Topic: Unregulated Trading Platforms (Read 391 times)

Hmmm, so you didn't even read their regulations or requirements before you invested but you have to do some reading here before you posted, if you did go back to look at their rules, is it that you can never withdraw, or its a time period thing? or is the site just an outright scam site? There is always a lesson in everything and I guessed you have learned some. sorry if you are eventually unable to withdraw though and do more research before investing in any crypto even if it is through a trusted exchange.

And do not be too scared to ask if an exchange you've just known is legit or not. No one will laugh at you upon questioning because it's very essential for a newbie to ask if he has no idea if that exchange is a scam or not.

Use sources like coingecko in checking if it's there and that's a good start for researching if that exchange is legitimate. And if it's not enough for you, just post on the right section and ask about its legitimacy.

There are not a lot that you can do now, because that money is gone. What you can do is to help other people not to fall into the same trap.... Go to this site https://badbitcoin.org (hope they still accept new reports) and report them as scammers. (So if someone Google them, they will be directed to that site)

You can also start a scam accusation here ==> https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=83.0 with a detailed explanation and some screenshots of your discussions. <=== This will raise a second red flag, when people google them.

They most probably used a burner phone for the WhatsApp, but even burner phones leave "Location" information and also footprints to track them down. (Wifi connectivity / Cellphone provider logs / Purchase information for data...)

Good luck.... Hope you get to burn them to the ground!

Yes it is not possible to rewithdraw your Scammed money, either the Scammers will not send you back the money. If you are trying to retrieve the money you will be get scam the more because the will deceive you to bring more money to increase the profit or others and nobody can help you to do that. The only people that can do that or help you are the Economic and Monetary Crime Agencies. Or a professional hackers from Federal Government. And those people you will pay a big amount of money to do the work.
Therefore, I will advise you to leave it and do not invest on any platform you see online, most of the are fraudsters. I will also advise you that instead of Investing learn how to trade and trade by yourself. But you can invest if you see a genuine platform to do so. But how will you know it is an another question. You can go and ask trading Board and ask for a good platforms

Don’t be too hard on yourself mate, such things do happen especially when you’re still a newbie in the market.
It has happened to a lot of people here, you just have to learn from it and move on and nothing more.

And as for recovering the money you have lost, there is no way that you can recover it. Don’t pay people who claim that they can recover a lost crypto for you, cryptocurrency transactions can’t be reversed.

Any lost transaction is lost for good and can’t be got back in most cases.

Try to always do your research, avoid fake exchanges and make use of the most trusted platforms.

I mean there are way too many people who get fooled by people and lose their money, it wouldn't be the first, hardly in the first million probably. We have seen so many places that stole money from people and honestly it is definitely not a deal that I would be upset about neither because if you are gullible enough to think that someone will make you richer than you could hope for, just because they will take some shares of that profit, then you are too gullible to be rich anyway.

The rich become rich because they are ruthless and cunning and they do not let emotions get in the way of money, they do not have trust for anyone but just profit.

It's unfortunate that you stumbled upon this kind of scenario given that you're still a newbie. It would have been hard to grasp thinking that you are just new, but already crossed path with scammers and schemes. However, it already happened and the least you can do is to do better next time.

If you badly want to trade, give a shot only to those reputable trading platforms. There are many reputable and trusted platforms that offer trading features. The only thing you have to do is to of course, research and do a background checking. The moment you want o enter something, it should be a protocol to check reviews about them first. In anything that there is money involved, you shouldn't put your trust easily because there are many people on the Internet that are greedy. Sadly, you encountered one. Not just once, but twice basing on your statement.

If a trading platform offers a too good to be true offer, doubt it already and trust your instincts. And if ever you got fooled the first time around, be more cautious the next time so it won't happen again. I've read similar scenarios as yours in which they got scammed and then afterwards, a person offered to recover what they lost in exchange of money. This is an old scheme already and you should be aware of that. Most of the scammers want to get the most out of their victims pocket. So, do not easily believe people offering you help.

A lot of lessons to learn every day on crypto scams that had been occuring everytime. I don't blame people for being weak to be easily scammed by online scammers. I know anyone can be liable to fall victim against any crypto scam but we all need to be careful so such will not repeat itself again. It is obvious that newbies are likely to fall to this kind of scam from unknown trading site that do guarantee big profit when trading with them. I have once fall victim to this kind of mistake and I learnt my lessons.

Getting your funds refunded back to you may be an haculian task because we don't know the group you've joined that demanded a deposit of funds from you as stake, the most challenging thing is that whenever you fall in hand of those trading platform who apparently appears to be as a result of scam cant afford any refundment to it user. i will advise you to do away with all forms of groups on trading platforms that guarantees ROI because one ended on being scammed at the end, in cryptocurrency and bitcoin as a matter of fact, things were best done if you can do them all by yourself because that's the first security you could give to yourself.

What he said was even quite confusing as he said that it was a trading group and later said it was a trading platform. Well, whatever it is, as long as it is as scam, there is no way that he is getting that money back. It’s clear in cryptocurrency that any wrong transaction you make, there is no reversing back. It’s not like PayPal where you can send money and reverse it if there is a problem, there is no such possibility. He should have done his research before investing his money into that platform, instead he chose to trust them with his money and when he suspected it’s a scam is when he decided to make his research.

There is something I m not getting cleared from you and somehow got confused with your post.
Questions you asking is already answered by you so wondering what you needed again.
If you sent BTC to scam wallet then you have to forget about it as it's missing which can never be seen or reversed to you again. Before dealing with any untrusted platform which you suspected to be scam is to make proper research about the platform or venture before going ahead with any deal or transactions.

Of course you should be able to withdraw your fund but one thing I know that can hinders you from such is if you break their rules and your being suspected for one or two suspicious activities that called for attention, atimes the exchange you're using also determines because some may put you on "user verify account" which will be required before you can perform some certain functions, also your country matters, if you're located in a region tagged then you might have this challenge as well, so most times they are KYC related issues.

aas you already mention on the title itself. We are talking about UNREGULATED exchange here which means the owner can run freely since there business is not registered officialy to let them tracked in case they scam you although authority can help you recover your funds if the money involved is huge and worthy to allocate resources just to recover it. If the amount is just small, Consider it already gone as this is the cons on using unregulated exchange at the first place. You should learn your lesson and move on.

Lots of good to be true offers such as this one you are talking about are circulating in the telegrams and the emails that I was using for bounties but if you already know what they are up to, you can simply ignore their message and turn away from every offer they give you. I recommend not to talk to them because these people have all the tricks in the book to fool you and once they got your trust, you ended up losing your money forever just like what the OP has experienced.

You basically answered your own questions.
The only thing you could do is to reveal the scam trading group and/or the scam trading platform,so that other people won't get caught in this scam.
You are not a sucker,but you should've done a proper research before spending any coins on some shady,unknown trading platform.Many people got scammed like you,so you are not the only one.There's no point of having regrets.Just learn from your mistake and move on.
My advise to the newbies is to stick with the most popular and regulated crypto trading platforms.This is just common sense.
Joining some unregulated trading platform increases the risk of getting scammed.

Perhaps rest of the investors haven't realized they are being scammed yet or they have a way to delete any bad info about them and keep only the paid good info as bait to lure innocent investors in.
Don't worry (law of karma will catch up with them soon) and don't let this discourage you, am sure some day you will get back what you lost through another genuine investment, this time try to invest through well known trading platforms, there are several with decent reputation. Good luck.

Appreciate the honesty, I have already reported to some authorities.  It just irks me that I searched for the company online and they had no bad info about them.  The scheme was pretty elaborate and the website is still up and running. 

It seems you are left with no choice but to communicate with that group and attempt to negotiate for your Bitcoin. Other than that, you could report it to the authorities especially if it involves a huge amount, but it would probably take a lot of time and process that could all result to nothing.

You know, you're not the only newbie who got scammed. A number of us have our fair share of similar experiences. But rather than discourages us, it somehow makes us a tad wiser and become a reminder to others.

I just read your story throughout this whole thread. It happens to a lot of people sadly. These scammers would do bulk email and phone sending to random people around the world and it is not just on crypto. This same "scam group" also happens outside crypto and it is more like involving local digital payments here in my country and they are also irreversible when you send money to someone.

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Source: Been seeing it a lot in public Facebook groups.

I will stop pursing a solution and move on.  Thanks for the support though

Your initiative is to join a bitcoin trading group from the start. Trading groups are bullshit, you should avoid them as much as possible. Trading is basically done independently (solo trading) not in groups.

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Blockchair is just a block explorer site, there is no information they filter beyond the capabilities of their features. They can't help you.

Just a few tips, the first thing is to double-check before you make a transaction and start investing anything or using any change because once your transaction is confirmed there is no way to get your bitcoins back in any condition unless you know the owner of the destination wallet address and he does a favor to get back your bitcoins which is most unlikely not going to happen, Also, there is not any different if you are using coinbase or some random exchange because even exchange with the strongest support team cannot change or undo anything because the bitcoin blockchain is decentralized and none can change it.

You can already tell that this is one big scam site but because you are new to crypto space you didn't realise it. No genuine trading platform will do business through whatsapp group - none that I know of.
If this link was received by you randomly without seeking them out then why would you take such risk?

From your explanation above it all shows so many red flag to tell you this is scam. It is unfortunate you had to fall for their dirty trick.
You try and engage lawyers to take legal action but this will coat more money and time.

there are several factors that make you unable to make your money back, especially never give your money to a bad platform this can be said to be a scam platform, and maybe at this time you can report the platform as a scam, it looks like you have to collect some information if You want to follow up on the case that happened to you, because this might be said to be a bad thing to happen to you, if you can't recover it, it can be said that your money will be impossible to return.

I am also new to this, so in the future you have to be more careful especially if the game involves trading, we have a lot to learn in this trading, if we are not able to master it it will be difficult to do the trading, so learn as you can control it as much as possible and start with small trades first, if you are successful in these trades then you can just do it according to your own wishes, and don't be in a hurry, you will most likely get big profits too of course.

So be careful of platforms that allow a lot of irregularities and don't let you experience something like this, because if you have made a transaction with the name BTC and it has been confirmed, you can be sure this cannot be changed again if it has been confirmed, and when it comes to Coinbase, Coinbase of course also can't take any policies or actions, maybe as I said you can only report the scam platform.

The coins he sent are not on Coinbase. He deposited on some fake trading platform that was advertised to him over WhatsApp. Coinbase can only take action if assets are located in their wallets. Centralized stablecoins can be frozen by the issuers controlling them no matter where they are. Both on private wallets and on exchanges.

You can follow the money trail on a service such as Wallet Explorer. Check where they are moving the coins, maybe they will end up on a centralized exchange where they went through KYC. Doubtful but possible. Even if that happens, you can't just contact the exchange and ask for information about account owners. No one is going to give you that. Unless you are planning to take legal actions, you should just forget about it.

So is this a website where they made you believe that you can trade and be profitable? If that is the case, you really need to use common sense and think logically before you believe in things like that. Do you even know how to trade? Can you read charts, recognize patterns, etc.? Before sending your crypto anywhere, do some research on what you are doing before it's too late.

The entire system is set up to scam people. Those running the site are behind the scam. It makes no sense to contact customer service on such platforms.

If I may ask if this trading platform is a dex or cex exchange?
Perhaps they have a way of communicating with them something like a customer service, I believe all trading platform should have this (except this was mainly designed to scam people).
It is sad to loss money to scammers, you have to learn from your experience and be more cautious next time. It is better to use well known trading platform.

I called coinbase and they basically froze my account and reset it 24 hours later, basically no help.

Can I tell on blockchair if they use a centralized exchanges or custodial wallet, i can see my transaction on blockchair i think it is the same because the date, time and  the amount transferred is very close ? 

I don't know why you can said this, but technically it's possible since Coinbase can freeze someone funds. The hard thing here is find the legit crypto lawyer or legal to handle this case, of course you need a money to pay them. If they're professional, they can cooperate with centralized exchanges and if your funds stored on centralized exchanges. If he use non custodial wallet, then it's impossible to retrieve your funds.

Sorry to hear that but this isn't really a new technique which is existing here for very long time even I received such requests from unknown people on social media platforms but I know so I just laugh and ignore such messages completely without giving any shit about it.

I just want to say one important thing, no legitimate exchange will ask you to deposit more money to withdraw your own money and also they never contact their customers and ask them to trade on their platforms so in future keep this in mind to avoid becoming a victim.

Recovery services work if you can't access funds in your own wallet but you actually made a transaction and the scammers took your money already so doing anything won't work at all, accept it and this js a lesson for your life.

This is what happend:

BTCHEO.com is complete scam. they operate via whatsapp group “Bitcoin Group 288” and other channels. They collect people by sending random/misdirected messages on SMS, whatsapp etc. They will say you can make a lot of money trading short term and to trade, they will ask you to open an account on their spoofed trading platform (btccheo and many other similar sites) and ask you to send crypto currency to their address. The platform will show you a fake account and will make you think that you are doing trading and making profits but you will never be able to withdraw money (beyond a small bait initially). Once crypto is sent to their address it is gone for good. The people chatting in the group is a decoy and some victims who have not yet realized the scam. When the person tries to withdraw, they block that person from the group so you won’t see any complaints about withdrawals. Everyone will claim they are making money all the time.  This is a complete SCAM.  BTCHEO.com  You will hear from Mr. Jeston, Mr Benson, Karen

As said above, Bitcoin or any crypto transaction is irreversible and once it will be confirmed, there's no way to get back not unless you hold the private key where your coins transfer.  I have doubt that you might a victim of a fraud exchange and this was what I experienced before when someone PMed me on telegram.  I created an account for the unknown exchange which is the deposit address controlled by the scammer (which I doubt this is the same case).

Try to contact this service, Chainalysis.
They have a service to investigate any related to the blockchain transaction which means they can able to track high-profile cybercriminals.  I hope this will help you if that is a huge amount, but if not, just move on and learn mistakes.  Just verify it first legitimacy of an exchange.

The trading platform is run by the scammers,   when I tried to withdraw funds the scammer knew I made a withdrawal request.  We were communicating through whatsapp.  It was a lot of money, at least worth some time for me not to totally give up and ask a few questions

you can't do much about it as you don't know where they are sending it to even if the addresses are shown at blockchair. and what do you mean by you got scammed with the trading platform? maybe, these scammers just used the trading platform to scam you but not the trading platform itself. maybe you can contact the platform support and report them. but to be honest, if the amount is not so huge, better move on as you would need more resources to seriously run after them. the trading platform won't cooperate if there is no legal lawsuit from your end.

The 3 Wallet addresses are coming up on https://blockchair.com and I can see transfers made close to amount I sent, I am not sure what to do with this information though

It's two bad mate, if you can't recovered funds from this trading group then consider your money as "lost" already. Just sad that you fall for this kind of trick and hopefully you will learn your lessons here. You can do trading yourself, go to the process of learning just like the rest of us here.

Just start small with your trading journey, understand and for sure you will enjoy it. Don't rush everything and maybe in the future you will earn huge profit from it.

I'm using blockchair.com

I got scammed with the trading platform, not a recovery service.  Do you have a explorer you recommend?  I have the wallet addresses of the scammers

Are you saying you have been scammed twice? First was depositing to a fake exchange and second was falling victim to a scam service for trying to recover what you already lost? That's really too bad if that's the case.

Don't expect much try to monitor the address you sent the money to using explorers Maybe the scammers will commit a mistake of sending to a known centralized exchange. You can then seek help from the said exchange.

Bitcoin transactions are irreversible once confirmed. If you sent money to a scam website, you can not reverse that transaction, and no one else can, so do not fall into another scan trying to retrieve it.
Do not pay the platform any fee either to retrieve it. Scammers usually put demands on withdrawals as an attempt to get more money.

Coinbase can not take any action, the transaction happened on the blockchain which is decentralized.
You can report the platform as a scam and try to gather more information to pursue the case. I'm not sure how serious such cases are taken in your country, but it could be worth a shot.

Hi, just joined group.  I should of searched a little deeper before I invested with a BTC trading group.  Long story short the reason I am here is I need advice if there is anyway to get my funds back that are on a trading platform that will not let me withdraw.  I read quite a few posts before I posted this and what I concluded is:
1. Recovery is next to impossible
2. Do not throw good money after bad on a “crypto recovery company”
3.  No authorities will help not even Coinbase where the transactions were wired from.
Anyway I am sucker who got scammed