Topic: Bestchange keeps scammer exchangers and probably collaborates with them (Read 800 times)

Thank you.  You just took the bait and proved me two things.  Fixed Float allows criminals to launder money through your flawed heroic system and you are stealing funds from innocent customers.

You earned thousands of dollars from me but you just lost me as a customer by opening up my eyes as to who you really are.

-
Regards,
PrivacyG

Wouldn't it be much easier if you share the results of said model before depositing? So: I inform you about the address I'll send funds from, and you tell me whether or not my funds are going to get frozen. It saves me the hassle of having to provide paperwork, and you don't have to spend time on providing evidence. But most importantly: I'm sure I don't lose my money depending on the decision of an anonymous website.

This whole setup makes it look like vigilante justice: you trick "criminals" into sending their funds to you, after which you decide what to do with it.

Could you name a few, please? Out of curiosity if any of my balance would be tagged and lost once put them in your platform or other platform with similar policy. And by the way, I think you mistyped "opinion". You're saying, "so, in our opinion," right? We got you.



So the two cases pointed out by OP on the opening post, they're happen to be proven as a stolen funds? As you've state that you have nothing to hide --quoted below-- certainly it means you don't mind sharing your foundings and evidences that became the basis for both cases?

As you've assured so many times that you never asked for personal data, and the anonymity of your customer is --also quoted below-- preserved, we can infer that there are no sensitive information involved and so there will be none leaked if you share us your evidence here. Or can't you share it as well because it'll "empower" the scammer by letting them know that their act have been known, just like you can't provide your blocklist to "dis-empower" the terrorist?


If you think you've answered all the questions here, I'd like to invite you to re-read the entire thread, there are a lot of interesting points that you conveniently missed. Like my part of FATF, or how could exactly, in your opinion that publishing your blocklist is really disadvantageous to prevent further ML or unnecessary account freezing.

You see, you keep repeating that you didn't require KYC, like that's the point we're pressing to you. It is NOT. Nor do we inquire about the why you froze an account. The answers are simple, everybody can easily whip a "he scammed someone" out of thin air. What we wanted to know is how do you prove the cases?

A casino can say they held their user's fund because the user cheated. A user can say certain platform scammed them some money by freezing without reason. A DT member --or anyone else, really-- can say a project is scam because they stole an idea somewhere, or whatnot. Eventually, everything breaks down to the how do the accusations or the statements is proven to be true, what basis, what evidence to back up the claim.

And so far, all you gave are vague answers and the ultimate weapon "we won't empower terrorist, we refuse to cooperate with scammers" or anything that fall along the line whenever you're cornered. Either that or you conveniently missed some key point in someone's question, or the entire post(s) themselves. You never presented a backup that your findings of someone's account is based on solid proof. Meanwhile, that thing is a very important here. How would you feel if in an overnight your account is marked as a scammer, flagged, there are hundreds of negative reviews about you, and when you asked why you got into that situation, people simply replied, "ohh, we have evidences that you commit a fraudulent activity, but we won't share it here because it'll help other exchange by making their action known"?

The concern is not why you suddenly froze --for instance-- my account, it's how you prove that my account is involved in fraudulent activity that deserve banning, while there's a huge probability that I'm stuck in this case simply because of my cluelessness that the fund I had was part of a ML, or I bought an XRP from a scammer.

We don't want clueless people to have their assets frozen because of their cluelessness upon depositing into your platform, specifically because --from what we may conclude from your jumbled explanation-- you played your own judge. You gathered evidences and blocklist etc. which remains private to you and your customer can't defend themselves. It is what PrivacyG prepared answer nicely describe, which you also conveniently missed.

Here, let me re-quote that for you and give you a hand a little: since your answer is positive, the question you'd want to address is marked in blue


And please don't say "we have a system". Remember, we are all about evidences here, so the expected answer is how exactly do you determine a user is an innocent victim or they're a scammer --or terrorist-- pretending to be innocent.

There are many services for verifying transactions on AML, including public ones. So, in our experience, public services only help criminals in money laundering.

We have developed a model for checking transactions so that the probability of suspending a customer's order that is not related to a crime in any way is minimal.

We have answered as fully as possible all the questions that were asked to us here by other users of the forum. We have nothing to hide, we never freeze users' funds for no reason, if the user has provided all the evidence that he is not involved in the crime - we unfreeze the funds and conduct an exchange or return the funds. We want to repeat again that we do not request KYC, so that the anonymity of our customers is preserved. We always go to a meeting in solving an incident when victims or our partners come to us with information that funds were stolen or the funds are clearly fraudulent, we cooperate with the law enforcement agencies of the countries that contact us so that justice prevails, the thief was punished, and the victim received his funds back. We value our reputation and do not want to be complicit in crimes, because of ignoring which, our service may be blocked, which is why each case is considered individually. We rely only on the availability of reliable information from reputable services that are responsible for the correct data provided.

Yes, if the transaction was indeed carried out as a P2P exchange and there is evidence of such a transaction, then we will have no reason to further withhold funds. An exception can only be the presence of an official request from law enforcement agencies for the immediate freezing or seizure of funds.

As far as I know Kycnot.me is not taking any percentage earnings from listing any exchanges and services on their website, it's open source project and anyone can contribute and post suggestion.
BestChange is commercially oriented service and I am sure they earn something from every exchange that is listed, even if that was never officially confirmed.
I would also like to see someone stepping up to be real competition for BestChange, that would also make them try to improve and be better.

PS
Kycnot.me does accept donations in BTC and XMR:
https://kycnot.me/about

I wish FixedFloat answered my previous reply before you posted this, but you beat me to it.  I was ready to paste and publish a pre written answer no matter their reply.

Fixed Float said this.


So they provided a list of proof they can request.  To which I replied,


If the answer is negative, then to me it becomes obvious this is selectively scamming and not about solving crime cases.  Either this or they are going to request information that does affect your privacy, which means they lied.  The other option is continuing to request irrelevant information from the customer until the customer gives up, similar to the way Free Wallet proceeds.

If the answer is positive, then the entire system is useless and a waste of time.  On both ends.

I asked the quoted question above thinking of a setup where a criminal sets up a trade between them and themselves, deposits the funds onto Fixed Float and pretends they never knew their Bitcoins have illegal origin.  They provide correspondence, although they spoke to themselves, all TXID's, confirm the address is theirs, provide a screenshot of the fake seller's Bisq profile.  Then what happens is you are enabling funds with criminal origin to be used onto your service and the criminal becomes innocent.

Which begs the question, of what good is their action to freeze funds if a very simple loop hole can be done within minutes to basically make the money legitimate?

And all of these services have the guts to pretend they are saving the world.  Pretending to be the hero in a super villain movie.  Fixed Float's way of saving the world can be easily exploited by a criminal.  The criminal becomes innocent and the innocent customers like me get selectively scammed by having their funds frozen and seized.  The criminal gets their money back through their simple setup, I get my funds stolen by Fixed Float for not thinking the unthinkable: I uninstalled the Bisq I used a few years ago and have no proof of my trade, therefore I deserve to have my money taken away.

This is B S.  There is no service in the world that can explain they are doing good by imposing Know Your Customer procedures.  If anything, Know Your Customer enables my identity to be stolen and legitimate customers to be robbed off their Bitcoin while criminals continue their job with no barriers.

-----

Because according to Fixed Float, if you have a serial killer on the run TV channels better not reveal their face!  This enables the criminal to escape, are they not right?

If they publish addresses of criminals, we know what to avoid, spare time investigators have what to investigate and connections will inevitably be made.  If not today, maybe in an year.  Maybe in five, who cares as long as the criminal is revealed.

Someone will definitely have links bookmarked and monitored.  We have some Bitcoin Talk members stalking even addresses that have not moved coins since 2010.  If they know an address is linked to crime, they will be even more curious to investigate.  One mistake and the criminal's history is revealed from the beginning to the end.  But of course it is easier to avoid the truth and any concrete answer than say out loud that they were and are in the wrong.

Funny in such a sad way that we are living in 2022 and fighting for logic.

-
Regards,
PrivacyG

Yes, but for the other hand, now we have the opposite situation in which all the positive reviews aren't moderated by admins of ratings. So exchangers write positive reviews for themselves. And I don't see many bad consequences of this. The problem is bad reviews become gray, not good reviews posted without proofs. Also there are sites like WoT and Trustpilot. They don't check if you actually were a customer when you post a bad review of some business. Of course competitors write bad reviews to each other but it doesn't harm WoT and Trustpilot and doesn't turn these websites to battlefields. So, theoretically I agree with you, but practically I don't see the situation described by you on reviews websites.


And as for admin's power. Wikipedia is created by community and it's ok. And I'm not saying moderation isn't necessary. For example, if some users say worstexchange asks for kyc I think I should read worstexchange's rules and maybe speak with worstexchange's admin to check if these users tell true. But moderation (in the meaning of checking if some info is true) and power aren't the same thing. I mean, there won't be an admin deciding "I'll make this review gray or delete it because I want to" or "I won't put this icon because I don't want to".

Also I think nothing is perfect. If I create the exchanger rating and see it doesn't work the way I expected so I'll change things that don't work as expected.

I'd like to firstly congratulate you, your jumbled explanation on this page only actually managed to make me stare at my screen for I'm not sure how long, it' a long minutes, re-read the entire page and found myself stared at my screen again because I'm not sure what's the best way to approach your situation. I even finally slept on it. So, I think this is the best way to address you and your sea of explanation, and trust me, I've wrote a very-very long post, but then decided to wrote a very simplified version. It's there in my draft, if you'd like to read.

So, simplified, if someone can't prove he's not related and didn't know the user he trade with, his account will be banned. If he can't provide proof of transaction, his account will be banned. If he bought a stolen money and can't prove his innocence, his account will be banned. In short, anyone using your platform, although they're free from KYC, they have to know a full details of the people they're about to transact with prior to using ypur platform or they'll be banned? Not sure if that's convenient, or if the info you inquire can be categorized as a legal questions, and not a harrasment, or extortion.

And what's the parameter of innocence? If A and B are friend and A tried to launder the money he stole from C through B who's about to sell it to D, which then put the money on FixedFloat, and they discussed it through a disposable chat platform, or even meeting face to face, or by paper airplane a-la high school students, or whatever, and since you found that D didn't know anything and somewhat can prove that B is not related and "didn't know" that the money is stolen, they'll get out of it? This means you're the ultimate judge of which fund is frozen and which one isn't?

Next, I still can't understand this statement,


How?

If any, it'll tighten their wiggle room. By having their address published, anyone is one or two steps away from tracking of the user and the true nature of the fund. No body would want to deal with the address owner and we can say good bye to the ML and TF.

But you choose to withheld this piece of very useful information. Clueless users who came to your platform wouldn't know what's about to hit them. All they know was they're dealing with someone --who probably dealt with someone else before them-- and boom, he went bankrupt in a day because all of his lifesaving is confiscated. The terrorist? Well, they sat calmly in their fortress, they've successfully launder their money, thanks to the cluelessness of the cryptocommunity because one of them didn't know the address they had a transaction with is belong to Gru.

Now, let's address your claim of emails from authorities accross the countries, what's the nature of this request? For you to stop harassing and extorting their citizen? Or to cease and desist?

Talking about FATF, were Seychelles fully FATF compliant? Last I check, Seychelles still arranging their regulations to meet thr standard, and from the evaluation taken in 2020, they're just meet 12 of the 40 guidelines FATF issued. Not sure which from those 12 speciefies what and if your actions were included and justified by those 12 compliantce, or if being nosy --and self appointed judge-- like this make you a progidy or a vigilante or an extortionist.

---

Beware of this point, it could backfire. We can only imagine what length a competitor would do to defame their fellow competition. For example, without having to submit a proof for bad review, a company called worstexchange could create hundreds of accounts to wrote bad review about his fellow competition, goodexchange. And without an admin who can moderate or decide the legitimacy of those fake reviews, your system would turn into a battlefield of reviews before ultimately collapsed.

Actually I'd like to receive donations if it becomes popular  I don't want to have any money from exchangers because in this case I won't be independent and I want to stay neutral and protect interests of customers, not exchangers Also a website like this doesn't need an expensive server and the content will be generated mostly by the community so I'll spend much time only in the beginning when I'll create it.

Go for it! Only one way to find out if it will be popular. And if it becomes popular, you'll add referral links to the exchangers, after which you'll have a financial interest in keeping them on your website.

I'm thinking about creating an exchangers rating. But it would rather be an antirating. So I want it to be a people's rating where users could add exchangers and could edit info of exchangers. Like in Wikipedia. There won't be an admin who will have all the power and decide everything. All the bad reviews will be posted without proofs and all the good reviews must have proofs the exchange was actually made. And exchangers will have the following icons: kyc, can scam you (seize funds), has legal info, has history of scam from other ratings, has rules on the website (some exchangers don't have links to rules to hide them from users), exchanger collaborates with police and can provide the police all your data. So users will edit exchanger's info on the rating and for example make some icons gray or red. And also there will be "report" buttons. I don't think we should just passively observe the horrible behavior of some exchangers. I think we should report them to hosters, domain registrators, police (why not? they collect our info and tell they report customers, so it would be fair if customers report them first and exchangers almost always run their business illegally).

What do you think? Does community need a rating like this?

BestChange needs competition. There's KYC? Not me!, but it still lists several of the same exchangers and doesn't have the marketing budget to promote it.

It was suggested before that someone creates their own "Taint detection service", that just labels every address as clean. After all, that's how Bitcoin and fungibility works.

They didn't seize my funds, I just saw they scam many people so I reported.


That's what I'm trying to say in all my posts in this thread. Some anonymous guy says "well, I think your funds are from bad origins so I'll seize them and will keep them, bye, thanks". The reason of seizing is "our partners said" or something like that. And more than that, you don't know anything about this guy that wants to check you and your funds origins, he keeps staying anonymous but in the same time he demands all info he wants from you. Is it fair? And it's not only FixedFloat. All exchangers at Bestchange that have KYC do so. That's the point. And Bestchange keeps them there, disputes become gray and admin says everything is ok. And doesn't want to put at least KYC icon near exchanger's name if the exchanger has KYC. It looks like Bestchange wants to hide this info from users.



This is what I'm trying to tell! Even banks and government must have proofs of crime committed or a proof there is an investigation to seize funds. So why the hell some anonymous guy in internet who doesn't even provide customers his legal info (so he isn't a legit company since there isn't any legal info about his business) seize funds? I think that guy overestimates himself. And the only real reason of this is that customers send their coins to that anonymous guy first. So when you have sent your funds and don't have control of them an exchanger demands anything it wants from you and do with your money anything it wants too. This is the only reason, not government requirements or laws.


Does he have any proofs his exchanger is a company based in Seychelles? Why should customers think this is true, because he says so? I mean, any company must provide it's legal info on it's website. With it's legal registration number or so, it's legal name etc. So where is it? Why doesn't he put this info on the website? Why doesn't he provide this info here and just ignors this question? It's because he isn't any kind of a company, just an anonymous guy seizing funds


This is the point I'm so happy I'm not the only person who undertands this.

So.  If I provide correspondence, all TXID's, confirm the address is mine and provide a screenshot of the seller's Bisq profile then I am good to go?

-
Regards,
PrivacyG

Correspondence, transactions may be requested; confirmation of ownership of the address by sending any transaction; links and contact details of the user who sent funds from an address explicitly related to the crime; if the funds were received from a mixer that directly sent funds related to the crime, then simply providing information to confirm receipt of funds from the mixer.

In no case do we force you to follow this recommendation, but if you need to provide the source of origin of funds, it will help to resolve this issue faster.

I take it you don't want to answer it, which is fine, but I'll draw my own conclusion.