Funds “frozen” in TyGrr-Bot’s MtGox account.

[TyGrr-PR]

Good day TyGrr-Bot shareholders and the Bitcoin community,

We are here to inform that significant amount of funds were frozen in the Tygrr-Bot’s Mt Gox account. The name of the account is “TyGrr-Bot”. The TyGrr-Bot account was set up by Chaang-Noi’s wife as she is a key member of the TyGrr-Bot operation. The account was AML verified and approved by Mt. Gox.

Magical Tux was made aware. Magical Tux personally gave permission to Chaang-Noi to allow his wife to set up an account and have it AML verified. The AML was not only approved but the limit on the account was raised when requested.

On April 19th Chaang-Noi’s wife sent an international wire to her own bank account in Thailand. The name on the bank account matches the name on the AML verification documents.

After this international wire was sent Chaang-Noi contacted Mt Gox staff (Not Magical Tux) to find out if an AML verified account could send money to their spouse. It was repeatedly made clear by a member of Mt Gox staff that this would not be a problem.

Two international wires were then sent to Chaang-Noi’s bank account in the USA.

Chaang-Noi’s wife opened a Mt Gox support ticket on the 27th and Mark Karpeles responded on the 28th. Less than 5 hours after his first response Mark Karpeles reported that these attempted transaction were illegal and were being reported to law enforcement agencies. Mark also noted that the funds could not be returned to the Mt Gox account because of “risk”. Terrorism and money laundering were mentioned however as no one has seen the copy of the police report we do not know what really has happened. Information about this has been requested twice but not yet responded to.

We have reason to suspect that Magical Tux is Mark Karpeles but this information has not been confirmed. If this is true we are confused by Mt Gox’s actions. Nevertheless we are ready to go to any court to defend charges made against us.

We would like to provide supporting information.

All of Chaang-Noi’s personal chats with Magical Tux in #MtGox on freenode on edited and in full
Chaang-Noi> Hello, are you around?
<MagicalTux> yes
<Chaang-Noi> would it be best to use my wifes id and a telephone bill with her name?
<MagicalTux> that'd work
<Chaang-Noi> im going to ahve to wait a while for the bill to come in :/
<Chaang-Noi> the address will be in thai. I assume that will be okay?
<MagicalTux> we'll try
<Chaang-Noi> how long does this normaly take? and do i risk getting my funds frozen while you look into this?
<MagicalTux> can take a couple of business days
<Chaang-Noi> okay that is not too bad. Thanks



<Chaang-Noi> Hello,
<Chaang-Noi> I would like to check on my account being verified. It has been about 10 days so far and I have heard nothing back.
<Chaang-Noi> Hi
<Chaang-Noi> About 2 weeks ago you asked me to send you my documents to get verified.
<Chaang-Noi> I did this but no responce.
<Chaang-Noi> I was told it would take 3 business days.
<Chaang-Noi> Is there anything I can do to help?
<Chaang-Noi> I wont add funds until I am verrified, I can not risk it getting frozen
<MagicalTux> what's your account ?
<Chaang-Noi> do you want the user name?
<MagicalTux> yes
<Chaang-Noi> TyGrr-Bot
<MagicalTux> I can see an email was sent to you on Mon 02 Apr 2012 confirming you were aml verified
<Chaang-Noi> oh, wow, let me check and see if i got that, if so i deeply apoligize!
<Chaang-Noi> Yes, I am very sorry about the trouble. I do have the e-mail!
<Chaang-Noi> can I at any time expand my limit?
<Chaang-Noi> i would like to leave it low now but might need to expand it later.
<Chaang-Noi> also I would like to say you guys seemed to verify me in about 24 hours. this was unexpected and why i missed it. again that you.
<MagicalTux> [17:26:20] <Chaang-Noi> can I at any time expand my limit?  <- email info@mtgox.com for more details
<Chaang-Noi> thanks mate! very happy you got the verification done in a day! thats awesome! peace!


<Chaang-Noi> Hi, Would you like to try and resolve the issue of the frozen TyGrr-Bot account here and now?


We would like to add supporting E-mails from Mt. Gox.

April 2nd
Dear TyGrr-Bot,

We are pleased to inform you that the identification documentation you have submitted has been reviewed, and your account has been upgraded to "Verified" status.

If you would like to request a withdrawal limit increase (up to 10x your current daily limit, and up to 5x your current monthly limit), please reply back to this email with the below.


Wallet (BTC/USD/ETC):
New Daily Limit:

Wallet (USD/EUR/ETC):
New Monthly Limit:

We sincerely apologize for the delays and any inconvenience which you have suffered in relation to the account verification process. If you continue to experience any issues, please do not hesitate to contact Mt.Gox Support.

April 19th
Hello,

We are pleased to inform you that the limits which you requested have now been applied to your account.

If you would like to make further enquiries in relation to this, please do not hesitate to contact Mt.Gox Support.

Kind regards,

Mt.Gox Support
Email: aml@mtgox.com

April 28th

Hi,
We confirmed transfers going to two different individuals, in two different countries. Because of financial laws on terrorism and money laundering, we are required to identify the owner of each account opened on MtGox, and ensure transactions are done by the individual registered with us.
Since this was not the case, we are investigating the issue and may forward the case to the appropriate law enforcement if required.
In the meantime we will need notarized physical copies of identification for both individuals you tried to transfer funds to, including original or notarized copy of utility bill. If your notary offers it, please also ask for an apostille.

Thanks,
Mark
MtGox.com Team


April 28th

Hi,
Please rest assured that this case is indeed being reported to the police. Until we understand why you have multiple identities in different countries, we cannot take the risk of executing the operations requested.
Thanks,
Mark
MtGox.com Team


We are very confused by this reaction as the photo on Chaang-Noi’s avatar has not only a photo of Chaang-Noi but also of his wife who is AML verified.
A request has been sent to for a clarification as to why the documents need to be resent as has a second request for information about the ongoing police investigation.
We are also confused as to why this was reported to law enforcement as what we have done is not a crime in Thailand, Japan or the USA. If this violated the policy of MT. Gox we would like to know why this policy has not been posted on the Mt Gox website or in its terms of service.

The point of this thread is not to attack Mt Gox but is to be informative of actions that have already taken place and to seek clarification of AML law and Mt Gox's policy.

We are willing to work with Mt Gox and law enforcement to resolve this issue as quickly as possible. Chaang-Noi and his wife’s lawyer in the USA have been made aware of the situation.

We have notified Mt Gox of this thread and hope they will take part or at least make note of helpful ideas for the betterment of the bitcoin world.


Local rules.

This thread was started to inform TyGrr-Bot stockholders and the community of the above situation. I would request that all questions or comments about TyGrr-Bot to be done in the TyGrr-Bot thread as it is not directly related. I would request that there is no trolling or off topic comments. I would request that there are no personal attacks in the thread on anyone involved, particularly Mt Gox staff. Helpful and polite productive criticism of policy is welcomed.

What we hope to accomplish is positive discussion on conflict resolution. Also positive discussion on related topics such as AML law, if you are an expert on the issue please inform the community.

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[TyGrr-PR]

E-mail just sent to us.

Hi,

We request documents proving the link between the owner of the account and the individual listed as recipient of the withdraw request. As you may know, we only allow withdraws to be done to yourself as we do not provide financial services. This means you can not use our service to pay other people.

Considering you have refused to help us solve this case by providing details and that several factors cause the withdraw requests to be considered high risk, we cannot take responsibility and will forward the case to a court of law to investigate, forwarding them all the details and requesting all funds to be held and subsequently released by the court.

You may also want to know that if you intent to publicly discredit us for abiding to the law, it will at best hinder any attempt to recover funds through legal ways, and at worse force us to raise charges.


And our response.

Mark,

We are trying to resolve the situation and we are not trying to discredit. We are not lawyers and do not know if you are following the law or not. What we requested was specific information on how we can help you solve the problem. We asked you for a clerification of what documents you need. You let us know you needed some documents noterized on the 28th but we are asking for more specific information. We are not refusing to work with you and only giving us 2 day (one of them Sunday) for us to comply seems unreasonable. Can you be more clear as to what documents will help you to see that their are "links" between two married people? I assure you that the situation here is that a spouse is not paying a spouse. Mt Gox staff informed us that what we were doing would be fine. We are very unsure of the law and the policy and that is why we asked. Did the Mt Gox staff member give us bad advice? Was this wire request so bad that we now need the courts to get involved? Please send us all information needed to resolve the situation.

Thank you.

[TyGrr-PR]

New and productive e-mail just now from Mark.

Hi,

If it's about two married people, then it should be easy. We need the following documents:

- Marriage registration certificate (if not in english, please join translation)
- ID of the withdraw recipient
- Proof of address for withdraw recipient

You can scan and upload the documents via https://mtgox.com/forms/verification after logging in.


Thanks,
Mark
MtGox.com Team



This is something that can be done. We will comply soon. 

[MagicalTux]

Considering you are releasing your own version of the facts, I hereby request your authorization to release all the details we have to allow everyone reading this to be able to understand our position, which you make deliberately sound "bad".

[TyGrr-PR]

Considering you are releasing your own version of the facts, I hereby request your authorization to release all the details we have to allow everyone reading this to be able to understand our position, which you make deliberately sound "bad".

We understand that we have left out some information that would make your actions seem more reasonable. In fairness we wold like to list the ones that come to mind. If we are leaving anything out please PM and either we will give you permission or will state it for you. I am wiling to make this very fair and open. However permission to post all of our personal information is not really reasonable.

The last name of Chaang-Noi's wife was not legally changed until after AML verification. At the time of AML verification Chaang-Noi's wife did not have the same last name as Chaang-Noi. The AML verified last name however is on the marriage certificate and we also have dated documents to support this.

The other fact that we think you would like to make is that Chaang-Noi acted like an unprofessional asshole. The TyGrr operation does not deny this.

Documents TyGrr will send to Mt. Gox include,

Marriage certificate in Thai and translated into English.
Passport of Chaang-Noi.
Passport of Chaang-Noi's wife with the new name.
National ID of Chaang-Noi's wife with the new last name.
(more current) proof of residence.
Legal document showing when the name change happened in both Thai and in English.

We are willing to provide more documents upon request. We will also post more information about this case on the request of Mt. Gox.

Thank you.

[vampire]

@Goat : You need to set up a company (a legal entity, so both you and your wife are shareholders, worse case a joint account. This way you could have used a single MTGox account with your wife. Just say sorry to MtGox and ask them to fund back the money into the bot account. And wire into your's wife account. I don't think challenging them right now will do any good for anyone.

I don't know about international laws, but in US husband and wife are two different legal entities. Meaning my wife cannot do anything with an account under my name.

[Tachikoma]

I guess this explains why there have been no updates on the status of TyGrr-Bot. I hope you can resolve the issues with Mt. Gox, an official update in the original topic wouldn't be a bad thing neither.

[check_status]

@Goat : You need to set up a company (a legal entity, so both you and your wife are shareholders, worse case a joint account. This way you could have used a single MTGox account with your wife. Just say sorry to MtGox and ask them to fund back the money into the bot account. And wire into your's wife account. I don't think challenging them right now will do any good for anyone.

I don't know about international laws, but in US husband and wife are two different legal entities. Meaning my wife cannot do anything with an account under my name.

This is off topic as well as wrong.

That's a state, not federal issue.  In most jurisdictions in the US, spouses are considered part of the single entity for LLCs.  

You are wrong. vampire is on topic and is making sensible suggestions in the right direction.

Adding to vampires line of thought; It is usually good business practice and sensible accounting to have a business banking account being operated as Tygrr-Bot, into which Mt. Gox Tygrr-Bot account funds get transferred into. Then from Tygrr-Bot business bank account all employees and share holders can receive payments or transfers.

[Polvos]

Use another exchange. It's known in the forum that MtGox is freezing some clients assets at their will.

[Red Emerald]

Use another exchange. It's known in the forum that MtGox is freezing some clients assets at their will.

Running an arbitrage bot without including the largest exchange would not be optimal.  Besides, it looks to me like Gox was just doing their due diligence.  Better that they froze the account and then deal with it quickly than potentially letting funds be stolen IMHO.

[LordGreynick]

Doesn't sound like Goat is trying to steal his own money. Sounds like Mt Gox are selectively holding onto funds without good reason and then using AML legislation (in which jurisdiction, Japan?) as an excuse to take their client's money.

There's no other way to look at it... Its common practice for wives/spouses to have access to joint accounts / business accounts. Trying to quote AML laws when working across multiple jurisdictions is a legal nightmare at best and instead of looking after their customers, Mt Gox is swallowing the cash up and then blaming AML.

Here in Australia, husbands and wives generally use a family trust when they want to share assets etc

The only recourse I can see is to sue Mt Gox in Japan and do it soon before they close up shop and the directors jump ship with all our money.

[Maged]

Doesn't sound like Goat is trying to steal his own money. Sounds like Mt Gox are selectively holding onto funds without good reason and then using AML legislation (in which jurisdiction, Japan?) as an excuse to take their client's money.

There's no other way to look at it... Its common practice for wives/spouses to have access to joint accounts / business accounts. Trying to quote AML laws when working across multiple jurisdictions is a legal nightmare at best and instead of looking after their customers, Mt Gox is swallowing the cash up and then blaming AML.

Here in Australia, husbands and wives generally use a family trust when they want to share assets etc

The only recourse I can see is to sue Mt Gox in Japan and do it soon before they close up shop and the directors jump ship with all our money.

Without the other side of the story, you're missing out on a lot.

[rjk]

Doesn't sound like Goat is trying to steal his own money. Sounds like Mt Gox are selectively holding onto funds without good reason and then using AML legislation (in which jurisdiction, Japan?) as an excuse to take their client's money.

There's no other way to look at it... Its common practice for wives/spouses to have access to joint accounts / business accounts. Trying to quote AML laws when working across multiple jurisdictions is a legal nightmare at best and instead of looking after their customers, Mt Gox is swallowing the cash up and then blaming AML.

Here in Australia, husbands and wives generally use a family trust when they want to share assets etc

The only recourse I can see is to sue Mt Gox in Japan and do it soon before they close up shop and the directors jump ship with all our money.

You must admit though, since his wife didn't have the same last name, it wasn't known that she was indeed his wife. Additionally, most any financial institution would regard several sudden payouts to several accounts with some suspicion.

[stochastic]

Doesn't sound like Goat is trying to steal his own money. Sounds like Mt Gox are selectively holding onto funds without good reason and then using AML legislation (in which jurisdiction, Japan?) as an excuse to take their client's money.

There's no other way to look at it... Its common practice for wives/spouses to have access to joint accounts / business accounts. Trying to quote AML laws when working across multiple jurisdictions is a legal nightmare at best and instead of looking after their customers, Mt Gox is swallowing the cash up and then blaming AML.

Here in Australia, husbands and wives generally use a family trust when they want to share assets etc

The only recourse I can see is to sue Mt Gox in Japan and do it soon before they close up shop and the directors jump ship with all our money.

How can you assume this is Goat or his wife requesting the money?  What paperwork across jurisdictions can prove that his wife is the person requesting the money?  What paperwork would be OK to show a marriage between Goat and his wife?  This is why banks do not allow anyone other than who is specifically named on an account from withdrawing money.  MtGox's TOS state that an account holder can only transfer money to another account that they have in their own name.

It would be better to get a registered company to take care of the TyGrr-Bot business, then open a business bank account in that name.  The people that are responsible for money can be on the business bank account.  It seems from the information left there that these accounts were personal accounts, which is a big mistake to do when running a business.

[Rothgar]

Doesn't sound like Goat is trying to steal his own money. Sounds like Mt Gox are selectively holding onto funds without good reason and then using AML legislation (in which jurisdiction, Japan?) as an excuse to take their client's money.

There's no other way to look at it... Its common practice for wives/spouses to have access to joint accounts / business accounts. Trying to quote AML laws when working across multiple jurisdictions is a legal nightmare at best and instead of looking after their customers, Mt Gox is swallowing the cash up and then blaming AML.

Here in Australia, husbands and wives generally use a family trust when they want to share assets etc

The only recourse I can see is to sue Mt Gox in Japan and do it soon before they close up shop and the directors jump ship with all our money.

This is ridiculous.  I'm convinced that MtGox is reputable.  They are big enough to be under the scrutiny of governments and be a hacking target.  These facts make these crazy requirements needed.  If the directors were going to jump ship, they would have already.

[Smoovious]

Doesn't sound like Goat is trying to steal his own money. Sounds like Mt Gox are selectively holding onto funds without good reason and then using AML legislation (in which jurisdiction, Japan?) as an excuse to take their client's money.

There's no other way to look at it... Its common practice for wives/spouses to have access to joint accounts / business accounts. Trying to quote AML laws when working across multiple jurisdictions is a legal nightmare at best and instead of looking after their customers, Mt Gox is swallowing the cash up and then blaming AML.

Here in Australia, husbands and wives generally use a family trust when they want to share assets etc

The only recourse I can see is to sue Mt Gox in Japan and do it soon before they close up shop and the directors jump ship with all our money.

You must admit though, since his wife didn't have the same last name, it wasn't known that she was indeed his wife. Additionally, most any financial institution would regard several sudden payouts to several accounts with some suspicion.

As well as, if I read it right, the payouts were to two different non-contiguous continents also. You'd typically expect spouses to have their accounts within the same geographic region, so this would count as another red flag, begging to be verified.

-- Smoov

[check_status]

As well as, if I read it right, the payouts were to two different non-contiguous continents also. You'd typically expect spouses to have their accounts within the same geographic region, so this would count as another red flag, begging to be verified.

-- Smoov

You forget the part where they asked Mt. Gox first before they did anything, Mt. Gox said it's OK, then after they made the transaction decided it was illegal and froze the account. WTF!

[TyGrr-PR]

Here at TyGrr we do not fully understand AML law but are very willing to work with Mt. Gox to help them stay operating legally. This is why we asked them about everything before we did anything and why were were AML verified.

We are happy to send them the requested documents now that they have made clear and specific requests. We understand that some red flags we raised and we are happy to work with Mt. Gox directly to clear them. However the prospect of having to go to Japan to defend in court is not ideal for anyone involved.

Thank you.

[stochastic]

As well as, if I read it right, the payouts were to two different non-contiguous continents also. You'd typically expect spouses to have their accounts within the same geographic region, so this would count as another red flag, begging to be verified.

-- Smoov

You forget the part where they asked Mt. Gox first before they did anything, Mt. Gox said it's OK, then after they made the transaction decided it was illegal and froze the account. WTF!

Where is the documentation of that in the OP?  I did not see that.

[LordGreynick]

Doesn't sound like Goat is trying to steal his own money. Sounds like Mt Gox are selectively holding onto funds without good reason and then using AML legislation (in which jurisdiction, Japan?) as an excuse to take their client's money.

There's no other way to look at it... Its common practice for wives/spouses to have access to joint accounts / business accounts. Trying to quote AML laws when working across multiple jurisdictions is a legal nightmare at best and instead of looking after their customers, Mt Gox is swallowing the cash up and then blaming AML.

Here in Australia, husbands and wives generally use a family trust when they want to share assets etc

The only recourse I can see is to sue Mt Gox in Japan and do it soon before they close up shop and the directors jump ship with all our money.

This is ridiculous.  I'm convinced that MtGox is reputable.  They are big enough to be under the scrutiny of governments and be a hacking target.  These facts make these crazy requirements needed.  If the directors were going to jump ship, they would have already.

Normally I would agree, but look at all the threads with people that have tried to wire funds out of their Mt Gox accounts and still don't have their funds a month later.

There isn't just 1 or 2, there are so far around half a dozen and they're all over the world.