How I was scammed by BTC lending platform frauds probtc.net and bitcoin-fast.com
Bitcoin being the hot topic around the world I was tempted to bite in to my share of the pie. The incredible growth and its appeal to a newbie crypto investor like me was too much temptation to stay away. I bought what I could afford to lose which was couple of hundred dollars worth of BTC. With those satoshis I bought some ALT coins based on advice of a Telegram channel which has tens of thousands of followers. I later found out they pumped and dumped their interests on unsuspecting newbies like me and I was ending up losing in almost half of the trades. I was upset with some channels which were dumping their coins on their group members.
Meanwhile BTC kept rising the ALTS were bleeding so it occurred to me to take a shortcut to catch up with the satoshis I lost due to ALTS. I wanted to find an alternative way to invest in cryptos. Master nodes, lending platforms etc caught my eye. Websites PROBTC.net and BITCOIN-FAST.com seemed like a good choice to me at the end of a very long and tiresome day. What were I thinking? Seriously!!! Unfortunately a quick internet search didn’t show any indication of wrong doing by these two websites. May be I didn’t want to find fault with these two because I was obsessed with quick returns promised by them. If I had spent a minute more searching I could have spotted these sites as scam.
I looked up their wallet to which they wanted me to send money. Both of them had active BTC flow.
19HnBYx4F5X1qvhAvhPRStWY8RF4HXYoXZ is the BTC address of BITCOIN-FAST.com
1Aw4kuZBTRdqgqxvE6sVrDFS7EF4hsDRJ1 is the BTC address of PROBTC.net
My thoughts at that moment were in the lines of “If it were true, who in their (in)sane minds would say no to 600% profit in a day”. I went ahead and deposited $50 worth in PROBTC.net website. It is interesting how the story unfolded. Both of them didnt acknowledge the receipt of the satoshis. It took some followup for them to accept receipt.
What happened with PROBTC?
As soon as they accepted to have received my satoshis, PROBTC sent me a bonus of the amount of $50 in my account in their website. I received an email.
Hello <my username>
You received a bonus: $50.00
You can check your statistics here: https://www.probtc.net
Good luck.
After the said time elapsed they showed my account to hold $350 in their website. It occurred to me that I should check the withdrawal route. Surprise! Nope I cant withdraw. Then checked if I were allowed to reinvest. NOPE! So I sent an email to support asking why. Here is the reply I got.
Hello Sir,
As we provide high profit, so for normal members, we do not allow deposit via balance.
Only vip members with mini $2000 can use this funciton, as we will assign a specialist trader to manage the account.
Kind regards,
Jenn
When I asked them why I couldn’t withdraw, here is the reply I received.
Hello Sir,
Is it your first withdrawal? You should first enable your instant payment system.This is for the system security, and only require once.
It is quite easy, you just need to deposit $200 in the same plan, then you can withdraw instantly as other members.
Best regards,
Jemma
I told them to return just the amount I deposited and to keep the rest. Who am I kidding. It was a waste of time and money. I haven’t received any further replies from them. End of story about PROBTC.
What happened with BITCOIN-FAST?
This site has live chat support. So I started a chat and asked why my promised satoshis were not sent to my address. This turned out really hilarious. Every time I opened a chat window the support person kept closing the window. I was thoroughly enjoying this game so I kept opening chat windows. Every time from a different IP address the person must have assumed that I were a new customer and started answering me. Once it was obvious that I wasnt quitting this person started talking to me.
I asked "what happened to my BTC?", and I received a lecture from the support person at BITCOIN-FAST. Here is how it went...
“Ask that question to yourself”,
“I probably wouldn’t invest to websites that doesn’t claim anything about how they invest their BTC”,
“No one claims to have a name here”,
“Go work and learn a lesson”.
So I had mentally written off the satoshis and moved forward.
My next thought was about whether warn others of what happened or to feel ashamed and keep quiet about how naïve I was to let someone scam me out of my precious satoshis. I decided to write thinking that it will be good even if I prevent one person from losing their hard earned money to these scam websites.
Moral of the story:
There is no gain without risk. But losing money like this is 100% avoidable.
Even the most careful person could make mistakes sometimes.
Keep emotions out of your investment decisions.
It is ok to risk as long as it is calculated. Following a system which were drawn when your thinking skills are at your best, always saves you.
Never throw all your money in to one basket.
Never make investment decisions when tired. It Is ok to let this train go and take the next train to your destination.
Signals from others should only be used to create awareness and not to start a trading transaction. Your instincts might be better than pros as long as you learn the game and then invest.
Thats all Folks!!!
