Claims on old lost wallets by a client of Salomon Brothers

[Tfs]

Recently a lot of old large wallets, possibly withblost keys, have been tagged with OP_RETURNs by a claim of ownership pointing to the Bank Salomon Brothers, which is still a subsidiary of City Group apparently (to be confirmed).

The initial notice served is this https://salomonbros.com/owner-notice
In particular it says:
"Our client seeks ownership right to the digital wallet for which no valid owner responds prior to October 5, 2025. Hence forth, no person shall trespass upon, infringe the rights of, nor attempt to extract any digital asset, from this digital wallet without prior written authorization of our client, except for an individual or entity which can show valid proof of ownership."

So this is a client of the Bank, not the Bank itself.

But it also links to another notice  https://salomonbros.com/about-notices which adds context:
"There are bad actors who seek to take advantage of these keyless wallets. They could include rogue states and criminal organizations that have far more resources than individual wallet holders. Our client believes this issue must be resolved to eliminate this risk."

The wording is rather strange "Less than 1/3th of 1% of all crypto digital wallets have been or will be notified."

It also appears to react to the 80 000 BTC that moved on 4th july and had been among those tagged:
"Are Wallet holders Taking Notices Seriously?
It appears so. Last week, after receiving the Notice, some wallet owners signaled their wallets are not abandoned by using their private key in a transaction. In this case by moving the contents of their wallet to a new wallet."

It adds a bait of gains for those who think they can claim ownership without a privkey "Our client is establishing a keyless wallet recovery fund arrangement for those who lost access to their wallets but can support a valid claim to ownership. Owners who have lost access to their wallets and would otherwise suffer a total loss - can now gain value through the Client's efforts. This arrangement will be administered by Salomon Brothers. Details will be announced in the coming months. "

This looks like phishing. And then the text actually reacts to that, in an english with spelling errors:
"Media Reports: Most Reporting To-Date Is Misleading & Speculative
Many coin media reports to this date, July 9, have been based on speculation rather than actual facts. We are dismayed that the reporting thus far is based on zero information from Salomon Brothers. Some have reported, with no evidence, that the client is a "hacker" (implying nefarious intent) or is phishing and has targeted certain wallets. All of that is false.
The client is not a hacker and is not physhing and no specific wallet is targeted. Applying a little common sense and logic can usually reveal the inaccurate reports. Ask yourself, (1) would a hacker engage a financial institution like Salomon Brothers if they meant to do something nefarious? Of course not. And, (2)  would any financial institution allow a client to phish for data? Of course not. Further, and logically, if a party wanted to phish for data - they would not be going to abandoned wallets (that they cannot access) they would direct efforts to wallets that are not abandoned so that they can try to get the key. Lastly, (4) the Notice is to a multiple wallets, all of which fit certain objective criteria. No specific wallet or wallets are targeted. How could anything be achieved by targeting one abandoned wallet or a few abandoned wallets? "

My only question is: what is the status of Salomon Brothers Inc and that website? Is it really still inside City Group?

[Tfs]

Just to answer my own message, I found a 2020 dissolution in Miami of SALOMON BROTHERS BUSINESS ADVISORS LLC, by someone called Chris Daniels, which refered to SALOMON BROTHERS HOLDINGS INC. 99 WALL STREET, STE 180 NEW YORK, NY 10005.

https://search.sunbiz.org/Inquiry/CorporationSearch/SearchResults?InquiryType=EntityName&InquiryDirectionType=PreviousRecord&SearchTerm=SALOMON%20BABANI&SearchNameOrder=SALOMONBROTHERSREALTY%20P010000515100&ListNameOrder=SALOMONBESQUENAZIPA%20P110000091310&Detail=FL.DOS.Corporations.Shared.Contracts.FilingRecord

That Chris Daniels is related to the Salomonbros.com site by a replyto email. So not sure if we're dealing with a real bank or the former website of some financial advisors unrelated to Citigroup.

[Tfs]

Also, the claims have now hit a lot of Satoshi's early addresses like 1FvzCLoTPGANNjWoUo6jUGuAG3wg1w4YjR which got the reward from bloc 3.

It seems this could be all related to Craigh Wright, since some of the addresses that sent the OP_RETURN can be traced to the 2020 address 1GBzbXJmcMjnDyTW2yKJFfeXUGicG1zpC4 which was a spam involving BSV described by Lopp here https://blog.lopp.net/history-bitcoin-transaction-dust-spam-storms/ See the address bc1qa2tgef8w9rcgwdvmuhjft3a2nyjn853vmcjaec and both its souce and where its outbound tx ultimately lead to.

[LoyceV]

How could anything be achieved by targeting one abandoned wallet or a few abandoned wallets?

My assumption is this:

This isn't about keys, this is about claiming ownership if those coins are ever deposited into an exchange in the (far) future. I've seen enough questionable judge rulings to not be surprised if some judge in some country would go with this.
It's beyond stupid: if the coins are actually abandoned, they can't access them. But if someone moves them 20 years from now, that proves they weren't abandoned. There is no "claiming abandoned coins" in Bitcoin.

[BitGoba]

Without the private key, any claims to ownership of these addresses are meaningless. The private key is the only way to prove ownership of Bitcoin. Everything else is speculation or irrelevant.

[gmaxwell]

If I had to guess,  my guess would be that yet another stimulant abuser or AI addict convinced themselves that they could make themselves impossibly rich with this One Weird Trick.

It could also be, as people have suggested, a phishing attack intended to collect PII for targets of kidnapping and extortion--- but I think a clear minded kidnapper is likely to realize that their targets won't ever see the messages (except via media coverage) and is very unlikely to respond in any way and particularly unlikely to respond in any way except verifying that their keys are secure, likely undetectably.  And so, for the moment, drug or AI powered idiocy seems more likely to me -- crypto kidnappers aren't this dumb.

And, of course, as we saw with the nonsense of Wright and Ayre that they had no real difficulty finding serious professionals to help whitewash and otherwise enable their crimes... so the fact that they can manage to author spam transactions or make a webpage shouldn't influence our estimations of their credibility much (I'd say, "or spell" but as people have noticed, they seem to have hired some Nigerian princes for copyediting...).   I expect if we find a 'client' at all, we'll find some shady people with a recent death in the family who have been trying to quickly backdate a fake history of involvement in Bitcoin and general wealth. People with an atypical interest in AI, quantum computing, and various woo who think they are gonna strike it rich.

I've looked into the claimed BSV connection from the discussion here, and I can't verify it:   What I can see is that the origin of the funds used in this spam flood was a *recipient* of the pro BSV spam, but that isn't interesting because ~everyone was a recipient of that BSV spam. (of course, few know they were simply because wallets intentionally don't display any of these messages!).  Perhaps I just missed the transactions showing that they were a sender but I don't think so.  Without showing they were fairly directly a sender, without it hopping via some exchange wallets, then there isn't really a link.   Not that I don't believe that Ayre and Wright wouldn't try to reboot their prior heist attempt under a new guise, I absolutely do believe they will... but I just don't see the connection here yet.

Perhaps the most interesting thing about all of this is that their broadcast message essentially has them admitting to a crime:  They're farcically claiming to have "taken possession"  of thousands or tens of thousands of people's coins, each chunk worth at least 5 million dollars.  If anyone took any of this really seriously the first thing you might see is a federal lawsuit for conversion, naming Salomon Bros, their 'advisors', and some unnamed does asking the court to freeze their assets and accounts to secure 'return' of the supposedly possessed coins.  But of course, we don't see that, they haven't taken possession of anything.  The few targets who are aware have correctly identified this as crazy, criminal, or in any case irrelevant.

In spite of it being an unambiguous joke, that doesn't mean they can't do harm.  Like LoyceV suggests upthread, they may intend to appear unopposed in front of some ignorant judge and get some joke of an order to grab coins as they hit exchanges and other such absurd nuisance behavior.  Their targets can afford to take care of the threat should it arise, no doubt, but they shouldn't have to.

It probably would be better to shut down this fraud earlier rather than later-- simply because these things get more expensive to stop the longer they go on (see also Craig Wright!) but the Bitcoin community has often failed at being proactive about outside threats in the past, so I'm not holding my breath.

[Assiduous]

There are several facts that make it clear that Salomon Brothers is no longer under Citigroup.

The mentioned website is neither official nor authentic. There are many reasons to be suspicious about it. Even though the salomonbros website looks official, the domain was only registered recently, in 2023. A quick check shows that Scam Detector has given this site a score of 48.9/100, which means caution is needed when dealing with it. Although the site displays an official-looking address under the name “Salomon Brothers Inc.,” this does not prove that it is part of Citigroup.

Salomon Brothers was originally a powerful investment bank on Wall Street, founded in 1910. Later, in 1997, it became part of Travelers Group, and from there it was merged into Citigroup. However, in 2003, the Salomon Brothers brand name was formally discontinued within Citigroup.

Therefore, as of today, there is no active or functional unit under the name Salomon Brothers that belongs to Citigroup.