Topic: Finding scammers (Read 943 times)

If I can summarize the matter, it just depends on the amount of ressource the attacker (the one who wants to find the identity of the scammer) is ready to spend on that attack, and on the value of the target (is the scammer a high-valued target ?).
In the amount of ressources to spend, you can't just take into account the money part, you also have to think about all the implications about laws, public relations (if the attacker is using some processes that are designated as close to be illegal, it will have to justify his acts to newspaper and to the public for example).

And in that simple equation, you just salt it with the anonymizing-techs that the scammer is using.

And then, you got your answer if it's techniccaly possible or not, and if it's worth considering for the authorities to catch the scammers (or other people breaking the laws).

Well i am also new to this system and thanks for this info it will be a future reference one day. And another thing also i would like to trace some of the bitcoin transaction from wallet to wallet to this link being identified. If this works but if will not then probably i will read some of the members input in this thread. Anyways i am still thankful though.

You can ask similar question as "Can we decrypto a crypto". Answer is same if FBI is investigating a terorist it has enough bugdet and knowlodge to find hack the code.Its just need some time. But if you are searcing a way to crack any code probably you dont have enough budget and knowlegde. So as an answer yes there are ways to find to a hacker or scammer but real question is your budget. FBI busted silkroad and btc-e related scammers. so you cant say btc is totally anonymous, cash is more anonymous than btc, at least it doesnt have trace. So btc having tracable data there may be some tools. But again if somebody have a great tool for following and cathing scammers that shouldnt be reachable for everyone. Because if hackers see that tool they may prevent theirselves from it. So we may guess fbi has a secret wepon somewhere out there.So if you had any problem related with blockchain prosecutions are your best option. Maybe there are private security firms also that can do this.

Scammers are getting increasingly sophisticated in their attempts to get your money or personal details. Be alert and protect yourself from being scammed by following our tips. ... Scammers can use your information and pictures to create a fake identity or to target you with a scam.

Well he still can track the wallet, and eventually the tokens will sooner or later be traded on an exchange, then he could contact them directly.


Most of the BeeTokens Scam Mail Ether was sent to Cryptopia and Kraken within a few hours.

Tracing bitcoin and etherium scammers are so hard enough i didnt get some news that they have been reported. You definitely cannot search it into google because first, cryptocurrency is decentralize and its users are anonymous. Least we can do now is not to be fooled by those too good to be true lies those scammers promote in us.

This is one of the main reasons why people do easily being fooled on where they do lacked knowledge and they dont really mind on learning up on what are those technical aspects and they do believe directly as long they earn money then it would be already a convincing thing for them.


You have a point where there are several projects being bust out and traced up but it would still depend on how serious and dedicated for its investors to make such action but mostly people do cry and forget and later on making the same thing all over again.

Unfortunately this still has to be mentioned since quite a big portion of users here just want to get quick rich.
And it is even worse that these people don't know how cryptocurrencies work at all. For them it is just 'a program' with 'blockchain' which makes you rich.

The last time some morons shilled a project in a discord chat, i went to the projects website, opened the whitepaper and saw something like this:


Well, but you can take legal actions against them (at least under some circumstances, considering it is blatant scam (e.g. shitconnect)).

These are just really basic steps for a crypto dude to follow and even just with our common sense we can able to spot out a potential scam attempt but still even how basic these things are, people do always failed it up to follow which it would really result into a disaster and later on they do cry out publicly that he lost his coins or being scammed by any investment.I dont see a point or trying to solve out figuring addresses being used on scamming even you do find out you cant still get those bitcoins back.

Have you tried www.walletexplorer.com?
Blue Protocol (BLUE) has interesting ideas for tracking scammers.

What kind of situation are you exactly talking about? Being scammed in general?

The most important step to avoid getting scammed is to use your common sense.
This may sound trivial, but a lot of people seem to just turn their brain off when looking for the next 'moon shot'.

Do: Read the whitepaper, think about the whole project when investing, ...
Don't: Trust random stranger on the internet


Security. You need to secure your coins as good as possible.
A hardware wallet is the first step into a best possible secured storage for your funds.

Do: Install an Anti virus software, Do perform updates regularly (driver + OS), always keep backups, ..
Don't: Store too much money on a hot wallet, download shady software, use torrents/cracked software, ...

I have once a victim of scammer, but in an other way. Someone message me in my bct account, it contains a link. Then if you click, it look like the bitcointalk welcome page that you need to login but I notice the url that has no bitcointalk in it and also im already login in bct. It has also no captcha requirement so I think it is a scam. Please be guided everyone who read this.  

With Etherscan you can tag addresses with well known scammers. Also something that isn't discussed often is that there is a good amount of scammers on Telegram groups acting as influencers attempting to collaborate with ICOs. Make sure that you perform your due diligence and verify their account.

I think you can trace it only to but navryatli you can monitor the output of the Fiat because there are a lot of ways not registrirovat or register for a front person! If the scammer is engaged in a dirty business he's already got it all figured out how to not be caught! Good luck to you!

this is almost impossible task, and even if you can track it, it will require alot of money

When you are interested to find the scammer you must do everything like you can find them in the google and find the link of addresses

I sent for the first time in bitcoin, received and sent, had a tranaction in history. on friday, now I/m not seeing anything in history. why is this. Plus the person I sent activation for is not responding. did I get scammed?

How are governments going to determine where you bought bitcoins, if you bought it with cash from a trusted trader? I never re-use any address, so they will not link any addresses to services that I use. You do not need Monero or Dash to be 100% anonymous, if you are using Bitcoin in the correct manner.

I have never heard of anyone that used mixer services to mix their coins and who had their coins tracked after that. If you are so quick to say that my statements are false, then give me examples or links to those data. 

There are some companies like coinfirm: https://www.coinfirm.io/about which lists the stolen/frauded BTC addresses then estimate the frauded/stolen bitcoin in your wallett.

Having been scammed myself before it's very difficult to get anything done and extrememly frustrating. In the end you are the master of your decisions both good & bad. I only have myself to blame but I highly recommed everyone to NEVER send anyone BTC without complete confidence! Even if you know you're being scammed you can stop yourself… albiet a very difficult task.
After the fact I had a look around and found this resource. Of course I'm sure that the scammer will never use the address again but if others use and know about it can prove to be a somewhat useful resource.

I think it's impossible.
Do you know about Bitcoin mixer?
If scammers used btc mixer, you can't track moving fund.
This is difficult.

I remember reading some leaked documents by Snowden, apparently the NSA hates Tor because they can't do much about it. Google "Tor stinks". Unless they have advanced in their methods to de-anonymize people, last time we know their opinion was that they had huge problems with it. As far as I know, there is no evidence of someone using Tails with all scripts disabled behind deanonymized ever.

M personally im not worried, since I don't do anything illegal, I just use Tor to hide my IP from the huge amount of scammers in the Bitcoin world constantly trying to dox and steal your coins.

Like you said, for small things they will not bother... if the owner of a mixer is not moving a lot of money they may not bother, but if in 10 years there's a mixing service moving $billions then he better have perfect anonymity because I doubt governments will just sit and watch as huge amounts are mixed.

there is currently a reward of > 40BTC for anyone who can provide information / recovery of this : https://www.walletexplorer.com/wallet/0553bf662200ad5d?from_address=1BaEJquitskdXcTj53Uy6PuUtJ5a8ETWpA

stolen from a big indian btc exchange.

finding scammers? you can do a look at google and find that link or adresses, because many people have scored a bit of scam especially with bitcoin because it's a great job / bitcoin job so they attracted about it

I would suggest to make a "black list" of people (namely, accounts, wallets, addresses, websites) who were engaged in scam.
There is such topic in the Russian thread related to unfair bounties (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2317295.0)/
There is also the list of exchangers that were caught with fraud (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2461288.msg%msg_id%)
So why can't the other threads do the same? Or there could be a separate site dedicated to scammers.

Bitcoin is so popular that it attracted people because of its advantages and value. But its sad that this brings out not only the good side of human nature, but also the bad one. And one is scamming. It's not new though. Since bitcoin became very well known, some people takes advantage of others. They create fake wallets, and other frauds and scams. With the question regarding tools on how to spot a scam, there are websites out there that offers services and ways on how to avoid one. Bitcoin.com, in particular, advises to visit their exchange portal to make sure that you are going to a real bitcoin exchange, wallet portal to make sure you are going to a real bitcoin wallet, and other guides. They also provide informations about different kinds of scam. But with the question about tracking the scammer, I am not sure if there is something that can lead you to the person because some people are really good at cleaning their mess especially when they really don't want to be hunt down. Maybe there is some tool that can help but I'm not just aware of it because I am not inclined to that kind of technology.

In the long run, it still better to have enough information so we can avoid frauds and scams. And as a saying goes, "prevention is better than cure."

Bitcoin has always been traceable. This is nothing new.
Just because it was not known that it is traceable 5 years ago, this doesn't mean that it wasn't.




This only works under some circumstances:
1) The mixer keeps logfiles
2) The mixers location is in the same country as the authorities
3) There has to be a court decision

If one of these points doesn't apply, this is not possible for governments.

---

Governments arrested a lot of people for selling drugs on silkroad. The majority has been traced via btc exchanges.
The (from exchanges) stolen coins, have already been laundered. You can't trace them further if they have already been sold.
Like it is the case with NEM. The majority of coins got laundered, therefore the foundation stopped tracing them.




Why should they? It is not illegal to run a mixing service.




Bitcoin is not anynomous. It is pseudonymous.
In the end the majority of pseudonyms (addresses) can be linked together. Thats by far not anonymous.

I think there is a fine line between what a high-level, over-funded governement agency like the NSA, the NKVD or the mossad *could potentially* do, and what they *will* do...
It's not a tale of what's technically possible, but about which level of paranoid you are, and about the odds of being the victim of a (mostly) 3 letter agency.

For example, take this article from 2014, written after a journalist dug into snowden's documents: https://www.engadget.com/2014/05/16/nsa-bugged-cisco-routers/
Combine the fact that a gov agency *could* bug the routers at your datacenter, they *could* have backdoors in the drivers on your servers, they *could* have bugs in your house, they *could* have installed spyware on your pc, they *could* have planted 50% of the current network's nodes (including the one on the darknet), they *could* be running the marjority of the mixers themselfs, they *could* have written algorithms running on big supercomputers having loaded all kind of blockchains in order to find links, they *could* have penetrated the dev groups of many opensource security tools to install backdoors, they *could* analyse all data from all ISPs and datacenters of the US and the EU if they use the proper legal channels,....

However, you should ask yourself "am i interesting enough for them to go trough all this effort in order to reveil my identity".

I truely believe that if they really, really, really wanted to find the person behind, for example, bitmixer.io, they could *probably* do this... However, the cost would probably be enormous... It would probably take them thousands of manhours, external contractors, bugging hardware, illegally entering houses, asking for searchwarrants, cooperating with or forcing other governements to allow access to certain data,....
In the end, the cost vs the outcome would probably not be in balance.

I also think that if you want privacy, and you use a combination of at least 3 anonimizing methods over tor and/or VPN, the odds of a governement agency deciding it's worth their effort to unmask you are really low, especially if you're not doing anything wrong to begin with. Personally, i sometimes use 1 mixing service... Even if it would eventually turn out this service is owned by the governement, i wouldn't be worried anyways... Mixing my coins is just a way to make sure nobody knows how much BTC i own (hint: not a lot)

BTW: a last remark: the way i understand it, bitcoin was never meant to be 100% anonymous to begin with, Satoshi left it up to the user to make sure he used bitcoin in a way that improved his/her privacy.... Satoshi actually wrote this post: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.34

Wow, so if that is true... Why are we not seeing government agencies arresting all the people who bought drugs on Silkroad or why are most of the money still untraceable that were hacked on the many exchanges that was exploited over the years?

Why did they not arrest the owner of the biggest Bitcoin mixer service that closed down a while ago? < Bitmixer.io > 

Bitcoin is for the most part anonymous, if you use it correctly and that is why government agencies are so against it. You can use other Alt coins like Monero and ZCash and Dash, but a lot of those coins are sold for Bitcoin in the end. 

If you want to be completely untraceable, you must procure your bitcoin in an anonymous way and never deal with a fiat/bitcoin conversion business or any other entity that is tied to your identity.

Once you have a business such as Coinbase in a transaction chain, they must respond to lawful subpoenas for customer information.  If they do not, they will face serious consequences.  Some bitcoin businesses also have in their terms and conditions that they can choose to voluntarily comply with a request from a law enforcement organization for information, rather than requiring a subpoena.

Best regards,
Ben

False. This may have been the case back in the Silk Road days but Bitcoin can definitely be traced now. This is why many deep web markets have switched over to Monero.

If you ONLY deal from bitcoin to bitcoin it is possible to remain anonymous... the problem is that most people, at some point, buy bitcoin with fiat. If the government/someone really wanted to track down a transaction, they can do so even through bitcoin mixers and whatnot.

There is a difference between identifying, finding and following. Identifying a scammer having only a random address is very difficult. This address would have to have a tag on some other service.

Finding the address used by a scammer depends on others to identify the address that was used by him.

Now, following an address you already know that has been used by a scammer is very simple. Just search for an explorer of your choice.

There are network analysis companies out there that track payments across the blockchain and align them with KYC data, however I really doubt you will have the funds to acquire this sort of information, as the fee is usually quite hefty.

Check out the following;

https://www.chainalysis.com/

And google blockchain analysis, or blockchain identity mapping to find out more similar sites.

At the moment, nothing!
That is due to the fact that there are many tools for them to hide their funds and you won't even know.
They can hide it with the use of mixers and these mixers have a privacy policy, so you can't really do anything in finding them.
They can use someone else's identity (like a friend or relative) and get their KYC done, and redeem their coins thereafter which, finding the culprit would be impossible. They may also use some dark coins which are least traceable like - Monero, Dash (mostly Cryptonight).
All I can say is, nobody is a perfect thief in this world but this is also the bitter truth that you can't beat these fools unless they leave something behind that could really help you out in catching them. And don't mind, even if you try to find them, you will only be able to chase them till their footprints are delved. After they have vanished, you will not get anything but heave.

There are so many ways of hiding the destination of the scammers coins that it is virtually impossible to trace it. A lot of sites on the internet will allow you to register without KYC/AML requirements and you can push those coins through these services. They also allow you to change the sender address, to withdraw from their services and some even mix your coins.

A lot of these sites goes down and then resurface under a new domain, so you cannot trace any logs, because they are destroyed or not even logged by these sites. A lot of people open multiple accounts, which makes this even more difficult to follow. 

If you're willing to pay, or if your business requires it, there are quite a number of blockchain analysis tools out there... think the field of blockchain forensics is quietly being developed for enforcement and regulatory use, actually. Saw a couple of proposals bidding for professional work and it's worth a lot of money. Think the guys at Chainalysis and Cointeliigence have been aggressively promoting their services. Then there are upcoming courses like: http://courses.dfironlinetraining.com/bitcoin-forensics

See BitFury's new tool launched a few weeks ago: https://medium.com/@BitFuryGroup/bitfury-launches-crystal-a-blockchain-investigative-tool-for-law-enforcement-and-financial-3d7712dd5dce

If you'd like to try an open source tool, there's one called BlockSci on github: https://github.com/citp/BlockSci

There are also Blockparser and BTCSpark. Since I'm no techie, I've never been able to try any!

you can use walletexplorer to link addresses to wallets
https://www.walletexplorer.com/

IIRC, these guys also have commercial products that dig deeper into the data..

If i'm not mistaking, this tool works by tracking when unspent outputs that funded different addresses are combined as input for a new transaction. However, if your attacker is smart enough, or used a mixer (or equivalent), this tool won't work... I don't think there are tools that are able to track attackers that actually know what they're doing, and cover their tracks...

Is there anyway to track scammers who scammed bitcoins and ethereum? Google search for public addresses don't find a thing.

Is there any tool where i can input addresses and it analyses it? I know there is block explorers but is there anything better?