StackGambler: coincidence or scam

[DaveF]

The user StackGambler posted a thread today about getting help because he was hacked:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5179071

OK, fine. Stuff happens, the fee seems REALLY low as in I'm not sure how you can get it that low, and a hacker / thief would set it high so it would be confirmed in the next block, nice and quick.

Before replying I took a look at his feedback, because something just felt wrong. Not sure what, it just did.

And:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=trust;u=2559072
3 negatives by somewhat trusted people and a password just changed.

Looking a bit more, you find this post from June 1st:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5149693

1st you ask how to reverse a 0 conf and then you need to a little while later because you were hacked.

Looks like a scam to me.
Anyone else have any input?

-Dave

[AB de Royse777]

I suggested DaveF to create this topic. I was one of the user who was helping the user StackGambler on that topic with ETFbitcoin. In the middle of the conversation I received a PM from DaveF (ETFbitcoin was also in the PM to field) and the fingers he points has very much possibility.

On that topic, the user successfully cancelled the old transaction and created a new one.

Then I wrote this to DaveF:

~snipped~
Since the tx confirmed I think asking him about the bounty is logical. If he was legitimately seeking for help then he will pay(of course that will not 100% confirm that your concern was wrong). Eventually I think we need to wait for someone to come up with an accusations against him.

I have archived the topic so that we do not lose any data. I truly hope that you are wrong bud. That's a lot of money for someone to lose.

Please notice the bold line.

The result is this:

My dev was a genius, he managed to recreate and rebroadcast a new transaction after dropping the hacker's one. Utterly stunning. Thank you everyone for the help nonetheless. Great learning experience for me.

Did you forget something?

The post was edited to add it later although it is not showing the dotted line underneath the post title.

Now honestly speaking, I am very much in doubt. I can not deny the references from DaveF and also one can not say that OP was not asking for legitimate help. Not responding to bounty he promised also is an indicator that DaveF may be right here.

I really hope DaveF is wrong here. Community feedback will be appreciated.

Cheers

[StackGambler]

Who did I scam? Myself?

[AB de Royse777]

Who did I scam? Myself?

I am not accusing you nor can't deny the connections Dave bought here. I really hope that you asked for legitimate help and we tried our best and in that case I am glad that you were able to fix it.

There is a way to find a solution here. If we see no one come here with an accusation and proves of course then you are good. I know this things sounds very messy and will be very messy if anyone comes up with an accusations.

By the way, what is your stand about the bounty you offered?

[StackGambler]

Who did I scam? Myself?

I am not accusing you nor can't deny the connections Dave bought here. I really hope that you asked for legitimate help and we tried our best and in that case I am glad that you were able to fix it.

flashflip server link - https://discord.gg/AtJNm6
bustabit server link (where me and the dev were talking) - https://discord.gg/qydyqF

My username is Stack. Feel free to join and ascertain whether or not the help I needed was real or not. I am sorry that you think I somehow tried scamming (not sure how that'd work) and I'm sorry that y'all think so low of people in an instant.

[AB de Royse777]

~snip~
flashflip server link - https://discord.gg/AtJNm6
bustabit server link (where me and the dev were talking) - https://discord.gg/qydyqF

Not a regular discord guy but I hope someone will verify it.

I am sorry that you think I somehow tried scamming (not sure how that'd work) and I'm sorry that y'all think so low of people in an instant.

I am too sorry to see you in this situation. I hope you are innocent and legitimately recovered your lost fund. No hurt feeling please. 

[StackGambler]

Who did I scam? Myself?

I am not accusing you nor can't deny the connections Dave bought here. I really hope that you asked for legitimate help and we tried our best and in that case I am glad that you were able to fix it.

There is a way to find a solution here. If we see no one come here with an accusation and proves of course then you are good. I know this things sounds very messy and will be very messy if anyone comes up with an accusations.

By the way, what is your stand about the bounty you offered?

I noticed you edited your message to add the bounty question. It's been paid to my dev: https://www.blockchain.com/btc/tx/517fad7595b55a3b2468cfeb7105239c48cf5c29ee7c461c183c2297027a864c

[DaveF]

Remember: we don't know you and you don't know us.
I see the following:

You ask about reversing a double spend.
You get hacked, and then are able to double spend to get your money back.
You caught the hack before it could be confirmed because it was an insanely low fee. To the point that some nodes would not even broadcast it.
You have 3 negative feedback's about ripping off a casino.

Put it all together and it just looks off.

Off, not necessarily a scam
That is why I was bouncing this off Royse777 before posting.
That is why I posted this as coincidence or scam instead of "StackGambler is a scammer"

As I said in the 1st line, we don't know you. You don't know us.
It is worth a discussion.

-Dave

[PrimeNumber7]

StackGambler has a history of exploiting casinos. I also believe he has previously offered gambling "investment" services in which he gambles your money for you with the expectation of earning a profit.

My initial thoughts, given his history is speculation that he may be planning on depositing coin onto a casino that accepts zero-confirmation txs, make a single high probability bet, wait for confirmation if he wins the bet and withdraw, and to double spend the tx if the bet looses. 

[hacker1001101001]

My initial thoughts, given his history is speculation that he may be planning on depositing coin onto a casino that accepts zero-confirmation txs, make a single high probability bet, wait for confirmation if he wins the bet and withdraw, and to double spend the tx if the bet looses. 

That is not possible, most of the gambling sites would only update your balance once the transaction has some minimum amount of confirmations. What @StackGambler did was just recovering it before it was confirmed by some miner.

I don't think this tricks could be used to scam a casino, or even I do not believe, he was faking his problem by asking for help here, but still anything can happen and yaa NO SYSTEM IS SAFE !

It's great that StackGambler managed to get back his funds with the help of some dev, but it's bad to see most of the members here dragging him into speculation, and yet no one here was able to help him in solving the transaction problem.

[PrimeNumber7]

My initial thoughts, given his history is speculation that he may be planning on depositing coin onto a casino that accepts zero-confirmation txs, make a single high probability bet, wait for confirmation if he wins the bet and withdraw, and to double spend the tx if the bet looses. 

That is not possible, most of the gambling sites would only update your balance once the transaction has some minimum amount of confirmations. What @StackGambler did was just recovering it before it was confirmed by some miner.

There are a small number of casinos and businesses that accept zero confirmation transactions under certain circumstances.

[StackGambler]

My initial thoughts, given his history is speculation that he may be planning on depositing coin onto a casino that accepts zero-confirmation txs, make a single high probability bet, wait for confirmation if he wins the bet and withdraw, and to double spend the tx if the bet looses. 

That is not possible, most of the gambling sites would only update your balance once the transaction has some minimum amount of confirmations. What @StackGambler did was just recovering it before it was confirmed by some miner.

I don't think this tricks could be used to scam a casino, or even I do not believe, he was faking his problem by asking for help here, but still anything can happen and yaa NO SYSTEM IS SAFE !

It's great that StackGambler managed to get back his funds with the help of some dev, but it's bad to see most of the members here dragging him into speculation, and yet no one here was able to help him in solving the transaction problem.

Thank you. This thread is a reminder of why I left bitcointalk. People here are just toxic as frick and jump to the wrong conclusions instantly. Happened to me before, happening today again. -_-

[LoyceV]

The result is this:

My dev was a genius, he managed to recreate and rebroadcast a new transaction after dropping the hacker's one. Utterly stunning. Thank you everyone for the help nonetheless. Great learning experience for me.

Did you forget something?

The post was edited to add it later although it is not showing the dotted line underneath the post title.

Posts don't show as "edited" if they're edited within the first 10 minutes. However, I scraped this post after 6 seconds, and it shows exactly the same: http://loyce.club/archive/posts/5227/52275604.html
I don't think it was edited.

Unless you meant your own post, that one was edited indeed: http://loyce.club/archive/posts/5227/52275662.html

Put it all together and it just looks off.

Off, not necessarily a scam

Isn't it common sense by now not to accept 0-conf transactions? It's only possible to scam someone this way if he doesn't follow the basics.

There are a small number of casinos and businesses that accept zero confirmation transactions under certain circumstances.

From what I've seen, they only accept them with a high enough fee.

[StackGambler]

The result is this:

My dev was a genius, he managed to recreate and rebroadcast a new transaction after dropping the hacker's one. Utterly stunning. Thank you everyone for the help nonetheless. Great learning experience for me.

Did you forget something?

The post was edited to add it later although it is not showing the dotted line underneath the post title.

Posts don't show as "edited" if they're edited within the first 10 minutes. However, I scraped this post after 6 seconds, and it shows exactly the same: http://loyce.club/archive/posts/5227/52275604.html
I don't think it was edited.

Unless you meant your own post, that one was edited indeed: http://loyce.club/archive/posts/5227/52275662.html

Put it all together and it just looks off.

Off, not necessarily a scam

Isn't it common sense by now not to accept 0-conf transactions? It's only possible to scam someone this way if he doesn't follow the basics.

There are a small number of casinos and businesses that accept zero confirmation transactions under certain circumstances.

From what I've seen, they only accept them with a high enough fee.

I didn't edit any posts.

I have no idea what these jokers are trying to allege. I have no idea how cancelling a transaction sent by my own wallet by a hacker can be construed as me scamming anyone. People here are just hungry for merit, I think.

[AB de Royse777]

The result is this:

My dev was a genius, he managed to recreate and rebroadcast a new transaction after dropping the hacker's one. Utterly stunning. Thank you everyone for the help nonetheless. Great learning experience for me.

Did you forget something?

The post was edited to add it later although it is not showing the dotted line underneath the post title.

Posts don't show as "edited" if they're edited within the first 10 minutes. However, I scraped this post after 6 seconds, and it shows exactly the same: http://loyce.club/archive/posts/5227/52275604.html
I don't think it was edited.

I meant my post :-P
This one.

I edited it and added the last quote and response.

Anyway, @StackGambler, I did not have any intention of participating your bounty whatsoever. I genuinely was giving my input to help you as I do for others. But after seeing the PM from Dave I started to have double mind. And I would say Dave was right at his observation. It needed to discuss in public and I think we had it.

I expected you asked for legitimate help and I am happy for that. I am also publicly apologizing if any of my move hurts your feeling. Just to let you know, hurting your feeling was not my intention.  

I will see you around bud.

[Theb]

@DaveF may I ask how will the scam go down in StackGambler's situation? Are you trying to say that he is asking for help to cancel a ongoing transaction to scam another person? If that is the case you need to have proof that he is indeed scamming another person not just a hunch about it because having two negative feedbacks and a password change won't cut it, the negative feedbacks he has isn't even directly related to cancelling any transactions in Blockchain. We do need more proof that StackGambler is scamming another person before we can give him a negative feedback with regards to this matter because I don't think he deserves a new one as of right now.

[DaveF]

@DaveF may I ask how will the scam go down in StackGambler's situation? Are you trying to say that he is asking for help to cancel a ongoing transaction to scam another person? If that is the case you need to have proof that he is indeed scamming another person not just a hunch about it because having two negative feedbacks and a password change won't cut it, the negative feedbacks he has isn't even directly related to cancelling any transactions in Blockchain. We do need more proof that StackGambler is scamming another person before we can give him a negative feedback with regards to this matter because I don't think he deserves a new one as of right now.

Does anyone read?
I did not tag him.
I did not leave him more negative feedback.

I just said that it looks off.

Originally I kept it in PM, and it was agreed that it should be brought out for others to see and discuss.
Even the title of the thread is "coincidence or scam"

According to his post he was using the core wallet.
Royce777 who saw the live TX it was sent with a 0.547 sat/B fee.
I have no idea how to send a transaction through core with a less then 1 sat/B fee.
Fine OK, just because I don't know how to do it does not mean it can't be done.

He also posted to reddit about the problem and deleted the post.
If you search for the TX on google you will find the deleted post.

https://www.google.com/search?q=1a62267aa812b8d289148192ff15cb2d6a1fccf40ce0e31278125191ff9d181b&filter=0&biw=1536&bih=723

There is a link to someplace that captured the post before it was removed:
https://tr.bitlovin.com/summary/someone-hacked-my-bitcoin-service-and-will-be-sending-the-funds-to-what-looks-like-a-binance-wallet

According to him in that post he was "locked out of his server"

So, he posted here and there and got back into his server, and was able to send out a new TX before it was mined because it was such a low fee.

Which means either he got hit by the worlds worse hacker [Fee and allowing access back to server] or there is something we are missing or something that he is not telling us.

Just my view. Others obviously disagree.

-Dave

[PrimeNumber7]

There are a small number of casinos and businesses that accept zero confirmation transactions under certain circumstances.

From what I've seen, they only accept them with a high enough fee.

The phrase you are looking for is not "high enough fee" the correct terminology is "fees above a certain thresh hold", and the thresh hold may or may not be high enough to prevent a double spend ~all the time. A company would need to react very quickly to things like long individual block times if he is going to prevent the possibility of a double spend attack when accepting zero-conf txs.

A tx fee rate of 10 sat/byte may result in being in the top 5% of confirmed transactions the majority of the day, but may take 2-3 blocks, or longer when there is an hour between two blocks, and an attacker could wait until 45 mins after the prior block to send a 10 sat/byte that he intends on double spending.

StackGambler possibly executing a double spend attack on a business is speculation, and I would not hold him to account for this kind of attack based on the thread refereed in the OP alone. I do believe that StackGambler stiffed Royse777 and/or ETFbitcoin out of a 0.03 bounty. StackGambler offered a 0.03 bounty in the OP of his thread, both Royse777 and ETFbitcoin responded with information about how to double spend the tx, StackGambler later says he created a new tx that he broadcast using his node that is "showing as invalid on <some>explorers", even though within 5 minutes, two people say the double spend tx shows up on block explorers they look at, only for StackGambler to credit his "dev" for "recreat<ing> and reboradcast<ing> a new transaction after dropping" the old tx.

I would agree that his story contains inconsistencies.

[StackGambler]

Here's the conversation I had with my dev. He's the one who helped out with reversing the hack so he got the bounty. And as I said earlier, if anyone has doubts about the legitimacy of the hack attempt, join any of the servers and read the conversion. The bot itself is pretty famous, it's currently being promoted on the front page of discordbots.org (see if you can spot it).

https://youtu.be/UgiwPf5vrj0

[Theb]

@DaveF may I ask how will the scam go down in StackGambler's situation? Are you trying to say that he is asking for help to cancel a ongoing transaction to scam another person? If that is the case you need to have proof that he is indeed scamming another person not just a hunch about it because having two negative feedbacks and a password change won't cut it, the negative feedbacks he has isn't even directly related to cancelling any transactions in Blockchain. We do need more proof that StackGambler is scamming another person before we can give him a negative feedback with regards to this matter because I don't think he deserves a new one as of right now.

Does anyone read?
I did not tag him.
I did not leave him more negative feedback.

I just said that it looks off.

But did you even read my post? I didn't even say anything about you leaving him a negative feedback. Like what you are asking in the OP I was just merely giving my two cents about the current situation. And on my personal point of view, as a DT member, I don't see myself personally tagging him based on the given circumstances. It may look off to you but I still don't see anything convincing that he is indeed scamming anyone.