Topic: Intersango Scamming (Read 10286 times)

Here is a copy of a message I just sent by PM to a UK resident who was asking me if it was worthwhile to report this to the police in the UK.

I thought it might be helpful. We are closing in, and I predict an arrest by late summer.

..........

Hi!

Yes, report it and get a crime number. You might prefer to report it by letter or email to Scotland Yard than explain virtual currency to your average PC. It doesn't matter whether or not the police understand in the UK what is going on or not, just get your letter in now.

In about a month you can request Scotland Yard forward the complaint to a particular officer in California whose contact details I will provide.

Then email it in yourself anyway.

You should be pleased to know that cops in the US are a lot more professional than those in the UK. They do tend to be a little overwhelmed though. There is an officer in charge of the Carole and Patrick Strateman case right now, but a specialist investigator will getting involved in about 3 weeks.


Icicle


And I forgot to mention - emphasize the PROPERTY aspect. This way California's seizure laws can be used to return your coins to you.

Hello,

I have a similar recent experience with this company.  I used to use them back in 2011 and executed several transactions buying BTC, all went without a hitch. 

In december 2013 though, I transferred some EUR into my Intersango account; it took 3 weeks (after filing several support requests, emailing Patrick & Co and even calling one of the available phone numbers) to get the funds into the account.  Now I'm trying to withdraw the BTC, filed a withdrawal request back in december, and have been waiting for this to happen ever since.  Again I've opened several support tickets and sent emails to them, all went without an answer.  I called Patrick (on the number someone has posted on this thread, thanks for that!) – the line was really bad (he said it was a skype number or something) so I barely understood much of what he said.  What I could pick out was some story about the site's security and such, and how futile it was from me considering legal action against the company.

I'll call him back, and come back here if I get any additional information.

ZP

yes intersango is scamming for 2014 !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

http://bitcoinscammers.com/intersango-com/#comment-1501

i make a btc withdraw demand for 11btc, 3 months ago !!!

----------------------
 Withdraw #58610
 Requested withdrawal of 11.56730000 BTC to
 1B1erpzRnefTEC4C9iGNH3mad7SG7UYJnX
 
 -----------------------

and support don't validate it, and don't give me any answer for any message......

it's scam

 

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/intersango-scam-123518

tl;dr:
Intersango explaining their scam as "you sent the funds to the wrong account" (but not until he made a forum post, 3 months later). No explanation as to why the reference code on his bank statement matches that of what intersango gave him: (bank statement, intersango (both showing da084781).

Now THAT sounds funny coming from the intersango-gang. 

So, you're claiming that what's written in OP is not correct?

Because according to OP, he said he'd be "seeking legal advice", what's not a threat of litigation. And, also according to OP, that only happened 5 days after the ticket being opened, not "immediately".

Intersango has no interest in doing business with people who threaten litigation without a good faith effort to resolve the problem first.

He opened a ticket and immediately threatened us.

That is completely unacceptable behaviour.

Great business they got going ey

So... why did you ban him? Did he try to steal from you or something? Or that's just how you deal with customer's complaints?

Like Intersango guys have not lied before.

Why are you wasting everyone's time making scam threads when they executed the transfer?  So you waited two weeks for a withdrawl.  Big deal.

OP should be banned for editing the support ticket like that.

Issuing a non-trespass notice, for a bitcoin exchange ? Don't you see how poorly you perform at business and customer relations ?

Mr H[censored]. has substantially edited the responses from staff.

The actual response reads.


As this means the transfer was executed on the 30th he will likely not receive the transfer until Monday.

(Names have been censored to protect the mean.)

i left phantomcircuit some messages at irc, i also sent messages to phantomcircuit and intersango at this Forum(their profiles show that they login forum everyday), i will wait until tomorrow, see if i can receive any responses from them.

Thank you for everything you did for me. i will give you a kiss once i successfully get my money back!!!

Patrick Strateman is his name if I don't remember wrongly.

Here's the information for Bitcoin Consultancy, which was the original group that formed Intersango. They dubbed them in very handwaving ways as omnipotent security experts and top coders. Excessive bragging about oneself usually is a true sign of reality not being up to par with their own word view. That coupled with them never admitting to faults, made the case pretty clear that they were not to be trusted for.... wait for it.... anything!

Here's the whois information from their original page that they cheepishly took down when shit started to hit the fan, and it was revealed that they were great braggers, but not so great at information security. There were many apeshit stupid hacks that led to the demise of Bitcoinica. There's plenty about that on this forum.


Here's even their original web page: http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.bitcoinconsultancy.com

They've also in general shown a complete disrespect for any and all customers that had any complaints. While shit storms where whirling around them, they were known to take out vacations, participating in hackatons, and in general not giving a rats ass about any customers. Where all the money came from to travel to Portugal, Brazil, USA etc. one can wonder..

Since Patrick is a complete ass, do not be surprised if he acts as one when and if you contact him.

Also whois info for Intersango:


Interestingly, someone registered patrick-strateman.com last year:
http://wsdata.com/redirect/2012-08-05/patrick-strateman.com

Other persons involved with Intersango is Donald (business dude) and Amir (anarchist hacker), Their full names can probably be found by searching this forum.

While the business adress for Intersango probably just is a dropship address, the doncaster address may give you more luck.

Here's their about page at Intersango, with full pictures:
https://intersango.com/about-us.php

Another e-mail adress for Tamir: Amir Taaki <[email protected]>
And for Patrick:Patrick Strateman <[email protected]>
Source: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/BIP_0014

This might be the same guy, or someone else with the same name:
http://www.freelancer.in/job-search/patrick-strateman/

Seems like Intersango people are also on this list:
http://bitcoinmalaysia.com/2012/10/18/famous-people-in-the-bitcoins-economy/

I would think there's already numerous complaints filed against them with UK authorities.

Best of luck in reclaiming the funds!

Thanks for the heads up

+1

Thank you very much for all your help and useful information

They hosted a conference recently in the UK, perhaps there's a contact number there, if you find that old thread.

Besides, I see phantomcircuit is still an op on irc-channel bitcoin at freenode, you can log on through bitcoin.org web irc application. He's one of the people responsible for Intersango.


If you search his nick or find his user on this forum, you will find more information I would think. I would think is real name is available too, I don't remember it.

i can meet them in person, but how can i seek them without having the way to contact them? their UK phone number is fake, and no one is answering their poland phone number, i just don't want to be another victim