Poloniex account hacked and all monies traded away, TICKET NUMBER # 273741

[arsat14]

Hi Guys,

First of please be nice and constructive. I had my fortune stolen away and I am at a very bad place, infact I am depressed ($17000 worth of my savings that took me more than 8 years to save). I would appreciate if you guys can give me honest suggestions of what to do or if there is any chance Poloniex will refund me for the hack that happened.

So here is what happened as I sent email to Poloniex but they have not responded to me yet:

TICKET NUMBER # 273741

Dear Poloniex,
My account was hacked this morning at 2:50 am BST (british standard time). I am devastated as I had upwards of $17000 worth of portfolio of coins. Someone logged into my account, converted all the coins to BTC first, then to BCN, then he went on to a very illiquid BCN/XMR and started buying high and selling very low at huge spreads. I suspect he was on the other side of the trade to profit from it. I am sure you can easily find out who the culprit by checking on the other side of the trade.
Please check the activity between 2:50 am - 3:00 am BST (british standard time). This is a clear theft where your site has been hacked to gain access to my account and upwards of $17000 was stolen from my account.
I have contacted the Attorney General at your state who has advised me to contact you directly first before taking it further with him.
I have the evidence of the email I received at 2:50 am BST, the ip address where it was logged in from and I have also downloaded the transactions to prove it.
Please look into this issue asap and get back to me please. This is my hard earned savings over past 7 years and I will leave no stone unturned to get this resolved.
Thanks

So here is the email above. Please suggest what to do, I have also reported it to Police and action fraud. I did not have 2FA. I did not use this password on any other sites.
I know I am very silly not to have 2FA. This thread is all about what options I have, please suggest.

Thanks in advance

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[BTCIV]

Your money are most probably gone , this is the downside of crypto.

It saddens me when I see these stories and i just don't understand why people do this? Why keep money you can't afford to loose on an exchange?
Not even 2FA ? I'm sorry to say but you definitely deserve it. You just don't do this man in this days anymore.

Never get comfortable whit money, you worked 8 years to make it but you did not took 1-2h more to setup proper wallets on your computer and store everything safely.

[arsat14]

Thanks for your response BTCIV. But I am looking at options here BTCIV.

This is a clear case of theft and I have notified poloniex about it. 2FA is optional not mandatory by poloniex. I totally agree I should have had it on my account.

But nonetheless the money has been stolen from the exchange who were the custodian of my coins. Should they not do something about this? what are my options here to get this recovered. I have downloaded the list of trades the hacker did, i have have the market snapshot showing the irregular activity.

Please help me out here instead of just saying what has already happened

Thanks

[alyssa85]

Thanks for your response BTCIV. But I am looking at options here BTCIV.

This is a clear case of theft and I have notified poloniex about it. 2FA is optional not mandatory by poloniex. I totally agree I should have had it on my account.

But nonetheless the money has been stolen from the exchange who were the custodian of my coins. Should they not do something about this? what are my options here to get this recovered. I have downloaded the list of trades the hacker did, i have have the market snapshot showing the irregular activity.

Please help me out here instead of just saying what has already happened

Thanks

You can ask them to investigate HOW the money was stolen. First, instead of sending an email, raise a ticket with support.

Once you have raised the ticket and have a ticket number, make an account on reddit, and then contact Mike-Poloniex (https://www.reddit.com/user/Mike-Poloniex/) via private mesage, quoting your ticket number and explaining what happened. They should be able to investigate and tell you the IP addresses of whoever stole your coins, and which countries they were in. After that, you need to contact the police to get them to track down the thieves.

[EXtremeAEX]

Do you mind explaining more about how your account was hacked?

Did someone gain access to your account and sold your coins at a low price? What happened after that? Did the 'scammer' not withdraw anything from your account?

If you have any other exchange sites/online wallets with BTC, do change your passwords if they are the same. You might not have a lot options now but the best you can to is to stop this from happening again. If the scammer indeed has taken away all your coins, if would be hard for you to get back your coin, sadly.

Did you know anyone who might have gained access to your computer? That might be a possibility too.

[arsat14]

Thanks for your response BTCIV. But I am looking at options here BTCIV.

This is a clear case of theft and I have notified poloniex about it. 2FA is optional not mandatory by poloniex. I totally agree I should have had it on my account.

But nonetheless the money has been stolen from the exchange who were the custodian of my coins. Should they not do something about this? what are my options here to get this recovered. I have downloaded the list of trades the hacker did, i have have the market snapshot showing the irregular activity.

Please help me out here instead of just saying what has already happened

Thanks

You can ask them to investigate HOW the money was stolen. First, instead of sending an email, raise a ticket with support.

Once you have raised the ticket and have a ticket number, make an account on reddit, and then contact Mike-Poloniex (https://www.reddit.com/user/Mike-Poloniex/) via private mesage, quoting your ticket number and explaining what happened. They should be able to investigate and tell you the IP addresses of whoever stole your coins, and which countries they were in. After that, you need to contact the police to get them to track down the thieves.

Thanks for your response alyssa. I have already raised a ticked witht them and they have not yet gotten back to me. I have the ip address from where the hacker logged into my account. Ip address is 119.26.200.230, a quick search shows its from Kobe Japan, Jupiter Telecommunications Co.

Do you suggest I should speak to police in Japan? I am based in London,

thanks

[arsat14]

Do you mind explaining more about how your account was hacked?

Did someone gain access to your account and sold your coins at a low price? What happened after that? Did the 'scammer' not withdraw anything from your account?

If you have any other exchange sites/online wallets with BTC, do change your passwords if they are the same. You might not have a lot options now but the best you can to is to stop this from happening again. If the scammer indeed has taken away all your coins, if would be hard for you to get back your coin, sadly.

Did you know anyone who might have gained access to your computer? That might be a possibility too.

Someone got hold of my password and logged in from an IP address in Japan, I am based in London.
Here is how the money was stolen, He did not withdraw any. I had notional value of $17000 in different coins. He converted them to BCN, then he went on and started trading BCN on a very wide spread. He sat on the other side of the trade and kept buying and selling from my account, buying high and selling low, him collecting the spread in that time. He kept doing this until my $17000 was reduced to mere $400.

It was a hacker from Japan according to login email

[BTCIV]

Forget about the IP , it is most probably a VPN.

Best to do is wait poloniex investigate and if they can't do nothing (which is most probable) file the complaint in Delaware and hope that police will do something ( I never heard of any case police recovered crypto).

To me it is lost, ofc until now the scammer withdrawn everything and probably used Monero too so very litte change of tracking anything after that. But good luck is better to try then to give up

Also do you access everything from Windows? Beter swich to a mac or linux and even then use a proper Antivirus like BitDefender and avoid dodgy places.

[CardShare]

No 2F.... really.... Why would you not protect your assets with as many layers of security that are available to you...

I think the outcome will be one of well sorry but it's your responsibility to ensure your account stays uncompromised.

Further to this your machine must be compromised some way for attackers to get access to the account in the first place.

[mmhaimhai]

Thats why 2fa is very important for an account for safety reasons. What you lose is such a huge amount. Dont you remember signing in to anu site before that happen? Last week i have found a fake/phishing site that looks like exactly as poloniex. By the way if you pass ticket on support surely they would make an investigation about what happen but I dont think they can make any action to refund what you lose.

[EXtremeAEX]

Someone got hold of my password and logged in from an IP address in Japan, I am based in London.
Here is how the money was stolen, He did not withdraw any. I had notional value of $17000 in different coins. He converted them to BCN, then he went on and started trading BCN on a very wide spread. He sat on the other side of the trade and kept buying and selling from my account, buying high and selling low, him collecting the spread in that time. He kept doing this until my $17000 was reduced to mere $400.

It was a hacker from Japan according to login email

Thats the thing which I don't get The thing is even if the hacker sells low and buy high from your account, there's no way he can ensure he is the want who will receive what you sell or what you buy. Did you set your settings such that you receive email notifications or require validation upon withdrawals?

I really have no clue what is going on, but there might be some reason behind such activity which is possible to find. I have some suspicions but I do not dare confirm for now.

[helloge]

Do you mind explaining more about how your account was hacked?

Did someone gain access to your account and sold your coins at a low price? What happened after that? Did the 'scammer' not withdraw anything from your account?

If you have any other exchange sites/online wallets with BTC, do change your passwords if they are the same. You might not have a lot options now but the best you can to is to stop this from happening again. If the scammer indeed has taken away all your coins, if would be hard for you to get back your coin, sadly.

Did you know anyone who might have gained access to your computer? That might be a possibility too.

Someone got hold of my password and logged in from an IP address in Japan, I am based in London.
Here is how the money was stolen, He did not withdraw any. I had notional value of $17000 in different coins. He converted them to BCN, then he went on and started trading BCN on a very wide spread. He sat on the other side of the trade and kept buying and selling from my account, buying high and selling low, him collecting the spread in that time. He kept doing this until my $17000 was reduced to mere $400.

It was a hacker from Japan according to login email

Sad to hear that, the problem may be why your password is stolen. So it is very important for us to keep the password as much safe as possible.

[pedrog]

Your money is lost, and it's a very expensive lesson for you, use secure computers, unique passwords and always enable two factor authentication.

Poloniex ain't gonna refund anything as you cannot show you're not the one defrauding them.

Police ain't gonna start an international investigation because so little money and also because you can be the one on both ends of that 'hack'.

[Mallyx]

No 2FA: it's mandatory nowaday.
Holding all your stack on an exchange: coins aren't yours.

Just 2 major failures.

I don't think Poloniex can do anything for you.

[unusualfacts30]

that sucks. It's not very smart idea to NOT use 2fa when dealing with so much money. I have 2fa set up on every website I use. I hope you get your money back.

[TheOATeam]

Me. Mt. gox 2013. Didn't have 2FA enabled. Russian hacker got my PW from a Bitcoin forum dump and I had used the same email and PW for my Gox acct. Can't get any dumber than that.

$4000 in BTC at the time, lost.

I've never not used 2FA again. Most expensive but best lesson I've ever learned.

[arsat14]

Someone got hold of my password and logged in from an IP address in Japan, I am based in London.
Here is how the money was stolen, He did not withdraw any. I had notional value of $17000 in different coins. He converted them to BCN, then he went on and started trading BCN on a very wide spread. He sat on the other side of the trade and kept buying and selling from my account, buying high and selling low, him collecting the spread in that time. He kept doing this until my $17000 was reduced to mere $400.

It was a hacker from Japan according to login email

Thats the thing which I don't get The thing is even if the hacker sells low and buy high from your account, there's no way he can ensure he is the want who will receive what you sell or what you buy. Did you set your settings such that you receive email notifications or require validation upon withdrawals?

I really have no clue what is going on, but there might be some reason behind such activity which is possible to find. I have some suspicions but I do not dare confirm for now.

He can make sure he is the one i trade with, as he chooses a very illiquid stock which has a very large spread, buying at 70 and selling at 40. He sits inside the spread at a low volume time and keeps trading very quickly and I keep paying him the spread of thirty until my funds get depleted. Does that make sense?

Yes I did have email setup, i got email at 2:50 am when i was asleep. The ip adress lookup shows an IP in Kobe Japan

[shifty30]

a couple of lessons, ALWAYS use unique password or even special email accounts to make it even harder, just like linkedin hacks etc all ur previous passwords are already out in the open so stop (re)using old password, enable 2fa

mostlikely you wont get ur money back, sorry to hear about it hopefully in the next wave (whenever that is) you can make some nice profits and PLEASE..... TAKE OUT SOME PROFITS when u got some. because the most important rule is and will always be..... DONT PLAY WITH MONEY YOU CANT MISS!!!!

[arsat14]

Your money is lost, and it's a very expensive lesson for you, use secure computers, unique passwords and always enable two factor authentication.

Poloniex ain't gonna refund anything as you cannot show you're not the one defrauding them.

Police ain't gonna start an international investigation because so little money and also because you can be the one on both ends of that 'hack'.

Yes I know what you mean, but you can apply this argument to any crime, like lost/stolen item, the victim can always be the one defrauding the system/the insurers/the banks

[benthach]

if your account hacked then it is done, no one can help you about it or don't expecting polo to pay you back. simple as that.