According to a Reddit post, a user was scammed by the user BTC-OTC on Localbitcoins.com The user has been banned a while back, but the problem is that the 9.3 BTC that were stolen, is frozen by Loacabitcoins. The funds have been frozen since May 2015.

The user BTC-OTC scammed this, and several other users using a bank transfer chargeback. The trader was very reputable at the time on Localbitcoins. According to crlxzzz, the user on Reddit, he filed a complaint to Localbitcoins.com which lead to the closure of BTC-OTC’s account and the funds being locked. In the beginning, the news was good from Localibitcoins staff;

“With regards to your fraud report of the trade, we have good news. We managed to seize the Bitcoins that were related to the trade. If you haven’t, we strongly recommend you to report the fraudulent loss of 9.380200000 BTC to the police as soon as possible so they can initiate a formal asset seizure request”.

Crlxzzz has since the incident trying to get the coins back with no result and have only received one reply on the support ticket in 8 months. By trying to contact Localbitcoins staff on Linkedin, on Reddit and even the CEO on email with no success, Crlxzzz is losing hope.

When contacting the police at first, they did not know what to do and found a Metropolitan Police Sergeant specialised in Blockchain and cyber-crime that understood this issue and decided to the user by contacting them using the fraud report I made in 2015. Almost two months passed after the sergeant contacted them with no answer and he contacted them three times. Now, crlxzzz is growing restless and looking for someone to help out:

“The reason I’m posting this is that there are other five persons in this very situation, also other hundreds based on the posts complaining online. Now I’m in the process of taking legal action. I’ve been in contact with over 40 lawyers from Finland and found only two that are looking to take this case and quoted me at €10.000 to €15.000 for civil proceedings. Finnish Law allows the only ‘Ombudsman’ to initiate a class action lawsuit so this can be settled only in civil court. If you are a victim of this or you can help, please get in touch.”

In less than 21 hours, the post has gained a lot of attention. Almost 17,000 upvotes and over 650 comments, in less than a day.

Image Source: “Flickr”