ChangeNOW is a SCAM exchange that has been illegally holding my 1.38M Zilliqa

[Kashi1111]

After my last post here, they admitted that they were wrong about the police document they were looking for, but after confirming my identity, they still did not show a desire to return my funds. They said they were solving the problem, but not what the problem was.
After my post at Trustpilot and my complaints about Atomic Wallet’s support for this case, they returned my ZIL.

I am at a great loss because of their unfounded holding and I will ask for a settlement proposal, otherwise sue them.



My funds are frozen by ChangeNOW and ChangeNOW ignores my questions regarding these case and refuses to return my funds!!!

ChangeNOW is a SCAM exchange that has been illegally holding my 1.38M Zilliqa for a month now, without any specific explanation.

Untill I posted this on Reddit, I was deceived into claiming that they were working on resolving my case, but that was not true.

Their customers relationship is terrible and as far as I can see it only serves an absolute expenditure of funds, energy, time and health of customers.

I'm sorry that I have to write something like this in public, but my experience with ChangeNOW is terrible!

Please learn from my expirience!



On 21.05.21. in Atomic Wallet I started a swap transaction from Zilliqa to Bitcoin. The transaction remained unfinished for 5 days, during which time my account was showing the amount of 0 ZIL. From Atomic Support, when I asked what was going on with the transaction, I only received multiple automatically generated messages. 26.05.21 I realized that in a panic attack due to the specific non-appearance of Atomic support, I entered my 12 phrases in the phishing site and that the funds that were stored there were already stolen from my wallet.Then I finally got a message from the Atomic Support team and I requested them to stop a pending transaction that has been unfinished for 5 days, so that the intruder would not take away my BTC when the transaction is complete and the BTC will be sent to my infected address. They said that the transaction was stopped by their partner ChangeNOW and that my funds are on the safe now and that in order for them to return Zilliqa to my new safe address, I need to submit a document from the police to ChangeNOW support. I immediately went to the police and filed a criminal charge and received a document from the police that clearly states:  "The certificate is issued with the aim of proving the report of a criminal offense and exercising the right as an injured person by a criminal offense." The statements that accompany the police document that are also part of the police report state the exact amount of Zilliqa to be sent to me and my new safe address to which Zilliqa should be sent. On this, ChangeNOW support replied that they refuse the official police document because, as they said, it could be forged (although it was sent to them by the police and translated by a court interpreter).ChangeNOW support has already issued me three support tickets (#75062, #84010, #85546) because, as they say, we have already written a lot (although all the text in the conversations is mostly mine). Please note that Atomic Wallet's support came out of the communication and they claim that they are not a legal side in this case but they are avare of the connection of my email address and my Atomic Wallet ID.

Please note that ChangeNOW support does not respond to my queries:

On what basis do they claim that the document issued and sent to them, by the police of the state of which I am a citizen, is forged?

If they stopped the transaction at my request immediately after I reported that my account had been hacked, how is it possible that they cannot return the funds to me now at my request?

Why don't they let me communicate with their legal department?

What is ChangeNOW doing to confirm my identity?

Why don’t they act according to the rules that stem from their policies.

I have all the screenshots that clearly show that I sent all the amount of Zilliqa, frozen by ChangeNOW support, from my Binance account (where I am verified through KYC) to my Zil address in Atomic Wallet, but no one cares.

I have emails in which I request Atomic support to stop the transaction of my email address (from which I requested Atomic support to stop pending transaction) and my Atomic Wallet Zilliqa address (from which I sent Zilliqa to debatable swap transaction)

I tried to write about this problem to:Santiago Lefebvre (Founder and CEO, ChangeNOW), Kevin Tayebaly (Co-Founder & Chief Development Officer, ChangeNOW), Rose-May Lucotte (Co-Founder & COO, ChangeNOW), Kimbal Musk (Co-Founder & Executive Chairman), but their Linkedin and Twitter profiles are closed to communication and I will be forced to write publicly and repeatedly on social media and crypto forums in order to reach as much as possible crypto communities which are among the users of ChangeNOW and Atomic Wallet services.

I suffer great emotional and financial damage during this time.



UPDATE 19-06-2021
Despite numerous correspondence, they still have not yet given any answer as to under which law and under which internal provisions they have the right to hold my funds. They only respond to emails with general responses.
UPDATE 18-06-2021
=================================================================================

Suddenly, after I post this on Reddit, I received an email from ChangeNOW support (Carol): **(WHICH IS THEIR FIRST SPECIFIC ANSWER TO ME IN THIS CASE)**Hi,We are not considering certificate 511-17-05 / 3-34 / 503.2021 as insufficient.

(THIS IS NOT TRUE!!! YES, YOU WROTE TO ME THAT IT IS ISUFFICIENT BECAUSE YOU DOUBT IT CAN BE FORGED (despite being sent to you from an official police email)

Although, this request still must follow several principles to comply with our internal policies (SO THAN PLESE EXPLAIN TO ME EXACT - ON WHICH PRINCIPLES AND WHICH INTERNAL POLICIES YOU REFER HERE?) for further actions from our side.

These principles were previously mentioned to you. (NOTHING IS PREVIOUSLY MENTIONED TO ME OR IF ARE, PLEASE FORWARD ME THIS EMAIL!!!)

One of them is a direct reference to an action (main reason for a request: "Return of the stolen assets"). (THIS IS NOT MENTIONED TO ME AT ALL . PLEASE NOTE AGAIN THAT THE SMALL PART OF MY FUNDS WERE STOLEN, BUT BIG PART WHICH YOU HOLD, YOU HOLD ON MY REQUEST. NOW I ASK YOU TO SEND IT BACK ON MY REQUEST TOO! SO, SEND ME BACK THE FUNDS WHICH ARE FROZEN ON MY REQUEST!!!)PLEASE EXPLAIN TO ME EXACLY WHICH PART OF YOUR POLICIES ARE DESCRIBING THE WAY YOU ARE CURRENTLY APPLYING TO ME??? "Please state exactly which police"Both Seychelles (international) and your local Croatian police will do just fine, as long as it also complies with our internal policies. IF THIS IS TRUE PLEASE FORWARD TO ME AN EMAIL WHICH YOU SENT TO THE POLICE!!!

Again, we are truly concerned about your rather traumatic situation and are trying to resolve it with sincere respect in mind. (YOU DO NOT SHOW THIS IN ANY WAY!!!)

But unfortunately, until this request complies with the standards and legal guidelines that we are required to follow, we will not be able to return your assets.We're currently keeping in touch with the police directly and are awaiting for them to send us a new, properly formulated legal request. As soon as that happens, we will be sure to let you know. (PLEASE MENTION ON WHICH STANDARDS AND LEGAL GUIDELINNES YOU REFER???)

Why you do not confirm my identity thrue third sides (Atomic or Binance), because it is clearly vissible that I sent all my Zilliqa from my Binance account and you policies are showing that you are able to do this???I

t is obviusly that you are not interested in clear evidences (**IT SEEMS IN ORDER YOU TO KEEP MY FUNDS!!!)**Why my request for stopping transaction was enough for you, but my request for back my money to me is not enough?I will continue to post things from this issue here on Reddit because you ignore me via email.

I know, The police will do their job, BUT I ASK why you don't do your job???You still did not ANSWER on my questions bellow:

Please note that ChangeNOW support does not respond to my queries:

- On what basis do they claim that the document issued and sent to them, by the police of the state of which I am a citizen, is forged?

- If they stopped the transaction at my request immediately after I reported that my account had been hacked, how is it possible that they cannot return the funds to me now at my request?

- Why don't they let me communicate with their legal department?

- What is ChangeNOW doing to confirm my identity?

- Why don’t they act according to the rules that stem from their policies.


PEOPLE, DO NOT GIVE YOUR PHRASES TO ANYONE, BUT ALSO BE CAREFULL IN WHICH SERVICES YOU STORE YOUR MONEY!!!

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[JeromeTash]

In case you didn't know. ChangeNow has quite a number of notable scam accusations in this forum. If only you had done some digging before using them, you would have avoided them based on what you could have discovered

These are some accusations;
1. ChangeNOW.io Evercode Lab - Scam. Defamation. Abuses. Threats - Russian Business
2. ICO. ChangeNOW.io has failed to list or exchange their own NOW tokens.
3. Changenow.io selective scamming
4. ChangeNow.io (Evercode Lab) - Scam. Illegally holding of 100 BCH (11 bitcoins).

Their trust summary doesn't look good either

[Kong Hey Pakboy]

Too bad that you only have known that ChangeNOW is a scam website after you got scammed by them. I think there are some users who have pointed out this problem, that the forum isn't quite far reaching on the Internet yet because there are people that are still getting scammed by flagged websites but that's not our problem though, if we did some research on the site or atleast Google search their name, pretty sure that the forum will appear on results.

[Kashi1111]

Unfortunately, I discovered that they are working exchange for Atomic Wallet after I requested Atomic support to stop pending transaction.
If anyone is interested in a class action lawsuit against them please contact me.

[cruso]

Too bad. Any link to the reddit post? if they’re still responding then maybe there is still a chance that they will pay you. You should also try contacting changelly, they’re all part of the same group.

[nutildah]

Hmm... That's too bad. I know they do the backend of the Cake Wallet for XMR swaps and its always worked fine for me. But then again I do much smaller transactions.

They don't have a presence here anymore so there's little chance they will respond. They got chased out of the forum, and rightly so.

[examplens]

I remember a lot of accusations against ChangeNow.
I saw they are still listed on the BestChange exchanger monitor, and there are quite a few similar accusations. the most common issue is unnecessary coin retention.
However, I suggest you try to report here, as far as I can see they have been solving many issues because they don’t want a negative rating here.
https://www.bestchange.com/changenow-exchanger.html

Also ask from Best_Change help and to mediate between you and ChangeNow.

[The Sceptical Chymist]

Your post is too long for me to read it all the way through, OP (my fault, not yours), but where did that phishing site come into play that you entered your seed phrase into?  I don't understand the relationship between that and trying to withdraw Zilliqa from Changenow.  Maybe I missed something?

In case you didn't know. ChangeNow has quite a number of notable scam accusations in this forum.

That's true, but I'd argue that complaints--and even scam accusation threads--don't necessarily mean an exchange is a straight-up scam.  I opened up a thread about Changelly once, but they ended up resolving my issue, and I'm pretty sure most exchanges have at least a few complaints against them.  Coinbase certainly does, and they're not scammers.

That said, I'm not arguing that Changenow isn't a scam exchange.  I haven't read the threads you linked to, never used them myself, and am not familiar with their reputation.

OP, I do hope you get your coins back.  I had to look up the price of ZIL (which I wasn't even aware existed), and that's a lot of money you're talking about.

[numanoid]

You have very huge investment on zilliqa , OP. Even with current price, your investment is worth $91000. It was even worth more than $270000 because ZIL has reached $0.2 while we were in bull market. You really believe with ZIL, huh? It's just like shitcoin for me, which doesn't has any useful thing.

But back to your topic, any progress right now? You can't wait until someone contacted you to sue them in law. With very huge amount of money on there, idk people still would using some unpopular sites like that, when we have many trusted sites out there

[examplens]

You have very huge investment on zilliqa , OP. Even with current price, your investment is worth $91000. It was even worth more than $270000 because ZIL has reached $0.2 while we were in bull market. You really believe with ZIL, huh? It's just like shitcoin for me, which doesn't has any useful thing.

Zilliqa had a very profitable staking plan. It's 16% APY. So if OP holds and stake 1.38 million of ZIL it brings around $1700 monthly profit ^{with the current price}. (as you say, it was also three times the value)
One year ago, 1.38 ZIL worth $6900, so it sounds like a smart investment, right?

[numanoid]

You have very huge investment on zilliqa , OP. Even with current price, your investment is worth $91000. It was even worth more than $270000 because ZIL has reached $0.2 while we were in bull market. You really believe with ZIL, huh? It's just like shitcoin for me, which doesn't has any useful thing.

Zilliqa had a very profitable staking plan. It's 16% APY. So if OP holds and stake 1.38 million of ZIL it brings around $1700 monthly profit ^{with the current price}. (as you say, it was also three times the value)
One year ago, 1.38 ZIL worth $6900, so it sounds like a smart investment, right?

Yeah but it's still worthless of OP can't get his ZIL back whatever we called it's a good investment or has good staking rate. OP must keep contact ChangeNow to get his money back , damn that's pretty huge. Hope OP can get his money back first then stay away from any kind of unpopular site like that

[Kashi1111]

Too bad. Any link to the reddit post? if they’re still responding then maybe there is still a chance that they will pay you. You should also try contacting changelly, they’re all part of the same group.

https://www.reddit.com/r/ChangeNOW_io/comments/o28jc6/my_funds_are_frozen_by_changenow_for_27_days_now/

[Kyraishi]

Jesus, that's a huge sum of money.

Personally don't think that they're warranted in the least to be keeping your funds for any reason whatsoever. If you can't fulfill certain requirements or they are not able to process your transaction, then all they need to do is refund your original address with the Zilliqa funds that you deposited in the first place.

I don't get why that is so difficult. They are clearly trying to drag it out and trying to farm the staking yield for themselves whilst using the KYC/AML requirements as an excuse to not process your transaction.

This is a morally corrupt company that must be avoided. Plenty of similar complaints before about Changelly/Changenow too. With the sum of money involved definitely try to seek out some form of legal recourse, get them to compensate you for both the staking interest, legal fees, and the original deposit. You're gonna continue getting the same scripted response from support.

[r34tr783tr78]

It seems you received your money back. Congratulations. Sometimes its not that easy.
It is strange it was Atomic Wallet returning the money to you. It is also strange that they are partnering with an exchange as ChangeNOW that has several scam accusations. Maybe they have links with ChangeNOW beyond what they are publicly admitting.

[Kashi1111]

ChangeNow sent me ZIL, but after my complaint to Atomic that the funds were not returned to me after more than a month and after I reported some irregularities in their work and communication with ChangeNOW. Maybe Atomic put some pressure on ChangeNOW after all. I'm not sure.

[janggernaut]

ChangeNow sent me ZIL, but after my complaint to Atomic that the funds were not returned to me after more than a month and after I reported some irregularities in their work and communication with ChangeNOW. Maybe Atomic put some pressure on ChangeNOW after all. I'm not sure.

Atleast you still have your ZIL back. Even though the price has been down a lot from the date you have problem on changenow, you still have luck to able get your ZIL back. Now i don't think you can sue them (from your post) because they were "hold" it for a month.

[gofry47]

Unfortunately, I discovered that they are working exchange for Atomic Wallet after I requested Atomic support to stop pending transaction.
If anyone is interested in a class action lawsuit against them please contact me.

I think it's better to bring this gang of scammers out of Russia into the light. I have a lot of information about them, which I will gradually update my post. They decided that they could keep 3 BTC for themselves

[ACrow]

Oh, man, I hope you're doing well. They admitted their mistake in my case by sending my xmr to the address that they should have changed. Now, instead of compensating for my losses, they are delaying it. They are mean and cunning as the devil! They want me to send them a transaction from the source addresses of the exchange, which do not actually belong to me. These are the addresses of the exchange's wallets to which I do not have access. This is a mean barrier, but I have already passed validation when they sent me some xmr and I told them the amount and gave them the hash of the transaction.

I don't have to prove anything. This is their mistake, for which they must pay. My accusation is here https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5359412.msg57911052#msg57911052