
Vanitygen Scam - fqsbits
Dear HN community,<p>Unfortunately, I had my 2.62683514 Bitcoins stolen from my wallet on Nov 3, 2017 2:03:29 PM.
I had used the website www.bitcoinvanitygen.com to generate the wallet address:
1FabioUj74f7Vf1qJD9ENa15XxzUNLVeW9<p>I created a paper wallet offline using this address and was using it to receive and send Bitcoins since August 2017. To my surprise when I sent 2.62 Bitcoins from the Brazilian Exchange Foxbit to this wallet, in less than a day they were gone. It is clear that bitcoinvanitygen website had my private key because nobody else knew about my paper wallet.<p>At the time it was known that their sites were running on this Ip address: 37.59.115.11<p>This is the BTC address where the coins are at the moment:
19yXdhfcsUc4dB5tfxrHuLyN27PubycNJj<p>This is the thief&#x27;s BTC address that stole my Bitcoins:
16BXHtbF2kmWjta983b3YfsTqtYS2Em3kX<p>There&#x27;s a video in Youtube &quot;How I lost $60.000 in Bitcoin! Bitcoinvanitygen Scam and Security Tips&quot; that explains how the criminals operate.<p>Many other newbies in the crypto space also lost lots of money falling for this scam.
Authorities in Brazil don&#x27;t care about cryptocurrencies. So, it was pointless for me to go to the police and report the incident.<p>If there&#x27;s any information, ideias, etc. you may share that could help me to ban this website or find the criminals, it&#x27;ll be much much appreciated.<p>Thank you for your attention!
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kylebenzle
That is amazing! I figured all these holes had long since been plugged. Rule 1
of crypoto is, "If you don't hold the keys, its not your Bitcoin". Sounds like
you chose to share your key with a third party. We should add, "Anyone that
has your keys, has your Bitcoin".

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Nextgrid
I’m sorry for what happened but let this be an expensive lesson. Never ever
share your private key or let someone else generate it.

Unfortunately I doubt you can actually recover your funds, so the best way to
fight this is to spread awareness around the dangers of such services.

~~~
fqsbits
That's why I made this post. What is interesting in Bitcoin is that everything
is recorded forever. We never know which future advancements will come that
will help us to catch the bad actors in the space. Authorities are also
becoming better and better in catching such criminals because in some point
they'll have to expose themselves in some way, specially when they move such
large amounts of money. Talking to a scientific policeman he told me not to
lose hope because everything is in the blockchain and governments have eyes
over everybody. The longer they keep my money the worst will be sentence for
them when in court. It may take years but criminals are criminals. They will
always be targeted. When you harm so many lives, one day your actions come
back to you in some way or other. Although they made my life and many other
lives miserable, lots of people are aware already and at some time, someone,
somewhere, will surprise them. Ross Ulbricht thought he could neve be
discovered and now he is in jail. As the policeman told me, only stupid people
think that can do things without being surveilled and nowadays the governments
surveillance is at the highest level ever.

