So I see that the scammer is no longer logging to the stolen account:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=327502

I am not sure what happened, though. Was his access to the account revoked? Who controls the account now (because I have not gotten any e-mails nor reply from the moderators)? What should I do now?

Memberberrry:
Well, regarding my account - I need the new one, because the original (Qiuyue201) was stolen and I am in process of recovering it. And regarding HEAT, it would be hard to prove that the goals were not met on purpose. You are suggesting something serious,  a fraud, so it would be good to have proofs. Most startups promise something and do not deliver it. To be fair, yes, there is a chance that it was pre-planned failure, they haven't intended to deliver, they had not enough skills to do this and simply wanted to drag the process as long as possible, till ICO participants get bored and move to the other projects. Yes, many projects do something like that. But there is also a chance, that they simply failed.

lemonandfriesonetwo:
When would you suggest to call a project failed? IMO there is no reason to sugercoat it. If a project promises X and launches without X and even couple of years later there is no X, then we have assumed it has failed. If Ethereum - which was promoted as smart contract platform - would launch in 2016 and still have no contracts till 2018, while being unstable, highly centralised etc. we would call it failure. I am not trying to beat the project's creators, because I understand how things work in startup business (and in crypto) and that most projects fail, but also there is no reason to pretend that all is good, because obviously it is not. If YouTube was announced as video streaming service but then over 2 years after the launch it would offer only text descriptions of the videos, it would be considered failure, wouldn't it? There are various ways to scam people. You can simply run away with BTC (and risk being chased), or you can pretend you are working on something, paying yourself the money. Not saying that latter is the case here (but many people rightfully suspect that), but many crypto project did it this way.

To be honest, yes, it used to make me angry. But then I realised that startup world (and blockchain in particular) is like that and there is nothing that can be done, because those are the rules of the game. I often stumble upon a project that fails but also there are some good ones. Instead of wasting energy on being angry I simply move to the next one and try not to make mistake. HEAT was expensive lesson, but worth it. Many people in this community are still naive and hoping for the HEAT bull run, others are still angry, but IMO best way to deal with it is simply move to the next project. That being said, if you would be doing any lawsuit you have my sword and probably some other people would join you too, but I guess you would need personal data and that would require loss of anonimity, so that should happen as further into the preparations as possible, because probably people will not be eager to share that data before they are 100% sure that lawsuit is happening.

I am not saying this is good. I am just saying this is how things work.
People willingly donated 1 million USD to the startup based on both the promises and their chances of delivery.
The startup chose not to sell that 1 million USD in crypto for FIAT but instead kept it and multiplied it thanks to both bitcoin price appreciation and additional coins from forks, which was good move on their side and not every project behaves like that (for example Augur, which was first Ethereum ICO, has almost no funds, since they immediately converted most of it to FIAT). So the fact that they have now 20 million instead of 1 million is thanks to their skills/choices and congratulations to them, they fully deserve to keep it. It is all good, even if they decide to pay out 19 million as salary bouns that is fair. What is not fair though is that they promised some things and those things were not delivered. Yes, we have to say it once again - the project failed, it is a failure, what was promised was not delivered and who knows how much of those 1 million USD was spend towards achieving this goal and how much was spent on business trips in luxury hotels. That being said, it was our duty to do proper due dilligence and we failed to correctly estimate how solid is the team (it is not solid), what is their success history (previous projects failed) etc. It was their mistake that the project failed but it was our mistake to invest in it. Fingers crossed for everyone, who is attemtping to salvage anything from this, but IMO this is not how things work in crypto and in startup business in general - if startups fails investors simply move to other startups and stop investing the initial startup in secondary rounds, which is basically happening here (HEAT ICO investors moved to other projects alredy with some exceptions, new investors / secondary rounds are not coming). Nothing to see here, just better luck next time. But really curious how long people from both groups (both: "give me back my money" and "HEAT will recover") will hang around here.

While I think that Tetra's attempts to get back any money from the project will be futile, I have to give it to him, that he is right about the promises.

There are many things that were promised and not delivered, just to quote some from the original post of the ICO thread:


The difference is, that Tetra (and some other people) took it as guarantees and now are disappointed that the project failed. The thing is that most startups fail, and as I stated before, you need to look not only at what project wants to deliver (the guarantees) but also if it will deliver this. Did HEAT promise all this? Yes. Did the project fail? Yes. Will they give us money back? No, because we took a risk and lost on this particular startup.

Both groups (the one that is raging to get their money back and the one that is believing HEAT somehow magically will recover on the next bull run) are wrong.
Info for the first group: no, HEAT will not give you money back, because you donated it to them based on the promises and your estimation of how probable it is that they will actually deliver. Promises were good but delivery failed.
Info for the second group: no, HEAT will not somehow magically go up on the next bull run. Actually, the next bull run will kill failed projects that are still around, because this is what bull runs do - they make already successful projects go even higher and they clean the cryptosphere of the failed projects. Did the 2017 bullrun made FIMK (HEAT team's previous project) skyrocket? No. Will the next bullrun make HEAT skyrocket? No.

Just be responsible people, accept the risk it takes to invest in crypto.

Thank you very much for your help! I really appreciate it!

Best proof I can provide (based on public posts and not private messages) is this.

1. Back in the early days of Ethereum we were playing around with simple smart contracts, building pyramids and lotteries for each other, playing around with various rules and mechanisms etc.
2. Back then I have created this post: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1436754.msg14637462#msg14637462
3. As you can see, there is this smart contract mentioned in this post: http://etherscan.io/address/0xa864694cACDf27900aFB3c32b1B07Aea3C465dDe#internaltx
4. As you can see in the block explorer, the creator of this smart contract is this address: https://etherscan.io/address/0x97eedb324b5ab7ddd100d027e990a05037e61b37
5. And yes, I still have the keys in one of my backups and can use them to do whatever is necessary to prevent the person from exploiting the account further.


-----BEGIN ETHEREUM SIGNED MESSAGE-----
My account Qiuyue201 has been hacked/lost. Please reset the email to ICO_services@gmx.com. The current date is 23 October 2018.
-----BEGIN SIGNATURE-----
0x97EEDB324b5AB7DDD100d027E990A05037E61B37 (addres that has created smart contract 0xa864694cACDf27900aFB3c32b1B07Aea3C465dDe from the linked post)
{
  "address": "0x97eedb324b5ab7ddd100d027e990a05037e61b37",
  "msg": "My account Qiuyue201 has been hacked/lost. Please reset the email to ICO_services@gmx.com. The current date is 23 October 2018.",
  "sig": "0xd7dbb8c25705936e8bb4d501c20b5155d13a7ea947cc9a03f88310d908a788b203eb13bff9c45 d68347f24e44b183c53da11e887bd9674e3dfcc9988c246696d1c",
  "version": "3",
  "signer": "MEW"
}
-----END ETHEREUM SIGNED MESSAGE-----

Here is the unedited post where I posted the Ethereum smart contract created by that address:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1436754.msg14637462#msg14637462

Sorry if I was misunderstood, I was not trying to be attacking and maybe my language is not the best because of language barrier. I was just worried that despite provising proof according to the procedure described in one of the posts multiple times nothing happened and I was checking every couple of months and tried to contact admins from various temporary account. Then I noticed that there are more people like me here waiting many months. I understand it might take some time but waiting many months is very patient IMO, so perhaps there was some other issue which I am speculating on. I had my account since 2014 but I was not posting very often, only when I got involved in a new project and then I could not post for couple of months and then post again. And almost a year ago someone took control over my account and started posting from it daily to claim bounties (some of those posts were copy paste of other posts). First thing I did after I noticed it was to go through the account recovery procedure involving e-mailing admins. If there is anything else I can do I would appreciate the info. Regarding my e-mail, the email conntected to the account was changed by the scammer, so I can not do anything about it and I guess I am unable to lock it down, am I? Best way would be to recover that account, it is not only about the account but also good memories, lots of messages from people who introduced me to crypto in PM and some of my first crypto posts on the message board are linked with this account.

Edit: after recommendation from the post link below, I am updating my OP.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5055572.msg47181362#msg47181362

So many months ago scammer stole my account
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=327502

Since then it was used multiple times to extort bounties etc.
I also multiple times tried to contact Bitcointalk mods according to the "how to recover my account" instructions presented on this board and never got any reply.
I guess there is nothing more that can be done to recover this account, but I really don't understand why.

DELETED

I think I get it where is the misunderstanding. You seem to look at this as guarantees, while people generally tend to consider it plans that might or might be delivered. I think it will be very hard to persuade people for legal action because when a project flops people just move to the next project but just in case you manage to somehow pull this off let us know, however IMO things will probably end like with most failed crypto projects - no new people coming in, ICO investors moving to new projects, devs slowly closing the project.

Once again, not trying to disencourage you, because if you have any means to get our money back than go for it, but the money was donated to them in exchange for the coins, so they can do what they please with it.

Well, that would be amazing if the things would work like that and you could simply sue the company behind your every bad investment. Things don’t work like that though. We all took a gamble like we always do in crypto, we took the risk that things might get delivered or might not be delivered, the project failed like most startups and that’s it. Seriously would be fun to see things work like that.

100% of the compny ownership is in hands of people who started this startup and even if all members of the community would like to support your case, they would still not have the rights to the company. Developers are considering to sell the company shares but that would require you to buy them. IMO this is just a failed startup project, like many others in this space.

Warning! User Qiuyue201 is using stolen account!

Attempting to extort bounties using stolen account.
Please cancel all Just bounties.

Give me my account back, scammer!



Hello, scammer.

You stole my account. I am reporting this form now on to all the bounties you are attemptimg to participate in (but I am doing it at the last of the bounty so you have to work for nothing). Also reporting to all the prevoiuos bounties that ended and you were not paid for them yet. Also reporting to Bitcointalk administration that you are using my stolen account. This is second time it happened to me. Not sure if you were last time or someone else, but this time I am asking them to ban all your accouints if you have any multi accounts.

LOL, I am not sure if this Tetra guy is trolling or serious. I mean, dude, if you really believe you have a case here, please feel free to proceed, because right now noone is taking you seriously, and you seem like empty worded fudder. Constantly reposting the same message is one thing and acting is another. If you really would have the knowledge and means to start a case you would already do it, this is why I think it is a bluff and you are probably just someone that sold at the bottom. And to be fair, yes, I know this project faild as an investment, but so did many others, when you invest in startups and crypto startups especially in most cases you don't make profits, noone is threatening (or rather falsely threatening) to sue anyone.

This user stole my account and is using it to extort bounty from you.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=327502

Warning! User Qiuyue201 is using stolen account!

Cancel all his bounties etc.!


Hello, scammer.

You stole my account. I am reporting this form now on to all the bounties you are attemptimg to participate in (but I am doing it at the last of the bounty so you have to work for nothing). Also reporting to all the prevoiuos bounties that ended and you were not paid for them yet. Also reporting to Bitcointalk administration that you are using my stolen account. This is second time it happened to me. Not sure if you were last time or someone else, but this time I am asking them to ban all your accouints if you have any multi accounts.

Warning! User Qiuyue201 is using stolen account!

Cancel all his bounties etc.!


Hello, scammer.

You stole my account. I am reporting this form now on to all the bounties you are attemptimg to participate in (but I am doing it at the last of the bounty so you have to work for nothing). Also reporting to all the prevoiuos bounties that ended and you were not paid for them yet. Also reporting to Bitcointalk administration that you are using my stolen account. This is second time it happened to me. Not sure if you were last time or someone else, but this time I am asking them to ban all your accouints if you have any multi accounts.