UTRUST refused to reimburse some traders who bought UTK tokens BEFORE snapshot

[Coin-1]

What happened:

In September 2020, the UTRUST smart contract suddenly migrated to a new ETH address. Old UTK tokens became worthless in one day. The UTRUST team refused to reimburse some traders who purchased UTK tokens BEFORE the snapshot of all ETH addresses was taken.


Amount not reimbursed:

9970.090 new UTK tokens (worth about $1300 at current price of $0.132)

Chart: https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/utrust/


Bitcointalk account associated with UTRUST:

Kakumei is the UTRUST Community Manager. This user created and maintains the official thread in the "Announcements (Altcoins)" section which currently contains over 600 pages.

Profile: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=907704
Archive: https://archive.is/8vTbj

UTRUST also ran a bounty campaign on Bitcointalk in 2017.


I often trade ERC20 tokens on the Etherdelta (Forkdelta) decentralized exchange. I always research the tokens I am going to buy.

On September 28, 2020, I decided to buy UTRUST token. I didn't find any announcement on Etherscan, CoinMarketCap and CoinGecko, so I placed an order on the Etherdelta decentralized exchange to buy UTK tokens for my 2 ETH.

On September 29, 2020 at 15:48 (UTC), someone sold me 9970.090 UTK tokens for 1.994037886340977068 ETH. This is the ETH transaction link as proof of the trade:
https://etherscan.io/tx/0xb964fae40f3f3b9564f14bbaebf26c7774bf90c043aa85597a65ccb68ad8430d

On September 31, 2020, I noticed on Etherscan that my UTK tokens had depreciated to zero because the UTRUST smart contract had suddenly migrated from the old ETH address to a new ETH address.

I searched and found an UTRUST statement on Medium. On September 26, 2020, the Kucoin centralized exchange was hacked, the hacker stole a lot of UTK tokens. Therefore, on September 29, 2020 at 15:00 (UTC+1), that is, at 16:00 (UTC), the UTRUST team took a snapshot of all ETH addresses containing UTK tokens with the exception of the hacker's ETH wallet. On September 30, 2020, they created a new (modified) smart contract on the Ethereum blockchain and sent new UTK tokens to the former holders.

Article: https://medium.com/utrust/utrust-statement-and-next-steps-on-the-kucoin-hack-bd0ddedf9080
Archive: https://archive.is/nKs8p

On October 2, 2020, I joined the official Telegram channel and saw a large number of messages by some Uniswap liquidity providers and traders from the IDEX decentralized exchange. They complained that they had not received the new UTK tokens. As far as I remember, the chat admins were deleting angry posts from users.

On October 4, 2020, I withdrew those 9970.090 old UTK tokens from the Etherdelta smart contract to my ETH wallet:
https://etherscan.io/address/0x6cd3473fd4ee2c4a65c29f2326ceef2a4471f6a3


On October 5, 2020, I sent a private message to one of the Telegram channel admins named Lukas (@trauli). I told him that my UTK tokens bought on the Etherdelta decentralized exchange BEFORE the snapshot was taken had not been swapped. He advised me to contact the Customer Success Manager named Jorge (@Jorge_Utrust).

I immediately sent a private message to Jorge. He requested me to provide the ETH transaction hash of purchasing the UTK tokens BEFORE the snapshot was taken. I posted a corresponding link. Jorge said that the UTRUST team will be taking such information and he will give an answer me within one week.

12 days later I asked Jorge: "Have you forgotten about me?" He didn't read my message. Then I contacted Lukas again and asked: "Where is Jorge?". Lukas informed me that he told Jorge to look at my message.

On October 16, 2020, Jorge replied:

Hi, the problem here is that you left the tokens on a smart contract that isn’t controlled by you

And the new tokens were sent to there

Still I will bring this information to the team

And we’ll see a solution that we could find here

Give me a few days

After that, I sent several reminders to Jorge, but he no longer read my messages.

As far as I remember, on October 12, 2020, the UTRUST team reimbursed the liquidity providers of the Uniswap decentralized exchange who had withdrawn old UTK tokens from the smart contract to their ETH wallets. Also on October 13, 2020, the UTRUST team sent new UTK tokens to the IDEX decentralized exchange to those traders who bought UTK tokens BEFORE the snapshot of all ETH addresses was taken.

On November 5, 2020, I asked Lukas to inform Jorge that I suffered financial damage and I would create a thread on Bitcointalk, but this message was not marked as read.


I wished to obtain an official response from the UTRUST team, so on November 30, 2020, I detailed my problem and provided the ETH transaction link to another Telegram channel admin named bardia (@cryptobardia).

This admin was more communicable. In essence, she expressed the following thoughts:

etherdelta is not an officially endorsed utrust exchange

in this case, you purchased tokens before the snapshot yes. but, you DID NOT withdraw them to your own wallet, if you had done so, you would have gotten the swapped tokens. instead, you kept them on erherdelta, meaning they were stored on the etherdelta smart contract

the terms of the swap clearly state that the new tokens will be sent to any address holding the old token.

now, you kept the tokens you purchased on the etherdelta smart contract, so the new tokens were also sent to the smartcontract.

there is nothing we can do. sorry

I said her:

In any case, sending new UTK tokens directly to the Etherdelta smart contract is pointless because they will be lost forever.


bardia replied:

yes. we know. its not like someone is sending out the new tokens to each of the 20k adresses one by one by hand. we used a automated system/bot that automatically sent the new tokens to each address containing the old token. the bot doesnt care if its etherdelta or some random guy using myetherwallet. every adress gets the token

I responded her:

On September 30, 2020 at 19:26:21 (UTC), your automated bot actually sent 341,846.136535906640649419 new UTK tokens DIRECTLY to the Etherdelta smart contract:
https://etherscan.io/token/0xdc9Ac3C20D1ed0B540dF9b1feDC10039Df13F99c?a=0x8d12a197cb00d4747a1fe03395095ce2a5cc6819

Since "Multisender.app" did not use the proper Etherdelta function such as "depositToken()", these new UTK tokens have been LOST permanently.

This is not my fault anyway.

As far as I understand, in essence, the UTRUST team burned all the UTK tokens that were stored on Etherdelta and other smart contracts except Uniswap and IDEX.


I also said that I lost my funds, so I would create a thread on Bitcointalk.

Then bardia showed me a screenshot of my message that was sent to Lukas on November 5, 2020. In that post, I asked Lukas to inform Jorge that I would create a thread on Bitcointalk. Apparently Lukas read all of my messages, but he used a custom Telegram client to avoid marking messages as read.

bardia asked:

i spoke to another admin, who told me you threatened him also with a bitcointalk thread some time ago

whats the need of threatening two admins with that?

I answered:

I am not threatening. Jorge and Lukas no longer read my messages, so I contacted you.


bardia concluded:

i guess i will stop reading your messages too

stop wasting my time please

My conversations with the UTRUST team have ended.


Perhaps the Kucoin exchange hired incompetent specialists who did not have sufficient skills in security technologies, so on September 26, 2020, the hacker managed to withdraw various cryptocurrencies of 150 million US dollar worth. In general, I think that in such a situation the UTRUST team acted right. They created a new smart contract and sent new UTK tokens to the former holders. But when I withdrew from Etherdelta the UTK tokens bought BEFORE the snapshot was taken, and provided the ETH transaction link as proof of the trade to the admins of the official Telegram channel, they denied their fault and simply ignored my problem.

It should be noted that according to the statement, the new UTRUST smart contract is not a copy of the old smart contract but has the ability to block UTK tokens stored at any ETH address. Imagine that one day, for example, the DAI stablecoin team suddenly decides to create a new smart contract and conduct a similar selective token "swap" within 15 hours of the announcement. In my opinion, this behavior is unacceptable.

I have been trading on the Etherdelta (Forkdelta) decentralized exchange for the years and have never faced such a problem before. It was almost impossible to withdraw the purchased UTK tokens to my ETH wallet within 11 minutes. This incident will be a lesson to me. As far as I understand, in essence, the UTRUST team burned all the UTK tokens that were kept on Etherdelta and other smart contracts except Uniswap and IDEX. I suffered extensive financial damage due to their unprofessional token "swap".

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[Coin-1]

I consider that the UTRUST team scammed me.

Please support the following "Type 2" flag:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=trust;flag=2567

This post has been updated on January 11, 2021.

[dmgr]

Hi, have you managed to reimburse the tokens from UTrust?
I am in a similar position, my UTK old tokens are on EtherDelta contract.

All people with similar situation, please send me a private message just in case we decide to join forces and sort out this issue.

[Coin-1]

Hi, have you managed to reimburse the tokens from UTrust?

My problem is still not resolved. The UTRUST team did not send me new UTK tokens. My old UTK tokens that were purchased BEFORE the snapshot was taken are on my ETH address.

I am in a similar position, my UTK old tokens are on EtherDelta contract.

There are a lot of the victims who have lost their funds on the Etherdelta and IDEX exchanges due to an unexpected token "swap". In fact, the UTRUST team literally burned all 341846 UTK tokens that were on the Etherdelta smart contract on September 29, 2020 at 16:00 (UTC).


In addition, take a look at the following negative review on TrustPilot:

Due to the last snapshot, i buy utrust with Eth in Idex, the team don't ask to idex to stop trading and Token on idex are legit. I wait always my new Token and no support from utrust team to give me back new Token or give back my 16 eth .

https://www.trustpilot.com/reviews/602f72b4f85d750b9899f19e

The day after the snaphot occured, this trader bought old UTK tokens for his 16 (!) ETH on the IDEX decentralized exchange. I heard that the total purchase amount reached 83.18 (!) ETH. The UTRUST team refused to reimburse them all.

All people with similar situation, please send me a private message just in case we decide to join forces and sort out this issue.

If you want to find people to join forces, you can enter this group on Discord:
https://discord.gg/btjddx5Y
https://discord.com/channels/766032317110026250/766032317110026253


As far as I know, in 2017 the UTRUST company was registered in Switzerland. Now they are incorporated under the jurisdiction of Estonia:

Company name: MODERNITYPARTY OÜ
Registration number: 14831182
Registered address: Harju maakond, Tallinn, Kesklinna linnaosa, Rävala pst 19-67, 10143

https://utrust.com/terms-of-service/

If you suffered financial damage due to fraudulent actions by the UTRUST team, you can also contact the police. Perhaps you will sue the UTRUST company.

[cryptoaddictchie]

If you suffered financial damage due to fraudulent actions by the UTRUST team, you can also contact the police. Perhaps you will sue the UTRUST company.

I can't believe they didn't refund or reimburse this long time case and it ended up being unsettled for months. Sorry to hear that loss mate, actually utk is considered as one of the potential project and been listed on Binance since then. Probably they overlooked this case or lets just say that don't want to reimburse it since utk price is so high now.

Supporting the flag mate.

[Rikafip]

I can't believe they didn't refund or reimburse this long time case and it ended up being unsettled for months. Sorry to hear that loss mate, actually utk is considered as one of the potential project and been listed on Binance since then. Probably they overlooked this case or lets just say that don't want to reimburse it since utk price is so high now.

Supporting the flag mate.

+1

I must say that I am also surprised by UTK move, not reimbursing people that lost the money. Up until now I only heard good things about them, some of my friends are using their debit card and are very satisfied with them (I also considered getting one but now I will think about it) so it sucks to hear that they screw up the people that way and that no solution could have been made to sort it out.

Flag supported!

[numanoid]

Oh shit, it seems i got affected this too because my old UTK token still on etherdelta before the snapshot. I don't have much, just around 1k UTK token on there, but money is money. Haven't checked it because the price was still low.

But even we supported the flag, it won't bring our money back as he is not active anymore since 2019. It can only warn and prevent new people who will invest on UTK token in the future.

[cryptoaddictchie]

Oh shit, it seems i got affected this too because my old UTK token still on etherdelta before the snapshot. I don't have much, just around 1k UTK token on there, but money is money. Haven't checked it because the price was still low.

Buddy 1k utk is worth 500$ now as the price is above 50c USD at the moment. Just check it on Binance and you'll see the current price. That's the thing about tokens, we don't know for sure that we have some good tokens that have now relatively good value.

But sad to say, that the project might ignore this case and some of those related issues like yours.

[Deborah Christine]

I don't know why they act like this, many projects do swap to new chain, and give time for holder to swapping their token, but this is very bad for their project. I have some on CEX and already sell itu 2 weeks ago, don't know its a new UTK or the old.

[onecall123]

This thread ain't working any more nor it's bringing back your money since you are not active when the snapshot of NEW UTK token was taking place. Since it was automatic we have nothing to do. I have faced same issue recently with Opacity token migration, lost my balance due to inactivity. This is so called hard crypto life.

[dmgr]

Please join https://twitter.com/FlawedSwap account as well where we can also discuss about how that flawed token swap can be fixed.

I am in contact with regulatory bodies of Estonia regarding the issue. Also I might visit Estonia soon and contact Police. Do you think I need to contact Estonian, Swiss or Portuguese Police or all? I might also need an Estonian lawyer or a law firm soon, so if anybody knows any reputable one, please let me know.

Would you guys send me in a private message a description of the situation in a quite well understandable English that I could give to Police and regulatory bodies? I want to compile my and your version to let them understand the situation. We don't want to loose our chance by using a messy communication. @Coin-1 PM me and I will send you a link to document I am working on and we could work on it together.

From my perspective, what UTRUST is doing is not fair. If I were them, I will try to resolve that issue at least in that way:

1. Acknowledge that tokens that were sent to EtherDelta are technically inaccessible forever so effectively burned.
2. At one stage in the future, they will burn tokens, so they could reimburse us with new tokens, but they can also account those tokens as burned.

There is no rule how the tokens should be burned. But we know that those tokens should be inaccessible forever. And they are regardless if they are sent over to the Etherdelta contract like UTRUST did or sent to for example 0x00000000000000000.... address.

[Coin-1]

I am in contact with regulatory bodies of Estonia regarding the issue. Also I might visit Estonia soon and contact Police. Do you think I need to contact Estonian, Swiss or Portuguese Police or all? I might also need an Estonian lawyer or a law firm soon, so if anybody knows any reputable one, please let me know.

I just googled and found a decent list of lawyers in Estonia:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/estonia-list-of-lawyers/list-of-lawyers-in-estonia

Since the UTRUST (MODERNITYPARTY OÜ) company is currently registered in Talinn, I have selected three law firms whose office is located in the same city:


1) Advokaadibüroo Hedman Partners & Co OÜ
https://hedman.legal

Address: Rotermanni 8, 10111 Tallinn
Phone: (+372) 6645250
Email: info@hedman.legal


2) Advokaadibüroo HEED Entsik
https://www.heedentsik.ee

Address: Fr. R. Kreutzwaldi 3, Tallinn
Phone: (+372) 6164660
Email: info@heedentsik.ee


3) Advokaadibüroo Concordia OÜ
https://www.concordia.ee

https://www.linkedin.com/company/concordia-attorneys-at-law
https://www.facebook.com/CONCORDIAattorneysatlaw

Address: Maakri 29, Tallinn 10145
Phone: (+372) 6262062
Email: law@concordia.ee

Would you guys send me in a private message a description of the situation in a quite well understandable English that I could give to Police and regulatory bodies? I want to compile my and your version to let them understand the situation. We don't want to loose our chance by using a messy communication.

First, you can give to Police the links to your Ethereum transactions as proof of the UTK token purchase before the snapshot of all ETH addresses was taken on September 29, 2020 at 16:00 (London time).
Second, you can provide a link to the "Multisender.app" transaction in which the UTRUST team directly sends about 341K new UTK tokens to the Etherdelta smart contract and thus effectively burns those tokens with the malicious purpose of reducing the supply on cryptocurrency exchanges.
Third, you can mention that you tried to resolve the issue peacefully, but the UTRUST company has bluntly refused to reimburse you and did not send new UTK tokens to your ETH address.

From my perspective, what UTRUST is doing is not fair. If I were them, I will try to resolve that issue at least in that way:

1. Acknowledge that tokens that were sent to EtherDelta are technically inaccessible forever so effectively burned.
2. At one stage in the future, they will burn tokens, so they could reimburse us with new tokens, but they can also account those tokens as burned.

In my opinion, such an event is unlikely to happen. The UTRUST team doesn't appear to be capable of negotiations, so you need to hire a lawyer to prosecute this company.

I found the general information about the "MODERNITYPARTY OÜ" legal entity:
https://ariregister.rik.ee/eng/company/14831182/


As I can see, the first director's name is Roberto Manuel Dias Machado.

I googled again and found some additional public information about him:
https://www.inforegister.ee/en/1475957-ID

He is currently the Board Member of two companies in Estonia:
1) MODERNITYPARTY OÜ (which is incorporated and called as UTRUST)
2) LEVIATHAN SOFTWARE OÜ

His phone: (+351) 916748994
His email: rmdmachado@gmail.com


The second director's name is Daniel Raissar.

https://www.inforegister.ee/en/1026200-ID

He is currently the Board Member of four companies in Estonia:
1) MODERNITYPARTY OÜ (which is incorporated and called as UTRUST)
2) OUBITANDO OÜ
3) BLOCKRHINO OÜ
4) ELECTRIFY GROUP OÜ

His email: daniel.raissar@gmail.com


I guess that Roberto Manuel Dias Machado and Daniel Raissar are the citizens of Portugal. You can directly contact them to try to resolve the issue in advance.


By the way, a week ago there was the first anniversary of the great UTK scam. Sad to those who lost their funds due to the fraudulent actions of the UTRUST team.