Hello CoinHeated,
Im sorry you got scammed, but I must ask.
When purchasing your Kialara why not insist upon using an escrow?
Why send the payment direct?
It sounds like you got socially engineered out of your BTC.
Can you elaborate on how this happened and who the user was that scammed you out of your BTC?
I would love to hear the whole story.
Here is the whole story from my side of things.
First, I've been in IT for over 25 years, and I am normally excellent at catching stuff like this. It's very literally my job. This is the second time in my entire life I have fallen victim to a scam. The first happened when I was 21 and to be fair, I was extremely drunk. This time, I was completely sober, so I have no excuse.
In general, my life is pretty good, so being out $1600 or so is a solid slap in the face, but it isn't a knock-out punch. I was still coming off the "high" of winning a different Kialara piece as well as another coin at the Scarce City CoinfestUK auction. Christmas is coming up, and I'm buying a new house tomorrow, plus a million other things. So I wasn't at my top game. It was the end of the night, winding down after a full day.
I'm on Twitter, I'm on Telegram, and many other places, and all as "Coinheated". I'm a scammers dream target, but a tough one to nail. So, let me break down how it all went.
I get a message on Telegram. I use about 7 different communications platforms all day long, and it is tough to keep track of who is on which one and where things are coming from sometimes. The scammer just said hi, and introduced themselves as the seller. We talked for a good while. Their English was at a very advanced level, and conversation was smooth and good. Not going to lie, I had a nice time talking to whoever that was.
It's my first auction here, and I really should have read up further, but I am a sucker for a deal, and it struck me as a good deal, so I went with it. And we have the beginning of the setup at that point. Whoever it was that scammed me, did their homework. No joke, it was top level, and just in that simple fact alone, I can respect the effort that took to pull off. I do not however respect the outcome or the person.
So, next a day goes by and I'm thinking all is good, then I get the "pay within 24 hours or you get reported" starts in, and I honestly have no idea what is going on. Becoming a bit frantic, I start replying more than normal. I never had a reason to post a lot before, so the system flagged me for posting and messaging too much for my non-bronze level membership. I first waited the one hour to see if I could at least send out one more message before the end of the night. Denied still after 90 minutes, I bought the bronze, thinking it would let me reply again. I waited another hour. Logged out, logged in. Tried incognito, and I still had the message limitations in place, so there was nothing more I could do other than go to bed for the night.
Then, this morning, I wake up to find I got put on blast having all the DMs posted here, which felt like an attack.
So, I've come to realize I've been had, and solid, and then find I'm now under attack. And the only thing I ever wanted to do is to figure out what happened, get some help perhaps, and get the whole thing straightened out. Instead, I was only met with the demands of paying within 24 hours or get reported.
So now I had a choice, knowing I've likely been scammed already, I have about 7 hours before the 24 hour timer is done. Since I got absolutely nowhere in the first 17 hours, I didn't want to risk hitting the 24 hour limit and being reported with such a brand new account. My reputation is far more important than a few grand. So, today, against my better judgement, I paid again. I am still awaiting absolute confirmation from the seller at this point that he now has indeed received the payment. Otherwise I just got scammed a second time. eh, life moves on regardless.
To the scammer:
Not going to lie, I'm not even mad, you were REALLY good. Good enough that I'll give you another 0.0005 BTC more if you send an email to
scammed@youarebeautiful.org , and 1: admit it was a scam, and 2: just tell me why. Any reason is valid. Could be "I hate people and I will take everyone's money I can". OK. You don't have to include any personal info, and you can send it from any anonymous email.
And so now I am left in the aftermath of this. If it was just that I got scammed, I'd be bummed, but would have moved on. But the combination of first getting scammed and then pressured to pay within 24 hours before I knew what was even going on has been very difficult to deal with. I'll be more satisfied when I know 100% that the seller was paid in the correct manor and in the correct time.
My rules are clear, but in this case I feel bad if he really was scammed by his mistake by not reading the auction rules, clarifying this.
I want to make it clear that I want to solve this as soon as possible, I have requested the user's postal address to be able to send the certified kialara
Waiting for a response from CoinHeated TO CLOSE THE AUCTION.
Thank you all for participating in the clarification of this unfortunate situation. I feel the offtopic
yes, your rules are clear and I am not blaming you one bit in the matter. I was only trying to figure out what I had actually done, and what I still needed to do to correct. But with the limitations of the non-copper account, I was literally forced into silence for the rest of the night until I was allowed to reply again.
Right now, I am still waiting for you to completely confirm that you have indeed received payment. With all the fiasco of this, I'd like it to be known publicly that I did indeed pay the auction correctly, and in the specified time frame.
I guess I don't know how to close the auction if there is something I have to do to confirm payment further?
[moderator's note: consecutive posts merged]
