Topic: Localbitcoins.com Stole My Money & Will Not Fix the Problem (Read 2163 times)

You probably don't see any contact because your bitcoins had already been transferred and your attempt to create one failed (thus the error message).

This is the kind of transaction you will see when you do an online sale:


It is very simple for someone with the password to your account to monitor the account and to empty it when it has bitcoins. The solution is to enable two-factor authentication. When that is enabled, you must enter an additional code supplied by the authenticator in order to withdraw any bitcoins.

Ah, thank you I got it now. It is a weird one. But I think that a malicious theft is still the strongest possibility.  That's a bummer man. Fricken criminals!

looking at this post it seems the coins been sent to  06/20/2014 13:21     0.81998003  Sent to 1B3F5ujAzxTyNPJvwsJwVxx8hAmuXYugZq so someone has been on your account and accessed from somewhere else.
https://blockchain.info/address/1B3F5ujAzxTyNPJvwsJwVxx8hAmuXYugZq

If the coins where traded and buying selling etc then if they where still their then they would be escrowed up in trade system. It clearly shows in your history on the post you put that the coin has gone to that address.

I would change all your passwords on  your email account and accounts but before doing so use malwarebytes and hijackthis and scan for keylogers and malware and then change passwords and also add 2 factor authentication on where it sends you a text with a code each time you access from different sites and even on localbitcoins turn this feature on.

100% it seems liek your account has been compromised and has been accessed from another location  cash out addresses changed and then funds sent to that 1B3 address.

I needed some money to pay for some things but in my account I only had .1 coin. So I deposited .7 more as I showed above with what I pasted before earlier in this post. After the money cleared I went to sell the coins with a user on the localbitcoins site who was buying coins.When I was at that page again it showed me my balance was good so I continued to sell all the coins to that buyer and so I pushed the submit of the deal and then I got an error page.I went back and refreshed the page and then there was no balance in my account but that was no problem because I thought the money went to the escrow system. So I wanted to check the order and I went to the dashboard and saw there was no deal made with that user and there was also no history of the deal. The money was gone from my account and there was no deal to work with the buyer.

I never add any bitcoin software to my system, I have only downloaded a bitcoin wallet
Transaction # 38207c3b0ce6de5f7ef357e4a6978787a95a7612adb33f1257a5b8530ab8a654

I'm still not clear on the chronology here. You deposited bitcoin, then a few mins. later it moved out of your wallet? Because that means you were robbed. This certainly could happen that fast. In fact it could happen in much less than 1 second.

Some questions that may help:
What type of two factor authentication do you use?
What OS are you using? Oh, I see now.
Have you ever downloaded any bitcoin related software that is not open source?
Do you have the transaction ID that moved the BTC out of your wallet?

This info should help figure out what is going on.

Hello, thank you for your response. I know how the site works pretty well. I did check closed contacts and there is no contact created or existing for that date June 20.Of course in the wallet area there shows to be money going out:

 06/20/2014 13:23     0.00006667  fee  
 06/20/2014 13:21     0.81998003  Sent to 1B3F5ujAzxTyNPJvwsJwVxx8hAmuXYugZq
txid 38207c3b0ce6de5f7ef357e4a6978787a95a7612adb33f1257a5b8530ab8a654  
 06/20/2014 13:18  0.7     XXXixRmJMsPMn4Yxxx9omvCXnWbcqrEXXX

This shows how I deposited .7 coins, I deposited them just to sell them, 2-3 minutes after depositing them I did the sale deal to cash out my coins and get cash. People who are saying that I was scammed or fished or whatever dont make sense because how is someone going to take the money from my account 2-3 minutes after I deposit my money.
The thief would have to see that I had .1 coin and not take it and then be sitting there for hours refreshing the page until i got money for hours and days and then immediately after i got money remove it and this is very very unlikely.Why did he not just take the .1 coins? How would he know more money was coming? How would he know when the deposit arrived so fast?? How could he gain access to my account I dont have viruses and use a linux system!

To me it seems that this whole thing of people scamming or fishing peoples accounts is a cover for the management of this site stealing peoples money.I have lost over $500!!

Untill I get my money back from these people this is a scam site.Beware of Localbitcoins.com!!

Click on "Closed contracts"

Now search through all the closed contracts until you find the one that ate your BTC

In the transaction status column it will show either "Bitcoins released" or "Canceled", which is it?

Either way, click on the contract number and read through all the details of the transaction, let us know the details you can make public.

If you wish take a screen capture or copy paste the details here - after removing any data you think might be private.

OP, you new at this? You can investigate yourself. Your wallet on local bitcoin will account for all btc going in and out, every deal you've completed, and throughout all of these it'll show you the balance. If LBC "ate" your bitcoin, it should show the 0.8btc debited and the reason. If someone hacked your account, it will show that the btc was withdrawn to an external wallet that was not LBC's wallet.

Take a look at the transactions in your wallet. It should have tracked every satoshi. If it shows that you should have BTC in your wallet but you don't, then I would agree that Localbitcoins ate your money. However, my guess is that you will see that your money was transferred to some bitcoin address, and that is why Localbitcoins support told you that "someone had unauthorized access to my account".

Do u mean release the bitcoin ? Is the order showing as executed or it is cancelled. Have u searched with the order id to get the status ?

Ok I am glad you are here.Let me explain it to you.

Ate -swallowed-chewed. It does not matter the word it is to say that I put money into localbitcoins to do a sale deal to get my $600 to pay bills.This is my money-understand? It has been 3 weeks since I submitted a sale on the localbitcoins.com site and the site gave me an error message and my money disappeared.They can see I just deposited the money to do the sale and then did the sale but they do not want to admit they have a fault.
Like I said before there was no order in the dashboard.There was no area to contact the seller, send them my bank account information or release the money after verifying the payment.

If you are going to have a system handling  millions of dollars of peoples money, especially after what happened with MT GOX scamming people, then you better have a system well designed that will not loose peoples money. At least if you do have an error admit it and refund the lost amount so people feel you are trustworthy and well managed.


For Google:
Localbitcoins.com scam
Localbitcoins.com fraud
Localbitcoins.com problems

You are right. The only possible explanation is that your localbitcoins account ate your money  ... whatever that means.

Not trying to be mean but are you retarded? Or do you work for the localbitcoins?

Read the first sentence of  my post!!

"About 3 weeks ago I was using my Localbitcoins account to sell bitcoins. I only had about .1 coins and then I deposited .7 more to have .8 coins."

I did the transfer to sell coins and their system ate my money...read

Somebody hacked your account and stole your bitcoins. That's what Localbitcoins meant when they wrote that "they were sorry someone had unauthorized access to my account." It seems to happen occasionally to new users, and neither Localbitcoins nor experienced traders on the site are sure about how the bitcoins are stolen.

The most widely accepted theory so far is that users enter their passwords on fake sites such as localbitcoiins.com, and the scammers then access the real site and steal their bitcoins. Scammers pay google to advertise their fake sites, so people using google to find localbitcoins.com will occasionally go to the fake sites.

The solution to the problem is to enable 2FA on your localbitcoins account, so that your bitcoins cannot be withdrawn even if the scammer has your password.

BTW, this wont help you get your bitcoins back, but your localbitcoins wallet can tell you where your bitcoins were sent.

About 3 weeks ago I was using my Localbitcoins account to sell bitcoins. I only had about .1 coins and then I deposited .7 more to have .8 coins.When the money cleared and was ready I went to sell the coins wih a user on the Localbitcoins site.When I clicked to do the selling coins deal I saw an error message and then after I went back to the wallet area my money was gone 0 balance. Then I tried to check the dashboard and it did not show an open deal for the money.The balance was gone I had no deal with my seller.The localbitcoins account ate my money basically and I did never receive my payment from the user who was going to buy from me.Nothing just money gone. I have been working with support for 3 weeks and the first responses were that they were sorry someone had unauthorized access to my account. I told them over and over I never said that someone had unauthorized access to my account, I told them that I made a deal to sell coins and their system took the money without giving me a communication with the buyer as I already explained.

The real problem for the community is that this is a huge organization that is holding peoples money in "ëscrow"". Their system is eating money and if they want to give many other people these error messages when they are doing deals and they eat the money of so many users then how are we as a btc community safe?? Especailly when their support just sends the same empty responses and nothing is done to fix their systems problems.

I hope people are aware of the risks with locabitcoins.com

If this is fixed I will respond here and say what happened