List of Major Bitcoin Heists, Thefts, Hacks, Scams, and Losses [Old]

[dree12]

Add BitMarket.eu to the list.  From another thread:

Earlier this year, I had this "genius" idea which led me to making a fatal mistake. I thought I could provide a hedge fund service for Bitmarket users.
[...]
For the record - there are 20161 19980 BTC missing

Will do. I'm a bit busy right now, and there are a few more to catch up on, but this seems like a huge mistake so it will be prioritized.

[1714637464]

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[1714637464]

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[makomk]

I do wish people would get the quoting right on that; those are M4v3R's words, not mine.

[dree12]

Apologies for how long it's taking, Christmas holiday was yesterday where I live. I will catch up shortly.

[malevolent]

Apologies for how long it's taking, Christmas holiday was yesterday where I live. I will catch up shortly.

Take your time 

[dree12]

So I'm a bit confused here: did the theft happen at the time of Bitcoinica's shutdown? If it did, why wasn't it discovered earlier? You would assume that given Bitcoinica shut down after the Rackspace hack, the lack of funds to withdraw from would be obvious.

[malevolent]

So I'm a bit confused here: did the theft happen at the time of Bitcoinica's shutdown? If it did, why wasn't it discovered earlier? You would assume that given Bitcoinica shut down after the Rackspace hack, the lack of funds to withdraw from would be obvious.

AFAIK it was discovered only after people requested more money to withdraw than bitmarket had. Some people may have kept their BTC on the exchange for many months before and after hacks and admin's gambling. After the Bitcoinica hacks the balance was only fictitious but no one knew about it so as long as more BTC being was deposited than withdrawn.

[dree12]

2013 has arrived, and we're off to a clean start thus far. The last theft (aside from the December revelation, which was actually a May theft) was an almost 10000 BTC theft in late September, so we have had a quarter of a year without terribly bad news.

With every new year, the cutoff value for significant thefts changes. While the total bitcoins in circulation has increased since 2012, there is little reason to increase this cutoff value based on this result alone. Although an increase would not be ill-advised (after all, the Bitscalper scam last year has already faded into obscurity), I feel that ignoring potentially devastating thefts based on an arbitrary number is ill-advised. As a result, I am preliminarily keeping the cutoff at 1000 BTC, which has served quite well the previous two years.

Ideas?

[FelicityWubwell]

Just some Fun Facts for you all...

BTC-e is founded by 2 men who stood trial for 17 counts of fraud.
BTC-e has relations with mafia organizations all over the world.
BTC-e has been known to close accounts and hold people's funds indefinately.
BTC-e has known to lie about the security of their site claiming it's more secure then it actually is.
BTC-e conducts insider trading constantly and trades funds that do not belong to them ie funds from closed accounts that they then spend.
BTC-e is not registered at all in Russia and all the American Servers the site is hosted on require them to abide by US law which they do not do.

[Stephen Gornick]

2013 has arrived, and we're off to a clean start thus far.

Well, that hadn't lasted long.

We sadly need to announce that our wallet has been compromised thus DO NOT send any further funds to any of the coin wallets, BTC, DVC, LTC, etc.

Though losses were absorbed by the exchange:

Before the wild speculations beginn, the service will be recovered and we pay the losses out of our own pockets.

But the severity hasn't yet been disclosed:

We'll post all the infos after we have done our investigation, the TRX IDs, IPs, Bitcoin address, etc. May it be of help to the other service providers out there.

[siesatsu]

Thanks for the comprehensive list.

Might want to include hacker caught / law enforcement involved category.

I wanted to do a list like this myself but never had the time.

Can you also maybe do a total of how many BTC have been "stolen" / "lost" / "tainted" / "scammed" !

Scammer... Pathetic

[WikileaksDude]

Just some Fun Facts for you all...

BTC-e is founded by 2 men who stood trial for 17 counts of fraud.
BTC-e has relations with mafia organizations all over the world.
BTC-e has been known to close accounts and hold people's funds indefinately.
BTC-e has known to lie about the security of their site claiming it's more secure then it actually is.
BTC-e conducts insider trading constantly and trades funds that do not belong to them ie funds from closed accounts that they then spend.
BTC-e is not registered at all in Russia and all the American Servers the site is hosted on require them to abide by US law which they do not do.

Source? for the people who own BTC-e?

[furrycoat]

Its shocking to see just how much money has been scammed off Bitcoin users in its short lifetime.

[bbit]

Its shocking to see just how much money has been scammed off Bitcoin users in its short lifetime.

I was just saying the same thing to myself 

[foggyb]

Its shocking to see just how much money has been scammed off Bitcoin users in its short lifetime.

I was just saying the same thing to myself  

Why is this such a shock? The global GDP in 2003 was some 70 trillion USD. [Source] Global Cybercrime alone cost the economy 336 billion dollars. [Source] That's about 0.5% of of world GDP. Considering bitcoin is a new experiment with growing pains, and bitcoin transactions are irreversible, (often no way to fix mistakes, pseudo-anonymity, poor government/law enforcement support) it may be argued that fraud and theft losses should naturally be higher.

[MPOE-PR]

Its shocking to see just how much money has been scammed off Bitcoin users in its short lifetime.

I was just saying the same thing to myself  

Why is this such a shock? The global GDP in 2003 was some 70 trillion USD. [Source] Global Cybercrime alone cost the economy 336 billion dollars. [Source] That's about 0.5% of of world GDP. Considering bitcoin is a new experiment with growing pains, and bitcoin transactions are irreversible, (often no way to fix mistakes, pseudo-anonymity, poor government/law enforcement support) it may be argued that fraud and theft losses should naturally be higher.

Indeed. Anyone claiming BTC fraud is significant has not really any clue about what happens in the fiat world.

[Realpra]

Wasn't ASICs the huge thing coming out in December, what happened to all that? Another scam to be revealed in the near future...?

[dree12]

Apparently a nasty trojan went around in 2012. I've added that to the list, ranking 15th.

@Vircurex: any evidence amount stolen > 1000 BTC?

[dree12]

So:

Looks like I forgot about the MyBitcoin mass withdrawals following the Mt. Gox theft. Coins were all funnelled to 1MAazCWMydsQB5ynYXqSGQDjNQMN3HFmEu, it seems. This is now added.

I also bumped Pirate down to first (it stood awkwardly at zeroth before).

[kwoody]

May as well add the bASIC to this list, I got scammed out of roughly ~230 BTC which is a big chunk of money for me, especially since BTC value has doubled since I placed the order.

[Stephen Gornick]

BitLC.net
Feb 13, 2013

Currently I have no other option but to come clean about everything,

- https://www.bitlc.net