BitMarket.Eu has closed down

[Ted]

I happen to know an excellent Polish transplant surgeon. If you, M4v3R, are healthy, you could get by just fine with only one kidney or half a liver. Maybe something could be arranged.

[disclaimer201]

Well, how about giving him a well-deserved scammer tag first? Why hasn't that happened yet? He openly admitted to it.

[mralbi]

well, when i just cite from your own link where it says:

"Before taking legal action against a foreign national, you should consider whether or not it is likely to be worthwhile.

First of all, it may cost a lot in legal fees as it is questionable whether the defendant will either readily agree to repayment of a debt, or have sufficient money to repay debts. Therefore, you need to ensure that you have sufficient funds to commence proceedings.

Secondly, you need to consider the likelihood of being able to recover the debt from the foreign national. If you do obtain judgment against them and they refuse to comply with it, you can take enforcement action through the courts"

So, good luck and keep us updated! As far as the police thing is concerned, they will simply not do anything at all because there is no "public interest". (If it is true or not does not matter, but they are only interested in million dollar frauds or murder stuff). When you start to explain that someone lost bitcoins, they will tell you to go for a private court case, where you will run into the problems mentioned above.

[GsR]

-Can bitmarket-admin confirm, that he owes me 47,6258 bitcoins? (My username at bitmarket.eu is fluppisippi.)

Please note though that since Bitmarket is not a bank, we don't have any insurances against theft or other unpredicted losses of Bitcoin. While legally I don't think I own you any Bitcoins (as per mralbi said), I feel morally obliged to return them to all users that had them stolen, that's why you will receive them back after we gather necessary funds. They will get the same treatement as the "on hold" ones from the previous loss, possibly with one exception - they will be probably reimbursed first.

-To which bitcoinaddress(es) were the latest 620 stolen bitcoins sent? (Maybe bitmarket-admin already told us, but I could not find it)

As someone already said before, the address and all necessary information was already posted before. The address that was used for the theft is:

http://blockchain.info/pl/address/1Lbcfpaw3uHs3iarBqZ12FYeD5vFwNvY49

Also, I don't really feel posting my postal address to some random guy on the internet, even if I owe virtual currency for him. Bitmarket investors will know my personal information and that's sufficient.

This might be relevant for people in the UK and other EU countries thinking about taking the previous owner to court you may not get all your coins back or their monetary value but if you just want to see him suffer the consequences of his actions it might be worth it:

http://www.findlaw.co.uk/law/dispute_resolution/litigation/basics/500437.html

I've reported him for fraud and theft this morning and I am awaiting a call from the police in the coming days to get more information from me.

I think that this choice doesn’t  worth the effort you have to put in it… but, honestly, I’m curious to ear the police's opinion.
Keep us updated

[Ted]

well, when i just cite from your own link where it says:

"Before taking legal action against a foreign national, you should consider whether or not it is likely to be worthwhile.

First of all, it may cost a lot in legal fees as it is questionable whether the defendant will either readily agree to repayment of a debt, or have sufficient money to repay debts. Therefore, you need to ensure that you have sufficient funds to commence proceedings.

Secondly, you need to consider the likelihood of being able to recover the debt from the foreign national. If you do obtain judgment against them and they refuse to comply with it, you can take enforcement action through the courts"

So, good luck and keep us updated! As far as the police thing is concerned, they will simply not do anything at all because there is no "public interest". (If it is true or not does not matter, but they are only interested in million dollar frauds or murder stuff). When you start to explain that someone lost bitcoins, they will tell you to go for a private court case, where you will run into the problems mentioned above.

Filing a criminal fraud complaint with the police won't cost you anything, and at least there will be a paper trail of complaints against M4v3R. The more complaints received, the sooner the authorities will have to act. M4v3R is quite possible a serial conman, and if we do nothing he will just be able to walk away and defraud someone else. For all we know this whole deal with the restructuring of Bitmarket is an elaborate scheme to stall the victims from taking legal action, until all traces of the crime can be hidden. Now that Bitcoin is down - permanently, for what is seems - what proof does any of us victims have of any legal claim against M4v3R? I believe the "second hack" served two purposes; the theft of even more coins, and a valid-looking reason to shut down the site indefinitely.

[Bitmarket.eu-victim0815]

I've reported him for fraud and theft this morning and I am awaiting a call from the police in the coming days to get more information from me.

Well done. Do you happen to know M4v3rs postal address, or did you just state his name, country and photograph?   Edit: Did you report him to the polish police or the police of your country?

So, good luck and keep us updated! As far as the police thing is concerned, they will simply not do anything at all because there is no "public interest".

Probably yes as long it is only one case. However things may look differently, if several people file a police report. And even if they do not pursuit the case any further, M4v3rs name will from now on be on records.

[unixdude]

I've reported him for fraud and theft this morning and I am awaiting a call from the police in the coming days to get more information from me.

Well done. Do you happen to know M4v3rs postal address, or did you just state his name, country and photograph?   Edit: Did you report him to the polish police or the police of your country?

So, good luck and keep us updated! As far as the police thing is concerned, they will simply not do anything at all because there is no "public interest".

Probably yes as long it is only one case. However things may look differently, if several people file a police report. And even if they do not pursuit the case any further, M4v3rs name will from now on be on records.

I don't have a postal address on him yet but I am working on it - quite easy to find information on him on line so shouldn't take long.

If you have the resources you could get the ISP he was using to give you his details via a court order I believe this was more then likely him either using a genuine Mac or a hackintosh to connect to the admin page of the site:

83.26.40.6 - - [14/Feb/2013:11:32:12 +0400] "GET /adminer-iuqgs124.php?server=localhost&username=bitmarket&db=bitmarket&sql= HTTP/1.1" 200 3489 "-" "Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_8_2) AppleWebKit/536.26.17 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/6.0.2 Safari/536.26.17"

I reported him to the met police in the UK.

He needs to learn a valuable lesson and so far he seems to have walked off without suffering any consequences for his actions. I don't know if the police will act or not but the more people that report him the better hopefully someone from his native country was a victim and reports him to the polish police who will be in a position to act much quicker.

[manfred]

Suing this and suing that, yes it is a wonderful tool and lawyers love it but there is just one catch. whoever gets sued must have assets. A car where the value is defined by weight (scrap metal) and a webpage is most likely the only two things found to be in his name. No fix job either, so whats left court appointed debt collector, yeh nice and good, but what u do when he moves residence? of course you win again and greece authority's will collect as happy as polish, but heck it takes a lot of energy. after all its an individual able to move at any time not like a multinational company with factory's and offices and patents. court appointed collection is all nice and good, but first u have to PROVE he owns u something. i can prove that i sent a total of 900 pounds to various people for btc payment and provide a screenshot of my login side showing the account balance 0 BTC (0 BTC frozen, 110.9 BTC on hold). so i might be able to "prove" more than most others, but its not proving anything real.
 I am eagerly awaiting to see what the police response will be when they call back in a couple of days time.
One thing i do know no lawyer will see an iota of my money to chase this ill investment. Depending how much value i put on 1 hour of my life one could argue the loss just grows with every line written, read and time spent....

maybe we should sue the satoshi guy too whilst we at it. maybe the whole bitcoin thing is just an elaborate get rich scheme  

[unixdude]

Suing this and suing that, yes it is a wonderful tool and lawyers love it but there is just one catch. whoever gets sued must have assets. A car where the value is defined by weight (scrap metal) and a webpage is most likely the only two things found to be in his name. No fix job either, so whats left court appointed debt collector, yeh nice and good, but what u do when he moves residence? of course you win again and greece authority's will collect as happy as polish, but heck it takes a lot of energy. after all its an individual able to move at any time not like a multinational company with factory's and offices and patents. court appointed collection is all nice and good, but first u have to PROVE he owns u something. i can prove that i sent a total of 900 pounds to various people for btc payment and provide a screenshot of my login side showing the account balance 0 BTC (0 BTC frozen, 110.9 BTC on hold). so i might be able to "prove" more than most others, but its not proving anything real.
 I am eagerly awaiting to see what the police response will be when they call back in a couple of days time.
One thing i do know no lawyer will see an iota of my money to chase this ill investment. Depending how much value i put on 1 hour of my life one could argue the loss just grows with every line written, read and time spent....

maybe we should sue the satoshi guy too whilst we at it. maybe the whole bitcoin thing is just an elaborate get rich scheme

No ones talking about suing anyone.

We are talking about reporting an admitted thief and fraudster to the police as he has committed a crime and it is as simple as that  - doesn't cost you anything to do that and takes less then 15 mins. I don't know if the police will act or not or how long it takes for them to act but at least I'm not condoning his actions like a lot of people are,  as if what he did was some how not a crime and  "poor M4v3R he has no job blah blah he can't pay blah blah". The guy has money, the guy has assets and he should have thought about all this before he decided to take the coins for his own purposes.


The PROOF is already there and his admission of guilt.

[Ted]

maybe we should sue the satoshi guy too whilst we at it. maybe the whole bitcoin thing is just an elaborate get rich scheme

You go right ahead and do just that, if that's your wish. Just don't imagine or imply that it was anyone else's stupid idea, but yours alone. That would be a total straw man.

[manfred]

The PROOF is already there and his admission of guilt.

Courts are only interested in hard facts. My friend can proof that at some time he hat purchased x amount of bitcoins and he has M4v3rs admission that a: the exchange got hacked and 620BTC got stolen and b: that he misappropriately misused my bitcoins to gamble at bitcoinica. Does that entitle my friend to 1000BTCs, no. He has to demonstrate that x amount of bitcoins are his and not 0 what his real account balance was at the time. Emotions aside thats the sad reality how courts operate.

[mralbi]

yeah, legally speaking it simply not a "crime" in the legal sense, unless you can prove that he INTENTIONALLY lost the coins or that he INTENDED to "steal" them. When he says explicitally that this was NOT intended (as he does) it is basically impossible to prove the opposite.

Even though he had no right to gamble with your coins, you cannot assume from that, that he "stole" them or did this in any way intentionally.

I mean you have the right to be reimbursed for your loss, but it is not a crime. The ONLY thing you can do is to sue him for the damage he caused to you and that is

a) tricky to prove
b) useless for the above metioned reasons


The government and all the crappy police institutions plus courts etc. are unfortunately NOT here to help you, they don't give a shit, they are just there for their own sake of being paid by the tax payer.

PS: 15 min at the police? Last time it took me already 45 min queueing and after that 1 hour just to explain what a bitcoin is and why it has value, lol

[Ted]

yeah, legally speaking it simply not a "crime" in the legal sense, unless you can prove that he INTENTIONALLY lost the coins or that he INTENDED to "steal" them. When he says explicitally that this was NOT intended (as he does) it is basically impossible to prove the opposite.

Even though he had no right to gamble with your coins, you cannot assume from that, that he "stole" them or did this in any way intentionally.

I mean you have the right to be reimbursed for your loss, but it is not a crime. The ONLY thing you can do is to sue him for the damage he caused to you and that is

a) tricky to prove
b) useless for the above metioned reasons


The government and all the crappy police institutions plus courts etc. are unfortunately NOT here to help you, they don't give a shit, they are just there for their own sake of being paid by the tax payer.

PS: 15 min at the police? Last time it took me already 45 min queueing and after that 1 hour just to explain what a bitcoin is and why it has value, lol

Are you some kind of legal expert? Not all crimes require intent. The proof of negligence is often enough, for example negligent homicide. The fact is that M4v3R took (knowingly and willingly) something that didn't belong to him, used it for his own intents and purposes, and subsequently lost it. Whether or not that is a crime is best left to the judicial system to decide.

You don't actually need to go into the details on bitcoins and their value, like you don't need to explain why tokens of fiat money printed on paper have some value. You just need to explain that bitcoins are a form of digital goods.

[mralbi]

no, i am not a legal expert, but trust me, since i have more frozen coins than you for sure, the first thing i did after realizing that my coins were lost was doing my own research on what my legal opportunities are, this included getting professional legal advice on how should i proceed to get my frozen coins back, how much the costs would be and the chances to actually see some money.

From this assessment i came to the conclusion that taking Maciejs offer to cooperate and help us to reopen a new and bestter service is the only way that we have a chance to get coins actually back. We now have setup a team to start the bailout process were some highly motivated people (who have nothing to do with the loss of the old bitcoins!) actually invest a lot of their free time PLUS their private savings to make this happen and we actually would appreciate a bit more constructive cooperation and discuss ideas out of the mess.

Instead we are just discussing destructive topics on how much a courtcase might cost etc.

[manfred]

Are you some kind of legal expert? Not all crimes require intent. The proof of negligence is often enough, for example negligent homicide.

Negligent homicide and violating my trust probably dont play in the same league.
What would a judge say if i told him i gave a total stranger a 20 pound note for save keeping and i will pick it up some time in the future? You fool. If his honour then ask me if i paid him a beer for the favour? I would replay no, but i expected him to give me 20.02 back. (hardware,electric,time) the guy at the high chair would then respond: You deserve every bit u got.

The theft of the 620 bitcoins is a parallel case to the berlin bank vault heist. For people not familiar with the story here is link: http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/weird-news/police-in-berlin-release-pictures-of-100ft-1543264
Unless people can prove what the had deposited in the vault (almost impossible) or hat private insurance to cover the loss the will receive not a single penny. the majority of safety deposit boxes owners  who hat valuables stored in the large German banks vault must have thought this is about as save as can be. its proven not to be the case. Millionaire one day and poor as a church mouse the next morning because unwanted guest came in through the back door in the middle of the nite and took what did not belong to them.
The only difference is there is some hope of getting some stolen bitcoins back (resurrection of the side), there is no hope if u are a victim of the bank heist at all.

no, i am not a legal expert, but trust me, since i have more frozen coins than you for sure, the first thing i did after realizing that my coins were lost was doing my own research on what my legal opportunities are, this included getting professional legal advice on how should i proceed to get my frozen coins back, how much the costs would be and the chances to actually see some money.

From this assessment i came to the conclusion that taking Maciejs offer to cooperate and help us to reopen a new and bestter service is the only way that we have a chance to get coins actually back. We now have setup a team to start the bailout process were some highly motivated people (who have nothing to do with the loss of the old bitcoins!) actually invest a lot of their free time PLUS their private savings to make this happen and we actually would appreciate a bit more constructive cooperation and discuss ideas out of the mess.

Instead we are just discussing destructive topics on how much a courtcase might cost etc.

Spot on, only trouble is you are light years ahead, contacted lawyers spoke with them and went to the police 2 months ago. Now getting accused of stalling the process??

[mralbi]

If someone is still a potential investor and would like to join our investors meeting next weekend in Helsinki please PM me, the agenda is ready by now.

[ddeseo]

We all know that we got scamed by a foolish polish a*****, that stole our money
for some gambling, we are all very angry, some of us lost a lot of money. We all
want to have at least a part of the money back. Maybee some want revenge, maybee
some even want to show morality or whatever.

I don`t mind, I just want to recover my money, I totaly agree with mralbi, and - by the way-
I would like to thank him for his affords to move something here and for keeping a cool mind
even if he lost most of all of us.

Maybee at this point we should split the Forum at two parts:
One for the founding of a new bitmarket.eu, and one for those that like to take legal actions.

I supose this would be better for everyone...





 

[crispy_bitcoin]

M4v3R,

I'm not sure if my PM reached you, so here's my request again.
Since the reopening of the site will probably take some time, I'd like to withdraw what's left of my balance to 13rTvLez5kKD4FThpqaYNenkMNhXbhCXLz.

Account: crispy (deposit addr. 15R9jtZ5UiCBhhB1MjErEd4t8o6RiU9H62)
Obviously, I don't want to disclose my password here. If you use PGP, I'll send you my password in encrypted email.
Alternately, if you tell me which hashing algorithm you used, I'd gladly provide you with the password's hash.

Thanks.

Appendix A: Napkin of expectations
During the last intrusion, the wallet's content wasn't stolen completely, only BTC 620. On different occasions, you said there were between BTC 100 and 120 left.
This gives a "survival rate" of 100/(100+620) = 13.8888…% to 120/(120+620) = 16.2162…%.

I had around BTC 22 to 22.5 in my account, of which – using prev. rates – there should be between BTC 3.05 and 3.65 left.
It's not much, but for once, I want to be the one responsible should these go missing… ;)

[eiskalt]

Regarding the address of our bitmarket-admin, there is also the possibility to submit a request to the domain-register (eurid.eu). One has to submit an application form, that could be written in any of the european languages.

The application form on the german eurid-website:
http://www.eurid.eu/de/eu-domaininhaber/domain-streitigkeiten/kontaktaufnahme-zu-einem-domaininhaber

First when I visited the eurid-website I could not find the application form. So I wrote an e-mail to info@eurid.eu and told them what happend with bitmarket.eu and why I would like them to disclose the address of the registrant (i.e. our beloved bitmarket-admin).
Although I still have to submit the application, their answer was quite promising and they also sent me the german version of the application form (because the form in the link above is in english).

Should I get the address of the registrant it is very likely, that I am not allowed to share it with the public, so if anyone is also interested in the address of our bitmarket-admin, you may give it a chance and submit a request to eurid.

[mralbi]

Dear Bitmarket.eu "stakeholders",

Last week-end from 15-17.3.2013 we had an investors' "kick-off" meeting in Helsinki about the situation of bitmarket.eu, and we just wanted to inform everyone quickly about the main decision points:

1) Bitmarket.eu operations will be closed down. The site will only be left open to handle the old frozen coin issues for which Maciej as the owner of bitmarket.eu is responsible.

2) The group of investors will create a new legal entity in form of a newly founded Aktiengesellschaft with seat in Germany. The company name will be "BiTalo AG" with a website at www.bitalo.com (also bitalo.org and bitalo.net have been registered).

3) So far we have acquired a starting capital of minimum 50.000 euros from a small group of investors. It is still possible to contact us for additional investment of NEW money.

4) It will not be possible to bring in "frozen coins" as shares to the new company, as this is not feasible from a legal point of view. We are still investigating possible solutions for treating "frozen coins" as a long-term investment.

5) Maciej, who represents bitmarket.eu, will sell the code of the old site to the new company, while the user database and debts will remain as his responsibility. Maciej will not be a shareholder nor participate in the administration of the new co-operation.

6) The goal of the new company is to create a new platform with new trading and market functions and efficient security measures so no admin can access a user's bitcoins without consent of the user. Old bitmarket.eu users may create an account on the new site if they wish, but the new company has no obligations towards them.

7) The plan is to start with 6 persons: 3 persons in the management board and 3 in the supervisory board in official roles. They will be paid no salary until the site is profitable.

The new company will invest the starting capital into the development of a new site and therefore employ Maciej as a consultant. Additional developers will be hired, and one of Maciej's main duties will be to transfer his knowledge of how the code works to new developers and administrators.

9) As long as the new company employs Maciej, he will use part of his income to reimburse frozen coins. A more detailed payback plan might be announced on the old bitmarket.eu website by Maciej. The new company will only be responsible to verify that Maciej fulfills this duty.

10) In case additional people are interested in participation and/or investments, just contact mralbi by PM.