Apr 2, 2009

Libertyreserve scammers love Mercedes

Look here (http://www.savefile.com/files/2063446) how the bastards that run the Liberty Reserve scam spend YOUR money: By purchasing expensive cars, for example.

This is only ONE example, some more exciting evidences will come very soon.

http://libertyreserve.com: SOON this gang of scammers will be shutdown for good. Not only virtually.

Update: Finally here are some others...

So, a Mercedes jeep 4x4 ML, a "minivan" Mercedes G, and a Wolkswagen Touareg 4x4!

http://www.savefile.com/files/2063446
http://www.savefile.com/files/2063913
http://www.savefile.com/files/2063915

More to come to show you how LR spends your money!

Mar 13, 2009

Some news about who are really the Liberty Reserve guys

Listed on their website, the President of Liberty Reseve is supposed to be "Amed Mekovar"

Some research in Costa Rica through our contacts in various administrations show that Amed Mekovar is in fact Ahmed Yassin, citizen of Morocco, living in Costa Rica with a residency permit. Interesting to know that this one is prosecuted in Morocco for many scams, and is even under investigation in Costa Rica per request of the US authorities.

So the President of Liberty Reserve is a fugitive from Morocco, using a false name!

The real founder and owner is the sadly famous "Ragnar", well know crook in the e-currency world. He runs a few websites, including the former goldage.net (sold to other people), the GDCA service that is supposed offer assistance to victims of scams (!) and that curiously went back online 2 days ago after a few months downtime! GDCA will be a support for Liberty Reserve, as more and more people begin to understand that LR is just a scam, made by scam artists.

Find more about this one and his good friend, also one of the executives of Liberty Reserve here: http://manhattanda.org/whatsnew/press/2006-07-27.shtml

News are now flooding the internet, but it isn't enough to achieve our goals: Recover the stolen funds and if not, bring Liberty Reserve and their team , personally, down.

We have hired some advocates from one of the biggest firm in Costa Rica. They are preparing the documents. We will publish on this blog who are our advocates, the text of the resolution we will submit to the Costa Rica Court, the details of our requests (Already know that we will ask our money back - about $110k, plus one million dollars damages, plus the payback of our expenses).

In the same time we are in contact with private investigators, my 20 years in the Special Forces made me know a lot of people who are ready to *act*. I will move myself to Costa Rica soon to coordinate the operations.

Paltz from Liberty Reserve, whatever his real name is, can post on his blog that we are joking, he will very soon understand that there are 2 categories of people: Those he can scam, and the others. Unfortunately for him, he scammed some of the second category. He will have to pay the price, and we will let him as all his friends down for good.

Mar 9, 2009

Libertyreserve scam - Update

This is in fact an update to say that Libertyreserve didn't reply to any of us about the $110k they allowed to be stolen due to their security breach.

Instead, they are once more offline since about 36 hours, to implement an automatic password change routine! Who will believe it? Such changes are always coded offline, then the new pages and scripts are uploaded, and there is NO downtime.

According to their blog, Libertyreserve is implementing new features to detect "suspicious" moves in an account. That will be just a "legal" (according to LR TOS) way to block large amounts when the Clients will want to SELL LR. So, no large amounts will be allowed to be sold, and the LR will has a no-value. Just like e-gold, there are millions in the system but they STAY in the system.

According to some information, one of the largest LR exchangers is without new since ONE WEEK, after LR ordered them to stop exchanging their e-currency. This exchanger has a few dozens thousands of dollars in LR and can not do anything with them! Paltz from LR replies since one week "we are investigating".

Another "big" exchanger is trying to sell $700,000 (seven hundred thousands!) LR directly to LR to get a bank wire. Guess what? LR didn't send the wire so far, despite the sale order was put last Thursday, and Paltz from LR told the exchanger "I am not sure we will pay you immediately, thank you to be patient".

These $700,000 come of course from Clients who sold their funds to the exchanger, and are now waiting for a bank payment. As LR does not want to pay the exchanger, WHO will be the last loser? The basic LR client who has just lost his money.

A third exchanger is in the same position: Last week he accepted to purchase LR from his Clients, *before* the LR API was disclosed, "before the crisis" so. He received the LR from his Clients and as usual prepared to send their bank transfer the next day.
But the next day, the API bug was revealed and panic began. As this exchanger has probably some inside information from LR, or simply as he is clever enough to understand that things are going really bad, he decided to wait to send the wires. Now, as nobody wants to BUY LR, this exchanger has simply not enough money to send the wires to his clients! He has just a lot of LR that has no value. Result once more: Final LR clients have lost their money.

Currently the trading rates of LR for exchangers that still accept to buy it, are between 8% and 40%. And ask any of them if he will accept a small $5,000. More than probably the reply will be "no".

The "good old e-gold time" is back, with Libertyreserve!

It is Monday morning in Costarica, and I am going to have a phone talk with a high representative of the Ministry of Finances of CR. Considering the current situation I will kindly invite him to make the financial license of Libertyreserve immediately canceled. The reputation of Costarica should not suffer from the activities of a gang of scammers.

The revocation of the financial license will mean the end of LR. That will also mean the loss of $70k for me, and the loss of money for everybody. That will then MAYBE make people decide to sue these criminals to Court. Look at the OSGOLD scam, seven years ago. The scammer has been arrested last month, after seven years being a fugitive. Let's organize so that the same happen for the LR crooks. Hopefully faster, as we have other information and some private initiative should be done to bring these criminals to the Justice. Private investigators work well. And fast.

Mar 8, 2009

Moderation of the comments, and precision

As some persons, maybe paid by Libertyreserve, posted a few dumb comments, I had to delete the old messages and repost them. Comments are now moderated.

Also, we have been contacted by a few persons claiming that Libertyreserve stole some money from us. Uwe and I decided that will join us only those who were victims of the "API bug", and who can prove it.

Libertyreserve: $110.000 stolen

[Originally posted on Mar 5, 2009]

We are a few Libertyreserve users and our common point is that we own accounts with a large amount of money. At the beginning of February 2009, our money was stolen by a mysterious transfer order sent by, according to the account histories, the Libertyreserve API.

One screenshot for a hack of about $40k can be seen here
Another one for about $70k can be seen here

Neither of us never registered an API in our LR account, and either a LR bug that was exploited by hackers, either an internal job from a LR staff Member, could allow first to register an API ((The usual way for this is to enter the LR account, then registering the API; the process requires the account number, the password, and 2 PIN code, one of 5 digits, one of 3 digits).

Moreover, the fact that only accounts with a large balance were wiped, as far as we know, can make think that somebody inside the LR company could scan the accounts and see which ones had largest balances, to then wipe them.

Quite immediately after this happened, the Libertyreserve API system was turned off, officially for a small bug. Some hours later, the whole Libertyreserve system was turned off, officially for a SSL certificate update, then for a Cisco update, then to upgrade some functions, then to publish some party photos, then to allow using debit cards, etc. The full downtime was about 4 days.

As soon as the website came back online, both of us contacted Libertyreserve through their Online "Support", asking an explanation about our money, and our money back. None of us, more than 48 hours after, received any reply. The only reaction from Libertyreserve was a message on their blog saying "[xxx] You may be introduced to some quite bizarre rumors during this outage and false information that was cooked up by an unfriendly and dishonorable competitors [xxx]"

The Libertyreserve team seems to hide, as they do not publish any phone number on their website, nor in their whois. We then couldn't do anything but wait that they would reply to our messages.

In the same time, we learned that 2 of the biggest Libertyreserve accredited exchangers, Swapgold and WM-Center, were instructed by Libertyreserve to not process any of the pending SELL orders, and to not accept anymore SELL orders. We know that at least one of this exchangers is still waiting an update from Libertyreserve after 4 days, as his business suffers from this. So far, Libertyreserve did not reply to him too.

Because of this silence, we decided to make the case public, and in the same time to launch a legal action against Libertyreserve, a Costarican company if on Monday 9th March, Libertyreserve has not either refunded our money, either at least replied to give serious explanations. We are able to understand that a sophisticated software may have backdoors, but in this case the company must take its responsibility and compensate the loss of the clients. In the case of a legal action, we will ask for the payment of our money back, plus large penalties, plus the payment of our fees. We will *not* give up.

Some updates will be posted here, as long as they do not interfere with the juridical process.

A small update

[Originally posted on Mar 6, 2009]

I was contacted an hour ago by a guy claiming to be from one of the biggest exchange company on the market (For now I will not tell the name). The guy told he was in direct contact with Paltz, from LR, and that Paltz "wanted that I contact him", saying in short that ruining the LR reputation is not fair (!). Also he told me that Paltz does not understand the problem... Great, hey?

So I emailed business@LR as this guy told me and .... am still waiting the reply! Our position (Uwe and I) is simple: There is NO negotiation, no transaction: OR LR accepts to pay the price of the bug in their system by refunding our 2 accounts in full, OR we continue the recovery process without any limitation. I added that if LR accepts to admit their fault by refunding us, we will of course inform everybody in positive words and the LR reputation would increase: Admitting and paying the price of their errors is the sign of integrity and honesty. At the opposite, if Paltze declines our request, we will act in 3 ways:

LEGALLY to make the LR company shut down, we are already in touch with some high executive in the Costa Rica administration,

IN THE MEDIA to inform the "e-currency world" of the real face of LR,

BY ANY OTHER WAY to recover our money.

There will be no no alternative, no limitation of any kind to reach our goals and I am sure we will reach them. We have the budget to pay the advocates, the contacts for the online media, and already a lot of concrete details to achieve the 3rd point.

I am so waiting Paltz reply. If any. If not, it would mean that first Paltz is ready to lose his company and the result of a few years work, and (but it is a detail!) that the guy who contacted me by ICQ was not the one he claimed to be.

New lies from Libertyreserve

[Originally posted on Mar 5, 2009]

Some minutes ago Libertyreserve published their reaction on their blog, it is exactly what we expected: We are the culprits and clicked on some suspicious links, Libertyreserve is safe because they use McAfeee, Cisco and Prolexic.

Using any of these 3 companies does not give *any* guarantee if the software is bogged, as LR themselves admitted it when they shutdown their API system immediately after the hacks, then turned their website off during 4 days (For a SSL certificate update as they said, sure!).

We notice that LR does not reply to our individual complaints sent to their online support (Business department) about 3 days ago now.

LR says that due to our poor security, a hacker could get our access data, and so register an API in our account, then use it to wipe the balance.
This shows that not only LR wants to scam their users, but their team is also stupid: If a hacker would know our access data to create an API, he would have just to TRANSFER the funds from the account, why would he had created an API for this?

This perfectly confirms that there was a bug in the system of Libertyreserve: It was probably not possible for a hacker to enter our account BUT it was possible to remotely create an API, then he had just to use it to steal our money. Libertyreserve quickly admitted this fact by turning OFF the API and their website a total of 4 days.

By running a bugged system, Libertyreserve is fully responsible of our loss; their blog update and their "no reply policy" to any of our messages seems to show that they will not admit it. We are so going to legally draw the consequences.