It would've taken roughly 2 seconds to confirm the SkypeID providing the account name was the same as the one you've been setting the deal with. A competent trader would've noted this information at the initial conversation and kept track of it. It literally makes no sense to make this type of mistake at his level and so many years as a professional. So this guy Thai hard vouched for James, James didn't send money to the right person. Is it not on either Thai or James to correct this with OP? Is hard vouch just a meme in this industry and if so why even do it?

Unless there is a message by you (your real Skype account) requesting for BTC rather than the Nat8 which you had originally posted for, either in the Skype group or in a PM with James, there is no way that you can be at fault here. You said you had ACR which is what you sent and it was to James's real ACR account, your post says that you wanted Nat8, but James sent BTC as he was presumably instructed by the scammer to do, this is where he ****ed up.

kinda how i feel too. if, as second sender, you assume zero responsibility for where you're sending the money you set up all sorts of freeroll situations.

also find it very strange that he insta took the defensive/berating tone, and was guilty of exactly the same things he was preaching as must do's. didnt check skype id, didnt vid chat, didnt msg the contact posting in group to confirm, etc. maybe hes a great guy, but itd deter me from dealing with him in the future

That was the only recent message I have posted. I never posted a message asking for BTC. I didn't talked with real James during this transaction. Just after the transaction when trying to figure out what have happened. (And a small chat 2 months before, where we tried to arrange STARS for Nat8/GG, but that didn't work. We both forgot this chat)

Gravis1 how long did it take for you to notice you were scammed and contacted acr?

The $ we’re already sent to btc?

Around 4 hours. I have took the screen shots of all the conversations from trading chat. It's in this Google Doc: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1...it?usp=sharing

"A different kind of trade" - yeah, to say the least!

Your first post here said that "2) James Romero posted in the same trading chat that he is looking for a trade." In that screenshot, you posted that you had Stars/ACR and want N8, he posts that he has $60k Luxon and wants BTC, and then you get a message that he wants your ACR? Did this not raise any red flags?

Also, the hard vouch - do you know Thai?

James looking to trade NAT8 didn't surprised me, as I assumed him often being intermediary, that's part of the reason why it didn't trigger me that much as he didn't send NAT8 immediately. (I have had a situation where I did similar trade looking for Vegas cash, and then the intermediary kept me running through casinos collecting it from random people)

"2) James Romero posted in the same trading chat that he is looking for a trade." this is me being lenient on James' part. If you read through the trading chat you can see how "slippery" James was responding there, and immediately forcing all the blame on my side, where I am trying to figure out what have happened.

Just read the doc and before doing so i thought Grazvis was wrong and james in the right, but am i right in saying, you sent money to pipedream1, which is james ACR account first? and then he sent BTC to a scammers address? if these are true, then i don't know how you are in the wrong? The scammers set it out what you had to send first otherwise james wouldnt of sent cus he would not of received the money, but he still needs to check hes sending the money to the right person, This whole situatuon could of gone the opposite way and if hes saying you should of skype called him before sending the money etc, then shouldnt he of skype called the scammer before sending the money?.... so for those reasons i would say you both split the loss 50/50....

The hard vouch - do you know Thai?

Also, now that you've shared the link to those documents, I see a lot of discussion of video calls, almost like those are standard in that group before sending, something you didn't bring up before. Is that the case?

And finally, I've seen a few posts about Romero being a moderator in that group. I don't know why a Skype chat/group would need multiple moderators, but I see it was the account "DKT" that decided to close the group down after this happened. I'm wondering where the info that Romero is a moderator comes from.

I posted this same link in my first post, same as PM conversation with James. But I understand most people probably didn't really want to read through it.

I have that Skype chat usually muted, and I would just post or look for trades when I need a trade. I don't trade much. I think confirming person's identity is standard there ofc, as video call is the best way to do it. But neither of us did it, and I acted after James had gotten a legitimate HV.

I just got lucky that I managed to send to a real James account. But on the other side, if that was the scammer's account, I would have had a good shot at claiming that money back for a theft by impersonation. I got in touch with ACR support very immediately.

I don't know Thai, I just saw that that person have posted some big trades recently above, so I figured it's good enough to take a chance.

Immediately after I thought the impersonator had fake Thai account, or that Thai wasn't real person, but that's not the case. James asked real Thai for a HV for his trade with Grazvydas.

Actually, my point was that it was lenient on YOU. It makes it sound like he was posting for a reciprocal trade, and thus it made sense when he messaged you looking to make that happen. Instead, his post was looking for an entirely different trade, and it makes little sense on the surface that he would message you.

So, you didn't even ask why he wanted to make a completely different trade than he had posted about?

Edit to add: Yes, you did post those links in the first post, my mistake.

I think Romero might be a moderator in different chats, I think he is a high volume trader, people seem to know him. Also the few people that participated in that chat seemed to be defending him. It's ~300 people chat.

DKT is the moderator of that chat, I talked a little bit with him, he didn't seemed to take sides, he seemed quite willing to help, but at that time he was on vacation, so I didn't bother him too much.

It’s the problem with BTC and why it’s so great for scammers.

Unless James acts in good faith it’s starting to look like an expensive lesson.

Something doesn't work with quoting right now. But to answer Bobo Fett question:
"So, you didn't even ask why he wanted to make a completely different trade than he had posted about?"
No I didn't. I assumed he is in many different trading chats, and that's what he does, he is looking for +ev trades, often being intermediary. (Where I am only on 2 Skype chats, one HS, another is lower where I don't post)

OK, so it would seem there's some confusion as to what happened here, so I'll try to summarize it in a little different way. OP, please correct me if I get any of this wrong:

• OP (Grazvydas) posts in the Skype group that he has Stars/ACR, wants Natural8, $20K Minimum.
• James Romero posts in the same group that he has $60K Luxon, wants BTC, $5 K Minimum.
• OP is messaged by a "James romeo" that he wants to trade (this is actually the scammer pretending to be Romero, of course).
• OP asks for a "hard vouch" before making the trade.
• Scammer is in contact with the real James Romero, using another account impersonating Grazvydas, offering to sell him ACR for Bitcoin. Romero agrees.
• Scammer also asks Romero to get someone to hard vouch for him, which he does.
• OP sends ACR to real Romero. Romero receives, sends Bitcoin to fake Grazvydas. OP is -$20,000 ACR, real Romero is +$20,000 ACR and -$20,000 BTC, and scammer is +$20,000 BTC.

OP, do I have that right?

Yeah this is right.

Did James show his receipt of the 20k bitcoin and the time he sent?

He haven't. (Guys I will probably take a few hours off, I have 3 tables PP running, if that's alright)

I'm still confused about steps 5 and 7, I don't understand how Skype chat works but wouldn't different ID's have different text threads? Logically you have one chat thread per userID you interact with, you provide your SN for fund transfer and when you receive that transfer you get the others BTC address from that same text thread. In that sequence the only way a scammer could interfere would be to actually take over the other users Skype. Like in Discord if I get a DM from a scammer with an identical name of someone in the server if I've had previous DM conversations with the real person those are still there and it's obvious that it's a new account.

I can’t help but be paranoid that out of the three people involved in this scam, the scammer didn’t actually exist.

Given these facts, if I were an arbitrator (and I'm most definitely not), here's what I would say...

OP was highly negligent here. He posts looking for a trade; Romero had been looking to make a completely different trade but purportedly messages him, from a similar but clearly different Skype account. OP doesn't ask why Romero wants to make this trade when Romero had been posting about something different, but instead assumes it's all good. Asks for a hard vouch, which is essentially just a stranger vouching for a different stranger, and as we can see here does nothing to help prevent a man in the middle scam. It would seem that verifying through video chat or other direct means is common in this trading group, but OP doesn't do that either, instead relying on this hard vouch. All of this in spite of the obvious red flags. OP has really brought this upon himself.

Romero was no more diligent than OP. His attitude appears to be that since he wasn't sending first, he had nothing to worry about. And from his own personal perspective, if he doesn't care about anyone else getting scammed, I suppose he's right, as long as the ACR funds he receives can't be reversed by either the sender or the site if they were fraudulent. Perhaps in this group it's pretty standard that the unknown/first sender will do their due diligence, and the veteran/second sender doesn't worry about it. Either way, it seems like a simple check on his part would also have stopped this scam in its tracks. He also take a pretty shitty attitude about it in the chat. He's played a key role in a $20 K scam, and has no sympathy and takes zero responsibility.

Hard to say what the "right" or "fair" settlement here would be without knowing more about how that group worked and what is generally agreed to. I'd expect it falls somewhere in the range of it being 100% on OP to Romero being responsible for 50%, but that's probably been obvious to most people from the start. Where I'd lean hinges very much on the fact that video chat verification seems fairly standard in this group. OP didn't bother with it. Romero actually offered to do a video chat - the problem was, he was of course talking to the scammer. But from his perspective, he makes that offer, and the money is sent to him without. He has the money, so it doesn't seem so odd for him to go ahead and send the BTC without further verification. I'm definitely leaning more towards this being on OP, but Romero isn't faultless - he could have prevented it as well.

The real Grazvydas and the real Romero never talked one-to-one, or even in the group chat (until AFTER the scam). It seems like it should be pretty simple to check whether the same Skype account was used for the post in the group chat, and that messaged him separately. But I think you'd actually need to make a point of checking; I don't believe they would be visibly threaded/linked together.

Yeah, I mentioned that possibility earlier. But I've been thinking about it more, and usually that happens when someone's account is said to be hacked, and their real account is used to scam. Like if I messaged you, from this account on 2+2, to trade with me. We trade, I don't send, and then I claim it wasn't me - someone hacked my 2+2 account. In this case, we actually know a different Romero look-alike account was used. It certainly could have been Romero, but it could have been anyone else, and no account hacking is needed to explain it. It's certainly possible it was Romero, but is it any more likely than the reverse situation someone mentioned earlier, where OP is scamming to try and get Romero to pay part of a scam that never happened? Either is possible, but unlikely IMO.

The two real people never talked to each other in DMs during this sequence of events. There was apparently just:

1) group chat with two real people, two fake accounts, and 0 or more other people
2) 1-1 chat with scammer and 1 real person
3) 1-1 chat with scammer and other real person

How do these 2 fake accounts get on this private Skype group?