What I experienced since the past two days now

[Outhue]

To cut this story short, it turned out that my trusted neigboir whom I have few times vouched for to be a bitcoin investor is a online scammer who collect Bitcoin from his victims, until he was bursted 2 days ago, it was around 5am in the morning when the raid happened in our compound, I couldn't say anything about this since there is no concrete information about what he did yet until later.

I was so shocked because I don't look at him like this, I was still planning to go to a nearby secondary school with this neigbour of mine and teach students about bitcoin, I have already talked to their principal and he said he will give me a date when I can come.

My neighbour have been scamming some foreigners for the past years as per the information I got from one of the hunt squad and he is storing the Bitcoin in a hardware wallet, funny thing is I was the one that gave him the idea to store Bitcoin in hardware wallet so keep it safer.

Now I sat back and think about a few arguments we had in the past, remember when the forum stop supporting mixers? It was in that period, he was so supportive of mixers like it is a must but I kept saying that I have no reasons to use mixers, I could have been suspicious of him then but I trusted him.

Many people are going to hate me for this but I don't blame the law for going after mixers and privacy featured wallets in crypto space, if you believe that you are clean it is only to yourself, the other users might not, you really can't tell who to trust or not.

Many people are criminals in disguise and they are ruining bitcoin name by scamming people using Bitcoin as if it is a safe pass to scam people for free and get away with it, so no wonder that the government hates Mixers and privacy in this space, who is to be blame if not for our people who are criminals in disguise?

Not all Bitcoin investors are real investors, some are just hiding and pretending to be Bitcoin real investors, even if they are close to you, it doesn't mean they are clean, many good people want privacy and mixers to prevail but I wonder how when bad people are taking advantage of these features to steal from others.

[Hatchy]

Trust? If we speak about trusting someone when it comes to cryptocurrency, then we might end up trusting the wrong persons just like you did here. You are very lucky not to have been arrested along side him. Because some people would want to drag others along when the fall in this kind of situation. You should be mindful of whom you keep as friend or tell about you being a Bitcoiner.

Though we all know that mixers were initially created to improve privacy for bitcoiners but some people have decided to spoil the good use of mixers and give it  bad names. We can't blame the government for going after mixing services because if they are all left unregulated, things may go out of hand. A lot of criminals will turn mixers into their den of illicit activities. So it's all for the best.

[peter0425]

My neighbour have been scamming some foreigners for the past years as per the information I got from one of the hunt squad and he is storing the Bitcoin in a hardware wallet, funny thing is I was the one that gave him the idea to store Bitcoin in hardware wallet so keep it safer.

I am glad that you weren't pointed as one of his accomplices. People might think that you were in on this too since you were kind of close and you are both Bitcoin investors. You'd probably have to check whether you both had any transaction with each other and whether this can be used by officials to track anyone and have them checked and investigated.

These are the very same people who tarnish the bitcoins image that's why many still refuse to acknowledge.

[Davidvictorson]

Do not trust, verify.

There are the types of conversations you have with some random people about Bitcoin and the technologies around that you can just smell something fishy. Too many support for seemly illegal services, curious questions on how to bypass illegal services etc it should be enough to walk away from these conversations.

All Bitcoin investors cannot be genuine. There will always be the bad eggs who have chosen that way of life. Caught off every communication with them and keep them at arms length soon they will meet their waterloo. And that will be when the FBI, Interpol and local security will come for their arrest.

[Helena Yu]

To cut this story short, it turned out that my trusted neigboir whom I have few times vouched for to be a bitcoin investor is a online scammer who collect Bitcoin from his victims, until he was bursted 2 days ago, it was around 5am in the morning when the raid happened in our compound

Look, how exactly mixers help your friend in this case? if mixers really help criminal to stay anonymous/undetected, why he can get caught? I don't see mixers should be blamed in this case, actually mixers didn't help him.

Many people are going to hate me for this but I don't blame the law for going after mixers and privacy featured wallets in crypto space, if you believe that you are clean it is only to yourself, the other users might not, you really can't tell who to trust or not.

Nope, I don't blame you to teach/discuss about mixers.

Many things are two edged sword, if a mother teach a kids to use knife to cut apples, but this kids stabbed someone using knife, is the mother a criminal and should going to jail?

[Alone055]

Let me give you some brotherly advice; Don't ever open up publicly about your involvement with cryptocurrencies because it can backfire on a lot of occasions, and besides, it is not safe at all.

You trusted the guy who was a scammer, you have been discussing Bitcoin and other stuff with him and he probably knew you were an investor and had cryptocurrencies. What if he was also a serious criminal who would do anything for money? He could rob you at gunpoint or even harm you only to get access to your funds because he knew you had them.

So, it is much better that you keep these things private and don't let anyone know about these things even if it's someone very close to you because you can't trust anyone in this world these days as you said.

[Nheer]

Trust is not something one can easily place on a person just by looks or how well you communicate or talk, it is something a person earns after undergoing certain tests and after observing for a long time. Even close friends or relatives can’t be trusted easily so trusting a neighbor of yours easily is not ideal but i don’t blame you though.

There are lots of criminals around now and it is difficult to tell when you see them that why it is important not to share personal information with just anyone. You are even lucky you didn’t disclose any useful information to him that he could have used against you. These kind of people have always given Bitcoin and cryptocurrency a bad name and they are the reason why many are still scared to adopt it and this is the reason why governments are reluctant to accept bitcoin and cryptocurrencies. They believe they criminals will hide behind use of cryptocurrency and with this government now have another reason to fight against the use of cryptocurrency, these set of people really tarnish the image of cryptocurrency because they are giving it a bad name.

Criminal have always been around even before the existence of bitcoin and will still be around even if bitcoin doesn’t exist so even if cryptocurrency is banned criminals will still find other means to stay around so government only using this as an excuse to do away with cryptocurrency.

[stadus]

Do not trust, verify.

There are the types of conversations you have with some random people about Bitcoin and the technologies around that you can just smell something fishy. Too many support for seemly illegal services, curious questions on how to bypass illegal services etc it should be enough to walk away from these conversations.

All Bitcoin investors cannot be genuine. There will always be the bad eggs who have chosen that way of life. Caught off every communication with them and keep them at arms length soon they will meet their waterloo. And that will be when the FBI, Interpol and local security will come for their arrest.

In all conversation that involves about money and investment, learn not to trust easily, otherwise you will fall as a new victim as well. But sometimes, scammers tend to be smarter than us. They won’t argue with us so that we’ll eventually feel that we’re on the same side. But in reality, they’re just waiting for us to finally fall on their traps. So it pays to be more careful and cautious with our actions and decisions that involve about money and investments. And obviously trust no one, that’s the only way that we can protect our own funds from stealing.

[m2017]

Many people are criminals in disguise and they are ruining bitcoin name by scamming people using Bitcoin as if it is a safe pass to scam people for free and get away with it, so no wonder that the government hates Mixers and privacy in this space, who is to be blame if not for our people who are criminals in disguise?

Following your logic, you too may turn out to be a potential criminal, just because you use bitcoin or a mixer. It seems to me that the criminal influence of bitcoin is greatly exaggerated, as is the opinion that mixers are necessarily used for criminal purposes.

Governments hate privacy and mixers for completely different reasons. Governments want to maintain a monopoly on the issue and regulation of money, a monopoly on privacy (only they are allowed to allocate millions of money for unknown expenses and hide everything under the heading “secret”) and want to control any financial transactions between people (as well as safely collect taxes for each money movement).

Not all Bitcoin investors are real investors, some are just hiding and pretending to be Bitcoin real investors, even if they are close to you, it doesn't mean they are clean, many good people want privacy and mixers to prevail but I wonder how when bad people are taking advantage of these features to steal from others.

The knife has claimed the lives of many people, but is this a reason to completely ban the sale of kitchen, tourist, craft and other knives? The use of mixers by some users for criminal purposes doesn't give rise to a total ban on mixers. This problem needs to be addressed in a way other than depriving most good users of their privacy tool.

[HideYourKeys]

This is one of the reasons you should be very private with regards to Bitcoin topics... he could have even stolen from you

[joeperry]

That's really sad to see your trusted neighbor turned it like that, you really can see people's real true color with money involved, the bad thing is you vouched for him/her and many people will might think that you might scammed them too especially you are really into crypto -in other word it would likely hard to gather their trust again regarding crypto even though your goal is to educate them.

By the way I still like your advocacy to teach crypto in schools, kudos!

[lovesmayfamilis]

When it comes to money, many people reveal a completely different side. Therefore, of course, we must bring information to the world about Bitcoin, but we cannot save the world from scammers. Your goals to help your neighbor were good, but now, having gained experience from the other side, you need to be more attentive to the people you trust with something. The mere fact that you own Bitcoin is already a red rag for someone to one day rob you. But if you also teach, these people, having fallen into a trap with the authorities, can drag you into their network and call you a teacher. Therefore, remember that your tongue is sometimes your enemy. And silence is always gold.

[adultcrypto]

Trust? If we speak about trusting someone when it comes to cryptocurrency, then we might end up trusting the wrong persons just like you did here. You are very lucky not to have been arrested along side him. Because some people would want to drag others along when the fall in this kind of situation. You should be mindful of whom you keep as friend or tell about you being a Bitcoiner.

You took this words out of me and to be frank, there are many links that would have implicated the OP in this matter and from my experience with the authorities, he might still be called to answer some questions unless he is from a country that is friendly with bitcoin. What the authorities will be looking at will be how the crime was being carried out and who were the people that shared the knowledge to the suspect. Somehow along the line, they will try to know if he acted alone or in connivance with others and the OP might be mentioned as those who helped him perfect his crime. I do not pray it get to that point but this should serve as a lesson to us that we should be careful who we share the knowledge of bitcoin with because some people always look for opportunity to corrupt what is real and genuine.

[CryptoHeadlineNews]

Many people are criminals in disguise and they are ruining bitcoin name by scamming people using Bitcoin as if it is a safe pass to scam people for free and get away with it, so no wonder that the government hates Mixers and privacy in this space, who is to be blame if not for our people who are criminals in disguise?

Not all Bitcoin investors are real investors, some are just hiding and pretending to be Bitcoin real investors, even if they are close to you, it doesn't mean they are clean, many good people want privacy and mixers to prevail but I wonder how when bad people are taking advantage of these features to steal from others.

You don't have to blame yourself my friend, because anybody is likely to have acted the same way you did in ignorance believing he was truly a Bitcoin investor, not knowing he was an internet scammer in disguise who scammed people through Bitcoin, while using mixers so as to make his transaction untraceable. But I'm happy he got caught by Law enforcement agents. And I think this should be a lesson to each and every one of us here on this forum not to totally believe anybody, be it relative or friends who though we knew for a long time, but only to travel and came back rich, not to doubt his source of income. Because one thing Iife have been able to teach me is that true wealth don't come overnight, but gradually.

[Fiatless]

Now I sat back and think about a few arguments we had in the past, remember when the forum stop supporting mixers? It was in that period, he was so supportive of mixers like it is a must but I kept saying that I have no reasons to use mixers, I could have been suspicious of him then but I trusted him.

Many people are going to hate me for this but I don't blame the law for going after mixers and privacy featured wallets in crypto space, if you believe that you are clean it is only to yourself, the other users might not, you really can't tell who to trust or not.

When few criminals use a service, it doesn't make such a service bad. I am not a criminal but I am a full supporter of Bitcoin mixing services. I don't want anybody including the government to monitor or know about my financial transactions. Is privacy now a criminal offence? Why didn't the government close banks that engaged in money laundering?    

Many people are criminals in disguise and they are ruining bitcoin name by scamming people using Bitcoin as if it is a safe pass to scam people for free and get away with it, so no wonder that the government hates Mixers and privacy in this space, who is to be blame if not for our people who are criminals in disguise?

Not all Bitcoin investors are real investors, some are just hiding and pretending to be Bitcoin real investors, even if they are close to you, it doesn't mean they are clean, many good people want privacy and mixers to prevail but I wonder how when bad people are taking advantage of these features to steal from others.

The highest amount of scams in my country is through fiat. The Bitcoin space is not the only area that has scammers. Scams and other criminal activities are prevalent in almost all sectors of the world. Has the use of guns for criminal activities made the government stop gun possession? The government's responsibility is to increase enlightenment programmes about cybersecurity to help people avoid scams.

[Razmirraz]

You don't need to blame yourself for the case that happened to your neighbor, he has chosen his own path in an incorrect way and will be responsible for all the crimes he has committed so far. You are still lucky because you only share knowledge with him and are not involved in any cases of fraud that he commits. He deserves to be punished for his actions which have tarnished Bitcoin's image in the eyes of society, people like this need to be eradicated so that Bitcoin is not always dragged into things that cause other people to lose.

[ajiz138]

So first he after the act of deceiving foreigners stored his stolen BTC on the exchange? Then after you told about the hardware in storing BTC there? Logically when he succeeded in deceiving many people, of course he couldn't have stored bitcoins in a third party in the first place, but I certainly don't know the exact reason.

I don't think anyone needs to hate you because you are not involved at all the neighbor just has bad intentions without involving you while you may not know at all, then it's his fault but from his arrest the reason for suspicion is because of what? Has anyone been lurking for a long time?

What is clear is that the use of the mixer is to obscure his bitcoin so that it is difficult to identify, but fraudsters always have loopholes to break bitcoin anywhere.

[fuguebtc]

To cut this story short, it turned out that my trusted neigboir whom I have few times vouched for to be a bitcoin investor is a online scammer who collect Bitcoin from his victims, until he was bursted 2 days ago, it was around 5am in the morning when the raid happened in our compound

Look, how exactly mixers help your friend in this case? if mixers really help criminal to stay anonymous/undetected, why he can get caught? I don't see mixers should be blamed in this case, actually mixers didn't help him.

Why don't you ask questions, this guy has been scamming for many years and robbing a lot of people's money. But because he used a mixer, the police had difficulty arresting him and accidentally let him commit fraud for many years. If mixers are really as harmless as you say, then why is the government so determined to eliminate them?

Many people are going to hate me for this but I don't blame the law for going after mixers and privacy featured wallets in crypto space, if you believe that you are clean it is only to yourself, the other users might not, you really can't tell who to trust or not.

Nope, I don't blame you to teach/discuss about mixers.

Many things are two edged sword, if a mother teach a kids to use knife to cut apples, but this kids stabbed someone using knife, is the mother a criminal and should going to jail?

But I agree with you, mixers, bitcoin or fiat...all are not at fault and all those scams come from human behavior. The scammers are the ones responsible and the people who lost money also have some responsibility because if they weren't greedy then no one could have scammed them.

[mindrust]

Criminals definitely use privacy tools as a shield to protect themselves from the law enforcement, nobody can deny it... It is definitely a tough topic for me too because I too can't convince myself if we really need to have full online privacy. We are able to create anonymous nicknames for our social media/forum accounts and that gives some privacy but when we commit a crime, the police can find out our real identity quite easily. That's a very basic privacy option and it works to some degree. People who demand the hardest privacy tool are usually the ones that do something the gov isn't going to like. I also never understand why would a normal guy want to mix his/her coins unless he has some tainted coins or he/she is a scammer/criminal. When a person who got his coins from a legit source like an exchange or mining and uses coin mixing, he literally helps these bad people to wash their money, isn't it? It doesn't make sense at all.

[South Park]

snip

Many people are going to hate me for this but I don't blame the law for going after mixers and privacy featured wallets in crypto space, if you believe that you are clean it is only to yourself, the other users might not, you really can't tell who to trust or not.

Many people are criminals in disguise and they are ruining bitcoin name by scamming people using Bitcoin as if it is a safe pass to scam people for free and get away with it, so no wonder that the government hates Mixers and privacy in this space, who is to be blame if not for our people who are criminals in disguise?

Not all Bitcoin investors are real investors, some are just hiding and pretending to be Bitcoin real investors, even if they are close to you, it doesn't mean they are clean, many good people want privacy and mixers to prevail but I wonder how when bad people are taking advantage of these features to steal from others.

If that is what you think, I do not blame you as this is an experience that was simply too close for you to remain indifferent about, and you may even think that you were lucky to not get your reputation ruined as you talked with this person often about bitcoin, however to me this seems more as a cautionary tale about being more mindful about the kind of people we discuss bitcoin with, as you have no way to know who you really are talking to.