Coindirect - insolvent ?

[John Tempus]

I tried to find another thread about coindirect in this forum but the only one I could find was about "Ask coindirect CPO" bla bla bla and that thread is closed.

So here we go, I know of multiple people who have coins stuck on coindirect where they would get multiples stalling before any response. When they do get an email back it states that the coins were send however its a flat out lie as there is never any coins send out, not unconfirmed or anything at all.

They have asked me to post on this forum to avoid possibly getting retaliated against if coindirect do decide to process their payments.


So let me ask the CPO of coindirect the following questions.

1. Are you guys solvent ? Are you delaying coin withdrawals in order to first buy the actual coins at a lower price or what is you angle with such delays and lies about coins being processed even though they are not.

2. This one is actually part of question 1, what did you guys do with everyones coins that you should be keeping and made readily available ? Have you guys been operating your business/salaries using the coins of clients considering your trading traffic have plummeted and you remained open. Is this a mini version Mtgox in South African style ?

 

[phly]

Smells like an exit scam ... in due time all will be revealed I am sure. I used to get regular correspondence from them - competitions etc. But then they went dark. I have never trusted these new exchanges to hold any coins.

 

[John Tempus]

Smells like an exit scam ... in due time all will be revealed I am sure. I used to get regular correspondence from them - competitions etc. But then they went dark. I have never trusted these new exchanges to hold any coins.

Yep, I have never trusted this exchange from the start but have a few friends before ever consulting me who did their first purchases on coindirect and during coindirect more active volume period they just continued trading their coins there with only partial withdrawals at most.

Now they are trying to move their coins and email support is completely absent with no way of getting any response.

The craziest part is that some of them eventually got a random reply stating the withdrawal was processed but as I mentioned in OP nothing ever transfered to their wallets, no unconfirmed or confirmed transaction (this is more than 1000 blocks ago for some of them)

So Stephen Young (I cant even tag you, seems like you closed your mybb account?) , if you dont respond here and resolve this mess and cashout my friends I will make sure this turns into a bigger deal.

https://mybroadband.co.za/forum/members/stephen-young.536199/

Registered 20 August 2018, last activity 27 August 2018.

It is like they paid MyBB to do that interview thread just to attract business and had no intention to actually participate in this forum at all.

@rpm Is this why you guys had that apparent "Ask anything" thread in the first place ?

This is rather shameful if thats the case.

 

[BitcoinZAR]

Their twitter is posting updates, the last one from half an hour ago about their affiliate program....so they appear to still be trying to get new customers. https://twitter.com/coindirectcom
If you are on twitter, maybe @ them there to get a response or email [email protected]

 

[John Tempus]

Their twitter is posting updates, the last one from half an hour ago about their affiliate program....so they appear to still be trying to get new customers. https://twitter.com/coindirectcom
If you are on twitter, maybe @ them there to get a response or email [email protected]

Only their twitter affiliate "person" is active. I noticed one of their recent posts there other people @ them and the guy just says to email support he cannot help, pretty pathetic.

They are trying to get new DEPOSITS cause to me it is clear as daylight they do not have the reserves to cater for the current clients. Fractional reserve at best using new deposits to process current withdrawal requests which would explain the long delay so far with withdrawal request since they are probably not getting any new deposits.

Whenever an online service marketing arm is more active like you mentioned on twitter compared to their actual support you need to ask yourself what is going on behind the scene and no answer you can come up with would look good.

The actual exchange support/withdrawal/etc. is non existing.. Still no updates from them aside from one random response that one of the withdrawals were processed almost 2 days after requesting it yet now an extra day have past since then and still no transaction went out or visible on the blockchain.

These guys cannot be this clueless which leads me to believe they are just stalling / running a longcon exit scam at this point.

 

[btmarketmod]

Looks like I'm reopening my fraud case against coindirect.com at FNB. Here is my post from bitcointalk.org


So my wife and I decided to purchase 1 BTC last week Thursday and got around 170,000 ZAR together from savings we had and deposited it into coindirect.com

It was a First national bank to First National Bank transfer that cleared into coindirect's account immediately. We only received our funds 28 or 29 hours later after sending around 20 emails to [email protected]. The price of BTC went up by 20,000 ZAR since we decided to purchase 1 btc. If they had cleared our funds immediately like they should have we would have had 1 btc and benefited from the 20,000 ZAR upswing.

They have not responded to a single email since Friday afternoon. My wife and I sent multiple emails basically begging for support. I managed to get hold of them on facebook. Another nightmare. I was told the funds got cleared. I checked my wife's account and guess what, no funds in the account. 1 hour later I get a message after sending many more message to support without any reply that the funds are in the wallet. I then proceeded to buy btc.

They list their price of the coin at 196,000 ZAR per coin. On the last screen after I confirmed the purchase I see that they charged me 202,000 ZAR per coin. 6000 ZAR difference (around $500 USD). I sent another mail to support and to the facebook support team. No response. I waited another 2 hours for the BTC that I paid 6000 ZAR more for to clear in my account. I requested a withdrawal of the remaining funds and asked them to release the BTC as I did not want to deal with a site like this where you get no support.

They refused to release my remaining 155,000 ZAR deposit back into my bank account, so I opened a fraud case at the police station and got the bank to freeze their account. Almost immediately after freezing their account I got replies from support. Making big promises telling me that they would release the coins immediately once they are purchased if I close the fraud case. Which I did. Turns out they were lying again. After almost 4 days, I got my ZAR added to my balance. I bought btc, and tried to withdraw it. Both my withdrawals failed and support responded with "We don't know why your withdrawals failed, please try to request again"

I requested another 2 withdrawals and they both got rejected. I have now requested another 2 withdrawals and they have been pending for 2 hours and no reply from support again.

Please stay away from coindirect and do not deal with them! They seem like a great site for South Africans to buy and sell altcoins, but they are definitely a scam.

If my withdrawals get released I will update the post. Even if they do release them trust me, you do not want to be begging for your coins to be released.

https://imgur.com/3OqK2Zg

https://imgur.com/ezIfxtF

https://imgur.com/jfCyZgB

https://imgur.com/DrqtWlc

 

[airborne]

Looks like I'm reopening my fraud case against coindirect.com at FNB. Here is my post from bitcointalk.org


So my wife and I decided to purchase 1 BTC last week Thursday and got around 170,000 ZAR together from savings we had and deposited it into coindirect.com

It was a First national bank to First National Bank transfer that cleared into coindirect's account immediately. We only received our funds 28 or 29 hours later after sending around 20 emails to [email protected]. The price of BTC went up by 20,000 ZAR since we decided to purchase 1 btc. If they had cleared our funds immediately like they should have we would have had 1 btc and benefited from the 20,000 ZAR upswing.

They have not responded to a single email since Friday afternoon. My wife and I sent multiple emails basically begging for support. I managed to get hold of them on facebook. Another nightmare. I was told the funds got cleared. I checked my wife's account and guess what, no funds in the account. 1 hour later I get a message after sending many more message to support without any reply that the funds are in the wallet. I then proceeded to buy btc.

They list their price of the coin at 196,000 ZAR per coin. On the last screen after I confirmed the purchase I see that they charged me 202,000 ZAR per coin. 6000 ZAR difference (around $500 USD). I sent another mail to support and to the facebook support team. No response. I waited another 2 hours for the BTC that I paid 6000 ZAR more for to clear in my account. I requested a withdrawal of the remaining funds and asked them to release the BTC as I did not want to deal with a site like this where you get no support.

They refused to release my remaining 155,000 ZAR deposit back into my bank account, so I opened a fraud case at the police station and got the bank to freeze their account. Almost immediately after freezing their account I got replies from support. Making big promises telling me that they would release the coins immediately once they are purchased if I close the fraud case. Which I did. Turns out they were lying again. After almost 4 days, I got my ZAR added to my balance. I bought btc, and tried to withdraw it. Both my withdrawals failed and support responded with "We don't know why your withdrawals failed, please try to request again"

I requested another 2 withdrawals and they both got rejected. I have now requested another 2 withdrawals and they have been pending for 2 hours and no reply from support again.

Please stay away from coindirect and do not deal with them! They seem like a great site for South Africans to buy and sell altcoins, but they are definitely a scam.

If my withdrawals get released I will update the post. Even if they do release them trust me, you do not want to be begging for your coins to be released.

https://imgur.com/3OqK2Zg

https://imgur.com/ezIfxtF

https://imgur.com/jfCyZgB

https://imgur.com/DrqtWlc

When did this saga start?
Really sucks when dodgy people like coindirect fk it up for all the legit operators. I wonder if they came in with good intentions and then went off the rails or went in to it looking to con people?

Do you need any kind of financial license to operate a bitcoin bank(that's essentially what it is?) in Sa?

 

[btmarketmod]

When did this saga start?
Really sucks when dodgy people like coindirect fk it up for all the legit operators. I wonder if they came in with good intentions and then went off the rails or went in to it looking to con people?

Do you need any kind of financial license to operate a bitcoin bank(that's essentially what it is?) in Sa?

I don't think they are regulated or licensed. I don't trust anything on their website. I will be opening fraud cases across all their accounts tomorrow morning first thing. Some of my mates I referred to coindirect cannot get their funds out either. Will be launching a massive fraud case from multiple users against them. I will make sure they cannot accept any more deposits. Even if it means I will never see the 170k again, I will not let anyone else fall for this scam site.

 

[btmarketmod]

For anyone looking to get your coins out of coindirect, here is their holding company. I will be visiting this address tomorrow with some police officers. If the address is legit and I manage to get some answers, I will be updating the thread: https://www.balfourgroup.com

 

[delta66]

absolute "FRAUD" thanks John Tempus for posting and giving people heads up on coindirect. @btmarketmod ...R170K +- is not chump change, hope you get it back. Definitely open a case and please update us on any outcome

 

[Tabac]

A bit off topic, but why don't people do the reasonable thing and research, ask questions, more research before letting go of their money ?

 

[btmarketmod]

A bit off topic, but why don't people do the reasonable thing and research, ask questions, more research before letting go of their money ?

I used them for over a year on my account. Decided to open an account for my wife with them so that she can own bitcoin too. Their troubles only started recently.

 

[Tabac]

I used them for over a year on my account. Decided to open an account for my wife with them so that she can own bitcoin too. Their troubles only started recently.

Oh ok. Sorry. Do hope you get answers when visiting them. A friend's son also lost most of his savings in one of these Btc scams.

 

[Nic Haralambous]

Hi @btmarketmod ,

My name is Nic Haralambous. I am one of the co-founders and the COO at Coindirect.com.

I appreciate your frustration and have sent you an email requesting your phone number and suitable time to give you a call to discuss the frustrations we are both experiencing with your and your wife's accounts.

I'm sure this can be resolved amicably and I'll do my best to put your mind at ease once we speak directly.

Looking forward to speaking with you later today!

 

[btmarketmod]

Hi @btmarketmod ,

My name is Nic Haralambous. I am one of the co-founders and the COO at Coindirect.com.

I appreciate your frustration and have sent you an email requesting your phone number and suitable time to give you a call to discuss the frustrations we are both experiencing with your and your wife's accounts.

I'm sure this can be resolved amicably and I'll do my best to put your mind at ease once we speak directly.

Looking forward to speaking with you later today!

As expected. All withdrawals failed once again Nic.

 

[Nic Haralambous]

As expected. All withdrawals failed once again Nic.

Thanks, the team and I are following progress of the withdrawals. Investigating the error we're seeing and will call you as promised to sort out before 9am.

 

[Tabac]

Hi @btmarketmod ,

My name is Nic Haralambous. I am one of the co-founders and the COO at Coindirect.com.

I appreciate your frustration and have sent you an email requesting your phone number and suitable time to give you a call to discuss the frustrations we are both experiencing with your and your wife's accounts.

I'm sure this can be resolved amicably and I'll do my best to put your mind at ease once we speak directly.

Looking forward to speaking with you later today!

There shouldn't be any frustration for your customer. Less talk and more action.
Deliver on your promises.

 

[Nic Haralambous]

There shouldn't be any frustration for your customer. Less talk and more action.
Deliver on your promises.

Thanks HunterNW, We're doing the best we can under the circumstances.

 

[btmarketmod]

I have been contacted by Nic and feel a lot more at ease now. He mentioned that the withdrawal issue is a bug that popped up late last night and that they are working around the clock to resolve it. He also mentioned that the are not insolvent as they just received a round of funding and have no liquidity issues. I will update the thread once I receive my coins.

 

[saor]

I have been contacted by Nic and feel a lot more at ease now. He mentioned that the withdrawal issue is a bug that popped up late last night and that they are working around the clock to resolve it. He also mentioned that the are not insolvent as they just received a round of funding and have no liquidity issues. I will update the thread once I receive my coins.

The withdrawal issues have been occurring since long before last night according to @John Tempus.