I was refunded by my bank, and the paxful team were kind enough to also refund the escrow amount of the trade which I foolishly went outside of to make a transaction. DON'T EVER DO THIS.
but this time I got very lucky, and it ended up ok.
oh, and I got the little fuckhead's real name, as verified against his ID for the site. can't be sure it wasn't all stolen information, but it looks like it could be accurate.
NAME: Muhammad Rizki Ardian
CRIME: FRAUD
DESCRIPTION: scams unwitting new users of escrow sites like paxful.com (this is where my incident occurred). Not to be trusted at all costs. Uses stolen identities & VOIP phone numbers. Very manipulative and persistent. BEWARE, AVOID ALL TRANSACTIONS.
*This is all PURELY SPECULATION. It is possible that this indivdual simply had their identity stolen as well by a larger scale criminal.
- UPWORK profile picture from upwork compared to group photos on instagram seem to indicate that at least those two accounts are the same individual.
TRADE_ID: JZYELM2udTH
ESCROWED: $10
I wanted to purchase BTC in exchange for a Zelle bank-to-bank transfer of USD. I made the mistake of trusting this user's positive ratings on his account, and moved out of the escrowed, safe fund amount. I was subsequently scammed of $96.
DO NOT MAKE ANY TRANSACTIONS OUTSIDE OF THE ESCROWED TRADE WHEN USING A SITE SUCH AS PAXFUL or LOCALBITCOINS
(414) 810-6049 -- Milwaukee, Wi, United States
FIXED LINE OR MOBILE - Bandwidth.com CLEC, LLC - WI
(254) 655-5472 -- Lorena, Tx, United States
FIXED LINE OR MOBILE - Bandwidth.com CLEC, LLC - TX
(513) 302-2539 -- Cincinnati, Oh, United States
MOBILE - T-mobile USA, Inc.
this is likely an innocent person who's identity was stolen in my view.
NAME: Vasumathi Ravikumar
EMAIL: [email protected]
it seems that this individual has verified their ID in the country of Indonesia, but their profile is now Showing Nigeria, and while I was being scammed it showed the USA.
USA
Nigeria
Indonesia (verification on profile)
the user instructed me to send more $USD than the 10 in paxful escrow. This made me uncomfortable, but he convinced me. He then had me send $50 to an email address / phone number which I can provide if necessary. (Cincinnatti area code) He then insisted I cancel the $10 BTC trade as soon as possible. Again I was apprehensive, again he convinced me. I received no BTC for my $50 of course, but the scammer began texting me from a different phone number, which I can also provide. (Lorena, Texas area code) In these texts he convinced me that he simply needed $100 in total to send his the bitcoin transaction. (foolish of me, of course.) I only had $46 dollars left in my account, and he convinced me to send it. He then proceeded to continue asking for another $50. This occured across several text message chains via the numbers I mentioned (and 14148106049, Milkwaukee area code -- they're google voice numbers though). If I can provide anything else to prove that this user is blatantly a scammer, please let me know. I personally think the most telling message was the scammer's reply to me threatening to report his account: "If you report me I have like 4 more paxful account " -- he knows exactly what he's doing. This may also be a group of individuals, its impossible to tell. Good luck, and please conduct appropriate action against these malicious actors on your website, and if at all possible contact the relevant police agencies. Again, if any information is needed from me, please let me know. I'm happy to export all of the text chats, I will just have to learn how. Thank you for reading. If you can offer a refund for my $96 lost, this would also be very helpful as it was my last money for the week, but its more important to me that this scammer can't take advantage of anyone else. Thank you.