BitMarket.Eu has closed down

[maninas]

We realize that as for ~15,000 users of Bitmarket, only five cases (so far) of charge backs is a very good result.

It's not just five incidents of PayPal chargebacks. I know for sure, because I myself can count 4 different times I got scammed...!

I was among the victims of the aforementioned scam involving Brian you-know-his-last-name. In the end I wasn't among the people that got their money sent back, so after about a 4 weeks you stepped forth and returned me the money in question in BTC. Of course after all this time and the price drops in between I had lost about 10-20% of it's value. Given that I counted the money as gone for good, I welcomed the gesture from your exchange even if in the end I wasn't even.

Just about 2 weeks after the shock of being scammed and feeling unable to support my case via PayPal, I regained my faith and resumed trading. I bought some BTC and then sold them on the 30th of July and 1st of August (before the official changes in the FAQ). I sold in three transactions one at about 64 EUR, another at 10 EUR and another at 81 EUR.

When it turned out that I got scammed with the same reversal technique with the first two transactions I was devastated! I sent you an e-mail reporting the incident and requested support and got no reply. I forwarded you the same e-mail 5 days after that (yesterday) and I have still received no reply of any sort!

Just now it turns out that I got scammed AGAIN (!), for the third transaction, with the same reversal technique! This is outrageous! How can it be possible!? I've lost all faith, and just feel that I have no support from anywhere. Most money I invested in Bitcoin got stolen and at this rate of incidents it feels that Bitmarket.eu has become a den of scammers and each PayPal sell is like crossing a minefield. I am a university student, studying Computer Science, and that money was most of my savings. It was traded well and generated some profit. Now it's all gone along with the profit and not because of any fault of mine.

I have been trading solely through your exchange since May and haven't felt the need to try another since the incidents happened. In fact I have sent you multiple mails and tweets to provide feedback and ideas and reported a possible security bug in the past. But right now I feel abandoned and betrayed and I know that it's going to be a long time before (if ever) I regain my faith in BTC trading and it's only going to happen in an alternate way than PayPal.

I hope this open mail reaches you at last and that you are going to review my case. For more information you can just check your inbox for my emails titled "I just got scammed again, twice". I won't bother sending you a thrid e-mail to report on the third incident unless you ask me too, because I just feel like you don't give a crap any more and it won't make any difference. If you do, by all means, I would be glad to assist you.

[1714938167]

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[1714938167]

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[ancow]

We realize that as for ~15,000 users of Bitmarket, only five cases (so far) of charge backs is a very good result.

It's not just five incidents of PayPal chargebacks. I know for sure, because I myself can count 4 different times I got scammed...!

<Snip story about being scammed via PayPal>

You're being just a tad unfair here.

For one, It's been mentioned multiple times that trading via PayPal is dangerous and the reasons why have been listed.
Also, this exchange is free and maintained in the owners' spare time.
Then, despite all warnings about PayPal here and elsewhere on the forum, after being scammed, you still went ahead and kept using it for trading. That seems, mildly put, rather stupid. Especially since there are other, less risky, ways to trade and you were trading your savings.

So, how much have you donated to earn the right to whine like this? Especially by trying to make the BM owners look bad for being overworked running a free exchange that, by your own admission, previously made you profit. (None of which they asked you for, BTW. In fact, they even reimbursed you using their hard-earned donations!)

If you do risky stuff, please don't try to pin your losses on others. Learn from your mistakes and try avoiding them in the future.


(All that said, maybe an "I got scammed" button that would allow higher priority messages to the admins would be an idea.)

[maninas]

You're being just a tad unfair here.

That's not my intent if it seems like it. I'm just trying to be heard.

For one, It's been mentioned multiple times that trading via PayPal is dangerous and the reasons why have been listed. Then, despite all warnings about PayPal here and elsewhere on the forum, after being scammed, you still went ahead and kept using it for trading. That seems, mildly put, rather stupid. Especially since there are other, less risky, ways to trade.

I have been aware of the possible scam long before I started trading on May. Everything rolled smoothly for months. Though I believe that the case I am reporting is just too much out of proportion. 4 out of 4 consecutive sells were scams. That's one pretty damn good indication that stuff needs to be done fast. And yet the situation seems to be getting out of hand. And I repeat, since it was available to sell via Paypal and since I got no official warning from the exchange site (the forum post came some days later and that is hardly official, it's a different entity) why should I not feel safe to trade?

Also, this exchange is free and maintained in the owners' spare time.

So, what is it, a spare-time hobby side-project all this time? I guess not. Not with 2468 BTC in circulation at this time, and I believe the admins see it as professionally as well (which is good).

So, how much have you donated to earn the right to whine like this? Especially by trying to make the BM owners look bad for being overworked running a free exchange that?

If you believe that donations have any correlation to one's right to be dissatisfied even to a free service, you're pretty much wrong. But since you brought it up, up to this point I have made 2 -albeit modest- donations, have submitted a possible exploit, feedback, improvement suggestions and brought 4 more traders to the exchange. I think that these actions clearly proclaim that I've been not only a fan of Bitmarket but I've cared as well to my possible extent.

If you do risky stuff, please don't try to pin your losses on others. Learn from your mistakes and try avoiding them in the future.

I didn't pin anything on anyone. I didn't even ask for money, insurance, or a refund. I only asked to be heard and supported as their user and client if you will and in the meantime support and protecting the exchange from further abuse by reporting the scammers and their paypal accounts.

[PowerChaos]

Just now it turns out that I got scammed AGAIN (!), for the third transaction, with the same reversal technique!

there is only 1 thing i can say on this
you dint do what paypal asked to provide tehm enouf reason to show that the fraude isnt fraude


here are a few things that makes it harder to prevent a reversal

1) your account is a free account ? (with a few limits on it ? ) , they are hard to get support from and you realy need  proof to prevent you from getting a chargeback
2) you do not have a credit card linked to paypal (so to less verifications to be trusted , so chargebacks are harder to stop as those accounts get mostly used for that)
3) you just dit not fill in the right information , if some1 submit a ticket about a fraude trade and ask for legal documents ... explain paypal that it goes about VIRTUAL goods ? (realy , explain it ) , it is just to provide a example

4) you just provide rude responses to paypal ? , stay nice and they help you faster/nicer instead shouting and complaining about chargebacks

there are ofcourse exeptions of chargebacks that are sucessfull because differend reasons ... but proof is the thing you realy need to protect

in my case i got a business account , and most chargebacks fails even when i do not even response to there tickets (strange that they fail isnt it ^^ )

hopely this can help you in the future when you start using paypal again

anyway , before going to mutch offtopic
i realy hope that bitmarket.eu can implent a paypal safety check like my other post
on that way only verified accounts can buy/sell bitcoin with paypal (so the fraude risk is a lot lower , no1 like to get there account banned when value info is linked to it ?? or do they  hmm ?? )


Greets From PowerChaos

[maninas]

Thanks alot for the help! I posted a note on each open dispute noting that I had sent the digital goods and because of it's nature I couldn't provide any such evidence. I tried to avoid mentioning Bitcoin as I have heard that PayPal tends to go nuts with this word. Do you think it's safe to provide a screen capture of my Bitmarket.eu transactions?

I also tried to defend myself on the fact that I have a verified PayPal account, two connected credit cards and a bank account. I bet the scammer doesn't have that much to back his account up. Is there anything better I can/should do?

How about the past closed disputes? Is there anything I can do about these? There's about 180 EUR lost there...

Thanks for your help guys.

[PowerChaos]

I tried to avoid mentioning Bitcoin as I have heard that PayPal tends to go nuts with this word. Do you think it's safe to provide a screen capture of my Bitmarket.eu transactions?

NEVER do this kind of things (not providing information )
ALWAYS provide as mutch info as you can , including but not limited to crazy screenshots , silly website adresses , even forum posts with link to the forum topic (sounds strange ) or just a bogus text that says that he promised it ?
paypal collects all the information and goes see what the difference is betwean the reason you gave and the reason they got (there is a lot of hidden info that you can send whit those cases)

just say where it goes about , how bad it seems to be , if they go nuts about bitcoin then they know what the exact reason is and then they know what kind of proof you can provide and where it goes about.
but just ignoring it because you heard it is crazy ?? , then wondering why you can not provide anyhting of proof ?? then it is normal that you lose the case as your proof is useless against the  claim that is provided

I also tried to defend myself on the fact that I have a verified PayPal account, two connected credit cards and a bank account. I bet the scammer doesn't have that much to back his account up. Is there anything better I can/should do?

there is nothing more you can do , but there is a difference to betwean a business account where you do a lot of transactions on and a personal/premium account ( exept the extra fee is there a few more security/verifications )
but not sure if that is a mayor thing , but my guess is that it can helps to ( as a lot of users want to get money back from company's with out a reason ? and you pay a fee of 3.4% to paypal )

How about the past closed disputes? Is there anything I can do about these? There's about 180 EUR lost there...

once a case is closed is there nothing you can do against it as the money is paid back ( including a fee in some cases )
the only thing you can do is to add screenshots and other stuff so the case can get delayed and you can maybe win it then because of the new proof

[ancow]

For one, It's been mentioned multiple times that trading via PayPal is dangerous and the reasons why have been listed. Then, despite all warnings about PayPal here and elsewhere on the forum, after being scammed, you still went ahead and kept using it for trading. That seems, mildly put, rather stupid. Especially since there are other, less risky, ways to trade.

I have been aware of the possible scam long before I started trading on May. Everything rolled smoothly for months. Though I believe that the case I am reporting is just too much out of proportion. 4 out of 4 consecutive sells were scams. That's one pretty damn good indication that stuff needs to be done fast. And yet the situation seems to be getting out of hand.

There's a couple of ground rules about trading you should be aware of, especially before trading your savings.
For one, "the higher the risk, the higher the reward" goes both ways. The higher the potential reward, the higher the risk. Since trading via Paypal is risky, you have less competition with it, resulting in higher potential reward. This makes Paypal an attractive target for scammers, increasing the risk even further.
Also, statistics play a role when you do enough trades. You were using Paypal for trading a few months without being scammed. That's pretty darn lucky. Getting scammed four consecutive times is pretty darn unlucky. It evens out...

And I repeat, since it was available to sell via Paypal and since I got no official warning from the exchange site (the forum post came some days later and that is hardly official, it's a different entity) why should I not feel safe to trade?

Read further up this thread, other threads in this forum...
PayPal never was safe for trading bitcoins, since they are hostile to the concept and the phenomenon. Trading there, you're entering a rather large risk. Making you aware of this risk or not is hardly the responsibility of the exchange (and yet, they are warning users, since their efforts to protect them are not as effective as hoped for). And yet, I was aware of the risk without doing specific research, so you could have been, too.

Also, this exchange is free and maintained in the owners' spare time.

So, what is it, a spare-time hobby side-project all this time? I guess not. Not with 2468 BTC in circulation at this time, and I believe the admins see it as professionally as well (which is good).

Just because it is a spare-time project doesn't mean it lacks professionalism. It does, however, mean that there are only so many emails they can deal with in a day. It also means that sometimes, they may forget to reply, even though they are taking action.
Have you ever had to deal with >50 emails per day, while still trying to work on something else?
As a suggestion for future reference: the admins seem to be reachable much better via PM (for urgent matters). So if, after a few days, your email doesn't get answered, write them a PM asking them to have a look at your email.
Posting to this thread should be a last resort, since it is distracting and adds noise.

So, how much have you donated to earn the right to whine like this? Especially by trying to make the BM owners look bad for being overworked running a free exchange that?

If you believe that donations have any correlation to one's right to be dissatisfied even to a free service

I don't, but I do believe in subtle hints.

If you do risky stuff, please don't try to pin your losses on others. Learn from your mistakes and try avoiding them in the future.

I didn't pin anything on anyone. I didn't even ask for money, insurance, or a refund. I only asked to be heard and supported as their user and client if you will and in the meantime support and protecting the exchange from further abuse by reporting the scammers and their paypal accounts.

There's a thread for reporting scammers: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=483.0

I still think your original post reads too much like you were trying to put most/all of the blame on the admins. Reading it, I get the impression that you didn't do your homework about safe trading and were trying to make the admins take the fall for it (both reputation-wise and financially). If that's not the case, great.

[byte-storm]

I am also one of those who got scammed 4 weeks ago. I sent an email to BitMarket support to report the scam and also got the IP and the ebay account used for verification as reply. They told me they would ask some of the ebay account's trade partners to see if the Paypal account owner is the same as the ebay account owner. But this was also the last thing I heard from BitMarket...

The scammer is from my country, so I went to the police and reported the fraud case. I have the Paypal account owner's address and I have the IP of the scammer, but they also need a timestamp to be able to get the information of who owned that IP. So, I asked BitMarket for a timestamp and some other things that might proof that the Paypal account holder is lying about his "hacked" account. Unfortunately, I am already waiting for 2 weeks for a reply. I also resent the email a couple of days later in case it got lost, and also sent a PM through this forum to Mahkul one week ago, but he didn't reply, even though he was online here almost every day... ISPs here store IP<->customer assignments only for about one week, so the opportunity to find the scammer by his IP is gone by now. Fortunately, I was able to get the scammer to open a prepared email and got another timestamp from him that I could report to the police. However, I am still waiting for a reply from BitMarket with more information that might be helpful to find the scammer or proof that the Paypal account holder is the scammer.

Luckily, I was not dumb enough to leave the money on the Paypal account, but transferred it to my bank account before sending the BTC, as I knew that PayPal would not care whether the transaction is ligit from my side no matter what proof they get from me. So, it all looks like they lost themselves a customer and some bucks by supporting a scam.

Nonetheless, I'd still like to see a reply to my email. I'd also like to get in contact with others who got scammed, especially with those where a .de email address is involved and/or who are from Germany to gather more information and raise the success probability of the police investigation. So, if you are a another victim, feel free to send me a PM.

[sonba]

Out of interest - whoelse received the following mail:

"The buyer wants to cancel transaction 11507 for the following reason:

The recent bitcoin drops only allow me to pay with paypal (don't want to sit on my bitcoins while they become less valuable) Please understand this. You won't regret it since you have your money right afterwards."

sounds pretty much like scam to me (paying AFTER confirmation with PAYPAL). The guy didn't answer yet to my mail. So, anyone else who got this mail?

[PowerChaos]

user only want to pay with paypal because of bitcoinpricedrop ??

that is definaly a scam
specialy if they choose the option to pay with wire transfer first

the users who use paypal ( like me) use it because it is easyer for me then wire transfer or a other payment way (it goes faster)

but canceling because the bitcoin rate drops ??

thats like buying a car with paypal as it is not possible to send it from your bank ( exept the faq that paypal sends the money to your bank )

paypal is nice to use , but still watch out what you sell over paypal
do not trust stuff like that .. as it is just a rubish reason that he is providing

anyway , if you still want to do that i can offer you my service so you are sure you get the money ( see sig )

Greets From PowerChaos

[Mahkul]

We realize that as for ~15,000 users of Bitmarket, only five cases (so far) of charge backs is a very good result.

It's not just five incidents of PayPal chargebacks. I know for sure, because I myself can count 4 different times I got scammed...!

I am not sure whether you read the update of our FAQ - but we cannot be responsible for the actions our users make. FYI - there have been only five scam cases on BitMarket. Since you sell quite a few coins there and you are one of the few sellers that still accept Paypal no wonder that it is you that got scammed (since our sellers who don't accept Paypal don't). Also, these scams only started recently (the very first one being the infamous Brian, from whom we managed to retrieve part of the stolen money/btc).

Immediately after receiving your email about new scammers, their account got blocked. Perhaps you didn't receive a response straight away (but you did receive it, I wrote it myself on the 3rd of August - advising you, again, not to use Paypal).

Surprisingly in 4 out of 5 cases - the scammer was the REAL owner of the bitmarket/ebay/email account. We know this, because, for examlple, one of them said she never heard of bitcoins and yet, she was selling them on ebay (the stolen ones from Bitmarket, among others probably). In hope of getting some assistance I wrote the people on ebay that she sold the coins to - and only one responded. I asked him to help us and tell us the address of the person, so that we could try and even go to the police, or at least provide our users with her details. Unfortunately, the guy asked me for 10 BTC in exchange for revealing her details; that was very disappointing, not like the old days when the Bitcoin community was a bunch of honest people who supported each other free of charge. So, I said to this person that we may give him the 10 BTC after (and if) we get anything back from the scammer. He then got back to me with the address of his Bitcoin related website and tried to exchange her address for email addresses of Bitmarket users (wanted to do some, as he called it, "marketing"), which I found even more disappointing and gave up talking to him.

So, please appreciate that we REALLY tried to do our best in chasing every single scammer; but it's just beyond our power (the same way it was beyond Mt. Gox and CoinPal). Also, you have no idea how much time it costs us to stay up to date with all emails. We receive 50 support mails everyday, which have to be handled directly by myself or M4v3R, because April has no access to the admin panel due to security reasons. On top of that - we get 50-100 verification requests, 75% of which requires us to further communicate with the people, since they have no CoinPal, no OTC, no ebay feedback. Every evening and every weekend I spend 2-3 hours doing responding to support emails. Every scammer means a lot of additional hours for us, so please be a little bit more understanding.

[byte-storm]

I perfectly understand that you have a lot of work with responses to emails, but if you have a backlog of 14 days of emails it would at least be nice to tell everyone in the queue that it may take a while longer. I am currently feeling ignored, with no response at all. I'd like to do my own investigations in my scam case, but I cannot without additional information from you, and the more time passes, the harder things get. With a reply to my email from July 22nd (that even had "urgent" in the subject), I'd be able to tell whether the Paypal account holder is the scammer or not, and take further legal actions if he is.

[sonba]

By the way - is anyone else having trouble with the API? Whenever I ask for the current bids and offers, I get the 4 best bids in EUR as:
10,88   @ 9,65
20,00   @ 9,03
143,58 @ 9
1,00 @ 8
(@ is manually added from me). Those are in there for several days already, but not shown on the web interface (as the prices are way too high I don't think they still exist). Would it be possible to repair the API so that it delivers the correct results?

Thanks!

[PowerChaos]

i got maybe a great idea to improve support

i know that you get a lot of emails dayly and that it is hard to reply

but you can use a forum with hidden topics ( so only creator can see post) to follow up tickets

on that way a user know if they got a reply and you got a overvieuw of the tickets that are getting made
same as the forum itself that can be used for more communication

Greets From PowerChaos

[khamark]

Hi Mahkul, i'm writing here because i sent a mail but not received yet any answer (suppose that you've many of them to check...) the fact is that 2 days ago i've sold 3 btc to a user, but i've not heard from him so far, was wondering if i can cancel the transaction to unfreeze my btc...'cause the guy bought them at 8.29GBP and now the price has dropped a lot..let me know

[ancow]

Hi Mahkul, i'm writing here because i sent a mail but not received yet any answer (suppose that you've many of them to check...) the fact is that 2 days ago i've sold 3 btc to a user, but i've not heard from him so far, was wondering if i can cancel the transaction to unfreeze my btc...'cause the guy bought them at 8.29GBP and now the price has dropped a lot..let me know

Why would you want to cancel to be able to sell at a lower price?

Anyway, at least with German banks, you'll have to wait a 3-day minimum until any money gets transferred (not counting weekends and holidays). That's just the way it works and I'm sure Germany isn't the only place where you have to wait.
Also, while no communication is annoying, there might be reasons for this like the buyer is really busy right now, your mail(s) landed in their spam folder, ...
I'd advise you to be a bit more patient and wait at least a day or two more before requesting a cancellation.

[khamark]

it is fun how people like to talk about things even not knowing the facts , the BTC were sold through Moneybookers, so no waiting time, i've sent a mail 12minutes after the selling (i was online at that moment) and not received any contact from the buyer. Anyway, the transaction was closed by the administrators reason "buyer had problems with moneybookers", so problem solved.
Regarding the price, i prefer to have 3 btc that i can sell instead having them frozen, if you think about it i've lost the opportunity to sell them to another buyer at the same price, but that's not the bigger problem anyway.. cheers

[ancow]

it is fun how people like to talk about things even not knowing the facts

It's also funny how people expect proper answers without providing the necessary details...

My answer was correct for the detail provided. Had you mentioned Moneybookers before, it would have been different.

[khamark]

no need to write it, the point was the non communication by the buyer (via normal procedure, reply to system mail and direct contact) thanks for the advise though. Anyway the problem is solved

[wolfangel91]

hi,
I just want to post a little contribution for the paypal chargeback issue (and sorry for my english..)
I've been stolen 3 times by paypal because the buyer told them that his account was hacked and 3 times paypal told me that virtual values were not assured by them, so I lost my money!
Last week, same thing for 65€, buyer pretend he was hacked etc.... and I decided to NOT reply to paypal (they send me 3-4 mails in the week..never reply), and finally after +/- 7 days they send me this :

"Our study on the transaction below is now complete. we
could not find evidence of unauthorized access to account
the buyer. The file has not been resolved in favor of the latter,
no money has been debited from your account."

So I keep my 65€

I hope this will help, maybe it's an exception , maybe not..