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Does anyone remember the scammer xoxo or know anything about his identity or current whereabouts?
almost a decade ago i paid @xoxo around 2 bitcoins for few wildcard ssl certificates that he was reselling. From the lil info I had, he appeared to be a chinese national.
Later the ssl certs were revoked and we soon found out that he had scammed the company issuing the ssl, i think it was alphassl's parent or sth.
Now when I see btc hit a $100k I have half a mind of lodging a criminal complaint against him on my next stopover in china. I bet the amount makes it worth it even for the authorities, if u catch my drift.
Does anyone here know more about the fraudster ?
Comments
probably on a yacht in Dubai
If he's rushing to close this deal and intends to scam you out of 2 bitcoins, it means he's in desperate need of money. In this case, he’s unlikely to hold onto the bitcoins because someone with this mindset would spend them quickly. Such a person is unlikely to become wealthy. Therefore, trying to track him down would be a waste of time.
Don't feel too bad, someone paid 10,000 bitcoin and all they got was a pizza.
Logic
But the audacity of a man! Sue chinese in his own country. By a foreigner…
Sacrifice to a chicken to the great chairman mao, your bitcoins will arrive in due time.
I'm a victim as well. I remembered I had him in friend list on IM and the account never went back online after those ssl certs got revoked. All his other accounts else where I know also got abandoned.
There was some discussions in Chinese forums but none seemed having any result. (this one for example)
-- update --
And after some archeology, I found a vulnerability report from an old thread which potentially was the method he used to obtain certs, but I didn't find evidence (strong enough to convince me to believe) the report author is related to xoxo.
It's been too long years ago, I only dig those clues from dust for fun, not able to verify any of them, and I don't feel practical to actually take action against this fraud anymore.
First and foremost, police won't give a shit about it, and its absolutely unlikely that there aren't statutes of limitation for the theft of what was then a value of $800.
Even if it was valued at current price, it would be such a jurisdictional nightmare, and a difficult investigation due to lack of evidence (logs of everything are gone after 10 years most likely, a decade is a lot of time) that it would be dismissed faster than a block is published on the Bitcoin chain.
The pizza was worth it!
Such a stupid vuln, client-side validations! wow.
Thank u for so much insight. I now remember the notorious sslcertificate.cn, whenever life presents me the opportunity I'll fully pursue this case. I'm pretty darn sure some leads cud be obtained from the certificate authority, after all he was their official reseller. I remember I was furious back then bcoz the CA was shifting the blame totally on @xoxo without taking any responsibility.
I paid him in btc I expect to be paid back in btc. Why wud u equate it to a dollar value?
Fair market value of the cert was never in BTC - BTC was just a monetary instrument.
Say you are an American and you went to UK and bought a pack of cigarette at a store. Say it costs 8 quid (ignore the precision) - you only had USD in hand. The store owner accepted 10 USD in exchange for 8 quid. And that store had a 90 day return policy.
Say within 90 days, GBP went shit and GBP to USD exchange ratio became something like 8quid = 5USD (again ignore specifics). When you return the pack of cigarette, the store is refunding you 8 quid or if you insist about USD - they are going to refund you 5USD because thats whats worth (fair market value) as of today.
Bitcoin banned in china. They will say they are smarter than you for banning it.
It’s true.
For the statutes of limitation what counts is the value at that moment the crime happened. This means the crime is of measly importance, even for Chinese standards. So, you're not reporting a commodity or asset robbery valued at $200k, you'd be reporting a theft of 2BTC, which were valued at the date of the facts at roughly 800 dollars.
Restitution valuation would be a another story and judicial battle.
The idea of you recovering these 2 BTC lost to a fraud after 10 YEARS is insane. You must understand what goes into investigating these cases, lots of money.
Even if it were today, making a criminal complaint against someone in China is ludicrous. If you're successful, please help Adidas, Reebok, Nike, and all other brands to sue the counterfeit moguls.
China doesn't give a damn when it comes to foreign criminal complains, what makes you think its much better than Russia?
Logic 👍
It probably won't make you feel any better, but just for the sake of it, i bought 40 btc at $4 dollars each, i spent half of it poorly as a teenager, lost the other half...
Don't grieve it, i think for myself that most likely i'd have sold it half way to $100 and thinking i did the deal of my life.
Say you do pursuse them in china.
Say the police take you seriously and actually take a report for you.
Say a bored detective will read the report and ask the case to be assigned to them.
Say they do days/weeks/months worth of investigations and find xoxo
Say detectives find enough evidence to forward the investigaton to prosecutors
Say prosecutors agree to pursue charges against xoxo
You most likely will need a lawyer, the lawyer will EASILY cost probably 4 5 times the amount stolen (800$)