Question about Freezing of account

[cryptoaddictchie]

Hey there guys, I would like to open a case of my friend's friend. Maybe anybody could lay some info regarding it. There is an exchange she is using I dont want to mention the name but she got an email from them regarding freezing of her account due to malicious trading or abnormalities on her account which might involve in data leaking and money laundering. So they are holding her account balance. They said she needed to fund 20% of her account balance for verification purposes and this is within 3days span of time if not the account will be totally frozen.

Ive asked her regarding their suspicious data leaked. She said that she was just copytrading the trading input of her whale friend and they were doing it simultaneously like if the other one is doing that time she also entering the same value or entry price and hence exiting on the same target price. So basically copytrade. Maybe this is the suspected thing of the exchange. But asking for deposit to verify or cleanse a freeze account? How is that even valid right to remedy the suspicion. They should ask for an evidence or any proof of their allegations instead.

Has anyone here with the same experience? Or at least solution how to overcome besides giving the 20% verification fund to them. Cause she is scared that after she do that, what would be the guarantee that the account will be unfroze.

Highly appreciated any response.

[Poker Player]

... They said she needed to fund 20% of her account balance for verification purposes and this is within 3days span of time if not the account will be totally frozen.

... But asking for deposit to verify or cleanse a freeze account? How is that even valid right to remedy the suspicion. They should ask for am evidence or any proof of their allegations instead.

It looks like a scam to me. I've never heard about such a thing but I'm not a trader either. I would exercise the utmost caution and not send any money unless I was 100% sure it was not a scam.

[mindrust]

Which exchange is that? Is it a KYC-enabled exchange or not? Is it a local exchange or international? You don't give us enough information and even if you did, we can't really help you. Let's say you said binance (or bestchange:)) did this bla bla, what can we do? If they have an official BTT account here, we can create a flag on them and wait for an answer and even after we do that, she may never get her money back.

[Maus0728]

Haven't you turned on the "anti-phishing" code whenever an exchange sends you an email? As far as I know, almost of the exchange in the market today does that especially Binance and OKX.

If I we're you, I'd go send an email to their customer support to verify if this is true, because to me, it appears to be a typical scam approach that you may encounter in Telegram groups, where a fraudulent representative may message you first and ask for money.

[cryptoaddictchie]

Which exchange is that? Is it a KYC-enabled exchange or not? Is it a local exchange or international? You don't give us enough information and even if you did, we can't really help you.

I cant mentioned it cause maybe this would be fud to them or can be use as defamation right? Also the person involved dont want to compromise the situation cause if this got out to them maybe they will give her a hard time getting her money more since it got knocked out on a public discussion especially in forum. I assure you the exchange is also known, an international one.

If they have an official BTT account here, we can create a flag on them and wait for an answer and even after we do that, she may never get her money back.

Thats why, she said someone helping her now, I'll wait for her update. But I looked it up it seems they dont have an Ann thread here.

[BitDane]

Has anyone here with the same experience? Or at least solution how to overcome besides giving the 20% verification fund to them. Cause she is scared that after she do that, what would be the guarantee that the account will be unfroze.

20% deposit for verification?  This is new to me.  Most of the freeze account due to violation often asked for KYC, or proof of funds.  This makes me think that the friend of your friend is getting scammed.  The sign are there, the 3 days deadline which gives the victim the sense of emergency thus may force the victim to give in to the demand.  It will be more suspicious if they give the deposit address instead of directly depositing on the trading platform.

I think you should tell the name of the exchange since it is not defamation if what you stated is true.  Knowing what exchange it is enable us to avoid using that exchange in the future and help us avoid the same experience.

[cryptoaddictchie]

Okay guys Ive get it now. When she mentioned to me bitrue we are talking about the same exchange. Thus the process is quite suspicious even for me too. Cause I know they are a normal one. But when I asked her about the website indeed its bitrue but the its not the one I knew. So when I checked it, looks like it is a different one.

Can we report this exchange
Its bitrue but ends in [.cm] not [.com]

Also I think that the one he do copy trade is an accomplice of this exchange.

[SquirrelJulietGarden]

Hey there guys, I would like to open a case of my friend's friend. Maybe anybody could lay some info regarding it. There is an exchange she is using I dont want to mention the name but she got an email from them regarding freezing of her account due to malicious trading or abnormalities on her account which might involve in data leaking and money laundering. So they are holding her account balance.

It is acceptable if they have that in their Terms of Service and I am sure many exchanges have that rule.

They said she needed to fund 20% of her account balance for verification purposes and this is within 3days span of time if not the account will be totally frozen.

This is unacceptable manner and I am sure if any exchange sends a user such greed request, I bet that exchange is a scam one.

Accounts can be frozen, suspended and investigation can take a long time but such request should never be sent to user. It is double scam against their user. Take user account first and try to ask user to send more money to their exchange to take it a second time.

After investigation time, exchange can release fund for user or seize it but no such sending more money to verify your account. In addition, pressuring on user with 3 days span of time is another suspicious request.

[Cantsay]

They said she needed to fund 20% of her account balance for verification purposes and this is within 3days span of time if not the account will be totally frozen.
~~~

This whole thing looks shady to me.
If eventually it turns out that they are really investigating her account then they should carry on with it, there's no issue there that's a normal thing for an exchange to do whenever they feel a user is doing something that's against their ToS but the fact that they are now requesting for her to find her account I have never heard of or seen anyone made such a complaint about an exchange before.

Since you didn't mention the name of the exchange it might be a little bit difficult to give a complete/thorough feedback on your topic I'm just writing this based on the exchange I normally use for trading but she should check if she's dealing with a counterfeit of the exchange.

[SquirrelJulietGarden]

This whole thing looks shady to me.
If eventually it turns out that they are really investigating her account then they should carry on with it, there's no issue there that's a normal thing for an exchange to do whenever they feel a user is doing something that's against their ToS but the fact that they are now requesting for her to find her account I have never heard of or seen anyone made such a complaint about an exchange before.

It is really shady and weird if we think of trusted exchanges. They can ask you to do KYC or do advanced KYC but a solid exchange won't request user to send more fund just to complete their verification process. Will they refund the amount you send to them after all?

What if they reject your additional proof including your new depositing coin, will they seize it too or will refund it to you?

No other idea rather than shady and greedy.

Since you didn't mention the name of the exchange it might be a little bit difficult to give a complete/thorough feedback on your topic I'm just writing this based on the exchange I normally use for trading but she should check if she's dealing with a counterfeit of the exchange.

We don't need to have the exchange name to know it is scam!

OP's friend could fall to a scam exchange or log in exchange account in a phishing site which is scam and tries to steal his coin.

[Lorence.xD]

Its hard to determine what kind of exchange your friend used in trading as you give less information. But for 20% just to verified your account already sound as a scam. Hopefully your friend were not trading in illicit way where she might be opened in fraud and scams. It sounds fishy, is there no other option for your friend to retrieve her account such as proofs and KYC? If none then for sure its a scam especially the part they scare your friend to totally froze the account, makes you guys panic and would fall for their trick. Tried to call out the exchanges customer for service and ask for assistance to your friend's issue, for them to authenticate the mentioned freezing of her account. It would be better to spread their identity for people to avoid that kind of exchanges.

[joniboini]

Can we report this exchange
Its bitrue but ends in [.cm] not [.com]

Are you sure this is not a scam exchange? I'm not familiar with Bitrue, but as far as I know, they never mentioned having other domains other than the com you mentioned. Even if it is true, I don't think any tier-3 or 2 exchange such as Hotbit asks you for a 20% deposit for verification. At best they would just close your account without saying anything else other than they were allowed to do so because the user is breaking their TOS. Still shady as hell, but not as scammy as this one IMO. Either your friend registered into a scam exchange that will serve its users for a while before they scam them, a phishing website, or a very shady exchange that should never be used regardless if she does copy trade or not.

[cryptoaddictchie]

Either your friend registered into a scam exchange that will serve its users for a while before they scam them, a phishing website, or a very shady exchange that should never be used regardless if she does copy trade or not.

Its been confirmed mate. She has been scammed and registered to a wrong exchange. So I do hope everyone report this bitrue with a domain ends in [.cm] cause its a trapped exchange copy cat. My friend's friend accepted her fate and probably learn an expensive lesson here.

[kingvirtus09]

I think that exchange for sure is an unknown exchange here in the crypto world, right? when she was asked for 20% of her balance as a supplement or to unfreeze her account, the process is a bit wrong and it is obvious that she was starting to be blackmailed or scammed.
Although I have never experienced such an issue on an exchange site platform, but I have heard of such a scenario on this forum, where the more she follows what the exchange wants, the more she sends, is the more they take advantage with her. And I don't know if the exchange will do the same when the 20% requested from her has been sent, and we are not sure if the platform will be motivated to ask them to send money again.

[adaseb]

This is a first. I heard from people getting their account frozen but to get it unfrozen by sending more funds to it is just crazy and obviously a scam.

Copy trading is not illegal. The exchange shouldn’t care since they are in the business of making money by trading fees and not whether you make money or not. Almost sounds like some bucket shop.

[Despairo]

So this is the summary on this thread,

The @OP's friend account on the exchange get frozen because of copy trading, the exchange demanding for 20% in order to verify her account. Then she discovered if she use bitrue.cm, not bitrue.com which mean she got phished.

So if people are trade with copy trading strategy, they don't need to worry since it don't breach the exchange terms of service and there's no such fee money in order to verify an account.

[Potato Chips]

Its been confirmed mate. She has been scammed and registered to a wrong exchange. So I do hope everyone report this bitrue with a domain ends in [.cm] cause its a trapped exchange copy cat. My friend's friend accepted her fate and probably learn an expensive lesson here.

Has she written to bitrue.com about this? who knows they might actually do something about it like publish a warning for their users.

In the mean time, I dropped a report to:

1.https://safebrowsing.google.com/safebrowsing/report_phish/
2.https://www.netcom.cm - their registar according to whois

Netcom.cm Sarl

To be frank, I don't have high hopes about this but i guess, it's better than doing nothing where your chances are flat zero.

she got an email from them regarding freezing of her account due to malicious trading or abnormalities on her account which might involve in data leaking and money laundering. So they are holding her account balance. They said she needed to fund 20% of her account balance for verification purposes and this is within 3days span of time if not the account will be totally frozen.

I know the case is over but for people who may stumble upon this in the future, I'd like to note that this is just another spin of 'deposit first before you can withdraw' scam. Aside from money laundering, scammers have also used tax as another reason to convince their victims to deposit and hold their funds hostage.

Going forward, it's best to believe that any centralized exchange who ask for a huge ass deposit for your account to go back to normal standing is a scam.


A bit of a meta related suggestion: Perhaps edit the op and add an update as a lot of people only read the first post which means you could reach more people.

[GreatArkansas]

(....)
Ive asked her regarding their suspicious data leaked. She said that she was just copytrading the trading input of her whale friend and they were doing it simultaneously like if the other one is doing that time she also entering the same value or entry price and hence exiting on the same target price. So basically copytrade. Maybe this is the suspected thing of the exchange. But asking for deposit to verify or cleanse a freeze account? How is that even valid right to remedy the suspicion. They should ask for an evidence or any proof of their allegations instead.

If this copy trading is being done manually by your friend, I don't think a particular exchange can detect it as copy trading with somebody else.
Ask your friend if maybe the API keys of her account are being used on some 3rd party applications like for some bot to automate the copy trading. Ask also where the funds from his account came from when she is depositing to the exchange.

EDIT: I saw it was just a phishing attempt, but my above scenario could be possible just in case that this is true for some exchanges.

[jrrsparkles]

Either your friend registered into a scam exchange that will serve its users for a while before they scam them, a phishing website, or a very shady exchange that should never be used regardless if she does copy trade or not.

Its been confirmed mate. She has been scammed and registered to a wrong exchange. So I do hope everyone report this bitrue with a domain ends in [.cm] cause its a trapped exchange copy cat. My friend's friend accepted her fate and probably learn an expensive lesson here.

That's it, cause bo legitimate exchange will ask for a deposit for verification purpose, they can go for extensive KYC processing if they feel some kind of money laundering or anything that goes against their terms but just smell it as scam when they ask money to release their money and this type of scam isn't new but the scammers are coming with new domains which almost resembles the existing reputed or new exchange.

[tranthidung]

EDIT: I saw it was just a phishing attempt, but my above scenario could be possible just in case that this is true for some exchanges.

Phishing attempt is a most obvious thinking but if it is a true request from an exchange, I am sure they are a scam exchange.

Like this

• Beware of "Pay original fine" - a scam method
• Some users say those scam teams even use that UI templates to repeat their scam with some exchanges
• I am not sure OP fell an exchange with similar user interface? Are they back after 3 years?