Topic: Changenow.io selective scamming (Read 1189 times)

For any people thinking of using Changenow, just look at their profile feedback.

I remember the hassle they put a forum user through when they seized around 110 BCH from him but he never backed down and managed to get them to send the sotlen funds back to him.

Changenow and their associated companies should be avoided otherwise you risk losing your funds under their terms and conditions.

Changenow is one of the worst exchanges you can use if you are thinking of not providing KYC. Maybe try other alternative instant exchanges like Fixedfloat, Godex, but you have to be aware that they also have that KYC clause in their TOS.
They haven't been scandalous like Changenow.

This site can also be helpful - https://kycnot.me

Regarding this (old) statement, I need to mention that what they are saying is not completely true. See this discussion I had with support today:



BE VERY CAREFUL when using their service to exchange funds.

Hello everyone. We're here to deliver some explanations.


Hello. I've checked with our PM and he told me that in November 2017 there was a person who wrote a negative review on Trustpilot about missing 221 BTG. They were invited to customer support to get a refund but they never returned. Could you please turn to our customer support? We will stage a refund as soon as possible.


We marketed ourselves as anonymous as long as is was safe for us. Afterwards, when the market rules and legal regulations changed, we dropped the anonymity and stopped marketing ourselves as so. Right now, ChangeNOW is advertised as registration-free because this is the most we can afford to do to let our customers retain thair privacy. When a customer is stopped for KYC, they can rightfully (but explicitely!) refuse to submit their documents. In that case, they receive a refund subtracting the network fee.
No one from Privcoin came to our support to request a refund. Actually, we have never received any messages from Privcoin ever since the situation occurred.

Hope this was clear enough.

Open a scam accusation. Provide proof in the scam accusation. Otherwise, there is no point saying it here.

Privcoin's case is strong enough for me to believe that changenow is running some kind of shady business at the very best, by using "KYC" as an excuse to hold onto customer funds for much longer than they are supposed to.

There's always a counterparty risk if you're not comfortable with providing ID to them, which a lot of people aren't especially with all the proof of funds stuff. Always take their claims of anonymity with a grain of salt, I guess.


I think that there is evidence enough in the fact that changenow is directly responding, without disputing any claims in regards to the fact that they are indeed holding/scamming the funds that Privcoin initially deposited.

That is serious money. You should open an individual thread about it. There are so many forum members convinced that Changenow is a scam (even if they repented and returned the money of one of the complainers) that you will receive a lot of support.

I lost 221 BTG to these scammers, worth ~$100k at the time, nearly worthless now.
Here is a tx https://btgexplorer.com/tx/9202e037c052a48fac2f7d10e58bb41d5dc0e0bced00d009740e9014b7479471
Was supposed to get ~11 BTC back, never received.

Initially, you marketed yourselves as an anonymous exchange and that was what most people used your service under the impression that your service guaranteed anonymity.

I think that this is misleading advertising at best and very shady business operations in general.

Why are you not able to return the funds which Privcoin sent you back to the same sending address? Since you are not exchanging any funds but rather just conducting a crypto to crypto transfer, to the best of my knowledge, that should not be something that is illegal in any state. I would also trust that Privcoin's claim that there are no specific legislation preventing you to complete the exchange to be true.

Anyhow, seems like all of these instant exchangers (shapeshift, changenow, changelly) have all become stricter with their KYC with Changenow and Changelly's reputation being much worse. I would be extremely careful about dealing with all of them.

Interesting claims. I miss evidence though.

Unfortunately, we need a clear confirmation from a representative in our support inbox.

Wasnt he very clear on this thread that he isnt going to complete the KYC? Why dont you return the crypto to the same address and clean your hands of also this mess?

Hello, Polina here. I would like to point out that we're still waiting for Privcoin to confirm that they refuse to complete the KYC procedure in our support. Unfortunately, we can't carry out a refund unless we get a written confirmation from them - such was the condition posed by our legal department.

Until you solve this case you wont be able to say you have clean hands.

I specifically found this thread to find out about the fate of Privcoin. I see that they have not left a comment, apparently, this means that they do not want to return the coins. I do not understand what their problem is, because as far as I can tell, changenow requires legal proof that these guys are refusing KYC. What is the problem? After all, this is exactly what they demanded from the exchange. Return the coins in case of failure of the user. Confirm the refusal and get your coins!

ni23457 received his coin, confirming the refusal, why does Privcoin refuse? 

We have already stated that all our hanging KYC cases will receive a refund as soon as they confirm they don't want to submit their documents and are ready to receive their funds to their wallets. That's our only condition.

@PrivCoin:  I commend you!  This is a genuinely noble & upstanding suggestion which deserves appreciation & positive feedback from the whole crypto community.

Bravo & well done!!

@changenow:  Stop scamming & do it.

Of course I did. However, we need that confirmation from them so that all is clear from the legal point of view. With regards to PrivCoin, no one from them has ever contacted our support team in the first place.

Did you even read their threads?

We need a confirmation of KYC dismissal in form of a written message in our support from all our hanging KYC cases, Privcoin and ni23457 included. Their funds will be returned to them right away.

I believe OP was pretty clear already:
What are you waiting for? Refund all those people!
What you're doing now looks like PR/damage control. I don't believe a word you say, I'll believe it when PrivCoin and ni23457 confirm it.

Hello everyone, it's Polina. We finally have some news on the situation.

Yesterday we have received an update from our legal team and other legal advisors that it's safe for us to release the funds of all our hanging KYC cases.

Dear Privcoin, please contact our support team and confirm your dismissal of the KYC procedure. You will be issued a refund minus the network fee right away. You won't have to provide any ID, all you need to do is confirm that you do not wish to complete the verification procedure. However, your wallet address will be blacklisted on ChangeNOW, so please keep that in mind.

This applies to all out hanging KYC cases. From now on, any of our clients who choose not to submit their ID for verification, will be issued a refund minus the network fee. Their deposit address will then be blacklisted.

You can read our full statement here: https://medium.com/@changenow_io/changenow-updates-verification-cases-and-future-plans-cf04a2863168.

Changenow are a bunch of selective scamming thieves. They are connected to Evercode and Atomic Swaps wallet so be careful, avoid them.

A exchange that allows customers to create an account without any verification and then blocks the account when money is deposited and starts blackmailing for documents without presenting any clear reason for the block seems a scam.

They should also change their advertising to remove "Non Custodial" as they have custody of our coins. They will keep our coins forever seemingly.

No surprise here. A thief is a thief. On reddit they are now saying Privcoin is a phishing website, that's why they stole your money. Either they don't know what they are saying or they employed the dumbest shill ever. Hope you recover your funds...

Article here on your story:
https://medium.com/@paulmcglynn25/privcoin-mixing-service-is-the-latest-victim-of-evercode-labs-changenow-io-1f64efd6c6d3
https://pmc25posts.tumblr.com/post/177824656942/privcoin-mixing-service-is-the-latest-victim-of

I'll post here as a reference for the red trust I'm going to give ChangeNOW. They claim to be anonymous (archived):
But then they require KYC when it's convenient for them (archived):

I've always appreciated the way you do business!

This thread is related: ChangeNow.io (Evercode Lab) - Scam. Illegally holding of 100 BCH (11 bitcoins).

---

Known alt of this account: Polina_ChangeNOW, admitted amongst others here (archived).

But scumbag is bitcoin regulated in your country? Do they have laws related to bitcoin wherever you operate from? If bitcoin is not considered as a legal currency, how the fuck your exchange is a legitimate money business? Stop fuckin around people and pay them back. We don't need you.

Shove your tech support up your arse. Stop centralizing bitcoin then it already is! Scam exchanges like you is why bitcoin has a bad name.

Like I said, exchanges like you are the root cause why bitcoin isn't going anywhere. I hope you run out of business soon.

Discussed in detail https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/is-privcoinio-a-scam-3805294

We provided written notice to them that they were factually incorrect which is a precursor to being able to file a lawsuit for libel https://github.com/MetaMask/eth-phishing-detect/issues/1598

There have been 0 scam accusations against us, plus we provide cryptographic proof of all transactions that can prove a scam. It's also odd to label us a phishing site when we don't ask for login credentials. We also refunded a user out of pocket for the scam of another service https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.40955778



We have no way to verify our funds because our country does not consider crypto to crypto as money service. You advertised yourself here as anonymous and this is how our Admin found you https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/limitless-exchanges-available-2911172




We would also rather not provide our ID. If you want to return the coins that's fine but you should return everybody's coins and not just ours. There are no known laws of any country preventing you from doing so unless you are absolutely certain they were involved in a crime and not just suspicious in which case they would be turned over to the agency investigating that particular crime and not held by you. If you don't want to return the coins for which you have suspicion and no actionable evidence then enjoy the free coins.

Hello! We are sorry that this was your experience with ChangeNOW.

Let us clarify the situation:
AML and KYC are implemented by all legitimate money service businesses, ours included. We need our users to pass KYC on order to continue our operations without any legal problems from legal authorities.

We have a standard procedure for all verification cases. In order to complete your exchange, please turn to our tech support at [email protected]. Our specialists will guide you through the process to ensure the process is as smooth and comfortable for you as possible.

As for our alleged anonymity: we stopped being anonymous quite a while ago when our policy changed. We don't advertise ourselves as anonymous and it is stated in our FAQ, Terms of Use, and Privacy Policy. All our customers automatically accept them when using ChangeNOW.

Regulation of crypto exchangers' operations is only becoming more strict. We are obligated to follow all the requirements.
Our customers' comfort is our top priority, therefore all our KYC cases are handled with utmost professionalism. You are welcome to have your exchange finished through our support and sincerely hope everything goes smoothly for you.

Very interesting information, but what evidence do you have? I see only one problem - when I go to your site (https://www.privcoin.io) I see a message from MetaMask:

ATTENTION
MetaMask believes this domain could currently compromise your security and has prevented you from interacting with it.

This is because the site tested positive on the Ethereum Phishing Detector. This includes outright malicious websites and legitimate websites that have been compromised by a malicious actor.

You can turn MetaMask off to interact with this site, but it is advised not to.

If you think this domain is incorrectly flagged or if a blocked legitimate website has resolved its security issues, please file an issue.

How do you explain this?

Scammers Profile Link:   https://bitcointalksearch.org/user/changenow-1307188
Reference Link: https://changenow.io
Amount Scammed: More than 1 BTC worth, less than 20 BTC worth.

What happened::

Many of you are familiar with the service we run, namely https://www.privcoin.io which is a multi crypto mixer. We currently support mixing BTC, BCH, ETH and LTC. On occasion depending on the popularity of coins we will use 3rd party services such as Shapeshift, Changelly and ChangeNow to swap from one coin to another to increase reserves of something in higher demand. One day within the last 2 months one of our Admins used ChangeNow only to be greeted with the following message after the coins had been sent:


The country in which we operate from does not require us by law to perform KYC on crypto to crypto transactions so for obvious reasons it will never be possible for us to prove where the funds came from nor do we feel like sending any ID to ChangeNow as they advertise themselves as an "Anonymous, Limitless Exchange" right here on the forums.

This thread should serve as a warning not to use ChangeNow unless you are both willing to provide ID and able to prove where your coins have come from. On occasion we don't want to process a mix at PrivCoin so we refund the user their exact coins back to them and this approach should be the industry standard.

To ChangeNow should they read this thread: If you either refund us the coin we sent back where it came from OR provide a swap to the coin we wanted, we will remove this post but here's the best part: We are not going to tell you which transaction was ours so either refund every user you're holding and give everybody their coins back or provide them the promised swap.