Topic: [2018-04-16] Buyer Loses $278,000 USD in Bitcoin Robbery (Read 182 times)

First you should really get rid of the assumption I'm having problems with the current tax laws in my country.
Cause I don't have any.

And the fact that everybody is trying to avoid tax is a natural thing, some countries managed to have an entire culture based on this and we know how it ended (Greece). It's the human nature  to try to avoid taxes even if they represent 1% of your income. People are trying to avoid paying anything, but it's still a crime.

There will never be a society where everybody is content with the taxes and everything gets done.
One of the richest country in the world shows us that:
Norway’s ‘Voluntary’ Tax Plan Brings In Just $1,325

The question is, why should somebody who sells cakes pay taxes and somebody who makes money trading bitcoins not?

People avoid tolls and they complain about potholes.
They get free rides on the buses and then they complain how dirty and old they are.
They avoid paying taxes and then they complain why the retirement funds are empty and why the unemployment benefits are that small.

Rather than asking me on changing something I don't want to, you should tell me how much of the Singapore's taxes have been wasted on this catching the thieves and recovering the money this guy lost  

In certain aspects one could indeed force through a change, but in other aspects it's close to impossible, especially so if you look at all the developments against people and businesses when it comes to taxes. Mind explaining how exactly you think anyone here can change tax laws for the better? It's one aspect the government just doesn't want to grant people nor businesses any room for. It's their way, and their way only, which perfectly explains and justifies the increase of people looking for ways to avoid paying tax where possible. In legal terms they are criminals, while in reality they are just protecting what belongs to them, and to them only -- no single entity has the right to claim anything that belongs to you.

I'm interested to hear from you how we can change the tax laws for the better.

Events like this should serve as an example and remainder to all Bitcoin users that Bitcoin is very much like cash, and all the common sense (which the person described in this article lacked) also applies to it - you shouldn't walk around with huge amounts of coins on your phone, store it without proper backups and security measures, publicly talk how many coins you have. Even though in this situation the person with cash was robbed, it could have easily been vice versa when the seller of huge amounts of coins could have been robbed - and this have already happened before with other people.

That hurts to lose so much, I hope that doesn't happen to him in the future!!! 

Well, according to both Wikipedia and the oxford dictionary, that's basically the definition.

You go 90 miles an hour in a residential area where nobody lives, and you get a ticket but I could say, you actually weren't that bad because the area was deserted, yet you are still breaking the rules.
It's not fair but that's it and you did it knowingly.

That's also what it matters here and you have to think with a cool head.

I can go buy a joint (actually can't around here, I doubt there are more than 5 guys who ever smoke marijuana in my city) , I can go back to my house and do it. Yeah, I broke the law, yeah f*** the government.But if I get robbed or the guy sells me fake stuff, do I go and report the crime? Do you expect the government to take action and catch the thief?

Think about it for a second, you're angry at the police for investigating you, for taking your id in the street for searching your house but the moment something happens you expect the police to storm every house in the city to find your money. Hypocrisy much?
He tried to avoid the law, let him go an get his money back without the help of the law.

No, unfortunately, no matter how I look at this I can't extract one milligram of pity from my wretched soul for this guy.


I've said it on this forum alone thousands of times, you don't avoid the law, you try and change it for the better.

I would do everything to avoid paying tax as well, and I am already doing so with the coins that don't have any centralized exchange or service taint on them. Do you legally break the rules? Yes, but the whole thing is that there is no reason I will ever going to let myself be subject to legal theft from the government side, and in the same way, people conducting these transactions won't do so either. I don't see these people as criminals and neither should others do. If the rules and laws were perfectly fair, these situations wouldn't occur. In your words they are criminals because they don't follow shitty laws of the country they are in. In my words they are doing what they should be allowed to do.

unfortunately yes, this news isn't the last one. Robberies like this are often

So the bitcoinist is part of the evil mainstream media...nice to hear that
http://bitcoinist.com/malaysian-bitcoin-buyer-loses-275000-usd-robbery/


The friendly market nature of Singapore is this:
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-singapore-cenbank-cryptocurrencies/bitcoin-warnings-grow-more-strident-as-singapore-urges-extreme-caution-idUSKBN1ED151

And further more:

So, that's exactly what I was telling you,  but I was using arguments and facts while you where just calling my view "pathetic", which I have to say it was a bit overboard.

I could do the same for you as you seem to have a way of defending everyone that is involved bitcoins , no matter if he is maybe a robber, a tax evasionist, probably you're going to defend those two mobsters that shot a guy for not making his quota on bitcoin mining as they are all part of the propaganda by the mainstream media.

Now, use logic, why would somebody go with more 278 000$ to buy coins in person and not via an exchange.

1) He was hiding his activities, and so breaking the law
2) He was just trying to get a better price...

Now to this better price argument, why would somebody sell you 35 Bitcoins cheaper that the market. Obviously he must avoid banks because he is doing his part of tax evasion or he is just trying to unload some dirty coins.
No way a sane person with nothing to fear would go in a shady bar with 280 000$ on him and buy coins from a stranger.

No matter who is reporting this, it can be BBC CNN or Cartoon Network, when I hear somebody in a country that prohibits via AML purchases over 50 000$ in cash, and has laws on taxing is running around with 280 000$ he has something to hide.

not the first one and,sadly,not the last one,but the sum is somewhat outrageously high
this guy must have been nuts to carry that much money with him first place and you cannot just trade 278k$ in cash for bitcoins and expect not to be robbed
there were similar stories the place where I live,involving Localbitcoins traders
the scheme was simple yet very effective: a criminal rents an appartment ground floor with two exits
arranges a meeting with a buyer (cash only of course) then under the pretext of checking the notes,goes to the back room and disappears with the money through the fire exit
the sums were around 12k $ total

One more proof of the statement "don't believe, think about the worst and act according to this"
For me it looks a bit supid, to be honest

Nobody is 100% protected from this. The only way to avoid situations like this is not to carry hundreds of thousands of dollars with you and make transactions online

How so? Just because he is having that much money on him? It could as well be a so called Bitcoin mule trying to acquire as many coins as possible in the overall friendly market nature of Singapore, where the coins would be sold elsewhere for a premium, likely to people looking to buy Bitcoin where they aren't able to do so because of their wasted government. You are doing exactly what the mainstream media is doing, which just pathetic. Your view is only based on an article, and nothing else. Let's not throw around with opinions that don't have any foundation or justification. We know how it is when the mainstream media is doing it to us, so let's not copy that behavior and do it to others....

Because probably he has troubles saying from where all that cash is coming.
In Europe you can't do deals bigger than 10k euros without a bank, probably Singapore has it's limits also. so from the start he knew that he is going to get involved in somethign shady.

Buying 35 BTC in cash? Sorry but it stinks so much of tax evasion I can't feel sorry for the buyer.


Are you sure about that?
Singapore has a deal in which every purchase over 20 000 in precious metals must be recorded.
Same stand for casino gains over 10 000.
There is paragraph that all transfers of financial instruments are also subject to this.

I don't know how bitcoin is viewed there currently, (wiki is outdated) but one thins is clear.
That guy wasn't an innocent pink angel.

This is what you got when you lost your common sense. We live in a world where trust is a rare commodity...we should not even totally trust people whom we know all of our lives much more with anybody whom we have never meet not even once. There is a big lesson to be learned and it does not matter if it is involving Bitcoin or any other transaction. Bringing with you a big amount of cash means you are endangering the money and even your own life. We have to always use our good analytical thinking all the time when dealing with money...especially a big amount of money for that matter.

Other than theft, it's possible that another illegal activity may be underlying to this transaction. It could possibly be money laundering or money to be used for the purchase of illegal material such as drugs etc. The amount is too huge, even for a big time investor. Even if it were in fiat, the authority would find the amount to be suspicious and even if the theft did not occur, it should still be looked into.

Security issues aside I don't think it's unreasonable for the Singaporean police to examine the source of the funds in this case.

The buyer was purchasing about 35 BTC which is unusual.  It is even more unusual to purchase the BTC using cash in a hotel room. 

Usually this type of Over the Counter (OTC) transaction would pay using a wire transfer and some sort of escrow service to make sure each side holds up their part of the arrangement. 

Singapore is a major financial center which has a higher usage of crypto than in the West so I'm sure the police were wondering why this 'business transaction' was processed in this manner. 

It's never a wise decision to carry a huge amount of physical cash with you. It's not always safe no matter where you are. Transactions concerning that much money should be done in a different manner. Could it not have been done in tranches instead of just one lump sum? Also, if the seller is not a trustworthy one, he should not have jumped and made a transaction which concerned hundreds of thousands of dollars. He should have first made a verification of the merchant.

The buyer was stupid, but not wrong and even implicitely comparing him to the robber is just poor journalism. There's nothing illegal about buying things in cash, even if the sums are in the hundreds of thousands. He certainly is a moron for walking around with that kind of money without protection though. Especially since the "broker" was clearly a shady figure with no reputation.

While I do agree that it's pretty unusual for someone to have that much foreign fiat currency with him in physical form, it's also not very fair to put people in a certain category by default just because of that.

The article itself is pretty simple in its setup and doesn't contain much actually valuable information. People aren't necessarily involved in shady practices if they have that much physical fiat on hand.

It might very well have been a person who was desperately looking to get rid of his fiat exposure, and for that reason wanted to acquire a large number of coins at once. It's not good to automatically expect the worst.

I must however admit that it's pretty stupid to openly walk around with that much fiat. Even drug dealers don't walk around with much physical fiat anymore because of how they are being hunted down by rippers.

$278000 is a lot of cash for a single individual to be moving around with. Even bullion vans despite the security still get robbed let alone an individual who just happens to have $278000 in physical cash.

 I also agree with the Police for putting Mr. Pang, the victim, under scrutiny, one can not rule out the victim of being involved in some shady deal too.