[SCAM EXCHANGE] CHANGENOW.IO trying to steal my 3 BTC

[gofry47]

I would like to tell you how Changenow.io robs users at the first successful opportunity.  

I turned to them a month ago, when I found my records of exchanges with them. One of the exchanges of 3 BTC to XMR did not pass for some reason, and since there were several exchanges, I did not notice a shortage, but then, when I remembered about it, it was too late. The flash drive with the data was lost, as it seemed to me then, but I found it recently among the old things in the box. This is a small file that I always kept on a flash drive, with the id numbers of exchanges, hashes and amounts in exchanges.

I turned to them with exchange id and payment hash, and as I understood, they do not want to return my money, because now it is more than 120K. They started to stall for time, checked something, told me to send them another BTC from the address that I used then, but I don't have access, it wasn't my address with private keys, but one of the services through which I sent BTC for exchange with Changenow. The payment address cannot be used by me either. It was also a temporary XMR address of one of the services through which I collected XMR without staying for a long time.

It should be borne in mind that this was almost 3 years ago. How can I have access to third-party addresses that are no longer used by me!?

Now I don't have access to both addresses, but I gave them information about my other exchanges, which have the same payout address for XMR. But they don't think it's worth anything. They stopped responding to my support tickets, while their chat sends me to the tickets (funny). They just ignore my words, realizing that they may not get anything for it. They have had my money for almost 3 years, they spent it for themselves and their business, so I understand that they will come up with new rules so as not to return my funds.

I go around in circles, it hurts me to realize that I was robbed, taking advantage of my position. I know that these are guys from St. Petersburg, although they hide it. Now I'm collecting information about them, and as soon as I get more information, and it should contain data about these people, I will share it with the community.

Also, I give you a link to the web archive - https://archive.fo/PcvZl where you will find the old version ChangeNOW.io Terms of Use in which there is no clause:

6.12 In limited cases ChangeNOW may store User's funds. The period during which the User’s funds are stored by ChangeNOW is limited to 1 calendar year. After that ChangeNOW cannot guarantee the safe-keeping of the unclaimed funds.

They added it as soon as I contacted them. This is not a fair game. They change the rules of the game, feeling the opportunity to keep the user's money for themselves. For a month now, they have been leading me by the nose, mocking me. it can happen to any member of the crypto community, so I want everyone to know about it.

UPD 1

I know that their office is located in Russia,St. Petersburg 49 Kurlandskaya Street 49. This is a group of people from Russia who were already involved in such a thing a few years ago. Now I have become aware of their names, these are about 50 people, about whom I will talk in this thread

If you use an Atomic Wallet, a Guarda Wallet, an Edge Wallet, a Simple Swap, a SwapZone, a Localcoinswap, exchanges within the WAXP platform, exchanges inside the Trezor Wallet-be careful. All of them use Change now exchange, so you can lose your funds.



UPD 2

People who are associated with Changenow (updated list):

1. Ilya Arsenov - one of the top managers;

2. Alexey Monko (the information is being clarified) - one of the top managers;

3. Sergey Dryamov - CMO - his profile is on the runet: https://runet-id.com/756743 . As you can see, he is the Director of Development at AKIRA. It seems that Change NOW is hiding behind...

UPD 3


If we try to find out a little more, it will be two founders:

Brusov Ilya Vladimirovich - "EVERCODE LAB"
Sokolov Pavel Alexandrovich

Saint Petersburg, Municipal District No. 78, Malaya Morskaya Street, 4/1 A, office 17

Interestingly, the authorized capital of the company "EVERCODE LAB" is about $ 200, so if you go to court, this is the maximum compensation. Funny, isn't it?

You will find more at this link. I didn't find the English version, so use the Google translator https://sbis.ru/contragents/7801396519/781301001


UPD 4

I found the email addresses and phone numbers of change now employees. As you can see, these are Russian names and the Russian code for the phone.

They don't respond to my messages. They just decided to ignore me. Is this decent behavior for the company? They lied that they were looking for a solution. They just sit in silence.



pavel.i@changenow.io

anastasia.ch@changenow.io

victoria.k@changenow.io

margarita.b@changenow.io

vlad.l@changenow.io

yulya.t@changenow.io

vladimir.y@changenow.io

aleksei.m@changenow.io

nastya.l@changenow.io

alex.shibaev@changenow.io

pavel.i@changenow.io

anastasia.ch@changenow.io

nickolay.d@changenow.io

victoria.k@changenow.io

margarita.b@changenow.io

vlad.l@changenow.io

yulya.t@changenow.io

vladimir.y@changenow.io

nickolay.d@changenow.io

aleksei.m@changenow.io

nastya.l@changenow.io

alex.shibaev@changenow.io

alexandr.d@changenow.io

aleksei.v@changenow.io

alexandr.po@changenow.io

alexandr.P@changenow.io

alexandr.t@changenow.io
 
alex.shibaev@changenow.io

andrey.r@changenow.io

anna.j@changenow.io

anders@nownodes.io

mihail.k@changenow.io

max.f@changenow.io

roman.s@changenow.io

alice.g@changenow.io

anna.s@changenow.io

ana.o@changenow.io

anastasia.ch@changenow.io

anastasia.s@changenow.io

anastasiya.k@changenow.io


+79111529705  It looks like this is the phone number of one of the top managers. The phone code of Russia. I remind you, the office address is: St. Petersburg, Kurlandskaya 49

This will be interesting for the FSB and the Russian Tax Department.

[bL4nkcode]

told me to send them another BTC from the address that I used then

I bet most exchanges or related services do the same thing, except if the user provided KYC already for verification.

On the other hand, either what's the price of BTC 3 years ago, 3 BTC is still huge amount and it's really frustrating if the amount cannot be refunded. The changing of terms is really off and I feel like there's nothing you can do about it, else if you take legal procedures about it.

BTW there are lots of scam accusation of changenow.io this one if the latest I guess, and using the exchange is really a risk.

[Kittygalore]

I feel bad for you man, I hope that you can get through all of this. When you said that you've found where they are, I was happy that you will be able to get them but I saw that they're from Russia, I am pretty sure that it's going to be impossible to get back at them because it's in Russia, which in my opinion is the safe haven for cyber criminals.

[gofry47]

told me to send them another BTC from the address that I used then

I bet most exchanges or related services do the same thing, except if the user provided KYC already for verification.

On the other hand, either what's the price of BTC 3 years ago, 3 BTC is still huge amount and it's really frustrating if the amount cannot be refunded. The changing of terms is really off and I feel like there's nothing you can do about it, else if you take legal procedures about it.

BTW there are lots of scam accusation of changenow.io this one if the latest I guess, and using the exchange is really a risk.

It wasn't KYC, I just didn't notice this transaction, but when I remembered, the ID was lost, as it seemed to me then, as was the hash leading to them. They just kept it for themselves.

[gofry47]

I feel bad for you man, I hope that you can get through all of this. When you said that you've found where they are, I was happy that you will be able to get them but I saw that they're from Russia, I am pretty sure that it's going to be impossible to get back at them because it's in Russia, which in my opinion is the safe haven for cyber criminals.

One of the top managers is Ilya Arsenov. Here is his  page on the Russian social network VKontakte.

[JeromeTash]

When you send your Bitcoins to a third party custodial service. You are no longer in control of the coin. What's even worse is forgetting them there for over 3 years and then trying to claim later. BTC was already worth $20K at some point in 2017, how would you miss out on noticing that 3 BTC wasn't sent to you?

I am not supporting Changenow as I know that they are already a scam service, but you should partly blame yourself for being negligent.

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

[ChangeNOW]

Hello there! ChangeNOW here.

Please allow us to explain what happened in this exact case:

One of our users created an exchange of 3 BTC to XMR on the 10th of January, 2019 — this exchange could not have been processed at the time. The user hasn't made contact with us back then.

gofry47 contacted us on July 9th, 2021 — 2+ years since the exchange took place.

For the sake of security of our users’ funds, sending 3 BTC or their XMR equivalent to a 3rd party address without being 100% sure that the person contacting us is the same one that created the exchange from over two years ago is something we are not willing to do. This serves both the interests of the user and ChangeNOW as a secure and trustworthy service.

gofry47 claims to have no access to the initial address they want the ChangeNOW to refund the 3 BTC in question to. It is yet to be proven whether the user has access to the payout address as we’ve been getting mixed signals — there are times gofry47 claims to have access to the address, but sometimes the user claims the opposite.

There are several ways to validate the address — unfortunately, none of them worked for gofry47.

To validate the payout address gofry47 initially told us they have access to, our Support Team has sent an unknown insignificant amount of crypto to the Monero wallet the initial user set as a payout address. The user in question should’ve then told us the exact amount he received — which gofry47 failed to do.

After we did that, gofry47 told us they no longer have an access to the payout Monero address.

To sum things up: the user claims to have no access to both the initial and the receiving address, and cannot identify themselves.

The only backup plan we could suggest was contacting the police — law enforcement will conduct an investigation and then contact us with a request for a refund if gofry47 is to be confirmed as the party initiating the exchange in 2019.

Our Support Team is in constant touch with gofry47 and we’re willing to do anything that can help solve this case in shortest delays possible. As soon as we have any sort of tangible proof that the funds in question do belong to gofry47, we’ll gladly send them over to an address gofry47 gives us.

We suggest gofry47 to verify their identity using any of the ways we've suggested — we'll be more than glad to proceed with the case as soon as it happens.

NB: It is worth mentioning that this case led us to create a precise, clear, and concise guide for users that end up in a situation similar to gofry47’s, and that we’ll gladly share this guide with the bitcointalk.org community as soon as possible.

[tokyohd]

Hello there! ChangeNOW here.

Please allow us to explain what happened in this exact case:

One of our users created an exchange of 3 BTC to XMR on the 10th of January, 2019 — this exchange could not have been processed at the time. The user hasn't made contact with us back then.

gofry47 contacted us on July 9th, 2021 — 2+ years since the exchange took place.

For the sake of security of our users’ funds, sending 3 BTC or their XMR equivalent to a 3rd party address without being 100% sure that the person contacting us is the same one that created the exchange from over two years ago is something we are not willing to do. This serves both the interests of the user and ChangeNOW as a secure and trustworthy service.

gofry47 claims to have no access to the initial address they want the ChangeNOW to refund the 3 BTC in question to. It is yet to be proven whether the user has access to the payout address as we’ve been getting mixed signals — there are times gofry47 claims to have access to the address, but sometimes the user claims the opposite.

There are several ways to validate the address — unfortunately, none of them worked for gofry47.

To validate the payout address gofry47 initially told us they have access to, our Support Team has sent an unknown insignificant amount of crypto to the Monero wallet the initial user set as a payout address. The user in question should’ve then told us the exact amount he received — which gofry47 failed to do.

After we did that, gofry47 told us they no longer have an access to the payout Monero address.

To sum things up: the user claims to have no access to both the initial and the receiving address, and cannot identify themselves.

The only backup plan we could suggest was contacting the police — law enforcement will conduct an investigation and then contact us with a request for a refund if gofry47 is to be confirmed as the party initiating the exchange in 2019.

Our Support Team is in constant touch with gofry47 and we’re willing to do anything that can help solve this case in shortest delays possible. As soon as we have any sort of tangible proof that the funds in question do belong to gofry47, we’ll gladly send them over to an address gofry47 gives us.

We suggest gofry47 to verify their identity using any of the ways we've suggested — we'll be more than glad to proceed with the case as soon as it happens.

NB: It is worth mentioning that this case led us to create a precise, clear, and concise guide for users that end up in a situation similar to gofry47’s, and that we’ll gladly share this guide with the bitcointalk.org community as soon as possible.

Why you didn't contact the user when. The 3btc exchange didn't finish ?
Instead you just kept it . Did you guys think it's ok to just keep it ?

[gofry47]

Hello there! ChangeNOW here.

Your support ignores my emails. It's a fact, you just don't want to look for a way out.

I gave you all the data about my other two exchanges with the same XMR address: ID, incoming hashes. Who, except the creator of the exchange, can know about this? You're ignoring this case!

I told you that I used the services of the darknet. They do not store addresses and simply do not use them in the future. How can I have access if so much time has passed.

You want to deal with the police, but what will it lead to? What kind of investigation is possible, other than what I've already given you? How will the police prove this? You know that this will lead to nothing and my money will remain with you. The only proof from my side: the ID and hashes of all exchanges with you for this XMR address.

I will be glad of any help from the community to solve this case and counteract these scammers. Anyone can be in my place!

[ChangeNOW]

Why you didn't contact the user when. The 3btc exchange didn't finish ?
Instead you just kept it . Did you guys think it's ok to just keep it ?

Hello there!
There's no way for us to contact the user ourselves if the user doesn't contact us regarding the funds first, as we're a non-custodial service with no mandatory KYC. We do not collect or store the data about our users during the exchange.
To be perfectly honest, the fact that it took the user several years to contact us makes this situation even more suspicious.

We always need the user to confirm whether he's eligible to receive the refund to an initial address if the exchange isn't finished, because sometimes the user no longer has an access to the address he sent the funds from. This is exactly what happened in the gofry47's case, as well — which makes this case even more complex.

Your support ignores my emails.

That is not true — our team is in constant touch with you through the ticket. No email gets ignored, and your case has our full attention.

You want to deal with the police, but what will it lead to? What kind of investigation is possible

Local authorities can confirm you as the owner of the funds in question and then contact us with an official request to send your crypto to the address you then give us.

It's a fact, you just don't want to look for a way out.

That is also not true — we keep offering you options to verify your identity, all of which you either refuse or fail to do.

We offered you 3 options regarding processing your exchange:

1. We could refund the funds back to the same address they came from — you told us that you no longer have access to it.
2. We could process your exchange and send the funds to a receiving address of an exchange — you told us you have no access to it, either.
3. We could send a small amount of crypto to an initial receiving address; you would then tell us the exact amount, and that would be enough to verify you as the owner of the receiving address — and again, you claim to have no access to it.

We can't send 3 BTC to a 3rd party address without being 100% sure that we are talking to their owner.

[gofry47]

Why you didn't contact the user when. The 3btc exchange didn't finish ?
Instead you just kept it . Did you guys think it's ok to just keep it ?

Hello there!

Do you have a legal right to withhold my money? Why did you change your rules immediately after I contacted you? This is the archive of the page before the change and there is no item here https://archive.fo/PcvZl

6.12 In limited cases ChangeNOW may store User's funds. The period during which the User’s funds are stored by ChangeNOW is limited to 1 calendar year. After that ChangeNOW cannot guarantee the safe-keeping of the unclaimed funds.

Who are you to consider something 100% insecure? This can go on all the time, your uncertainty cannot be the reason for withholding my funds.

Has anyone contacted you during these almost 3 years? I gave you information about all the exchanges with you. No one can know this except the owner. YOU'RE IGNORING THIS FACT!

And by the way, your support really ignores me and could respond faster. 2 hours just to send a copied response, seriously?

Thomas (ChangeNOW)

Aug 31, 2021, 23:44 GMT+3
Hi!

We are sorry that you are faced with such a difficult case, but we will do our best to try to help you.

Sincerely,
ChangeNOW Support Team

That's all I get from you sometimes. What are you doing to solve this?

[ChangeNOW]

Do you have a legal right to withhold my money? Why did you change your rules immediately after I contacted you? This is the archive of the page before the change and there is no item here

Who are you to consider something 100% insecure? This can go on all the time, your uncertainty cannot be the reason for withholding my funds.

Has anyone contacted you during these almost 3 years? I gave you information about all the exchanges with you. No one can know this except the owner. YOU'RE IGNORING THIS FACT!

Sorry if there's been any confusion along the way, gofry47 — our only aim here is making sure that the funds in question are sent to their rightful owner. 

Taking custody over our users' funds — especially for as long as 3 years — isn't quite something we would do out of our own volition. It is in our best interest to determine the origin and owner of the funds in the shortest delays possible, as well.

We always make sure that our users don't have to wait for their funds — either exchanged or refunded — any longer than it takes for us to process their exchange and then send the funds to the destination address. 

A usual ChangeNOW swap takes mere minutes.

In this particular case, however, none of these actions can take place:

— we cannot refund BTC because you have no access to the initial BTC address
— we can't send you the exchanged XMR since you have no access to this address, either.

Therefore, the ownership of the funds is yet to be established — we have not received any data confirming you as the owner.

We do confirm the receipt of the data involving several other ChangeNOW exchanges that you sent us. That said, the aforementioned data still cannot serve as a proof of ownership for either of the addresses in question. If anything, the fact that you keep bringing these exchanges as proof of ownership makes them seem like the only card have to play, making it even more suspicious.

As for the changes in Terms Of Service:

The crypto market is subject to rules and regulations mandatory for most crypto services. It is only natural that some of the Terms evolve and change over time in an emerging and ever-growing market such as crypto.

We're a business fortunate enough to grow together with the rest of the market. During these past 2,5 years, a lot has changed — and so did our T&Cs.

In an attempt to ensure our future users run into as few inconvenient situations as possible, we are constantly updating our Terms & Conditions using data from the unusual cases we discover along the way and the users' feedback — including yours, too.

It is also worth mentioning that any changes in our Terms Of Service for the last 2,5 years would only apply to the swaps after the one in question. 

This exact case is still subject to the same Terms Of Service you accepted while confirming the exchange details.

[gofry47]

b]Do you have a legal right to withhold my money?[/b] Why did you change your rules immediately after I contacted you? This is the archive of the page before the change and there is no item here

Who are you to consider something 100% insecure? This can go on all the time, your uncertainty cannot be the reason for withholding my funds.

Has anyone contacted you during these almost 3 years? I gave you information about all the exchanges with you. No one can know this except the owner. YOU'RE IGNORING THIS FACT!


In this particular case, however, none of these actions can take place:

— we cannot refund BTC because you have no access to the initial BTC address
— we can't send you the exchanged XMR since you have no access to this address, either.

The guys from changenow are registered in an offshore zone, but they themselves are located in St. Petersburg 49 Kurlandskaya Street 49. What is business in Russian? It's holding on to something that doesn't belong to you at any cost. Changing the rules of the game.

All I ask is a solution to my problem, but they are doing everything to complicate this matter.

Will you trust them with your money?

[ChangeNOW]

All I ask is a solution to my problem, but they are doing everything to complicate this matter.

Quite the opposite, gofry47.

We offered you 3 options to verify the ownership, and then suggested a 4th one after you failed the first 3.

We can't send 3 BTC to a 3rd party address without being absolute certainty in the fact that we are talking to the owner of the funds.

[gofry47]

All I ask is a solution to my problem, but they are doing everything to complicate this matter.

Quite the opposite, gofry47.

We offered you 3 options to verify the ownership, and then suggested a 4th one after you failed the first 3.

We can't send 3 BTC to a 3rd party address without being absolute certainty in the fact that we are talking to the owner of the funds.

Did I fail?

- Access to the addresses is lost: almost 3 years have passed. I thought I owned xmr until now, but it closed and the account gave me a different address for the deposit.
- The addresses belong to the darknet services that I used for entertainment, collecting winnings and so on.
- They have no support and will not talk to either you or me.

Option 4???

It looks like an excuse to leave my money with you. This is not a client-directed service, it is the creation of conditions under which, of course, I will not be able to do anything.

Are you saying that you can't give the money without making sure of me? 3 BTC is so little that for almost 3 years, no one came for them except me? Are you serious, man?

Changenow support ignores my emails again...

[JeromeTash]

-nip-

By this statement, you do actually confirm that you illegally held someone's Bitcoins. I don't matter if OP is able to prove to be the actual owner of the addresses or not. The mere fact that you did such a despicable act shows why people should never trust changenow.

"A secure and trustworthy service" my ass

[ChangeNOW]

By this statement, you do actually confirm that you illegally held someone's Bitcoins.

Here's what happened:
The user's exchange couldn't have been processed back in 2019. No one has contacted us regarding this exchange until 2021.
We always need the user to confirm whether he's eligible to receive the refund to an initial address if the exchange isn't finished, because sometimes the user no longer has an access to the address he sent the funds from — much like in this case.

We'd gladly send 3 BTC back to the initial deposit address or send the exchanged XMR to the initial payout address — what gofry47 wants us to do is send the funds from this exchange to a 3rd party address that has no connection to this exchange.

We are non-custodial service — users don't register on our platform to conduct exchanges. That's why we need at least some sort of proof if a user needs us to send his funds to an address that was never a part of the initial exchange, which gofry47 couldn't have provided us.

We will not send 3 BTC to a 3rd party address without making sure we're talking to the funds' owner.

[gofry47]

By this statement, you do actually confirm that you illegally held someone's Bitcoins.

We are non-custodial service — users don't register on our platform to conduct exchanges. That's why we need at least some sort of proof if a user needs us to send his funds to an address that was never a part of the initial exchange, which gofry47 couldn't have provided us.

We will not send 3 BTC to a 3rd party address without making sure we're talking to the funds' owner.

This is not true. You collect user data, such as IP address and KYC. You transmit this data on request, as I know.

I gave you all my exchanges id. Who but the owner knows about this? You just found a reason not to give this money away.

I added some data to the UPD of the post about these scammers. As you can see, you have russian names. You are working illegally in Russia, hiding behind an offshore company.

[ChangeNOW]

I gave you all my exchanges id. Who but the owner knows about this? You just found a reason not to give this money away.

We could've either issued a refund to an address you sent us deposit from or proceed with your exchange — what you want us to do is to send 3 BTC to an unknown address by providing us with an Exchange ID.

We can't send 3 BTC to a 3rd party address without being absolute certainty in the fact that we are talking to the owner of the funds.

[ACrow]

I gave you all my exchanges id. Who but the owner knows about this? You just found a reason not to give this money away.

We could've either issued a refund to an address you sent us deposit from or proceed with your exchange — what you want us to do is to send 3 BTC to an unknown address by providing us with an Exchange ID.

We can't send 3 BTC to a 3rd party address without being absolute certainty in the fact that we are talking to the owner of the funds.

I see a similar case. Okay, are you talking about the evidence of the initiator of the exchange? In my case, I proved this to you by providing the hash of your transaction and the transaction size. You're a scammer! You made a mistake and are trying to avoid responsibility! Here I blame you  https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5359412.msg57911052#msg57911052