Topic: The curious case of user 🏰 TradeFortress 🏰 - page 3. (Read 1179 times)

TradeFortress made a post in 2018 in the Donators section of this forum where he reached out looking for victims to repay for his misdoings.  I took advantage of this offer and received 6.51961 BTC from TradeFortress as a result.  From my perspective, at least he made/is making an effort to repay victims.  I lost far more BTC in the GLBSE debacle where no attempt was made to return Bitcoin to victims by it's owners...  So it seems like when it comes to paying people back for things you were involved in, TradeFortress showed more honor than others who had ownership stakes in operations that made no effort to repay those they took BTC from even though they are sitting on piles of other people's BTC to this day.

pirateat40 / Bitcoin Savings and Trust: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-bitcoin-fraud-texas-idUSKCN1012W8
GAW / Homero Garza: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/09/man-who-swindled-9m-in-wannabe-bitcoin-ponzi-scheme-headed-to-prison/
Bitconnect scammers might get there as well: https://www.cnbc.com/2021/11/16/us-selling-seized-cryptocurrency-in-bitconnect-fraud-case.html

Has there ever been a case of a Bitcointalk scammer going to jail? Never seen or heard of a case like that, all they get is a red tag on the forum while they move around freely outside of it, and the fact that there have been multiple scams here and no one has ever been caught in real life makes you worry.

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The 4000 BTC  was transferred to this wallet address 1EMztWbGCBBrUAHquVeNjWpJKcB8gBzAFx
1Acj4bQBSh385WLzZKv9s1cwrYmUwUgdYg from 17 addresses and both addresses are showing zero (0) balance.If only he had kept a small portion of the coin until now. Everything appears to have been spent between 2013 and 2015.

I believe part of the reason (going from memory) was the young age (teenager) of Tradefortress when most of this occurred.

Hehe, thanks! Yes, I saw that reply too... that was one of the few ones remembering him what he did... And I hope he will never scam anybody again. At least, now he is notorious and people can avoid him...

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This is incredible. I studied this subject for a while, but I was not aware that (1) he was banned; (2) he was banned for trolling (inside a topic containing doxxing information of theymos or other staff member!!! -- how comes that he was banned just for trolling when he doxxed these people?!) and I think this is the first ban for trolling I ever seen; nor that (3) his ban was lifted (I did not see any reason for lifting his ban in that thread... weird). Now I am even more intrigued. Thanks for sharing this, LoyceV!


Oh well... I understand this but the situation looks a bit ironical I mean to have a criminal inside your thread and not be able to ask why he is there because you would break forum rules.


First sentence is true. However, I would have expected to see more negative feedbacks from DT members in his case... His current Trust score, for stealing at least 4100 BTC is -13. As comparison, figmentofmyass, for cheating CM campaign for 3 years (where he lurked way fewer BTC that TradingFortress), has a Trust score very close to TradingFortress': -12. Yet, the prejudice made by the lattest is way greater that the one made by figmentofmyass...

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My dear Pharmacist, let me tease you a bit First you did not know about your (and as well -- our) true home (smile here). Then about figmentofmyass. These, combined with change of lines between you and icopress about forgotten things, that I accidentaly noticed in the trolls-related thread, made me smile as well (I hope you get my humor.)


I was not aware of this either... this is new information and, if this happened, then indeed this is a good explanation. Otherwise, as you said, "TradeFortress should be in a jail cell rather than on bitcointalk"...

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Even so, he had access, at least, to the other "smaller" scams. 10 BTC from you, 15 BTC from me, 5 BTC from another one and so on... I'd say that even if he could not access those stolen coins, the other ones he scammed (detailed in OP) represent amounts of more than 1M USD...

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Indeed. And what you said is perfectly illustrated in these two quotes:

TF is a total sociopath and a natural-born fraudster. He seems to have a specific style in which he conducts his scams.

A "hack", funds lost, (optionally) customers trolled, excuses years later. See Hashie.

I expect one of the crappy mixer sites to turn out to be TF's new scam.

Back in 2018, he claimed that he did not have access to these funds, and that they were mostly lost in the hack. He further claims that his reimbursement plan is the result of him making some good investments over the years - but it is obvious that he could not earn 4100 BTC.

I doubt he will ever end up in prison if he doesn't by now, because he should be indicted and the authorities should know his identity.

I wonder if he has access to any of those coins. 4100BTC is no joke, if he took even 5% of those supposedly hacked coins for himself then he could be in jail for a significant amount of time.

No, I'm definitely thinking of TradeFortress.  The story of his massive scams is one of the first things I remember reading on the forum, and I think that goes back to the days when I was just lurking occasionally (probably 2014 or so).  And I don't think it was Theymos who said the account changed hands but someone like Bruno--though obviously I can't remember the details exactly, so I could be way off.  But I'm sure it was TradeFortress that was mentioned.

Any chance you're confusing him with red-trusted VIP JusticeForYou?
For JusticeForYou, theymos wrote this:

For TradeFortress, theymos wrote this:

Jesus, I don't know what the hell I was doing in January, but I obviously wasn't paying attention to the Reputation section.  I didn't post in the reference thread that's included in figmentofmyass's negative trust, nor do I remember that scandal.  So I'm just learning that he had multiple alts in the Chipmixer campaign, a feat I find astounding!  Thanks for mentioning those examples, OP.

With respect to TradeFortress, I swear I heard that the account changed hands a while back, because I was wondering the same thing you are, which is how and why would such a notorious scammer even show his face on a forum where he scammed so many people.  Memory is a funny thing, though (especially for me).  I'm not sure what I actually read or even if I interpreted it correctly, but I could almost swear that someone stated that the account was sold or given away after those scams went down.

Maybe someone here can set us straight on that.  If not, it does seem very weird that a member would have enough balls to keep posting here as if nothing ever happened.  I mean seriously, it sounds like TradeFortress should be in a jail cell rather than on bitcointalk.

Scams are not moderated here that is the only reason why he is still active no matter how much money he scammed, I remember he was holding most number of negative trust when the old DT system is in place but nothing stopped him, he just chilling out here and nobody can do anything about it because its just an online forum, people who was scammed can take legal actions against him if they want that's it.

It looks like he successfully appealed his ban in 2015.
He also lost the ability to edit his own posts, which theymos restored in 2018 (while at the same time removing selfmod status from all his topics).

That would be off-topic, which isn't allowed. His Trust and username speak volumes and are discussed in several topics. There's no need to mention it in every topic he posts in.

The scams happened before I (or most other users) even joined the forum. I don't trust him, but I also don't feel the need to add more negative tags to the pile.

Hi, great thread.

I like this kind of posts to learn more about the history of Bitcointalk, but:



I didn't have to look very hard to find this. In fact, I think I read that thread and odolvlobo's response at the time. Anyway, with all the negative feedback, I don't think he will scam anyone again in this forum.

During the time I've been here I read about many scams. Some were really big, some were small; some were about money; some were about trust; some were about cheating signature campaigns and so on. But what all had in common (or -- almost all) was that, once the scammer was exposed, s/he left the premises for good. This happened especially after big scams. If you need examples, look at the cases of pirateat40 (very well documented by xtraelv), master-P, El Cabron or the most recent cases of alia, Polar91 or figmentofmyass.

Indeed, some were banned and this was the reason for their disappearance. But not all of them.

One particular case raised my attention, which involved the theft of 4100 BTC, plus other (which seemed to be at that time) lower scams. And my attention was brought by the fact that the scammer did not leave the forum, was not banned and is still active. This is the case of TradeFortress.

This is the main story (more details here):


Apparently, years later he tried to pay back some of his victims but in the end he abandoned the idea:


However, excepting this scam, TradeFortress was accused of several other users for scamming the with various amounts. As it can be seen, what he did with inputs.io was his masterpiece, but he "exercised" his hand well before that.





More scams or scam attempts can be found here.

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Why I'm creating this topic? As I wrote above, it's because I was almost shocked to see that the scammer remained active for 8 more years after all these scams. He was last active here last month. According to BPIP, he is (just) the 28th most distrusted user from the entire forum (but I think he should be placed on a higher spot). Also, as it can be seen on LoyceV's website, there are some users (not 1 or 2, but 13!!!) which trust TradeFortress - a fact which I find to be amazing. Another aspect amazing me is that only 23 users distrust him!

What's even worst is that it also happens that he is a VIP member, meaning that he actually paid 50 BTC to obtain this rank (no matter that when he paid BTC had a lower value). And while such members - VIPs or Donators - should be remarkable figures among us, sadly, there are cases when such titles are worn also by scammers...

Coming back to the story, I still can't understand the guts of this guy, to keep being present here all the time, involve in various threads, in various boards (Bitcoin Discussion, Gambling, Securities, Altcoins, Meta, Offtopic etc.) without having (almost) anybody asking him: "do you really have the guts of actually still being here after all you did?".

Moreover, some actually praise his posts:


Very rarely I saw someone which told him something more or less subtle, about what he did and that he does not belong here anymore.

It's like... everybody forgotten his actions... or closed their eyes.

Why is this happening? Opinions...?