Statement about the suspect of recent Bitcoinica hack

[bitcoinminer]

Hopefully this latest theft will have reached a high enough level for some painfully expensive education.

If not, I look forward to reading the details of the next massive security breach/theft/loss of wallet file!

[RoloTonyBrownTown]

Hopefully this latest theft will have reached a high enough level for some painfully expensive education.

If not, I look forward to reading the details of the next massive security breach/theft/loss of wallet file!

Agreed.  This is a very complacent community so far.   I'd like to see that change (and it'll need to if we ever want to take this currency anywhere outside of here).

[dopamine]

I want my bitcoin back and also want compensation for taking more than 60 Days to get it back...

[RoloTonyBrownTown]

I want my bitcoin back and also want compensation for taking more than 60 Days to get it back...

Yes, well, good luck with that.   Sounds like they're just handing over this new cash to the Bitcoinica guys who haven't exactly had a great track record of handing funds back so far.   No reason to think that's about to change suddenly.   It's just more money for them to accidentally flush down the toilet.

[BitBuster]

Will you cut it out?

No I will not, as is my right.

Some people have lost money here.

Yes and you are not the only one or an arbiter of what action should be taken.

We can deal with the "whodidit" thing later.

Getting full compensation requires the persual and capture of the theif. These theives must be chased down and battered so that others know not to copy them.

This isn't helping anything.

I reject this assertion and refer you to the above.

I want my questions answered by Zhou, despite having to repeat them.

I also want these questions answered:

The funds were sent to the Bitcoin address as requested: http://blockchain.info/address/1FqqBZnemCrcCDbz57Nk7LHLCN42hCHXEV.

Thank you Zhou for your cooperation.

I was asked by some of the creditors and interest holders in Bitcoinica, LP to broker this transaction. Steps are being taken to safely transfer the funds to Bitcoinica, LP so they may be distributed in a fair and expeditious manner to claimants.

Thank you,
Patrick Murck
Principal | Engage Legal PLLC

1. Does this 15k not represent stolen goods?
2. If so, what gives you the legal right to receive and possess them with an intent to further pass them on?
3. If this 15k does not represent stolen goods (and why?), is this to be considered a payment from Zhou to Bitcoinica?
4. If so, what are the terms of payment and for what is it in exchange?

Its healthy to see some legal entity involved, but we need to know your exact involvement, purpose, terms and authority on which you are operating. Please could you also provide your registered offices and contact details.


BB.

[dree12]

Some people have lost money here.

Yes and you are not the only one or an arbiter of what action should be taken.

Never did I claim that I was. If you are here to ask questions, that is completely reasonable. But please, do not be blunt enough to refuse changing your standpoint.

I would like to ask you: does there exist an answer to those questions that will actually change your mind? If there isn't, why do you ask them?

[dopamine]

Is the owners of bitcoinica and everyone involved made public, im sure if the police are not involved people would like know where they live...

[zhoutong]

I believe so. He handled this matter very professionally and I'm going to continue recovering the fiat money from the hackers.

Zhou,  
Since the Intersango team is actively blocking the recovery process,  can we convince you to take care of the claims process as you originally offered?

You can calculate everything,  and submit the information to Tihan / Patrick Murck for verification and actual payout.

I can do that, provided anyone from Bitcoinica can send me the data (claims platform isn't available any more) and also the written authorization. With the authorization the fund holding parties can get the frozen funds from Mt. Gox as well.

Also I suggest you to arrange this with Patrick Murck because handling claims may have serious legal implications.

[defxor]

Justice is getting the money back, and extra at this point.

I respectfully disagree.  Not exactly sending the right message is it.    "Hey hackers, these jokers at the bitcointalk forum are pushovers!  Hack the shit out them (several times), but as long as you concoct some barely feasible story and hand back a portion of what you took, you get to keep the rest with no consequences!"

Yeah, awesome.

Exactly. Mybitcoin should've been the first and the last. I had no money in Bitcoinica (and I consider everyone who had to be naïve) but I strongly want Bitcoin to succeed. Thus, my motivation is in making sure scammers stop their bullying of my playground.

[zhoutong]

Justice is getting the money back, and extra at this point.

I respectfully disagree.  Not exactly sending the right message is it.    "Hey hackers, these jokers at the bitcointalk forum are pushovers!  Hack the shit out them (several times), but as long as you concoct some barely feasible story and hand back a portion of what you took, you get to keep the rest with no consequences!"

Yeah, awesome.

Exactly. Mybitcoin should've been the first and the last. I had no money in Bitcoinica (and I consider everyone who had to be naïve) but I strongly want Bitcoin to succeed. Thus, my motivation is in making sure scammers stop their bullying of my playground.

This tells a lot about your attitude. I hope it is a hindsight and you didn't assume Bitcoinica to be a scammer's product when it was launched.

I'm sure Bitcoinica itself has helped the community to grow (by providing a way to hedge and facilitate trading through the interest system), otherwise I wouldn't have been involved in the first place.

The community should encourage the creation of similar products with better security in place (especially crypto-based security, like segregated accounts).

[proudhon]

Sorry, my interest in this whole bitcoinica shitstorm waned a few weeks ago.  Will somebody tl;dr what's been going on lately for me?  Or even more to the point, just answer whether the likelihood of me getting my bitcoins back has gone up or down given the events of the past week.

[allten]

Justice is getting the money back, and extra at this point.

I respectfully disagree.  Not exactly sending the right message is it.    "Hey hackers, these jokers at the bitcointalk forum are pushovers!  Hack the shit out them (several times), but as long as you concoct some barely feasible story and hand back a portion of what you took, you get to keep the rest with no consequences!"

Yeah, awesome.

Exactly. Mybitcoin should've been the first and the last. I had no money in Bitcoinica (and I consider everyone who had to be naïve) but I strongly want Bitcoin to succeed. Thus, my motivation is in making sure scammers stop their bullying of my playground.

This tells a lot about your attitude. I hope it is a hindsight and you didn't assume Bitcoinica to be a scammer's product when it was launched.

I'm sure Bitcoinica itself has helped the community to grow (by providing a way to hedge and facilitate trading through the interest system), otherwise I wouldn't have been involved in the first place.

The community should encourage the creation of similar products with better security in place (especially crypto-based security, like segregated accounts).

Bitcoinica was great. The kid running it with a fragile ego wasn't great.
You sure showed those intersango guys that they weren't as good as you.

[shockD]

Sorry, my interest in this whole bitcoinica shitstorm waned a few weeks ago.  Will somebody tl;dr what's been going on lately for me?  Or even more to the point, just answer whether the likelihood of me getting my bitcoins back has gone up or down given the events of the past week.

The likelihood hasn't changed one iota. Just a bunch of fanciful stories from zhou tong.

[Vod]

Sorry, my interest in this whole bitcoinica shitstorm waned a few weeks ago.  Will somebody tl;dr what's been going on lately for me?  Or even more to the point, just answer whether the likelihood of me getting my bitcoins back has gone up or down given the events of the past week.

ZhouTong was the hacker who stole all the coins.  All the evidence pointed to him, so he could do nothing but make up an imaginary "friend" who he says framed him, but of course he won't provide ANY evidence of this person.    Now the community wants to play nice with him to get the money back, THEN we are going to see he rots in jail.  Some people on this forum believe him, oddly, but he probably won't convince the police of an invisible person when they come a knocking.  So Zhou posts like he is innocent, and we post like we believe him. 
 

[bittenbob]

Sorry, my interest in this whole bitcoinica shitstorm waned a few weeks ago.  Will somebody tl;dr what's been going on lately for me?  Or even more to the point, just answer whether the likelihood of me getting my bitcoins back has gone up or down given the events of the past week.

The likelihood hasn't changed one iota. Just a bunch of fanciful stories from zhou tong.

15k BTC was transferred to a lawyer pending Bitcoinica's instructions on what to do with the funds. There was supposed to be a subsequent payment of 20k BTC (I think), which hasn't happened yet. The last thing I remember Zhou saying was he was going after the fiat now. Of course I could be wrong since it is a very long read but that's what I have taken away from it.

Disclaimer: I had none of my personal funds at Bitcoinica and therefore have no horse in this race.

[bittenbob]

This is the 20k BTC I was talking about, I guess it was total. Zhou, you had 15k BTC transferred to the lawyer, what about the other 5k BTC? Surely the 5k BTC you were providing that you said wasn't connected to the theft wasn't the other 5k BTC your were talking about. If it is, this doesn't bode well for your case.

I have sent 15,000 BTC to an address provided by Patrick Murck.

He or one of his clients will later confirm the receipt of the funds and also the escrow/representation relationship.

Thanks Zhou. It is a far cry from the 40K BTC / 40K USD stolen, but it is a start. Can you please share the transaction id?

Status: 4/unconfirmed, broadcast through 8 nodes
Date: 29/07/12 19:54
To: 1FqqBZnemCrcCDbz57Nk7LHLCN42hCHXEV
Debit: -15000.00 BTC
Net amount: -15000.00 BTC
Transaction ID: b87922d693b3d3b66da385592a07147cf0b8f31f78057ebb212eb60745b58cf9

Currently I can recover at most 20,000 BTC and $140,000 from Chen Jianhai.

If AurumXchange can reimburse the laundering fees for the Mt. Gox code (about $2,320.31) then it will be even better.

AFAIK he used Blockchain's mixing service, but we don't expect the fees to be returned because it's impossible to identify the funds anyway. (Also Blockchain has offered a 0.5% bonus for those people who facilitated the laundering.)

The average price he sold at should be around $7.2, including the exchanging fees. At this price point we are short $42,000. I'll see if it's possible to get this from Chen Jianhai, but quite unlikely. I doubt the effectiveness of Chinese police as well, because he's very likely to have "Guanxi" to deal with his financial activities (which I can't decide whether legal or not). In any case, he has been acting in a very naive way and I assume he still has freedom today because of his guanxi, not technical sophistication.

I'm not sure about Bitcoinica's real solvency before the hack at the moment. The information is insufficient for me to give a definitive answer.

My 5,000 BTC is entirely separate from the hack, but it more or less covers a large part of the shortfall.

I'm trying to squeeze funds to see if I can compensate more personally, but I'm not in a very good financial condition. If NameTerrific is profitable in the future, I will be happy to contribute more personal funds to help Bitcoinica customers.

#1 - are you talking about the hacker and his wife's info or Chris Heaslip. I find it weird his credentials were in the lastpass account affiliated with Bitcoinica when he has no known affiliation. Perhaps you can shed some light on that.

#2 - you are pissed at Aurumxchange for holding your funds... we will get back to that later.

There seems to be a lot of confusion around when the code was leaked and where. Perhaps you can shed some light on the details of the leak, which are muddy to most of the people trying to get to the bottom of this. Documentation of when the leak occurred (other than the first thread post here) is what we are looking for.

That email was protected with my weakest password that I reused everywhere and even shared with some other people. I didn't have to protect that email at all because it's meant to be semi-sockpuppet anyway.

He had access to source code after genjix released it.

Chris Heaslip's Mt. Gox account was stored alongside Wendon's in the LastPass. Obviously he didn't know which one had more money so he logged in to both.

I know a lot of his personal information (especially his and his wife's bank accounts and address), and I threatened to report to police if he didn't agree to refund.

I don't know where you got all the misleading information from.

What you mean misleading, it's from YOUR post here! Mine interpretation, but the facts are yours.



The source code was leaked after the hack as far we know. No one in this forum knew about the source code prior to genjix posting it and then deleting it.
Now this hacker dude gets off easily because he sends money back? Why don't you file a police report now?

The hacker didn't steal from me. Why should I file a police report?

I'm obviously more pissed off because of AurumXchange, and people like you, rather than the hacker or Bitcoinica.

The source code is the direct cause for the hack, because the LastPass master password was not redacted.

The hack happened on July 12, and the source code was released a few days before that.

Back to the AurumXchange comment as #2 above. Here you are authorizing AurumXchange to release funds to BitInstant's lawyer. It seems to me like you are admitting that the funds at AurumXchange were directly related to the hack. You originally claimed they were for a "friend" but it now appears the funds are directly linked to the latest theft. Please comment on this as it does not look well and you have basically admitted that the funds were related to the theft.

After Patrick Murck or his clients confirm the receipt of the funds, I will be working on getting the fiat part from Chen Jianhai.

It appears that he stored the vast majority of the money in his offshore bank account in Isle of Man (not Jersey, I correct myself here). It should be with Barclays International. He converted some Liberty Reserve dollars to Chinese Yuan and I can get it through Alipay, and I'll simply pay that part off with my own USD savings. (I can deal with the currency controls later. My family has 5 people, and each person can access up to US$50,000 worth of foreign exchange transactions every year.)

Also he is holding some euros due to the exchange he was using didn't have enough reserves for USD. Anyway I have access to "interbank rates" so it shouldn't be a problem as well. Considering the rising EUR/USD the USD value can be a little bit more.

I assure that I won't keep a single cent from any funds transferred to me. Also I authorize AurumXchange to send the funds directly to Patrick Murck (after he provides the bank account details) so that there will be less hassle in handling large amounts of fiat money.

Perhaps I am interpreting this all wrong. Please Zhou if you are innocent, explain the above discrepancies.

[Shuai]

The Chinese police cannot be trusted, and you know that. If you don't make public all the information you have about this "chen jianhai", we will have to assume that he's just a made up person, and that you are the criminal.

[stochastic]

1) zhoutong can refund the money he made from selling Bitcoinica to whoever it was and give it back to the clients of bitcoinica that lost money from his negligence.

2) If you can't read Chinese then translate it in google translate (if not I am sure you get the idea).  If there is a Chen Jian hui (陈建海) then he can just search his name and bitcoin and find:

http://cnbtcnews.com/bitcoin-news/economics/statement-about-the-suspect-of-recent-bitcoinica-hack.html

周同指控陈建海才是黑客
2012年07月26日 ⁄ 经济 ⁄ 暂无评论 ⁄ 被围观 97+
编译：cnbtcnews

周同在bitcointalk论坛发帖子称陈建海才是黑客，大意如下：

陈建海是周同之前的生意合作伙伴，精通于信用卡诈骗。周同打电话给他进行质问，陈建海承认了自己是黑客，盗窃了Bitcoinica在Mt.Gox中的资金。并表示，只要不追究他，他可以归还被盗的资金。金额如下：

USD: 约 $140,000 + $5000 被AurumXchange冻结了
BTC: 约20,000 BTC

周同保证陈建海会归还这部分资金给Bitcoinica，并表示Bitcoinica也应该快点将资金还给用户。

cnbtcnews注：Bitcoinica的Mt.Gox的账户的损失为40k BTC和40K USD。

3) 陈建海是否与中国共产党有联系？

[BitcoinBug]

I believe so. He handled this matter very professionally and I'm going to continue recovering the fiat money from the hackers.

Zhou,  
Since the Intersango team is actively blocking the recovery process,  can we convince you to take care of the claims process as you originally offered?

You can calculate everything,  and submit the information to Tihan / Patrick Murck for verification and actual payout.

I can do that, provided anyone from Bitcoinica can send me the data (claims platform isn't available any more) and also the written authorization. With the authorization the fund holding parties can get the frozen funds from Mt. Gox as well.

Also I suggest you to arrange this with Patrick Murck because handling claims may have serious legal implications.

This authorization will never happen!

We can, however, speed things by clearing up, who has legal authority to manage the funds at Bitcoinica, BEFORE Patrick releases the funds to them. I assume this to be legally required anyway. When we know that, the only thing missing is the database. Zhou? If you or your "friend" returned the funds, how about the database? If Consultancy has the authority and the database, things could be (optimistically) over in a week or two!

[shockD]

I believe so. He handled this matter very professionally and I'm going to continue recovering the fiat money from the hackers.

Zhou,  
Since the Intersango team is actively blocking the recovery process,  can we convince you to take care of the claims process as you originally offered?

You can calculate everything,  and submit the information to Tihan / Patrick Murck for verification and actual payout.

I can do that, provided anyone from Bitcoinica can send me the data (claims platform isn't available any more) and also the written authorization. With the authorization the fund holding parties can get the frozen funds from Mt. Gox as well.

Also I suggest you to arrange this with Patrick Murck because handling claims may have serious legal implications.

This authorization will never happen!

We can, however, speed things by clearing up, who has legal authority to manage the funds at Bitcoinica, BEFORE Patrick releases the funds to them. I assume this to be legally required anyway. When we know that, the only thing missing is the database. Zhou? If you or your "friend" returned the funds, how about the database? If Consultancy has the authority and the database, things could be (optimistically) over in a week or two!

What makes you think bitcoin consultancy magically has the database now? They've stated they don't have it. You people will *never* see your money.