Topic: Has my brother been scammed? - page 2. (Read 389 times)

I'm writing from my phone, so it'll be brief:
A wallet is not an exchange. You use an exchange to convert fiat money to bitcoin.
A decent wallet is created to manage bitcoin, it doesn't care about fiat money (although some wallets work together with an exchange, so it looks like the exchange is part of your wallet)

There are plenty of free wallets, the only wallets you want to pay for are hardware Wallets like trezor or ledger.

So
Fiat => exchange => bitcoin => decent wallet

If you spend funds using your wallet, the wallet will create a transaction, and it'll include a miners fee...

You don't activate wallets, off course you won't be able to send funds if you haven't funded an address belonging to your wallet.

I'd love to write a full walkthrough, but not from my phone.

I have a couple of questions regarding wallets which will, no doubt, confirm my ignorance...

Once I've chosen a wallet, what happens? Do I have to put money in it to be able to purchase coins? Do I have to 'activate' a wallet by paying money in?
Do I have to put money in to cover transaction fees? Do I have to link the wallet to a specific exchange or is that done depending on which wallet is used?

I'm trying to establish, in my own mind, exactly what the process is. Is there a step by step idiots guide to this? I want to try to understand so that I can identify the BS that is being fed to my brother.

Any info will be gratefully received.

Thanks

Thanks Lucius - yep he's in this for thousands...reckons he has 2 wallets with over £30k in each. I need to get the full story from his computer....

Thanks mk4 for the links. That's really useful reading.

Cheers

Show your brother point #2 on this article[1], point #2 on this article[2], and the last point on this article[3]. Tell him that this kind of scam isn't new and is quite common.

---

[1] https://www.thestreet.com/investing/bitcoin-scams-14640202
[2] https://coinsutra.com/cryptocurrency-scams/
[3] https://cryptosec.info/scams/

Only if we consider what you post above, I don't think your brother was buying BTC (unless he spent a considerable amount of money) in last 6 months. It's a shame he didn't get informed before he went to invest, crypto world is full of scammers who are just waiting for people like your brother.

What can be done now is to expose potential fraudsters so that others do not become victim, or try to report to the police if payments have been made through a bank or any other traceable method.

I really appreciate your prompt replies - thank you 

I'm going to try to get hold of his laptop and account/wallet information tomorrow... no doubt I'll be back with lots more questions.

At least my gut feeling about this seems to be right. Just need to convince my brain washed (or desperate!) brother.

Thanks again

Your brother is obviously not in control of his funds (i.e. no private keys), and therefore is in the hands of a third-party who does. Being that the basis, having to provide 6K to retrieve is BTC sounds like a complete scam, and I’ve read multiple cases where people are asked to provide further funds to retrieve what they’ve got, all being scams whereby you end-up losing it all.

In any case, and just in case, he should read the contractual terms of where he invested in BTCs, since it does not sound like a wallet per se, but rather more an alleged investment firm of some sort (that may give him access to see a virtual balance, be it real or fake). Certainly do not provide any more funds, and try to dig into the full extent of where he bought those BTCs (i.e. search for the company name, post it here, etc.).

If he has to pay money to get access to money that's actually his, it's a scam.

Never pay btc to somebody to "release" btc you already own, if somebody asked you to do this in a fiat setting, you'd call them a scammer and call the police in a heartbeat, but it seems like new users dealing with crypto get blindsighted by lack of technical knowledge and/or plain greed, and they get scammed by scammers that use tricks that wouldn't work if you were taking about USD or EUR...

Your brother should have received the funds in a desktop or hardware wallet OF HIS CHOICE, never trust an online wallet or exchange to hold your funds, but that's all hindsight now.

Hi

I'm a complete novice and have had no dealings with bit coins whatsoever.

However, I've joined this forum to try to gain some understanding on how things work with wallets etc.

In short, I believe that my brother has been scammed as he has bought bitcoins over the last 6 months and for various 'unbelievable' (in my eyes) reasons cannot access his coins/money. I have read some of the threads on here and a few of the discussions have raised alarm bells with me as he has mentioned some of the malware/hacks particularly the Ctrl C, Ctrl V issue.

I'm not sure what wallet/s he has or who he is dealing with blockchainwise but I believe he has access via a laptop using Windows. He seems to use the correct terminology when talking about things, in relation to what I've read on here and other sites, but I've not seen anything legitimate about the transactions need to recover his coins. I've not actually seen his laptop or how he accesses his wallet.

So, in general terms, he is being told that his coins are available in a wallet (possibly not his? I'm not sure) but he needs to put in cash (using the term 'Overturn') to activate the wallet and release his funds. Apparently, he has 4.8 bitcoins in there but needs £6k to get them back. This appears to be complete bullsh*t to me but as I've said I have no experience of this.

Is 'Overturn' a genuine thing? Does this sound like a typical scam?

Is there a way of sorting this out?

I'd be really grateful of your help/opinions.

Thank you