Scammers Profile Link: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=1307188Reference Link: https://changenow.ioAmount Scammed: More than 1 BTC worth, less than 20 BTC worth.
What happened:: Many of you are familiar with the service we run, namely
https://www.privcoin.io which is a multi crypto mixer. We currently support mixing BTC, BCH, ETH and LTC. On occasion depending on the popularity of coins we will use 3rd party services such as Shapeshift, Changelly and ChangeNow to swap from one coin to another to increase reserves of something in higher demand. One day within the last 2 months one of our Admins used ChangeNow only to be greeted with the following message after the coins had been sent:
According to European AML directives and KYC regulations, we have to ask you to provide a scan or a photo of your ID valid in your country of residence and the additional information of the funds origin (like trading, mining etc).
The country in which we operate from does not require us by law to perform KYC on crypto to crypto transactions so for obvious reasons it will never be possible for us to prove where the funds came from nor do we feel like sending any ID to ChangeNow as they advertise themselves as an "Anonymous, Limitless Exchange" right here on the forums.
This thread should serve as a warning not to use ChangeNow unless you are both willing to provide ID and able to prove where your coins have come from. On occasion we don't want to process a mix at PrivCoin so we refund the user their exact coins back to them and this approach should be the industry standard.
To ChangeNow should they read this thread: If you either refund us the coin we sent back where it came from OR provide a swap to the coin we wanted, we will remove this post but here's the best part: We are not going to tell you which transaction was ours so either refund every user you're holding and give everybody their coins back or provide them the promised swap.