On March 15th, 2022 I purchased $200 worth Bitcoin on Swan, and as expected, Swan deducted $200 from my Discover checking account.

First Scam Attempt:

The next day on March 16th, 2022 Swan deducted ANOTHER, second $200 from my Discover checking account. This is the classic Double-Bill Scam (Wikipedia link) businesses sometimes run hoping Clients won’t notice.

Defense: I only keep enough funds in that Discover checking account to cover purchases. Swan’s Double-Bill created an “insufficient funds” alert. My defense worked.

Second Scam Attempt:

Swan then deleted my Bitcoin from my 15 March purchase out of my Swan account.

For the next week Swan pretended not to understand what happened, a double-bill. I have a Minor in Accounting, so I sent them detailed line-by-line explanations of what occurred on my side, and their side.

Every day for a week they replied “We don’t understand what happened. Please explain.” So I would send ANOTHER line-by-line explanation of what happened.

After a week of back-and-forth emails designed to convince me Swan was incompetent, it finally dawned on me they were only pretending to be incompetent.

Sure enough, after a week and the price of Bitcoin had increased 10%, Swan admitted their double-bill error, and tried to force me to take my Dollars back.

It’s a neat little arbitrage scam.

1. Create an “error” to lock-up a client’s Bitcoin purchase.
   
   
2. After a week say “So Sorry“, and return the client’s Dollars if the price of BTC has gone up, ….or, return the client’s Bitcoin if the price of Bitcoin has gone down and the Dollars are now worth more.

Defense: I refused to accept the Dollars, and demanded every day they instead return my Bitcoin. After a week, the Support Tech apologized profusely for the “error”, returned the BTC to my Swan account, and said he would give me an additional $25 in Bitcoin as compensation for the hours and hours of fighting they forced me to engage in.

Third Scam Attempt:

Surprise! On March 28th 2022 Swan billed me $25 for a “Pre-Paid Fee“. This was the “gift” the Tech spoke of. Not free BTC as promised, but instead, another fraudulent charge. LOL

Defense: Keeping my checking account empty. Swan’s fraudulent “Pre-Paid Fee” charge bounced due to insufficient funds.

I called the Bank Fraud Department at Discover and put a “stop pay” on Prime Trust LLC which prevents them from deducting money from my Discover checking account.

RED FLAGS I SHOULD HAVE NOTICED BEFORE ON-BOARDING:

• Swan’s 620 5-Star reviews on Trust Pilot. They are obviously fake and paid for by Swan. This proves intent to Deceive. Go read them and see how fake: https://www.trustpilot.com/review/swanbitcoin.com

• I called their “support number” (218) 379-7926 approximately 20 times over the course of a week. Nobody answered, ever, even once. It goes to voicemail. Test this yourself before on-boarding.
  
  
• Their business address 26565 W. Agoura Rd Suite 200, Calabasas CA is a mail-forwarding service (link), similar to a UPS Store.
  
  
• Swan Bitcoin is basically a front for Prime Trust LLC, a scammy “bank” that is really just a mail drop at a strip-mall in Las Vegas (Google Street View link).

RED FLAGS I SHOULD HAVE NOTICED AFTER ON-BOARDING:

When purchasing, Swan charges a BTC price a few percent higher than market price. Visit https://cointelegraph.com/bitcoin-price to see the Real Price exchanges like Bitfinex, Bitstamp, Coinbase, Hitbtc, and Kraken are asking.

On-boarding Salesmen will lie and tell you your cell phone identity data is only needed for on-boarding, after which your personal data will be deleted. This is false. Swan will force you to use the same cell phone when you try to move BTC off their site into your private, self-hosted wallet. — I should have tried moving BTC off Swan before buying more BTC, but I didn’t want to wait the 10 days Swan “locks-up” your BTC purchases.

If you access your account only via a desktop computer (as you should), Swan refuses to provide a password, and instead forces you to receive a new e-mail to log in every time. Encouraging phone and tablet use makes it easier for Swan to scam people by making it more difficult to save accurate records of chats, emails, and transactions.

Every morning for three weeks I downloaded the .cvs spreadsheet file of my transaction history from the Swan website. I noticed they were changing historical data, fiddling around with past transactions, usually changing the BTC price of a previous transaction.

In Accountancy, past errors are corrected with new “correcting entries” precisely to prevent this type of fraud.

SUMMARY:

If asked, I’m sure the Bitcoin Celebrities paid by Swan to give their product glowing reviews would say my experience was an anomaly. They will claim to be unaware their Techs are running these little scams on small fry like me.

If true, that just proves incompetent management.

To their credit, the Fraud Department at Discover Bank were very cool. The Fraud Investigator I eventually spoke with was also a “Crypto Guy” who totally understood my problem.

Please, please use my Contact Form to tell me how I could improve this scam report.

http://logos.elementfx.com/contact/

Thank you!