Topic: Status of WEX (World Exchange Services) (Read 26311 times)

ℹ️ The last remaining BTC wallet of WEX with address 1LfV1tSt3KNyHpFJnAzrqsLFdeD2EvU1MK has been flushed today (value is about $ 165 mio USD today). No idea, if this is a good or bad sign. See a relatively objective summary on Coindesk.

Update 24^th of November 2022: A transaction analysis shown by Cointelegraph gives not much hope, that those funds will reach the current owner of the registered business of WEX. So for now they have to be considered lost.

Thx, this was a c&p error, I was in hurry. Fixed.

The Russian BBC article came up with a leaked audio recording, identified as Malofeev's voice somehow talking about a shutdown of the exchange, garnished with the name of a former FSB agent and some other unrelated facts, and ready was the basis for the Hollywood story of the year! Of course, when this recording was from and whether it had any direct or indirect influence on the subsequent shutdown of the exchange can't be proven. But the report also revealed that there are ongoing investigations against WEX by the FSB. Thus, in the end, the report remained vague, opening the basis for the speculations that followed.

After “Captain Future” alias the Telegram user “FUTURICO” had taken over the “WEX scam initiative” there were circulating several false promises and Hollywood stories. The pinnacle of it all is now the false promise that the authorities in Moscow would start finally a huge legal action and a recovery until 400 % for lost trading wins would be possible. “Just” a registration at the initiative would be necessary, no fees anymore (of cause no word about the 100 USD each registered member had paid already), but now 20 % fee of the recovered amount. I would be interested in what he has smoked! Actually already his newly nonsense posting fulfills itself the initial suspicion of a fraud attempt: “Unlawfully obtaining a pecuniary advantage under false pretenses”. “Over 250 million in stolen funds were found”: oh madness! Imagine: I also found 250 million on the blockchain. And not even on a single blockchain. Namely, by listing the cold wallets of WEX! (Presumably Captain Future aka FUTURICO consulted this list for his "sensational treasure find.") The even bigger nonsense is that all of a sudden the highest law enforcement authorities in Russia allegedly moved heaven and hell to compensate “the victims of a fraud”. Only, “unfortunately”, in reality there is no fraud at all, but, as we know by now, WEX was seized by the FSB for money laundering by Al Qaeda and the “Federal Trojan” ransom ware extortionists. The former (and current) WEX owners are thus themselves the ones suffering.

Of course, Captain Future could now wag the Hollywood story again, Konstantin Malofeev, the co-founder of WEX, had rented FSB premises and hired fake FSB agents to force the red admin to decrypt the wallets. However, one could also ask oneself in this course, whether the summoning at the public health officer and the following admission to the closed sector would not be the adequate means to answer this Hollywood story! And that was only the tip of the iceberg, if one looks at part 2 of the “blockbuster” and the last postings from this group! It is not even shown on which legal branch the alleged compensation should take place. Just how crazy the whole thing is can be seen from the further false promise that another 400% of lost profits could be reimbursed by the authorities. Of course, there would be no legal basis for such a claim. Unless it were a civil case in which the previous owners were sued for damages for lost profits. But such a procedure would be futile, apart from the lack of potential defendants. The cryptocurrencies have already increased in value many times over, insofar as a profit would already result from the current exchange rates - so such a legal claim would be all the more futile. So I strongly recommend: Beware of the drunken Captain! As long as not a single fact of the Hollywood blockbuster has been confirmed, e.g. a conviction or even an officially running criminal or civil proceeding against Konstantin Malofeev, all postings and promises are based on unconfirmed pipe dreams! Don’t even offer your personal data as sacrifice! Captain Future only wants to obtain in this way a kind of authorization through the community. In fact he has no legally valid mandate from the community nor is he representing in any way the authorities, in which country ever!

Other wallets still untouched, what is going on here. Webmoney has connections to Ukraine as it seems...

I had approx 400 ethereum, 300 monero, 100 litecoin and over 10 bitcoin + 9 other cryto tokens in volume on BTC-E many disappeared when it became wex and id love to be involved in any action.

My email is [email protected] I'm not a big user of the site so please contact me directly by email.

Well.. I made the mistake at this point. Although I quickly withdraw my BTC, I kept LTC and other alts in Wex.nz, along with the tokens. And rather than immediately selling the tokens, I waited for their prices to increase. And when Wex.nz was closed down by the authorities, I lost all that money. I guess I lost around $1,000 worth of tokens and coins back then. The current exchange price would be somewhere around $50,000 to $100,000.

Is that a broken link or did you do it deliberately instead of underlining/bolding the text?

No one can be trusted here, but wasn't Malofeev's involvement established a while ago as described in that BBC article?

That's always an easy way out, presumption of guilt.

And BTC-e also has to pay a fine of $110M if they aren't contesting it (lol), so that money might go to cover that.


It was possible to get as much as 85% by waiting until they refunded 68% a couple weeks later and selling the tokens they gave. Some people even double down and invested in tokens as wex was paying their debts until it shut down.

damnn ho much money that btc-e got i think i have some altcoin there, i think the money is still exist but there conspiracy here i believe

the authorities did seize $90 million from the alleged owner of btc-e last year, but the odds of that money being paid to btc-e or wex.nz customers is slim to none. the authorities have said all their money (including customer deposits) is tainted due to commingling with proceeds from ransomware, darknet markets, hacks, etc.

i quickly took the ~55% refund from btc-e before wex.nz launched and ran. i'm still holding all those coins since 2017. that experience was a big lesson for me: not your keys, not your coins.

I am very disappointed and angry with WEX or BTC-E cause i lost everything just like this i am not someone wealth i lost my job in 2013 cause of crisis and while this time i tried to mine 24 hours as much i can BTC / LTC and BTC-E was the first i went i manged to get around almost less then half btc and i think around 5-6 LTC then some altcoins to i know its not so much but it made me depressed when prices went up and just struggle to make a bit out of it and sudden btc closes then reopens to WEX and then after months it just closes up and to know just some Russian scammer with millions take so much and even fbi close it up and people like us left this way  and i am still unemployed i just try to work us much free time i can but what i want to say is if someone from WEX see this your really should be ashamed doing this to people while you was making so much money you even steal more and scam instead of helping but that how it goes with many wealth ones   at least some are not this way

I just wish there would be someway to get something back at least someday

Thank you for sharing. I had almost forgotten all about this case.

I'd love to see the actual evidence in regards to the "Locky" allegations. I recall WizSec speculating that BTCe was probably in the business of laundering funds for various hackers, and not necessarily behind the hacks themselves. With Locky, I can't find anything more than this linking Vinnik to the malware in question:


He would obviously be useful to the authorities in solving various ransomware and money laundering cases, but I haven't exactly seen a compelling case against him, in regards to the allegations that he owned BTCe or developed and distributed Locky.

I just noticed the article that you had linked, blueimp.  Thanks for that.

We seem to be getting some actual action going on in this matter, and surely it seems strange to be suggesting that anyone who might have been operating an exchange would have also had time to get involved in bullshit randsomeware nonsense - so in that sense, charges seem a bit trumped up... however, there could be more validity to arguments that he knew about illegal activities that were being channeled through his exchange.

I did I quick google search of Vinnik's name in the news and the latest article that I found was from 3 days ago...

https://martinsvillebulletin.com/news/world/trial-of-russian-in-alleged-bitcoin-fraud-to-wrap-in-paris/article_be31eaa4-9fbe-5693-92ef-8b42c7a82ca8.html

https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/4033373

The only thing Russian government is doing is trying to have Vinnik extradited to his native country. They were unable to do so, so a month ago he has been extradited to France. If he gets acquitted (or convicted and finishes serving his sentence there), he is to be extradited back to Greece from wherein he is likely to be extradited to the US.

Any progress on here?

I was lucky it was only 0,2 BTC but still ... any ideas if the Russian government is active about this?

There wasn't anything interesting or of substance to be seen in that video as far as I remember when it was posted.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-50821547

So nothing new. There's some stuff on Mayzus' fb page and on forklog but it's hard to make heads or tails out of it.

down.

any update?