It appears Romero is now a scammer and no one should do business with him in the future(at least I wouldn’t)

Apparently he’s too busy to even check if he’s sending btc to the right person which is so laughable. Btc the most untraceable currency in the world....

Exactly this, you are rly vulnerable when sending first its worst position to be in when doing a trade. Its your responsibility to make sure everything is up to a par. Let's say G was sending BTC instead of ACR balance, who would be at fault then. Its rly shitty position to be in but OP is 100% at fault for not doing due diligence and launching the money into the void.

Imagine you and I are going to do a trade for first time, you don't know me so you ask your friend to get a HV for you so you need to send money 2nd.

Friend gives HV for you, the other side sends you money, you send money where the other side asks.
Then 3rd person comes and says *** man I was thinking that I'm doing trade with you but was talking with the wrong person and sent money where he asked. Before checking his skype ID. Can you please give me my 20k back or at least 10k back since you were also talking with the wrong person.

What do you do? Give 10k/20 or say I'm sorry man but I did everything as I should it's your fault?

Why should Romero be responsible for the custodianship of funds sent to him by someone who was tricked into doing so and for which he has no contractual relationship with? If someone you don't know hands you a bag filled with $20k are you suddenly responsible for its safe keeping?

It is not like a bank because it wasn't the bank (poker site in this case) who put money into his account. And the money wasn't put there accidentally - it was done intentionally by Grazvyd.

Have to agree with OP, the way James comes across is really insensitive and scummy

Yeah actually you are responsible. If a bank accidentally or meant too but later realized it shouldn’t put 20k in your account instead of someone else’s and you ship it to some random btc account you will owe the bank 20k.

That’s also like saying if a teller meant to put 20k into an account because they were scammed by someone acting as someone else even though what they did was incorrect

Also one last point, if you are looking at this with the 'this is contract' mindset. There was literaly none between G and R, S(scammer) made contract with G for 20k into ACR account x, then S made contract with R payment in BTC for funds into ACR. S owes 20 k to G which are probably gone. But there is no contract between R and G exept the messages in skype and these are for completly different transaction. Even the T guy vouched for real R, how more clear can this be.

But i agree that one take away is R is not as 'experienced traider' as he says he is, since he isn't able to protect his trades. Some kind of guarantee is always nice.

Edit: obv no real leagal advice ...

Absolutely agree about the bank situation. This isn't a bank situation so you're commenting on the wrong scenario. And the person depositing the money wasn't the bank or a an employee of the bank - it was a private individual, doing so intentionally.

I agree in this case gravis1 is hooped unless James acts in good faith, which appears he won’t. But doesn’t mean it’s right.

If the scammer is reading this I just want to compliment you on one of the smartest scams I've seen in my time in poker!

Likely any protocols in place for how people do transfers should be changed when I think a lot of people (myself included) have historically been not reckless when they send 2nd thinking "I can't lose" but this example here seems to pretty clearly show how ineffective that approach is.

Originally I was thinking Grazvydas was >50% at fault (perhaps he should cover 67% of the loss). But Seaking's and Raidalot's posts have made me rethink that. I think James is >50% at fault (but probably the fair resolution would just be for each to cover 50% of the loss).

This would set a rly dangerous precedent when it comes to trades, it would mean that no matter where i send my money the second party which might not even know about the scam is responsible to cover for it. I fail to understand how come people think this is in any way James fault when in comes to monetary exposure ?

So you are saying the second party is free to send wherever he wants as long as a scammer tells him too and he has no consequences, why not just send to his own btc and say he was scammed?

No, you have the facts wrong. That is the opposite of what happened here. The first party sent to the correct place, the second party sent to the wrong place.

Literally the guy that was asking for a trade asked for ACR for Nat8, and the 2nd person sent to a BTC address instead of Nat8, pretty sure this is a huge problem, the first person sent to ACR which is where said he was going to send, then the 2nd person just outright sends to a different method, but is a "professional" trader and knows all, OP got scammed by Romero, won't surprise me when a few more of these happen before that trade group blows up, gl to everybody in that group!

Cheers!
John

This might be the most cringe post I've ever seen on 2+2 and that is saying something.

No I am saying the first guy sending the money into the void is supposed to verify the transaction goes through as expected since he is the one that commits the money.

Just put yourself into James shoes, there is this guy willing to do a transaction says he will transfer money into ACR account for BTC. Money shows up in ACR account, you send BTC.

What would be the judgment if the first guy send BTC and was out the money himself, he is only going after the money since it seems somewhat recoverable the account he send to might have or might have not belonged to R. Here within lies the reason why its G fault (first guys fault) since he enabled the scammer it rly doesn't matter where the money ended after that.

It doesn't matter where he send money to since he wasn't making the deal with verified person, he looses the money the moment he sends it to anywhere the scammer wants it rly doesn't matter it went to correct account since the deal wasn't with account owner but the scammer.

Op never wanted BTC, scammer wanted BTC for obvious reasons

https://gyazo.com/2ea4dbe7d1ed918bb52defd877f75e3f

But this is Thai's HV, that James asked "20k HV @James Romero with Grazvydas"

How James can ask for a HV with Grazvydas, when he is not talking with Grazvydas?

I managed to send to the right account. James didn't send to me. We both were following scammer's guidelines.

Also if I have send to the scammer's ACR account, I would have a decent chance of recovering those funds, given how fast ACR managed to react to it.

Doesn't rly matter OP send money based on conversation with unverified user how more plain can this be. He just got lucky that it ended up in right place but that rly doesn't matter with respect to money obligations. As I stated earlier J R is not "experienced trader" as he said cause he should catch on this type of scam and correct it.

Unless you said to 'real' james "Send the money to fake.me@scam.com" instead of "real.me@xyz.com", real james has your money.

What addy did you give 'real' james, or did you even talk to real james?

You should've kept the hold on the funds. By releasing it, you messed up. Now I think you're outta luck without cooperation from james.

I feel like that's part of the scam and I am rly sorry you fell for it. It does make it seem like your funds are safe and they lure BTC out of the other guy. The HV as its written is vouch for James (with account tag exactly used to prevent this kind of scam) not for you since he cannot vouch for you anyway and would have 0 weight.

I didn't even talk with real James. Real James send to where the scammer asked.

Graz didn't send money into the void. He sent it to an ACR account. James sent it into the void, a btc account. An ACR account is far less of a void than a BTC account is - you can freeze a ACR account (like Grazvis literally did in this case after realizing something was awry). There is very good reasons to why the scammers bothered getting btc instead of just stealing ACR money like the obviously could have done (by simply asking Graz to send to an account they controlled - but no, they went 100 extra miles to get btc instead)

Blindly acting like this this gets you convicted of money laundring in the real world, even when acting in good faith

What if this what if that. Graz didn't send BTC. There is a reason why they had to add in James into the scam and didn't directly scam Graz to just send them the BTC directly instead - he wouldn't have, and there would be no scam possible. The fact is both Graz and James enabled the scammer by not doing their due dilligence and verifying identities - if one of them had done that the scam doesn't work. That's why both of them are at fault

I hope you represent James' side to an arbitrator.