Topic: I'm a victim of MiM Scam! Now the police is investigating! help! (Read 2990 times)

OP, begin writing your whole story down for a summary for your lawyer.
Do not attempt to argue law or defense strategies, just provide the facts.

Gather all the documents or other communications you may have, including:
emails, text messages, localbitcoin communications, telephone numbers, pictures,
receipts, or anything else that will help corroborate your story and help toward
any need for a defense.

Obviously, do not willingly provide any information to the police or investigative
authorities without a lawyer present. It may not be important that your lawyer
knows all the in & outs of bitcoin, as long as they understand it is a non-reversable
payment method.

It is likely that after all is said and done, you may need to return the cash deposit back
to the original depositor, since they may have been defrauded by a scammer and
now you will be the last one holding the bag.

It is also possible that the officer who called you could be the scammer attempting to
get you to return the money to himself. It is important to cooperate with the authorities
after they have proved to be actual authorities, and after you have a lawyer present.

Just begin preparing your proofs, so that you have them and ready if you need them.
Do not hand them to the police, they are only for you and your lawyer's use.

Edit: I just noticed the user above me bumped this three month old thread and I
answered as if it was new. 

This is really a call to order for anyone transacting in cryptocurrencies here and everywhere! Op, it has been a long while you posted here, so how has it all turned out?

The buyer of your bitcoin is a rogue and knew what he was doing from the unset, so you really need a criminal lawyer, knowledgeable in cryptocurrency to fight this case and it would cost you some money too, but you can claim damages in the tail end.
As smart as the buyer thinks he is, your lawyer can demand for the identity of the owner of phone number used in sending the text message and also that used on the bank teller, when deposit was made. Your advert at localbitcoin, his text message, their dates, amount involved, exchange rate then, blockchain transaction, which I presume should correlate, are useful tools to establish your case.

MiM scams are much older than bitcoin, bitcoin just make them worse cause the fraudster leaves less traces and law enforcers in general are still very ignorant on it and tend to try to close cases too quickly. Anyway always ask for verifications on who is paying and for what (the procedures varies depending on the payment method), like some photo of the deposit receipt with some sentence hand-written on top which leaves no doubt about the nature of the transaction (like "deposit for xx bitcoin purchase from xxx to be sent to address xxxxx") and maybe the id of the buyer on the side. And always keep a record of all the chats and evidence.

Police has my bank statements and I explained to him the cash deposit was from bitcoin sales. He doesn't buy my story... -__-
Even if I do give him blockchain transactions I doubt he has no idea what he is looking at...

But you can't close a person's account just because a scammer transferred funds into his bank account. What if the scammer decided to pay electricity bills, will they close the electricity company's bank account?


OP, you can get details of your bitcoin transaction on localbitcoins.com if you check "profile" look at your transaction history, maybe that can help.

OP should expect that fraud charges are filed against.
Unless it gets cleared, and you get evidence of this filed with all the banks involved, (and the banks don't mess up and fail to get you out of the inter-bank fraud databases) you should expect that all your bank accounts will be closed by your banks and that you will not be able to open any new bank accounts for some years.

I think the police are almost certainly just hoping you will say something to incriminate yourself, and assuming you don't then nothing will happen.

Sharma is right - you don't need to be able to prove your innocence; in order to be charged with a crime the police and accuser need to be able to prove your guilt.

Interesting case to study such kind of aspects. I would advise you to have a consultation with your lawyer first and don’t mess up with cop till your lawyers advise you to do so.
Please keep us updated because such matters should be brought in to public so that any one of us can deal with such situation if it happens with someone. Wish you best of luck to get out of this case. Please keep us updated.

The police issues were not caused by the OP being on bitcointalk.
It was from selling coins on bitcointalk to a fraudster.

This is pretty scary stuff to hear about to say the least especially if you are a new person to the forums. Because nobody wants to be involved with the police from being here.

He has proof that the cash was sent to the OP.
Unfortunately, the OP doesn't have any proof that the bitcoins were sent to the victim (alleged).

https://s18.postimg.io/sb3o97dvt/1593015.jpg

semper necessitas probandi incumbit
ei qui agit ,  translation : "the necessity of
proof always lies with the person
who lays charges."
The person accusing  you of scam should produce the proof that the deal was actually for some vehicle and not bitcoin

What's upsetting is that the first thing the cop says is that I'm a criminal and I know you scammed my victim... what a fucking scumbag... to assume me guilty without even listening to my side of the story -_-

The cop said he's investigating an internet fraud involving false vehicle sale... I'm not too sure. I did find the transactions on blockchain but it doesn't really prove the identity of the receiver.

Are you sure that you are a victim of MiM?
Is it possible that the complainant is the person who took the coins from you?

Did you receive the money the same day that you sent the BTC? Maybe the transaction record on the blockchain could serve as proof. I'd agree with The Pharmacist that you should be wary of trusting the police and to at least seek out the advice of a lawyer.

on top of that the police didn't know what bitcoin was so I had to give them a good 10 minute lesson on what bitcoin is....

They shouldn't need more than a brief explanation from you I would think.  But my advice is to get more advice.  There are bitcoin lawyers, but sounds like you need a criminal lawyer.

I already went to go see 3 lawyers and they don't know what bitcoin is... I'm sooo fucked -___-

The police threatened me saying they have a probably cause for an arrest warrant because my name is on the bank account...not sure if this is a scare tactic but I just need to find a lawyer that knows what bitcoin is at least...

My advice is, don't talk to the cops and get a lawyer if you think you're going to get arrested.  At least talk to a lawyer.  I don't trust cops or lawyers all that much, but if you think you're going to be on the losing end of this then you need a lawyer.  Good luck.

I sold a good chunk of bitcoins last year through cash deposit. It was my first time selling and I didn't really know anything about protecting myself from MiM scam. I set up an ad on localbitcoins and included my phone number (FIRST MISTAKE). I got a text message from a person wanting to buy my coins. We had a conversation and exchanged details for the trade. I told him to open up escrow on localbitcoin but he deposited money into my bank account first... Surprised but satisfied with the money, I sent him bitcoins to him directly to his wallet address and that was the end of that...I thought.

Fast forward to now, I get a phone call from a police from another state saying I'm a suspect in an internet scam involving a victim who thought was buying a vehicle. I explained to him that this is a mistake and explained the money was from selling bitcoins. The police wants proof of this but I don't really have any proof of this trade happening...I probably don't know what the phone number is even if I do get a number from my phone company...

What should I do? I'm thinking about going to see a lawyer but I think I'm pretty fucked in this situation.