Complaint Review: Wouter Laurens - Klein

On August 3, 2019 I was approached on Instagram by Wouter Laurens (tradewith_wouter) who claimed he had been a cryptocurrency trader for 8 years. He said that he traded via the website www.360cryptoearners.com and that I could open an account with them and deposit a minimum of $550 for a 5 day trade and then withdrawal the profits. He said he worked on a 10% commission of whatever trade profits he generated. He had many testimonials on his Instagram and tagged many different Instagram profiles so I sent the $550 via a Bitcoin transfer on August 4, 2019. The next day he contacted me and said I could upgrade my trade to a VIP plan which had much higher returns if I deposited another $550 of Bitcoin and my account would stay upgraded for future trades, so I deposited another $550 to upgrade my account.

At the end of the 5 day trade he said I could submit my withdrawal through the website but he needed to receive his 10% commission. In my account on 360cryptoearners.com it showed a total profit of $13,258.52 which seemed unbelievable but he assured me in was correct even though there was no where within the website I could view the trading history on my account. Wouter Laurens provided his Bitcoin wallet address to me and I made 2 separate withdrawals out of my account, one to him for the 10% and then one to me for the balance of the trade profit. When I sent him the screenshot of the withdrawals, he got agitated and said I did it wrong and I had to pay him separately out of my personal money and not my trade profits and once he received the commission he would contact 360cryptoearners.com and let them know my trade had completed and that I could withdrawal my trade profits.

After some thought I decided to send him the commission as I thought I would then immediately be able to withdrawal my profits. Once he confirmed that I had sent him a payment of $1325.85 worth of Bitcoin he claimed to have contacted the website and I could place my withdrawal which I did. I then received an email from [email protected] that said in order to receive my profits I had to pay a one time network charge of $980 and then my profits would be sent in 15-30 minutes. I contacted Wouter Laurens and expressed my outrage about the charge and said that this was a scam and he said I needed to trust him and this doesn't happen all the time but sometimes it does. The next day once I calmed down I decided to contact some of the people on his Instagram that were tagged in his testimonials. The two people I was able to message with were @ama_derrick and @stevebowel.

Both Ama and Steve were supposed to be in the US and said that they had received their profits and that I should trust Wouter. They said that they had to pay the network fee as well and that if I paid it I would receive my profits. They both also agreed that the fee should have been disclosed to me at the beginning. After deliberating for a couple of days I did decide to pay the $980 network fee which was sent to the website's Bitcoin wallet. I then received a confirmation email from [email protected] stating my profits would be sent to my Bitcoin wallet in 15-30 minutes. After about an hour I received another email stating that I now had to send them another $2400 of Bitcoin as the price of Bitcoin was volatile. They called this a HTC Fee. I emailed them back and asked that they deduct the fee from the amount of money that they were sending and they emailed me stating that they could not because they had completed my transaction on their end. So at this point on a trade of $550, I was up to an additional $2855.85 of Bitcoin I had sent to them and they were asking for another $2400.

I told Wouter that I did not have the $2400 to send. He said if you want your profits then you know what you have to do and you need to trust me. I contacted @ama_derrick and @stevebowel on Instagram again and they also said that they had to pay that fee (althought neither had mentioned it previously) and I needed to trust Wouter. I also started to notice that they were both always online at the same time and that they messages that they sent did not sound like they were being sent from someone in the US as the wording was off. I contacted the support email address several times asking for a solution or a work around or for them to at least send me the amount equal to my deposits and they did not reply to any of my emails. I tried to use the Live Chat feature on the website and there was no reply.

I discussed this situation with a close friend and he suggested a call with Wouter Laurens on WhatsApp as Wouter had added me to WhatsApp once I became his "client". We did a group chat with Wouter asking for a call and he said calls were against company policy. We then asked him several times to help with a solution and he was unwilling to help. I then reached out to @ama_derrick and @stevebowel on Instagram to see if either of them would be willing to chat with me for a few minutes on the phone. I mostly wanted to make sure that they were real people and were really in the US and were not dummy Instagram accounts that Wouter was managing. Interestingly enough they both came online at the same time and texted me at the same time. Steve said he was not willing to talk to me on the phone but was willing to answer my questions via Instagram messaging and Ama refused to talk to me on the phone and accused me of wanting to record her.

It is obvious at this point that this is all an elaborate scam to get people to send money to Wouter Laurens and I would strongly urge anyone who reads this to not give him any money and to not set up an account with www.360cryptoearners.com which after a recent whois domain search, I see has only been registered one month through namecheap.com.