Topic: [SCAMMER] Quickseller/ ACCTseller sold me a hacked account (Read 4420 times)

I am not familiar with those coins, so I would need to pass. I avoid trading in markets that I have not studied and am familiar with. This means that I avoid trying in physical coins that I know have fetched a nice premium in the past.

If the coins are in good condition and they have some numismatic value, then I would suggest getting them graded, most likely be ANACS as getting coins graded is almost universally going to increase it's value.

You might be able to find a market for these coins in the goods section of the marketplace.

I would also like an answer to xetsr's question.   

Curious to know if those are REAL gold coins and how much you're paying for them to profit selling them for spot. Something seems off...

Sorry for getting off topic here.

Yes cloud think purchased several accounts, including the first one that I ever created (bluemangroup) from a reseller, which was very disappointing when I saw it with negative trust. However the purchase of these accounts did not work out very well for them because they were outed an alts of a scammer and their value went to pretty much zero.

This will exaggerate the importance of using escrow on *every* trade and to actually read the comments, the amount risked, and the reputation of the people who left trust with a potential trading partner. If the amounts risked and reputation of received trust is all virtually zero then such trust ratings should probably be ignored. If a large percentage of positive ratings are from people in your trust network then there is a good chance that person is farming trust and should be treated as a scammer. If there are/is scam reports by reputable people (regardless of if they are in your trust network) then you should trade with additional caution.

I think people should overall understand that the short delay in the time it takes to complete a transaction and the small added fee to use escrow is a very small price to pay when compared to the losses associated with getting scammed.

We'll start seeing many more attempts to scam using bought accounts. Account values continue to drop as Hero and Legendary accounts become more common, price will continue to drop making it much easier for a scammer to buy, scam, profit and repeat. It's inevitable as newer and even some older members here who don't know better blindly trust those with Hero and Legendary account status or accounts with trust. I'm pretty sure scammers and account sellers have been also farming "trust accounts" as well.

Unfortunately, nothing can be done to stop this. Private keys will be sold with accounts and scammers will try to keep the same posting style making it very hard to tell it's been sold. Banning account sales will stop the more lazy scammers but not the ones that are more determined.

Didn't cloudthink purchase accounts? How is that going right now?

I originally started trading forum accounts, however I left that business after the market became very saturated and no longer worth it for me. 

I now occasionally trade physical coins however I intend to be able to ultimately collect a number of coins. I do very much enjoy trading on here.

I also act as escrow for a variety of deals however that pretty much results in dust earnings.

My project somewhat was assuming that the price of Bitcoin was going to be a lot higher.

I think a major reason why so many scammers are successful in the currency exchange section is because there is no sticky warning people of the importance of using escrow and as a result people get greedy when they see a really good deal.

I think a lot of the scams are done by the same person and/or the same group of people.

Selling accounts would become a higher risk endeavor, and almost universally speaking, things that involve more risk would mean that the expected reward would be higher.

As I mentioned previously, there are very few instances of fraudsters/scammers using purchased accounts to attempt to scam, and they have incentives not to do so because if they get caught trying to scam then they would loose their initial investment.

Even if scammers were unable to purchase older accounts, there would be nothing that would stop them from cultivating their own accounts which would still enable them to scam, and since the incentive is no longer there to not scam with a high level account, they would have a greater incentive to try to pull off a scam attempt.

It would make the account trading environment more difficult, however in the realm of things it would not be all that hard IMO

Considering that your thread is roughly a year old, I don't think that is all that bad (that is quite good actually), although I am sure you had to put a good amount of effort into earning that much money.

When you are in business, you should expect to lose some amount of money due to fraud/scams/ect., that is a normal cost of doing business, as a good risk manager, you should take steps to minimize those losses as much as possible by taking certain precautions.

As mentioned previously, banning the sale of accounts is only going to move the trade of accounts off the site, which would likely make doing business on here more risky and more scam attempts will be likely.

Out of curiosity, how much money have you made in the currency exchange subform?

There are very few instances where sold accounts have been used to scam, in fact the vast majority of accounts end up in signature deals when the company is advertising based on how "flashy" they can make their signature. An even less percentage of accounts are actually successful in pulling of  a scam attempt so, as mentioned above, the scammer only ends up with a loss because he received nothing from the scam attempt yet had to pay to buy the account.

And your opinion does not suit your argument? For cying out out, that is what opinions are! But that you supposedly set the rules on what amounts to be an OK trade (in accounts on the forum) makes you right is no-where near the right thing, and that is NOT just my opinion.


Apart from the advertiser's and the gullible user's trust.



Me tagged as a scammer, hiding behind an account?  Did I miss something here? Whatever you are smoking, ive up on it.
But like I mentioned before, you have no reason to attack my personality, not even on the back of my comments in this thread. But I know scammers in this forum stick together ..... so there.

In your opinion, which just so happens to suit your argument. They're paying for a Hero member account and that's what they're getting. If they wanted to make sure that the account was originally and always owned by that person they should ask for a signed message from a very old address first, but they probably don't care and the only person that seems to care about it is you.


Twisted logic, and I don't think you know what the definition of a scam is. Nothing has been stolen or swindled. Maybe if they stated 'account must be owned by original owner' you could argue some terms of service have been broken, but they don't. Still not a scam either way.


It's not pathetic and it's not a scam, it's logical, especially if you were open to the logic/reasoning/argument behind why their sale is allowed in the first place, but the irony is you're a scammer (tagged as such) hiding behind an account that has no other purpose than to troll now. I wonder how many times your account has changed hands or what other nefarious activities it has been involved in? Who knows?

Think about that again ..... They are paying for an advert in the signature of a person who's gained a good reputation on the forum, suposedly by possitively contributing to the forum. An account that has been bought will surely not be able to carry on in that vein, thus the advertiser has been shortchanged. Scam though and through!

And that is quite aside from whatever nefarious acts and / or omissions the account can be used for, and the most prevalent use of such being standing up for fellow scumbags when they get exposed. Honestly, it may be a known evil that scams do (and will continue to) happen, but for a member of staff (tagged as such) to come out and say buying a hero account for the purpose of joining a signature advertising campaign does not amout to a scam is pathetic.

So if we banned account sales you would then feel more confident in sending money to scammers? This is exactly one of the reasons why it's allowed as if it was banned it wouldn't change anything apart from give users a false sense of security. People would just sell accounts off site and out of sight.


If it's easy to tell which accounts were sold then it shouldn't be a big issue. People need to make their own minds up about users and 9/10 should be using escrow anyway. Accounts can always be hacked so you should be aware of that too.


You could just create your own army of alts for this, no need to buy one. Should we ban alts now?


I think you're exaggerating here. I'm not denying that sometimes people do buy them in an attempt to scam but but most are busted before they even get a chance to. I haven't seen a bought account scam anywhere near that amount and usually they end up trying to scam and getting neg-bombed before they have the chance forever ruining their account and wasting their money in in the process.


How do you know they were bought? He could just have used his own alts or urged or paid others to leave negative.


Sounds like it doesn't take much to fool you. Being a "woman" should set off red flags instantly.


How were they clearly bought? Anyone could create both a bitcointalk account and Facebook account pretending to be a girl free of charge. If people are naive enough to send money just because they're a woman then there's not much anyone can do for them nor is it the staff's job to babysit them.


For the same reason scams and scammers aren't moderated: Almost impossible to police and incredibly time consuming for staff to check for these things, not to mention we can get it wrong. What if we accidentally thought you were the scammer and banned you? Fair game? Nope. It's easier to allow them and let users police and defend themselves as they should be able to do. As much as you dislike the practice banning accounts sales will do absolutely nothing but push them off site.


It's not defrauding anyone. They're paying for an advert in a signature and that's what they get.


Then why punish everybody including legit people who are just trying to make some extra money from accounts, especially when we can't even enforce it adequately?


I think you're exaggerating the numbers again, but people really need to learn to protect themselves better as harsh as it may sound. The only person who can protect you from being scammed is yourself and sadly sometimes it takes getting burned once or twice before they learn, but most people can handle themselves and if not they certainly need to learn because one thing I know is scammers will never go away and will always be looking for new ways to outsmart you and steal your money. Your solution and logic for this is like trying to put a bandage over a cancer. We can't see it so the cancer is now gone and cured? No, it's still there, just out of sight.

These scam artists linger on this forum, tend to back each other up and always apply diversionary tactics!  The scam accusation clearly states Quickseller NO Quicksilver ...... Who'd have thought, dogie's number one wingman quite aside from trading in forum accounts (which is a scam of its own right), also scams his customers! You couldn't make it up if you tried.

A signed message is solid evidence that an account was owned as of the date the address was posted. It proves that he at one point owned the account, which is undisputed. If you were to sell your account then you would still be able to produce a signed message from any addresses previously associated with your account.

I don't know how many bitcoin addresses you have, however I counted over 130 used addresses in my electrum wallet whose seed was generated only >3 months ago (and which wallet is not the only one I use). If he were to do a google search then he would have needed to know which address to search for.

I remember checking his post history and was unable to find a posted address. If his address or pgp key was more visible then he would be risking being asked for a signed message which would have foiled his plan to scam. He needed an address that could easily be linked back to his account, but only to someone who knows where to look, or to someone who is shown very specific evidence.

I admit that when I purchased the zedicus account, I was very new and that it was a mistake to not get a signed message prior to paying for it, however that does not mean that the account was hacked. The generally accepted standard to prove ownership of an account is to provide a signed message that specifies that the ownership is transferring, then if/when someone comes around to claim the account was hacked, that signed message can be presented to disprove such allegation.

Since Badbear wont elaborate as usual, it really isn't very helpful and doesn't tell us much. Usually signing a message previously used on an account is considered fairly solid evidence of ownership. I don't find it that odd that he used a cached address, he probably used Google, making it quite a simple task to search for.  As far as the emails, I could see some one not checking their inbox for an extended period of time. If his intent was to scam then why wouldn't he prepare a more visible Bitcoin address in a post or set up a pgp key prior, instead of fishing around for deleted posts?

None of this sounds unrealistic to me. Obviously this situation creates issues with telling which accounts are or are not stolen in the future. If it is just one person's word against another's, then what is to stop account sellers from regularly selling stolen accounts and just claiming anyone who complains is just trying to scam? Conversely what is stopping account sellers from scamming? IMO there should be some kind of standard set for this type of situation otherwise this will be a recurring issue, especially after the forum hack.

He says there is good reason to believe that he shouldn't be the owner of the account anymore. Although yes, he does say that he doesn't know with certainty either way, the preponderance of the evidence does support it not being hacked.
Nope. All that confirms is that he was able to produce a signed message from an address previously associated with his account. Additionally, Light mentions that the signed message is from a cashed version of a thread, which implies that the post that included the address was deleted. I was in communication with him for over 3 days before the account was actually purchased, the bayuo account was created very shortly after the account was sold, so if the account was in fact hacked then the hacker would have needed to gain access to the actual password of the account, not change the password, both send and receive PM's to me without the "real" owner of the account noticing, and then bayuo would just so happen to know which thread an address was posted on despite not being able to search for such address because the post was deleted. Also the "real" owner of the account would have had to not noticed PM notification emails received any time I had sent the account a PM.

Can I ask if you seriously think all this would be plausible? It should also be noted that bayuo claims to employ extensive security measures and claims to have used a very long/complex password. It should also be noted that there was no corresponding report of theft of bitcoin from bayuo and he never reported that he found any malware.

Only he doesn't confirm it wasn't hacked. He explicitly said he doesn't know either way.

I think most people would consider this conclusive evidence:

The account was not hacked, as BadBear confirmed here:


Bayuo sold me the account, received money for it and then later claimed it was hacked so he would receive his account back and obviously get to keep the money he received from the sale. Just a pathetic scam attempt.

If the account was in fact hacked, then Quickseller, knowingly or otherwise sold stolen property. If he never had legal ownership of it to begin with, he has no right to keep the collected funds because there was no valid exchange. The rest of the argument is irrelevant.

Just a quick analogy for you for comparison...
http://nccriminallaw.sog.unc.edu/must-a-pawn-shop-return-stolen-property-to-its-owner/

He may or may not have known it was hacked, but as far as possession and the law are concerned it doesn't make any difference, he must return the property and the funds, and be more selective about accounts he buys in the future.

Quickseller knew the account was hacked!

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.11674128