my original article posted on Medium:
https://medium.com/@ikucoinfraud/kucoin-steals-funds-of-its-users-evidence-scam-exha-76e1f4649170Hello crypto enthusiasts. Today I would like to declare a blatant dishonest attitude faced by a small group of people in which I am one of the victims. I would not like to violate the anonymity of these people, so as not to affect the entire process of the recovering. Therefore, I tell you that we are a group.
So, the object of close attention, which I will bring to your judgment today, is the public exchange, called KuCoin. Many people call it a “for people platform”; however, today I couldn’t agree with this conclusion at all. If I were asked a year ago, I would no doubt call them the best. I damn well liked to see how the exchange, which provided people with services and high-quality service, was overgrown with a large number of users.
However, on April 3, 2019, a case occurred, that completely changed my perception of the value of the reputation, safety, and integrity of the staff of this seemingly very large-scale project.
So, to avoid further demagogy, I’ll probably start:
04/03/2019, sipping hot tea from my thermos, I came to the local computer club, in which I wanted to participate in IEO, which was announced by the KuCoin exchange. The project was announced on its site, which has the name Spotlight. Approaching the personal computer that was already waiting for me on the table, I opened the browser, and out of habit typed into the address bar:
https://kucoin.com. Clicking on the login tab, before that, opening my 2FA, I tried to enter the login and password. However, my attempts were in vain.
At first, I thought that I was merely mistaken and tried to enter again. The thought settled in my head that I had just changed my password and had forgotten about it completely. Without thinking, I clicked on the forgot password tab. I entered my email address, after which I was asked for a captcha. I entered some strange characters and began to expect a message that was supposed to give me a password recovery code. Recently, the exchange had problems with mail servers, so I didn’t start to panic much when the letter didn’t come the second time. However, when it did not come for the third time, I already began to overcome doubts about what was happening. I opened my mailbox, in which I started frantically to look out for all incoming messages. My heart trembled when it turned out that my last letter (which had already been read) was connected with the email bound.
https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1000/0*DIWk6iiiADWim-aKWith shaking hands, I took the mouse, then copied the incoming ip address. Having gone to the whois service, I decided to double-check whose address it is after all. And you know, to my surprise, there was no limit when this address turned out to be Hongkong.
2
I had to pull myself together and collect my thoughts. Coming out of a few hours of stupor and completely forgetting about IEO, I headed for the technical support page where I saw a picture that impressed me quite a lot. There was no column that the account was hacked. I decided that I was just looking bad, and went to look for help in the technical support service. Knocking on the chat, I was answered fairly quickly and support with bad English began to ask about the essence of my problem.
I briefly described what happened, to which I was given a very clear and concise answer: “We can’t help you with anything, it’s your account and you are responsible for keeping it safe”. In my head began to appear bad thoughts, weakly dimmed eyes, but I decided to try to continue the dialogue. For each of my arguments, or my proposal, I received only monosyllabic-patterned phrases in very bad English (believe me, I learned them all by heart, because I talked round the clock with technical support and never heard anything new.)
After a few hours of correspondence, in which I tried, by all means, to convey my rightness to them (I will tell you that I even started writing in Chinese, by means of an interpreter) so that people would understand me better. But no! Even in Chinese, I still received homogeneous sentences. So, after a few more hours and after a few support service specialists, I still managed to get through to one of them, who understood me correctly. After consulting with their colleagues for a few more hours, they offered to send my request for review by e-mail. I understood that this procedure would take a lot of time, but I had no choice. The specialist kindly made a ticket for me and answered questions about the approximate waiting time in one way: be patient. That’s all. After the phrases: “be patient etc.”, the experts left the chat and I had to get everything from them all over again. As far as I understand, the company completely lacks any communication between specialists, because every time I applied to the chat, different support service specialists provided me with different information regarding my problem.
3
So, after about eight hours, I received a similar answer, in which I was given the requirements, thanks to which I would be able to get my account back.
https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1000/0*74wKmO7t-QyXx5XVWithout thinking twice, I answered all the questions posed by them and sent an answer:
https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1000/0*p7j_I-3hcTZmHPf7I provided them with all the necessary data, with the exception of the Tether wallet, due to the fact that I just did an account distribution. If I memorized all the addresses, then I’m afraid that there would be a total collapse in my head. As you can see in the screenshots above, it took me just four minutes to provide them with all the necessary information.
After I sent the ticket back, I immediately went to the live chat, in which I started asking “technical support specialists” to consider my application as fast as possible, due to the fact that I have funds on it. At that time, I thought I could quickly return access to my money and manage it in the right direction (yeah, naive)
And so, two hours later, I received the answer:
https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1000/0*CHMFJMEZ6B-5kXZxAre you guys serious? Give a piece of information about trading, deposits, and withdrawals? Listen, if I do not have access to my account, how will I do this to you? Perhaps I should memorize all the transactions I have made? But oh well, I tried to explain to them that I can’t imagine it because I used the exchanger with Monero and even because of my desire, I can’t choose a specific transaction. If you tell me the first two digits of the address, I will certainly give it to you, in the other case, I will have to screen all the wallets, all the exchanges and so on. Moreover, I even sent them a couple of my addresses, in the hope that one of them would work. An, no, it’s not such simple. I received another email:
https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1000/0*-q-q9DygdBuRKvgiAfter I sent them all the data that I only had, I again received my long-awaited response (yes, I didn’t wait for the letter from the girls anymore, now I woke up every morning hoping to see the email from Danae). And so, once again, I received an e-mail and the following answer is there: now provide screenshots of the output from other platforms.
https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1000/0*WVWbAidU_H6dp5fPHaving stated to them that I have dozens of addresses and I need at least approximately to understand what they are asking for, I sent them a letter in which I explained everything.
https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1000/0*mqNkWHdZhw_OukXbSo, I again received a letter, this time from my new friend — Udora. He (she) said that they need time to sort out this situation. Okay, waiting again.
I was tired of waiting, I sent an email in which I asked them to speed up with a solution to this problem, but I received a homogeneous response again:
https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1000/0*lA3Ba3MBKr4wdozyFurther, after another 10 hours of waiting, I was told that my data does not pass. Sorry, my documents registered in my name, my wallets, old emails, untied 2FA, does not confirm my identity. But oh well, I stopped asking why my documents do not suit them and began to look for the address of funds input required by them.
By sending them a screenshot, I got the following answer: could you provide a screenshot that fits in with IEO?
https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1000/0*LoaGhnxTXOYsimAeLord, I have dozens of addresses! But oh well, I collected my thoughts and send them one screenshot, with one transaction that was near that time.
https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1000/0*bM29-qxLNLjrK8paNo, you see, this transaction is not suitable for them either. I ignored this message, due to the fact that I was leaving for a couple of days on a business trip.
Okay, I stopped and left my city. I was not in the city for two days, therefore, I had no opportunity to enter the email. As soon as I came back and opened the mailbox, I saw the following:
https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1000/0*FdTeWTpBmo-VjqEUThat is, I waited for their responses for 10 hours (each) 7 days passed, but as soon as I had some business and did not have time to disassemble their disgusting English for several hours and provide them with screenshots of everything they ask, they said that they just block my account.
I can’t stand it, I send them another screenshot with a dozen transactions, I knock on support:
- Hello, check out my ticket. I updated it, why are you blocking my account?
- Hello, good afternoon. I’ll check now.
- Well …
- Be patient (for this week, I began to hate this phrase)
- Well …
- Yes, we sent your answer to our technical service. Wait for an answer, they must deal with this problem within a few hours.
- Thanks.
*After a few hours * *Another technical support specialist *
- Hello.
- Hello, good afternoon.
- Any updates regarding my ticket?
- We blocked you. We can not help you.
- Can you tell me that the documents that I provided are not valid?
- I do not have the right to dispose of this information.
- What is the problem? Send me a letter in which you write that a passport is not a means of identifying a person in the country of your jurisdiction (oh, yes. They are not in Hong Kong, but in Seychelles (offshore zone).
- I can not help you, goodbye.* Specialist left the chat *I was very angry and did what I should have done a long time ago: headed for Telegram. The community of 70 thousand people just had to respond:
https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1000/0*GahCHgxjB5hQaBN6I asked the administrator to write in private so as not to exaggerate the scandal and problems with the exchange, but I was told that I could write here everything that worries me. Okay, okay:
https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1000/0*WeHRsE3imGvkRSPPhttps://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1000/0*l4LgI5dWbvMHCcIaI said that I was ready to go through the video verification because my documents are stored in the database, but this was again ignored.
https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1000/0*lG5Zk-26lUoBfqSoSo, KuCoin community manager answered me that they are going to solve this problem and that I should expect their verdict.
Immediately after, I wrote that I would be ready to gather a class action lawsuit and publish this article. The funny thing is that the bot decided to sharply make the news into the group (literally in a couple of seconds after my post) and it occupied the entire screen. Well, four hours have passed (or even more). But still no answer:
https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1000/0*44cK4QF9EbonnHi3There could be screenshots about the support with a live chat, but for some reason, the history with support disappeared and, upon my request to provide it, I saw the following picture:
https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1000/0*RStFd0wMHs3W-HYkMoreover, the specialist did not just finish the chat. Support also forbid me to write (apparently):
https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1000/0*z331n3WMpcsiZtQ9The icon, about the beginning of the chat with customer support, which has always been located in the lower right corner just disappeared.
Conclusion: it seems to me that in the context of this situation there can be two options:
Exchange steals money from people (remember, I’m not the only one)
The person who hacked my account is one of its employees because he is very actively covered and no one is going to help me. Just the “go-ahead” with the hope that I will forget and will not deal with them anymore.
I look forward to any updates but feel that there will be no luck.
***
UPD. 11.04.2019After I joined the exchange group (
https://t.me/Kucoin_Exchange), several people wrote to me about having encountered the same problem.
We have gathered in a small coalition and are going to file a class action if someone has the opportunity to somehow help with lawyers or financially, we would be very grateful.
UPD. 12.04.2019I tried to raise the resonance in their group in the Telegram. The administrators of the channel turned out to be much more literate, but could not help me.
Technical support specialists believe that I somehow withdrew funds from the account that (according to them) was frozen! I couldn’t even go in there, no even withdraw funds. I had to write to their chat from another account.
https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1000/1*U3FSf_z87IXM6iRz5DMWbg.pnghttps://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1000/1*c6tJWfTiuI0oLm05wkzvjg.pnghttps://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1000/1*7S5POLDh4-dNfzBvsgvICg.pnghttps://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1000/1*o2jaNqHMadk8vsS9DQgOLA.pngI consulted technical support for freezing my account every day. They told me that it was locked up and all withdrawals were blocked, but today I find out (according to them) that the amount had been withdrawn by someone, and the specialists believe that it was me and now I want to fraud them. That is, I have been fighting for a week for withdrawing myself without knowing what?
Either their level of language did not allow them to understand the essence of the problem, or they are simply fraudsters.
UPD. 12.04.2019https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1000/1*qaJm0lu-7pfgIAAQHXHbsA.pngIn the end, it turned out that even the contact manager gave me the wrong information, and as I found out from the chat group, I just leaked all the information to someone. Thank you, exchange!
https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1000/1*W4AHbSfn9v8SEmDuF1Oozw.pngUPD:
Found on their website (
https://kucoin.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/360015207533-Why-Get-KYC-Verified-on-KuCoin-)following statement:
https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1000/1*0eTnnBWb7I1kmJf2yuOb_Q.pngI know that my passport is valid, and they don't wanna provide a reply about the thing that passport is not valid due to the fact that it’s gonna break their own rules.
UPD. 13.04.2019I began to raise the scandal, people began to stand up and ask admins to figure this problem out. You can see the result yourself. I was blocked in their live chat, now also in the telegram. “People’s exchange”, yeah!
https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1000/1*1uiFBFAUmqFvXCmhKD8i6w.pngUPD. 14.04.2019Today I found the opportunity to ask support by connecting from another browser and VPN. As you can see, they have blocked even the VPN address.
https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1000/1*of5TOUsT-xvdXGTG8GcGVw.png
