In yet another case of suspicious cloudmining scandal, it looks like Chabat Mining is down for the count with no signal or sign of life. Additionally, it seems as though they aren’t paying out to those that held contracts on their site who can no longer access the web page.
When visiting their page, users are greeted with a 403 Forbidden error. There is no message stating there are problems. There is no notification to users with active mining contracts. There is only a message without any consolation.
Chabat Mining hasn’t been paying out for an extended period according to concerned users on LitecoinTalk. The first report is on January 13, 2015 and reads as follows:
“Is Chabat Mining now gone? No payments for several days. The forum has been closed to all postings. The three emails I have sent the past three days are unanswered.”
The first concerned poster also mentioned a possible tie-in the LTCGear, along with the site’s issues as of late.
“Anybody know what is going on? Were they possibly using LTCGear shares and since LTCGear is not paying out right now, Chabat cannot pay?”
LTCGear supposedly went dark as well on Jan. 20, and the website is still spotty to this day. There seems to be no clear consensus as to whether LTCGear is paying out what they promised. When trying to access the site, CCN.com was met with this error page.
According to others on the BitcoinTalk forum page , they too are experiencing the same problem with LTCGear. Complaints pour in of the site being offline so much that some users are sick of the updates.
When trying to access the Chabat Mining BitcoinTalk page to find the general sentiment, it seems it has either been deleted or set only to allow access to certain people for some time.
It does seem as Chabat Mining has run off with user’s money, which is an unfortunate side effect of a traceable, yet anonymous, cryptocurrency.
Some users aren’t giving up that easy in the face of a possible scam though. According to one user on a Chabat Mining LitecoinTalk forum, someone may have a direct connection to the possibly crooked cloudmining service. Along with their connection, it seems like the user has a large amount of stake in the game.
“Hey guys, I had quite a lot of money in there and paid a part of it via PayPal, so I have the guy’s data. Due to the nature of the service I can’t open a claim against him, but if there [are] more people that paid with PayPal please report it so they can help. It hasn’t paid for any days, support doesn’t answer and forum is closed to replies.”
With no response from support and no way of contact otherwise, it seems as though this anonymous user might hold one of the only ways to find out what happened. Until then, Chabat Mining seemed to have their customer’s cash and decided to leave while they could.