Topic: What should I do if I think somebody soon will scam someone? (Read 603 times)

Yes I agree with you 100% on this, but also it is better to try to stop the scam before it happens. 
I see its very strange that this MadHatters change telegram username all the time, and have so much to offer, but I am pretty sure nobody will fall for this scam attempt.

https://bitcointalksearch.org/user/madhatters-3554014

OP, I think there is no much stress about this. When receiving any message or chat  on this platform which seems suspicious what is expected of you is to make use of the report botton and report the message to forum moderator for urgent actions so as to save yourself and every other forum member from falling for such scam.

Looking at the reply from other members here, it is obviously clear that the user is likely a scammer who goes around scamming people and possibly has many alt account which they use in accomplishing their nefarious act. I wonder how any forum member that must have been scammed by them on this platform.

@TheChin0s and @MadHatters can be discussed whether these two accounts are connected, but there is no evidence between these two accounts that the owner of the two accounts is thechin0s. Here we find only merit transection as proof which is not enough. But I am pretty sure that TheChin0s is not a trusted member, because he tried to take a loan using alt account. https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.61723065

So you may be right to assume that he came to the forum with another alt account with the intention of scamming in any way, but this cannot be proved due to insufficient evidence. But after reading your investigation and reviewing the past activities of @TheChin0s, it is possible that these two accounts are connected, but I will wait for full proof that they are alt accounts. If you think this user may be scamming someone, follow this user's activity, and if you see something suspicious, post it back to this forum to alert community members.

Sorry I did not understand a thing, have this to do anything with the topic? (Sorry my English is not 100%)

Take a look into the situations that happens and know what warrant such user to have found him as the major target to scam, some cannot control the way they make use of the social media or other quick and fast means of making money, which obviously means that we do make it a way opened for others to scam us through where we go, things we do and what we give out to the public which should have been private with us alone, no one can easily scam us if we had never left vulnerability down for them to use against us.

Now MadHatters got his first feedback, it's negative and a bit strange. - https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=trust;u=3554014

Seems to have some kind of been with a Full member that in his feedback got accused for some kind of account selling/buying.

Post-Cosmic just did (the one that gave him the feedback)
This user's password was reset recently.
This user recently woke up from a long period of inactivity.

( https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.62498489 )



 

Though it is a good way to tread through this forum, by putting people to your ignore list so they doesn't bother you anymore, it is a rather incorrect way to use trust list. Trust and distrust [~someone] are meant to express your opinion about how accurate someone's judgement is, it should be based on the records of the feedback they leave on other users, not how trustworthy they are on dealing with funds. The trustworthiness of funds are belong to the feedback [positive, neutral, and negative feedback].

If my memory does not deceive me, when debating on the subject you told me that the neutral tag can be used for anything, or practically anything. Does that ring a bell?

Of course - someone shouldn't just throw mud at the wall.
If you have to suspect someone, then be an intelligence person, I mean watch their moves and get valid evidence before making accusations against them.

But really - I just wanted to create my own shortcut where I would probably just ignore his profile and put him on my distrust list. Every other user has the same responsibility for the safety of themselves and their money - meaning they should be responsible for doing any analysis on someone before trusting them with money.

Same thought with Holydarkness, which is a correct stand anyways. All these shows the leniency of the forum which is a factor of the level of freedom the forum inherited from the ideology of bitcoin.
It is not a crime yet unless it is committed;
Even if it's committed, if not convicted, he remains a suspect.

You can only suspect someone who is considered to have malicious intent, but you cannot accuse someone else of being a scammer without valid evidence.

Lure him into your trap if you are sure that he will immediately deceive someone, direct him to the telegram channel and then follow all his wishes. When at some point you hold the evidence, immediately make an accusation with the attachment of valid evidence.
Don't be hasty in taking action on unproven accusations.

All you got is only circumstantial evidence, if you really want to tie both account, you will need at least to prove that both account use same bitcoin/other crypto address or if they use/refer to same non-bitcointalk account.
I also don't think tagging the account in any way is fair and it's not necessary, it's a newbie account for now, so people wouldn't be just trusting him/her with some money.

It's good when forum members are vigilant so that no one is deceived.

There is such a wording that if there is no composition (fact) of a crime, then there is no offense.

What should you do? Just watch the changes of these accounts. Perhaps there is a connection between these accounts, and perhaps not. But until you can provide the necessary evidence, you have nothing to show them / him. Keep your finger on the pulse and, if necessary, urgently warn of the danger.

I will have to beg to differ on the "never enough evidence to nail anyone" part, though your later part bear some weight of truth; "unless the suspect doesn't have what it takes to vindicate themselves", which can be read as, "unless the suspect can no longer defend themselves as being not guilty".

It is quite established throughout the forum that cases being raised here should be seen on case-by-case basis. And be it we applying the presumption of guilt or the presumption of innocence, both presumptions emphasize of piling evidences up to beyond rational doubt that someone did or did not do something that's being accused. The keyword, for this topic, is "piling evidences".

If we use your instances, sure separately, they are circumstantial. FatFork's writing style can be coincidental [as I've argued it myself], same address of John can be a transaction between colleagues, social media handles can be copied. But if they're piling on top of each other, it'll push the barrier of reasonal doubt. This is why Little Mouse and PP suggested to utilize neutral tag as a marker to remind ourselves about the account while we dig deeper before taking further steps based on the findings.

It depends: FatFork quoted a few posts with 5 of the same words, tspacepilot used his "training in Statistical Methods for Natural Language Processing" to do a thorough analysis to find patterns.

Based on all this, would you say LoyceMobile is my alt? The writing style is different (because 90% of the posts were written on a keyboard smaller than my drink), I never sent Merit to it, and I use the account at different times (and locations). That only leaves the same local board, which I barely use anyway and could easily avoid if I wanted to.

In this forum, there is never enought evidence to nail anyone, unless the suspect doesn't have what it takes to vindicate themselves. For instances;

• When you connect accounts through their writing style just as FatFork did, we will say it's not an evidence enough.  Maybe a coincidence
• When you connect accounts by uncovering direct transactions to someone's address, the forum will say they want to tarnish the user's reputation just like the case of LDL
• When you connect people always transacting with same address they will say that they are colleagues and have been trading for a long time just like John Abraham's case
• When you connect them with social media handle, the accused will say they copy pasted it through bounty application

It is just like that, and no matter how careful you monitor both accounts in question, you cannot successfully connect them but I'm sure both accounts are controlled by same person looking at;
Coincidence of active and exit of both accounts;
Writing method;
From same locality;
The merit flow;
I think a neutral tag is worth it but let the neutral have the weight of neutral. Because some neutral tags are as powerful as red tags due to the tone used in the tag.

First try to avoid such person because people like that have nothing and wouldn't mind spoiling what you have, then study such person from a far without giving him any feelings that you're on his track studying him till one day he will launch an attack and you will have enough evidence to use against him.


Watch and observe him as I've said, have enough evidence to use as reference against him whenever you got him caught doing the act and use those evidence as to report him to the moderators or post it on a scam accusation thread.

Depending on the case, I've used it:

Honestly, I'm not sure if guesses and assumptions are enough even for a neutral tag. Everything is based on sending 2 random merits, probably and very likely they are really not enough.
Yes, there is a possibility here, as far as I can see both accounts are very interested and active in the Invites & Accounts section, but that's still just a guess.

I agree in everything what you said here. I cannot prove anything and that is right because i just suspect so the thing I can do and did is to warn people. You have 100% right  
But just I thinking like this is better to prevent a scam from maybe happen instead of wait until it happen and then post that the scam have happen, because I think this scammer wont care, just create a new account and not pay back the money he/she scammed the victim of, this seems to be a person that has create many alts and scam a lot of people to get this one out of the forum could do a little change to the positive.
If the account MadHatters have honest intentions then it should be no problem to show that in the future trades with using a reliable escrow provider or go first with a member that have good feedback and if so happens a couple of times, this all will be removed and apologized.

At least we know which Hhampuz to trust:

You cannot prove anything by just suspecting them to be a scam. Just collect some evidence yet and once you get enough then post a scam accusation here to warn people about those upcoming scam that might happen. If the crime is already happen to someone else then help the victims by providing the necessary proof so that he can file a case to sue those scammers.

But since you seems to have a good trace right there I guess this case need to look at to see if there's a crime committed.

Humbertin uses the expression


from time to time - especially if their current profile has been active for six or more months.

Check the creation dates (or woken up etc) of anyone seemingly having a successful trade.

They should be banned with this proof of @Stalker22 since one of his alt account has been already banned.

As of now, there's nothing you can do, every one of us here in the forum will do stupidity even a reputable member will end up potentially scammed.  So right now, this thread is enough to warn everyone here to avoid scams. 

Seeing the title of this thread got me interested in this, but after reading to the point of seeing this statement you wrote above got me discouraged because truth be told, everybody on this forum is a suspect of one thing or the other, of which I expected you to have waited until you may have gotten full solid proof to back up your suspicion before creating this thread. Because until proven otherwise, those user remains a suspect who deserves no negative nor neutral trust rating, because the fact that they speak the same language, and received merit from one account to the other is not enough to prove they are connected.

##That's my point of view##

I triple what's said by Little Mouse and PP. These evidences so far, even what's provided by FatFork above me --good digging, though, FatFork-- was still circumstantial. There's no definitive connection between the two accounts. Given they're speaking the same language, it's probable thst the grammatical error of, "I can help with you" is a common practice.

Until there's a direct evidences and connection, best way to approach this will be to tag with neutral and later change it as the situation developed.

You mentioned that you don't have 100% proof and that push me to ask if you have any proof to nail the perceived scammer since you said 100% proof any proof will work just fine for this as long as it shows that both accounts are connected.

If there is nothing as proof to point to that fact,  then your accusation may be trashed as a mere assumption since you are without evidence to support your claims.

It really looks like another alt of the old scammer Humbertin19_ / HumberRoll / DavidXXXX etc. I think it was mentioned somewhere that he was from Colombia or Ecuador, which explains the language.

However, as others have already pointed out, that's not enough for a negative tag at this time. It's good that you voiced your suspicions, though.

EDIT:
Some additional intriguing "coincidences":

You can't give negative feedback to someone just because you suspect he is alt account from another scammer.
First you need to find some proof of at least same style of writing, spelling mistakes, address connections, same social media accounts, etc.
If there was merit exchange between this members and if he is active in similar boards like TheChin0s than there is a reason for suspecting him, so you can monitor his activity for now.
 

Okay.
Thank you! 

What you have done is fine, open a thread in this section to discuss these things. I would supplement it with neutral feedback with this thread as a reference. If you don't have more evidence, you shouldn't use the negative, just the neutral, which you could change in the future if more evidence appears. So I agree on this with Little Mouse.

Yes I know I don't have any 100% proof and that's why I wont and cant give negative feedback or accusing him for something.
That's why I asked what I should do.

You don't have some good proofs to accuse him as a scammer. I haven't looked deeply at the coincidences you have shared. However, this isn't enough to call someone other people's alt. So, it doesn't make sense to tag someone. You can still monitor the account and if you find something suspicious, then you can take further steps.
Well, there's neutral feedback that can be used here though. You can apply neutral feedback and out this thread in the reference link.

Hello.

If I am almost positive that a person on this forum soon will scam somebody, what should I do?
The problem is that the person has not scammed anyone yet! But I am pretty sure it's just a matter of time.

The account is a newbie account, so of course won't a person that know how this forum works fall for a scam.
But its still bad if a new user get scammed in my opinion.

Not long time ago he (thechin0s) scammed another person (newbie).
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.62226312

If people look this message : https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.62230136
This person have done this before with many other alts.


thechin0s: https://bitcointalksearch.org/user/thechin0s-3506957
I think this is thechin0s new account:  https://bitcointalksearch.org/user/madhatters-3554014 - Madhatters.

Why?
- Same day and time thechin0s got accused for scamming Madhatters showed up.
- And when I look around this Madhatters seems to be able to offer people many things. He answer in many many threads where people is looking to buy stuff.
- They talk the same if you look how their messages.
- From same speaking country
- thechin0s  have sent two merits to Madhatters for random posts.
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.62259924
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.62255417

I don't have 100% proof but I think its kinda obvious that this is the same person, of course I can be wrong then I will apologize and remove this instantly.



What should I do? Just leave it? It looks like he have done a lot of scamming on this forum and it would be great if that ended.
Since Madhatters has not scammed anyone yet it's wrong to give any negative feedback, but I want people to be aware and careful.



Now MadHatters got his first feedback, it's negative and a bit strange. - https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=trust;u=3554014

Seems to have some kind of been with a Full member that in his feedback got accused for some kind of account selling/buying.

Post-Cosmic just did (the one that gave him the feedback)
This user's password was reset recently.
This user recently woke up from a long period of inactivity.

( https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.62498489 )