit of not knowing these guys so I can look at this from a clean perspective.

Either they are incredibly stupid or they are somewhat smart. Something just does not feel right to me on this whole thing. Including their responses now.


Sorry if I will upset anyone with this but just like that site there are too many red flags going on here.

[raskul]

I might get flamed a bit for this or I might not but I don't give a shit either way.

Sorry but I still think Mauiflipper is shady as hell. Phoenix is a bit shady too. Something does not sit right with me on this whole thing with these two.

Now before anyone goes off and tells me how trustworthy any of the two above are just let me say that there have been much more trustworthy members on these forums who have scammed people in the past so it is not impossible.

I have the benefit of not knowing these guys so I can look at this from a clean perspective.

Either they are incredibly stupid or they are somewhat smart. Something just does not feel right to me on this whole thing. Including their responses now.


Sorry if I will upset anyone with this but just like that site there are too many red flags going on here.

phoenix trying to sell land in hawaii rung alarm bells with me the other day. that was a strange one, smacked of desperation to raise some coinage.

[mauiflipper]

Yes, I made mistakes.  I already pointed that out.  Do you want me to make a list for you?  They are self evident. No one feels worse about that than I do, except maybe my brother who sent the scammers way more BTC than I. However, I am going to take my lemons and make some new exotic form of lemonade.  I personally get very excited when I make mistakes, because I know that it always creates an new opportunity for me.  It always has.

Going to the beach now with my family.  Be back in a few hours.

[Gamer67]

Yes, I made mistakes.  I already pointed that out.  Do you want me to make a list for you?  They are self evident. No one feels worse about that than I do, except maybe my brother who sent the scammers way more BTC than I. However, I am going to take my lemons and make some new exotic form of lemonade.  I personally get very excited when I make mistakes, because I know that it always creates an new opportunity for me.  It always has.

Going to the beach now with my family.  Be back in a few hours.

I don't need a list. Anyone with half a brain can read the thread and see exactly where your mistakes have been made. Your response is still making my radar go wacky