Way forward on P2P scams, persistent begging by traders and Merchants

[Antotena]

I have have seen similar threads like this on the forum and outside this forum about p2p merchants and their style of begging for funds. I have personally experienced different style of money extortion, incomplete payments, all form of excuses just to make make money from trades and this doesn't have anything to do with their rating and reputation, most of the time I don't trade with anyone below 97% rating and total trades in the last 30 trades, they turned to be the ones that engage in this practice the most.

Here is a list is similar things you can see from any p2p merchant and it doesn't have anything to do with their rating, reputation or even trades, it's even the ones with reputation that do this the most and if you are not careful, once you release coin to them, you can't do anything about it because you already agreed to have received the full payment. Here is a summary of things they do:

1. They begged to send you incomplete payment: If they are sending you money, let's say ₦52,000, they can beg you for the ₦2,000 on top to send you ₦50,000. This practice is very common in p2p traders. Here is one similar example on this thread.https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5551154.0

2. They purposely sent incomplete payments: I was a victim of this today and some happened months ago. I was expecting payment from this merchant, sent me incomplete payment and I didn't pay attention to the sent payments only to release usdt to him and I couldn't appeal despite the multiple complaints and report.

Here is one similar attempt that happened today.



I was expecting the merchant to send me ₦49393 but instead he sent me ₦40323. You can see that the 9 is hidden, if I didn't pay good attention to the credit alert, I would have thought it was the agreed payment but they purposely did this to scam people. They know Bybit customer service is bad and wouldn't do anything about it, they know you can't report to the bank and this has been persistent with p2p, I can only imagine if they do this like 10 times in a day, scam each trade worth of ₦10,000, that's ₦100,000 in a day.

*Ways forward to stop this Pandemic scams and begging

Everything that happened on p2p exchanges seek for each party attention, only you the seller or buyer can prevent from been scam by anyone or when a trader tries to use emotional talk and pitty talk to extort you. How to prevent this:

1. Don't release payment until you confirmed payment on your mobile app: it's easy to for everyone to operate transactions on their mobile app these days, don't rely on sms alert, values can be altered, you might not get good view of your account balance. Make sure to use transaction history to check amount that came into your account before you release any coin.

2. Report traders that engage in fraudulent schemes and give negative reviews for begging: I do ignore traders that try to send me incomplete payment after sending the remaining amount or when they try to beg for money. However, I personally feel like it's because they are been ignored and actions are not taken against them is why they keep coming back. If for every trade they try to beg or scam and they are getting negative reviews, they will stop one day because their ratings will reduce.



This trader purposely sent me incomplete payment and when I complained, he later gave excuses and sent the rest. I still gave him the negative review; if they keep getting this reviews and ratings, they will stop these scam attempts.

3. Please pay attention to some numbers, ₦99000 is different from ₦90000, ₦89321 can be confused with ₦80321, they have ways of playing around with digits that if you don't pay good attention to them, you will think it's actual amount. This is my experience and this how you should deal with them to save other people from all this begging and scam attempts.

[Charles-Tim]

This is very common on Bybit and we have discussed about it before a lot of time on this local board. These are examples:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5537424.msg65248889#msg65248889
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5536355.msg65209676#msg65209676

They are examples I used as references when people brought similar topics.

[DPHOR]

Yeah, anyone who is that active on this local board should understand how they functions currently and p2p has become something else and I must advise anyone who using exchange to be extremely cautious on how they easily rushed to release payment while they haven't confirmed if they buyer sent complete payment to their accounts. So, to say before whatever payment are made it's always advisable to activate our alerts sim card or email to receive alerts so that whenever a payment is sent we can be able to confirm and verify payment before rushing to release our assets to the buyer.

[BIT-BENDER]

Yeah, anyone who is that active on this local board should understand how they functions currently and p2p has become something else and I must advise anyone who using exchange to be extremely cautious on how they easily rushed to release payment while they haven't confirmed if they buyer sent complete payment to their accounts. So, to say before whatever payment are made it's always advisable to activate our alerts sim card or email to receive alerts so that whenever a payment is sent we can be able to confirm and verify payment before rushing to release our assets to the buyer.

The exchange also warns against releasing funds without confirming that you have actually received payment, every exchange especially bybit (the case study the op is using) goes the extra mile to warn users about scam, they make sure to use a catchy read warning signs, so if that is not enough to earn people against the dangers then I wonder what will.

[SatoPrincess]

If I had a dollar for everytime I have experienced such from p2p traders on some of these exchanges especially Bybit I would be a millionaire by now. I’m surprised you’re just experiencing this now because this has been the case for the longest since Nigeria government ban Binance p2p.

[igebotz]

Vendors with low ratings used to have limited exposure (shallow ban) on Binance p2p back in the days to prevent further scam attempts. The begging and sending of fake amounts was never a thing on Binance p2p. I think most Remitano vendors are moving to Bybit p2p cause they're known for behavior like this and it was one of the reasons I left that exchange a couple of years ago.

Why would someone with a locked liquidity worth million be begging for 100, 200 in DM if not greed.

[Davidvictorson]

I have been using ByBit for more than a year now and although this begging is very rampant, I have only experienced it like twice and of those two times, I have proceed to warn them sterning. I have even promise to report them. Just go for traders with higher rate of trades.  Also you also tell them that they will be reported if they try that nonsense with you. My strategy is to always hope I don't meet any more like that that tarnishes the image of ByBit.

[Youngrebel]

I have been using ByBit for more than a year now and although this begging is very rampant, I have only experienced it like twice and of those two times, I have proceed to warn them sterning. I have even promise to report them. Just go for traders with higher rate of trades.  Also you also tell them that they will be reported if they try that nonsense with you. My strategy is to always hope I don't meet any more like that that tarnishes the image of ByBit.

If you dey  sell Bitcoin,  You would have encountered it in many occasions. Those guys are making things difficult for cryptocurrency particular Bitcoin sellers in that exchange for them. I think I don see someone don talk say make we dey report them to the support team of the exchange but I believe the support team of those exchange e dey aware of that bad behaviour of the vendors.
The first time when I come to cryptocurrency, things were not like this. And everything was good to go. Is it that the government policies changing everything in the crypto market?

[Felicity_Tide]

I think most Remitano vendors are moving to Bybit p2p cause they're known for behavior like this and it was one of the reasons I left that exchange a couple of years ago.

Why would someone with a locked liquidity worth million be begging for 100, 200 in DM if not greed.

And from my observations and a few complaints that I have heard, their customer service is not always reliable in handling fraud related cases. Settling disputes with good accuracy and within a preassigned time is one way to reduce these fraudulent acts. I can remember coming across a thread on X, where a Bybit user had to drag Bybit for failing to settle a dispute involving millions of naira.

And I even doubt if Bybit takes actions against those that have been reported for consecutive begging.

[Jegileman]

1. Don't release payment until you confirmed payment on your mobile app: it's easy to for everyone to operate transactions on their mobile app these days, don't rely on sms alert, values can be altered, you might not get good view of your account balance. Make sure to use transaction history to check amount that came into your account before you release any coin.

In this era, many people don’t use SMS alert to confirm payment but I know some people may still be using that. Some may not be close to their mobile phone to access their bank app and tend to use SMS alert but that is a very bad practice now that fake SMS alerts can be sent and you won’t know. Those that make use of FinTech banks and make use of SMS alerts will be more prone to be tricked by scammers since most of these FinTech banks make use of phone number as the account number. So if you’ve used your phone number as your account number on your exchange P2P, don’t activate SMS alerts but rather make use of bank mobile apps to confirm payment.

2. Report traders that engage in fraudulent schemes and give negative reviews for begging: I do ignore traders that try to send me incomplete payment after sending the remaining amount or when they try to beg for money. However, I personally feel like it's because they are been ignored and actions are not taken against them is why they keep coming back. If for every trade they try to beg or scam and they are getting negative reviews, they will stop one day because their ratings will reduce.

I have only encountered this once but I was lenient not to give a negative review on the merchant because he begged me not to and said that’s not his ways, that it was just a tip they ask for and if you don’t wish you can let it be. Although he didn’t tell me that before sending incomplete payment. Next time I come across any merchant with such fraudulent act, I’ll gladly give them a negative review because it’s more persistent than before and the complaint is getting more and more. I now believe that they know what they’re doing and the only way to penalize them is to give them negative review. I think it’s going to reduce with that action taken against them.

[Callido]

If I had a dollar for everytime I have experienced such from p2p traders on some of these exchanges especially Bybit I would be a millionaire by now. I’m surprised you’re just experiencing this now because this has been the case for the longest since Nigeria government ban Binance p2p.

Since this news became rampart, i kept my eyes up to see anyone try to use such tactics on me, lucky for them none of the vendors have tried something like this to me, i wait for the day such will happen, they will beg and do report before releasing their coins, perhaps go 3 hours lengthy before releasing, best for an eye for an eye.

[Obari]

You already said it all that, the bybit customer care isn’t actually functioning well because if they do, then I’m sure the rate of these scams wouldn’t be this much and these silly act is already creeping into other exchanges and tye early these exchanges take some drastic actions on vendors, the better for them else these guys will end up ruining things for them and quickly move to other exchanges.

I understand that, bybit is one of the largest exchanges after Binance that’s why the cases are very rampant over there but the customer care aren’t doing anything serious about it because if they do, then some accounts should have been bound by now so that others would learn and exchange prestige restored.

[Ever-young]

Why would someone with a locked liquidity worth million be begging for 100, 200 in DM if not greed.

This is here is the main reason why I never give room for them to bring their rubbish request to my doorstep, in fact I don't even take it lightly with those greedy bastards, if I even noticed anytl form of begging or shortpaying, the first thing I'd do is leave them a horrible and negative review before even asking you to completely my money. At first I used to think that this was actually a harmless mistake as they claim, but then I realised it has bern normalised among those traders and it's just so annoying.