SKYCOIN KIDNAPPING

June 21 2018

TL;DR, Synth & Steve sold a group of Chinese investors 100 000 SKY for 100 000 000 CNY (~156 250 USD @ 6.4CNY/USD) on June 20 2017. The group wanted to send the SKY to Binance to sell, an 'error' in the wallet occured. The group visits Brandon (Synth), Steve and Sarah's home (Sarah is Brandon's girlfriend. Brandon is not married). They figure out that wallets can be and have been locked, so they demand reimbursement of the 100 000 000 CNY. Brandon gives them 18.88 BTC and 6466 SKY, approximately 80% of what the fiat value they sent Brandon on June 20 2017 (as of June 20 2018). A police report was filed. Brandon and Sarah have alledgedly left China.

This leads directly to Synth's claims of kidnappings and robbery. The police report describes the situation told by the Skycoin team. There is a possibility that the report is fake. Please consider both sides of the story and make your own decision as to who is telling the truth.

Original Chinese text and screenshots of the bank statement and the locked wallet:

Part 1: https://i.imgur.com/5TDqan2.jpg mirror: https://my.mixtape.moe/phjvtm.png
Part 2: https://i.imgur.com/Gs3FWaO.jpg mirror: https://my.mixtape.moe/rpkbne.png
Original police report: https://i.imgur.com/YVlBfcz.jpg mirror: https://my.mixtape.moe/eraoic.jpg
Translated police report: https://i.imgur.com/PWTztfF.jpg mirror: https://my.mixtape.moe/omehfo.jpg
Source for the police report: https://archive.fo/JmuiL

A rough translation of the above-linked text:

	My statement as a Skycoin Investor: Once the million-dollar investment went back to Skycoin, this project was heard by Xiao Yan from June last year. Xiao Yan and Li Xin spent a lot of time in the blockchain industry. I listen. They said that the founder of Skycoin is one of the developers of the original Bitcoin. The popularity of this project on Bitcointalk is also good. Li Zhen himself has also invested at least 1 million, so I decided to invest a little and I got together with a few friends 1 million. Li Tuo bought 100,000 coins from Brandon. Because I'm not happy to manage these things myself, I've put the coins in Li Hao, where she has a separate wallet private key for us, one for each of us.

The bank statement:

	11 China Unicom Order 11:37
	Transaction Details ¥1,000,000.00
	Balance ¥0.00
	Transaction Card No. Receipt Receipt Bank Receipt
	Account Transaction Time One Card 6214°0128
	BRANDON JOSEPH SMIETANA Industrial and Commercial Bank of China Zhouzhou ICBC Shanghai Taihang South Station Plaza 6212261001049009126 2017 - 06-2019:29:51
	BRANDON JOSEPH SMIETANA9126

 	In June of this year, Skycoin was on currency. I let Li Ye help me to sell some of them. Li Wei tried to break through my wallet, but found that my coins could not be transferred successfully. She then told me about her own wallet. This problem also appears, the wallet has been following the prompt: There ors some ending trascctons. Data you see mey hot ba updated

   	Li Yu and I said she will immediately contact the technology partner. After determining what was going on, the technology did not see any problems, and at night she went directly to Skycoin's founder, Brandon. Brandon's reply is that the wallet has a bug and it takes time to troubleshoot. Li Lan asked me not to worry. She said that she will be responsible for solving this problem. These investors trust her before investing. She will not let her go. During the day of June 12, Li Jie’s partner and Jesse who has invested in Skycoin went to find Brandon. Asked if he could lock someone else's wallet, Brandon responded by saying that he had Steve track Sam's wallet address and then freeze everyone's wallet. When we heard the audio recording, we were shocked to see that this happened in the blockchain industry. It was a serious
	violation of the decentralization principle of the industry.

 	We certainly want to find him face to face. On the night of June 12th, Li Lan sent a message that Brandon and his wife Sarah were looking for their bills. She was also very angry at the time and wanted to face Brandon and say that the wallet was locked, and another partner of Brandon would be the next day. Going abroad, if there is no way to unlock our wallet, I will come to Brandon home with several other co-investors. We arrived at Brandon's home around 10:00 that evening. There are four people in the Li Wei team and I have others. There are a total of 9 investors and Brandon and his wife Sarah are at home. Our idea was very simple. We asked for the wallet to be unlocked and to compensate us for the loss, because I was originally prepared to throw a part of the price at the time of the commuter currency, that is, about 20 US dollars. Because he locked the wallet, I couldn't trade freely, to 12 On the day of the day, the currency price has dropped to $14. I hope that Brandon can compensate us for this part of the loss.

	When we entered the door, we asked about the locked wallet. Brandon at first didn’t admit it. He said that it wasn’t him who did it, it was his partner Steve. But a crypto that can be easily locked by someone else, we’ve lost faith to it. So we proposed we return all the Skycoin to him, and Brandon should return our investment back.

	Brandon said from the very beginning that he didn't have enough money to return it to us, and then began to delay. He has 4 computers and has been operating in front of each computer for a long time. He will need a network cable and will synchronize his wallet. He will say that the wallet will be synchronized for several hours. He will restore his address and recover a lot. To find him something and pick him up, we all want to get things done quickly. During this period we basically sat on the couch talking to him, because we don’t know which computer he wants to use, nor does he know what he wants. How can we solve the problem? We did not have physical contact with him, nor did we force him to do anything because we did not actually know what to do with him to return the money to us. During this period, he stated that he would communicate with another programmer to unlock his wallet, so he also sent a message to the other party on the computer. During the whole process, he was free to use the computer to send messages and communicate with the outside world. No one had limited him. The only thing I said is that you are a fraud. You sell the money to the user, but they freeze their wallets so they can't trade. If you can't solve it, we have to call the police and resort to legal measures.

	Brandon got this for a few hours. The water drank a few bottles. We were all exhausted. Sarah also said to him: 'Honey return the money to them.' I was really tired. I want to rest. Brandon ended up hitting 18.88 Bitcoins and 6466 Skycoin. He said he only had this. Then the couple said that let's go back and wait until the price of two or three months rises. We can get it back. We lost it. Brandon agreed to unlock the wallet in the morning when it was already 3 o'clock in the middle of the night. We also realized that it was impossible to recover all the losses and we could only leave. In addition to being unlucky, I have no other way. A blockchain project, the project party did not run away, and never returned to zero, but because the central wallet was locked out, it could not get the reward. Brandon and Sarah now have I don't know why they left because they left China. The Li Wei team was responsible for the work of the community and handed over several WeChat groups to Sarah. What I saw was that she had just finished this and her team changed. Sarah and Brandon made an announcement and began to throw dirty water in the [WeChat] group. It would be a good time for Li Yu to abduct them and steal them. If Brandon and Sarah have already filed the case, I will be happy to accept the police investigation and give everyone a truth.