Dear friends & members of the Bitcoin community.
Firstly I appologise for any typo or mistake. Im not a native english speaker and I write from my mobile. We write this brief text to inform the community that the site
http://www.venebitcoin.com/ is a scam and that we personally lost 300 USD because of their wrongdoing.
SADLY, the beginning of the Bitcoin Industry in Venezuela is actually a sad one. We ventured to buy there Bitcoins because we are Venezuelans and we wanted to promote the newborn Bitcoin industry in our country.
As you know, Venezuela has a fierce currency exchange control and there is great expectations on this industry to emerge there as an alternative to such control. These guys used the urgency we have as a society to profit and make quick buck and we would like to use this platform to inform others so they don't fall for such a scam!
My wife and I decided to support the bitcoin community in Venezuela which is very small and which we consider to be very important to develop due to the currency controll that grips my homeland. Im very experienced and supportive of bitcoin in general so I understood that I was risking my savings whilst doing this because its a new exchange. We deposited our trust, time, efforts and good will on their site on the 27th of February, and they deposited our money in their accounts and disappeared after a brief exchange of emails and a promise to sort the problems they have with their "payment processing platform" in 48-72 hours.
Despite of asuming to take this risk, I took some considerations, checked there was no negative background, that the company was active on twitter, and knowing was that this was a newly founded company I wrote to them asking questions before I proceeded. They replied and answered my questions. Most revleant one :: is your system automatized??? to what they replied: YES.
THE VERY BIG MISTAKE I MADE was to actually spend such a sum on a newly and non-trustworthy entity, but I did because I fealt proud and excited that there were signs of a BTC community emerging in Venezuela.
After I paid and 5 hrs passed without me recieving my coins I wrote them an email and they replied that because my transaction came from outside of the US, their system requiered them to do a manual check which wouldt take 42-72 working hrs.
I worte to them that I was becoming uneasy, that they had to deliver my BTC and they replied that we needed to wait this time to do so. I angrily came back to them asking for a refund and they said that it was difficult due to their payment platform conditions. They offered me to send me a small portion of my BTC as a sign of good faith and to calm me down. At this point I was sure this was a scam. I accepted their proposal and i worte them a pretty comperhensive (and bitcoin-epic) email showing SERIOURS support to the community in Venezuela, serious desire not to hinder their newly-born enterprise and promissing them not go public about this before the time they had requested me (the tuesday after the friday where we were at this point). I actually waited untill wednesday night and they didnt replied. I wrote many messages to them before going public and I saw myself speaking alone for two days and today wednesday I published the first info on the internet.
They replied 4 days ago saying that they didnt agreed with the fact that I went to the social networks, that their solence was due to the carnival hollidays in Venezuela (note that their page says their offices are in Miami and Caracas) that their boss was now on a meeting and that they will come back to me as soon as possible. They obviously didnt.
Tomorrow will be 10 days since I transfered them the money. My account was charged and I already made peace with what happened. I just DONT WANT ANY BAD ACTORS TO DESTROY WHAT WE HAVE BEEN BUILDING FOR YEARS and DONT WANT ANY OF YOU TO GO THROUGH THIS.
I promise a full article on the subject on my blog and on this space as soon as my working schedule allows me too.
TL,DR ::: Its a scam. They are playing as if its not by replying some emails and doing some shady actions.
