The Probit Exchange scam Proofs
The blockchain environment provides many opportunities for both earning and fraud. Every week we hear of investors and traders losing their crypto funds on fraudulent exchanges.
The DecimalChain team stopped the listing process on the Probit exchange due to possible scam and loss of user funds.
The history of DecimalChain’s cooperation with Probit exchange and the beginning of the conflict.
Our cooperation with the Probit cryptocurrency exchange began on July 24, 2021, when a listing fee of 65,000 USDT was paid in two tranches of 25 USDT and 40,000 USDT.
The listing strategy of the DEL coin implied access to two sites of the “first echelon” and our choice fell on Probit.com and XT.com . At that time, the Probit exchange had been on the market for a long time and had positive rating. In addition, we received recommendations from our partners who had their experience of listing on most existing exchanges.
Partnership with XT.com went smoothly and the integration took place within the terms stipulated by the contract. The support and operation of the exchange left positive impressions only, and this cannot be said about Probit. Since the very beginning they had been building the partnership in a strange way, and we, in turn, blamed it on communication problems.
Esmond Hwi kept in touch with us on behalf of the exchange ( https://t.me/esmondhwee )
The ”difficulties” with integration on the part of the exchange continued until January 15, 2022, despite the fact that the publication about the upcoming listing of the DEL coin appeared on Probit’s official twitter on October 7, 2021. They announced the possibility of depositing and trading the DEL/USDT pair from October 12, 2021. Here’s a post about it:
https://twitter.com/ProBitIndonesia/status/1445933583294611461
I had to contact the legal department to prepare a claim to the Probit Exchange
Desperate to get in touch with the developers of the exchange to help solve the integration problems that were unclear to us, the legal department prepared the documents and we were ready to defend our rights in court, as we stated to Esmond Hwi, the contact person.
At the stage of preparing the claim letter and collecting information about Probit, our lawyers noticed patterns that could be the sign of the upcoming scam, namely:
1. Probit has changed its legal name
2. Initially probit.com had a license in Estonia for Probit Exchange OÜ, then they changed the company name to WHENMOON OÜ, and, according to open sources, their license is not valid since 07/21/2021.
At the time of preparation of this material, we failed to find the information about the current license of the exchange in open sources.
3. At the same time, lawyers noticed negative feedback from probit.com clients. The bulk of the complaints said that users could not withdraw their deposits or that the listing of their coins either did not take place or led to a loss of funds.
We continued to conduct a dialogue and in a letter to Probit management we asked for explanations of all the questions that arose on our part, as well as the reason why the listing of the DEL coin did not take place in six months after the terms stipulated in the contract.
The scam of the Probit Exchange is confirmed by the public
From July 2021 to January 2022, several updates took place in the DecimalChain blockchain network, and this wasn`t a problem for other exchanges where the DEL coin is listed but for Probit it was a convenient reason to delay the moment of listing. Although we almost did not count on it, we were still trying to get the situation and reach some solution of the parties, despite the fact that we had already found honest reviews of seriously affected users.
Customer reviews
“Probit.com cheated my company out of a large sum. They face regulatory challenges and there is evidence that they have also been hacked. They lost my deposit, and they don’t want to prove that they were hacked and the funds were gone.
In order to recover the hacked balances, they are trying to charge everyone who listed the asset an undeclared service fee of more than $20,000, which was not in the listing agreement. We report the fraud to the local Korean authorities. Don’t use this exchange as they are unethical and immoral in their business”.
An absolute scam exchange! DO NOT USE PROBIT
Their exchange does not limit your slippage to a market order. Their order books are filled with ridiculous sales orders. I wanted to buy $16,000 of XRP using a market order and lost $10,000 on it!! I contacted the support service but did not receive any response. Only after I started tweeting to the CEO they would contact me in Korean. After a lot of effort, they managed to answer me in English that everything was fine with their exchange and that I had to use a limit order.
I wouldn’t be surprised if most of my lost money is in their pockets right now.
On the internet, you will find a lot of (!) bot accounts shilling Probit, by the way. I’ll say it again; DON’T USE PROBIT”
On April 12, 2021, I mysteriously lost all my coins worth over $450,000 on Probit, even when I had two-factor authentication enabled. They hacked my browser sessions and gained access to my email, deleting all confirmation messages.
Transaction records were not displayed in their system, but there were no coins, and even support requests were unexpectedly ignored and closed each time. Attempts to contact the CEO of Probit did not yield any results, it seemed that no one cared about it. PROBIT is a big scam, guys!!! They secretly withdraw all the coins without any trace, and then disable the account, under the pretext of protecting your coins.”
These are only 3 reviews that demonstrate problems not only with the listing. A lot of reviews can be read on the TrustPilot website, where hundreds of angry users and their stories about unprecedented fraud.
Drawing conclusions
Time passed, and the issue of integration still hasn`t been resolved. Our lawyers sent a letter to all official representatives demanding that their part of the contract be fulfilled, but no response was received. The next step based on this letter will be to apply to the court for compensation.
On February 7, 2022, we wrote the last appeal to Esmond Hwi with a request to return the money, to which, of course, we received no response. Obviously, we will not be able to return 65,000 USDT through negotiations, but we can at least protect users and companies from the scam of the project, as the listing offer is still available and maybe someone is losing their crypto right now.
Perhaps Probit was a legitimate and high-quality exchange in the past, because why would they have so many good reviews? However, it is no longer possible to ignore the facts of fraud.
Moreover, analyzing the feedback of the victims, the fraudulent strategy itself becomes obvious, according to which users can deposit their funds, but they can never withdraw them. Citing technical difficulties, the scam exchange buys time, and then simply ignores the requests of the victims.
In conclusion, we strongly recommend that you don`t use Probit. We hope that not a single user and market participant will suffer from scammers anymore, the Probit management will get what they deserve, and the site itself will be forgotten.
We also sent a letter to colleagues in coinmarketcap.com , coingecko.com and coinpaprika.com with all the evidence and a request to stop listing Probit.com