Topic: The Rock Trading Scam www.therocktrading.com Exchange Review fraud opinion - page 40. (Read 35932 times)

There is nothing we can do. For sure the law and security prevails on all our arguments.

Either the customer provides to us, or to the authorities, his/her Id or we will have to wait forever.  Also, let's assume we will release the coins, without following the rules.... the same person could come back to us claiming a hack and sue us for negligence......  I wouldn't be surprise.....

Believe me, I'm the first one that would like to see this saga ending and close the account.....

Isn't strange he/she threatening us to go to the authorities, talking about jail sentences etc. and non acting accordingly??

Quite strange I would say.... or,normal if he/she is not the account owner....

I still hope this is not the case but, so far, everything is pointing in that direction.....Will see....

Yes!! 11 months is really a lot for a issue that it could be solved in one business day....

no, we cannot. Present EU AML directives are quite clear.

There is nothing we can do. For sure the law and security prevails on all our arguments.

Either the customer provides to us, or to the authorities, his/her Id or we will have to wait forever.  Also, let's assume we will release the coins, without following the rules.... the same person could come back to us claiming a hack and sue us for negligence......  I wouldn't be surprise.....

Believe me, I'm the first one that would like to see this saga ending and close the account.....

Isn't strange he/she threatening us to go to the authorities, talking about jail sentences etc. and non acting accordingly??

Quite strange I would say.... or,normal if he/she is not the account owner....

I still hope this is not the case but, so far, everything is pointing in that direction.....Will see....

If they let him have his funds back and then a month or year later IF there is a request by Italian authorities or an audit then they can justify their returning of the crypto by saying the CTO gave wrong information and the funds were sent by the customer in error.

I am sure the OP would be happy to withdraw his crypto over a period of 4 days to the value of 8,750 EURO a day over a 4 day period.

The stance taken by the exchange is dubious enough but the fact that they seem to revel in the suffering of the OP makes this a very sad matter indeed.

That is not correct. Once a customer sends funds there is a "business relationship".

If somebody does not trade and just deposits, then wants his fund back in the same format he sent them, then there is no need for ID verification.

The main anti-money laundering duties (enshrined in Italian law)  relate to:

Customer due diligence
Data retention duties
and
Reporting duties.

At this regard, the obliged entity shall:

carry out an adequate client and/or beneficial owner due diligence in case of ongoing business relationship or occasional transaction involving the transfer or the handling of payment of an amount equal to or higher than 15,000 Euro or in any case, i) in case of doubts concerning the truthfulness of the data obtained or suspects of money-laundering or terrorism financing regardless of any exemption applicable; ii) clients located in high risk countries identified by the European Commission; iii) cross-border correspondence with a corresponding credit institution or financial institution in a third country; iv) ongoing professional relationships or transaction performance with clients and in case of politically exposed persons.

shall retain a copy of the documents collected during the customer's due diligence, indicating: i) the relevant date of the establishment of the business relationship; ii) personal data of the customer and/or the beneficial owner iii) the scope and nature of the legal relationship or of the transaction in place; iv) means of payment used by the customer.

shall submit without delay a suspicious transaction report to the UIF (Financial Intelligence Unit for Italy) when they become aware of, suspect or have reasonable grounds to suspect that terrorism financing or money laundering are in process or terrorism operations are being carried out or attempted, or whatever funds, regardless of their size, come from criminal activity.

There is no limitation on the types of assets that can form the basis of a money laundering offence, and there is no monetary threshold to prosecution. However, where the goods laundered have a limited value, or they derive from a less serious predicate offence (punished with imprisonment for less than five years), mitigating circumstances could apply, which can decrease the amount of the effective punishment.

He knows very well that european directives don't have direct effect on private relations. Only bind states to adopt internal legislation.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Directive_(European_Union).

I told him that more than a month ago:

He is invoking european directives (only the 5th AML european directive of 2018 applies to crypto exchanges, but Italy hasn't yet execute it with internal legislation) well aware that they are irrelevant to this case.

But as I said, Italy adopted their Legislative Decree No. 90 of 25 May 2017 on AML and KYC duties, but his article 3, n.º 5, says that crypto exchanges are restrictively ("limitatamente") subject to this duties only on their operations of conversion from crypto to fiat. That is, to customers who ask for fiat withdrawals. I left clear 4 years ago to him on an email exchange that I wouldn't ask for any fiat withdrawal. And he confirmed their TOS: that in this case verification was voluntary.

What they are doing is completely contrary to their own TOS/FAQ and to italian law.

Again I want to thank r34tr783tr78, Mirae and now JollyGood for their attention to this case.

n) identification data: name and surname, place and date of birth, residence and domicile, where different from residence of the registry, the details of the identification document and, where assigned, the tax code or, in the case of subjects other than natural person, the name, the registered office and, where assigned, the fiscal Code;

1) we cannot breach the law and avoid KYC/AML

no, we cannot. Present EU AML directives are quite clear.

You quoted European directives?! You have to know that directives are only binding on State members in order to compel them to approve national legislation. They are completely irrelevant on the relations between private persons, as you well know.

Considering the OP will not send you any ID, is there please any other way to solve this issue?

Sure,

our FAQ: https://support.therocktrading.com/kb/faq.php?cid=1&lang=en_US

and our AML policy: https://www.therocktrading.com/en/service_terms/5

If all docs are going to be fine, in one or two business days funds will be released (sooner if possible)

Thank you!

So in order to clear this up and for the user to get access to his funds again, you want him to login to his account and upload his ID?

Specifically which ID do want from him? Please list it here.

Since there are issues between yourself and the User will you guarantee that you will not start making more problems but asking him for more and more things because under your ToS you can use (if you want to) loopholes to make things very difficult for the OP.

If he agrees, after you get the ID how long will it take for him to get either the FIAT to his bank or access to transfer the crypto out of your wallets?

My lawyer read the Legislative Decree No. 90 of 25 May 2017.[/b]

It only applies to the activities of crypto exchanges when they convert crypto to fiat by allowing fiat withdrawals (check article 3).

The user accepted the new TOS.

Still, since 2011, if we are not positive about the identity, we do have to check for security issues. Believe me, we have seen any kind of examples in the past 8 years....

I want to believe he/she is the owner. In this case, I'm positive he/she will provide to us, or to the authorities, what we need in order to promptly release funds. As simple as that

Thank you!

PS: The CTO is not  the Compliance officer.

The user accepted the new TOS.

Still, since 2011, if we are not positive about the identity, we do have to check for security issues. Believe me, we have seen any kind of examples in the past 8 years....

I want to believe he/she is the owner. In this case, I'm positive he/she will provide to us, or to the authorities, what we need in order to promptly release funds. As simple as that

Thank you!

PS: The CTO is not  the Compliance officer.

Hello,

no, we cannot. Present EU AML directives are quite clear.

But, if we could, in the specific case, we are not positive he/she is the real account owner. So, for his/her protection, and for all of us including our customers, we cannot release funds based on a chat claim....

For example: let's suppose your account has been hacked, would you be happy if we were releasing your funds based on a chat claim??  

But again, if he does not trust us, he/she can open a cliam with the authorities, they'll contact us, provide us with the information and we'll release funds.  It is a longer procedure but the choice is not up to us.

Hello,

no, we cannot. Present EU AML directives are quite clear.

But, if we could, in the specific case, we are not positive he/she is the real account owner. So, for his/her protection, and for all of us including our customers, we cannot release funds based on a chat claim....

For example: let's suppose your account has been hacked, would you be happy if we were releasing your funds based on a chat claim?? 

But again, if he does not trust us, he/she can open a cliam with the authorities, they'll contact us, provide us with the information and we'll release funds.  It is a longer procedure but the choice is not up to us.

Many thanks for your post.

Now it is clear the user does not want FIAT sent to his bank. If he has 35,000 EUR worth of crypto can you allow access to it or allow him to send you his wallet address so you can send it to him?

Personally, I have never used any exchange which asks for KYC as I never trust anybody with my ID. Many people have their own reasons for not wanting to send ID to companies over the net, it is very common. It is equally common for users that are happy to trust to send their ID to exchanges. For those that do or not want to send, both have my respect.

If they ask for KYC then users who do not want to send ID should not sign up, simple. In this case your CTO advised the customer that ID would not be required.

Please could this issue be resolved and all parties involved can say it was a misunderstanding?

Is it possible maybe you could sent the crypto to the user (or allow him to withdraw it) and after that both parties will not trade with each other again.

Hello and thank you for your remarks.

Yes!! 11 months is really a lot for a issue that it could be solved in one business day.... and, we do not understand why the customer doesn't want to comply to  rules and AML policies.

We do have 2 major problems here:


1) we cannot breach the law and avoid KYC/AML

2) we do have to be sure the claimer is the real owner of the account (at this point this is a major issue....)

Even if we do have very stict laws in handling documents, If the customer does not trust us in providing his/her documents, we asked him/her multiple times to open a claim with the authorities so, we will be able to solve the issue.

However, it seems like, reading previous posts that he/she does not trust the police as well.....

Please note: TRT is the oldest exchange in existence. We started business on June 1st 2011 and, since then, we processed thousands of SEPA transfers without any major problem and handled tens of thousands customers documents without one single leak.

So, why he/she doesn't want to provide information required by the laws to us or to the authorities?

I let you answer the question.....

Thank you!  

Hello eliale,

I just started following this thread yesterday.

It has be sad the OP finds himself in a very unfortunate predicament and all this negative PR really has not helped your exchange either.

Regardless of who is or is not to blame I think all parties would agree that 11 months of a customer not having access to his crypto is unacceptable.

Sure, even if you blame the customer OP for this issue may I kindly request a way out where both parties can at least achieve their objectives in a kind respectful manner?

If you feel you did not nothing then do not apologise to him and if the OP thinks he did nothing wrong then he will not apologise to you either but that should not stop a resolution which results in the OP getting back the funds/crypto that he owns but are in your control. In the end the funds belong to him and he has had them in limbo for 11 months, that is something unacceptable.

The 21 August 2018 email exchange between the OP and your CTO (as mentioned and quoted in the OP) is the basis of his defence and his argument. Please, is it possible that rather than the OP send any ID verification for FIAT deposit/withdrawals, you allow him to access his crypto just so he can send it to his desktop wallet.

Maybe both parties can say there was a misunderstanding and you will kindly allow the OP to release the crypto by sending it to his desktop. After that both you and the OP will no longer have to deal with each other.

Many thanks for your consideration.

Holdings on the account belongs to the owner of the account and not to us.

Provide your information to us or, if you don't trust us to the police and I'll be more than happy to release the funds and close this issue.

Thank you