The following is written on behalf of Digital Wealth Builders, LLC as it relates to an agreement for services offered by Seth Maniscalco (Crypto Wealth Coach, LLC).
Between 2017 and 2018 we built a relationship with Seth Maniscalco because of our involvement in the Cryptocurrency Space. We provided education, training, tools etc. on how to safely navigate the Cryptocurrency world. Helping individuals navigate the Cryptocurrency space was important to us because we saw so many being taken advantage of in this new industry.
We sought to help those who wanted to learn more and understand the ins-and-outs of all of the risk associated with Cryptocurrency. We met Seth Maniscalco online in mid 2017 when we started following his postings on Social Media through another Cryptocurrency group on Facebook.
We were very impressed with his knowledge of the Crypto World, trading, due diligence etc. He promoted security and even called out frauds and scams in his group. His mission seemed very aligned with ours and those we were serving. He continues to run a paid Facebook Group where he provides his reviews of coins and Crypto based projects as well as trade signals to those who trade Cryptocurrency.
The numbers he shared with the types of returns he claimed were impressive. His information and analysis, alongside the mindset training approach he offered in his group, resonated with us and it felt good to know that he appeared to be someone in the Crypto space who was worthy of uplifting and sharing with others. We eventually added him to our own Facebook Group and invited him to share his information with our audience.
We continued to see value in the information he shared with his messages. He preached messages of integrity, transparency, doing the right thing, family first, taking responsibility for one’s own actions, etc. He promoted Cryptocurrency as a new way to build wealth and how it could be used for personal banking, personal empowerment etc.
Seth promoted himself by showing his followers that he coached with high profile coaches and influencers as a bona-fides of who he was in the world. We even met with Seth when he drove through our area on a trip to see one of his business coaches. Overall, Seth seemed like a solid guy, a former Marine, who worked hard, gave voice to integrity, understood the importance of family and had several others who vouched for him and his integrity.
We were also affiliates for Seth’s signals group and over the course of the 2 years we included Seth as part of our own Facebook group, we made 1 commission of .19102 BTC for a referral who signed up through our affiliate link for his signals group.
In addition to his signals group, Seth offered a $50k “Elite” program. His Elite program was a done-for-you Crypto trading program where Seth traded coin on a client’s behalf and took a commission if the trades made money. We thought this was a brilliant idea but knew most would not be able to participate in his program because of the point of entry.
In June of 2018, we approached Seth and asked if he would entertain a group of people coming together to combine resources to take advantage of his Elite Program. He agreed as long as we served as the point of contact and as long as he didn’t have to manage the people in the group. Because of the fluctuating price of bitcoin he agreed to provide services with a minimum of at least 5 BTC. It was at that point that Digital Wealth Builders was born.
Digital Wealth Builders was designed to provide wealth mindset training combined with Seth’s Elite Services. The monthly training calls were designed to provide wealth mindset training and to go over trends, projects and things everyone saw in the Cryptocurrency industry. We met on a monthly training call each month and we recorded the calls since we had individuals from all around the globe who were a part of our training group.
We ran our first group in June 2018 and entered into individual agreements with each DWB client. Each agreement outlined Seth’s services and we held monthly training calls while Seth traded the coin. Digital Wealth Builders had a written agreement with Seth and our first group launched about June. We had several people who wanted to be a part of the DWB program so we launched a second group in July and eventually a third group in October 2018. All in all, we had 14 people join us between three groups.
As we started the first group, Seth mentioned he had run into a hiccup because he was accepting cash from his Elite clients and was going to have to give all of his cash clients their money back to avoid the issues of not having a money transfer license since he was having to convert cash into Bitcoin.
By the time our first group began Seth started accepting Bitcoin for his Elite Program and all of the transactions made between DWB clients and with Seth were done in Bitcoin. In October 2018, Seth communicated that he had returned monies to all of his cash clients and that he had lowered the requirement of his Elite program from $50k entry to $25k entry and was now transacting 100% in Bitcoin. This further affirmed the integrity and trust he had built within our relationship. Over the course of 17-months DWB sent Seth a total of 19.65 BTC between the three groups for him to trade as part of his Elite Program.
Seth supposedly started trading and the first group got the first quarterly update from Seth in October 2018. The report was positive with gains made. Seth provided a summary of the account holdings and even agreed to join our groups on some of the monthly calls. We were set to get quarterly reports for the second and third groups in January of 2019. Seth continued to show up in his Facebook group and ours representing himself as a person of integrity and honesty.
However, in January 2019 everything changed with Seth. While he continued his messages of integrity, etc. in his facebook group, his actions over the next 10 months started to suggest he was only giving lip service to his integrity and not practicing what he preached.
The following is an outline of events that eventually led to the complete deterioration of trust with Seth and revealed what appears to be a cleverly executed exit scam that stole Bitcoin from our group along with a number of other people. (Summary provided at end.)
October 9th, 2018
We received a summary statement of the account for Group 1. Group 2 (and eventually Group 3) would receive first quarterly reports in January 2019.
October 2018 to January 2019
Zero issues with Seth, everything was going well he continued to represent himself as a person of integrity.
January 1st, 2019
We did not receive our Quarterly Summary Statements from Seth for any of the groups.
January 2nd to January 11th, 2019
We reached out to Seth multiple times via Facebook Messenger and text messages asking when the Quarterly reports would be in. We finally heard back from Seth around the 11th saying reports should be out by the 15th of January.
January 15th, 2019
Cryptopia Hacked. This was an alarm for major concern as we had not heard anything from Seth and were left to assume the worst.
January 16th - 18th, 2019
No communication from Seth and the reports he now promised were late.
January 19th, 2019
We received a Voxer message from Seth. He explained he had started trading some of the “penny” alt-coins and as such had a lot of coin on Cryptopia. He also explained that he was not able to get into his Cryptopia account and that he was in a bit of a “panic” but explained he had an “idea” of what was in Cryptopia.
January 19th - February 5th 2019
We attempted to communicate with Seth about the hack and quarterly reports to try and get an idea of what happened. We received no direct response from Seth but eventually received a communication from Seth in his Telegram group explaining the hack. (We no longer have access to the group as Seth has since blocked us from all of his groups.) We eventually spoke with Seth on a phone call and he explained that he took a calculated risk and that he had placed nearly 7000 ETH on Cryptopia in hopes of taking advantage of the Constantinople hard fork that was supposed to take place on the 16th of January.
February 5th, 2019
We received the summary statements from Seth that were due on 1 January, 2019.
At this point those in the DWB group still trusted Seth and understood the risk associated with Cryptocurrency. Most in the group were upset because Seth had kept that much coin on a single exchange and, rightly so, as Seth preached security and the dangers of keeping coin on an exchange. Some in the group chose to send more coin to Seth to trade in hopes he would be able to recoup losses from the Cryptopia hack.
February 27nd, 2019
Each group was set to receive individual reports from Seth as he was supposedly trading three separate accounts for us. Given that the groups, combined, supposedly lost 10.4 BTC in the hack, everyone agreed to consolidate the groups into one in hopes of being able to leverage the remaining coin. So we requested that Seth consolidate the 3 group accounts into 1 hoping Seth would be able to continue to make successful trades.
February 28th, 2019 (Approx)
We sent in an additional 1.65 btc from those who wanted to add more for Seth to Trade. This brought the total coin we had sent to Seth up to 19.65 BTC
April 16th, 2019
We received our summary statement for the combined group from Seth. The account was down again, from 11 BTC to 7.5 BTC. Again, Seth continued with his Facebook group and his messaging had not changed, although he had continued to brag about signals he made that were seeing huge gains. This was not congruent with the summary of our account as he had now lost an additional 3.5 BTC.
July 20th, 2019
We received the summary statement for the combined group. We also received a Voxer message saying the summary report looked “rough” but that for July overall the account was on the “upswing.” Our account had dropped again this time from 7.5 BTC to 3.69 BTC.
July 21st, to August 8th, 2019
We communicated with Seth that we would like to have a conversation to discuss the quarterly report. We had also learned from someone who had an individual account with Seth, that Seth was going to be shutting down the Elite program. We reached out hoping to get clarity on this matter, but Seth did not respond.
August 9th, 2019
We received a message from Seth saying he could talk on August 10th.
Aug 10th, 2019
We finally spoke with Seth. Seth explained that he was shutting down his Elite program. He explained he was shutting it down because several people from the group had apparently reached out and attacked him on social media. He said he could not deal with that kind of feedback as it was not conducive to “winning.” He explained that he was closing down his Elite Program and would be sending close out forms and returning coin. We told Seth that if he was going to close the account, we were going to need to see actual proof of trades (not just the summary he had been providing) especially since he was closing our account at over a 90% loss. He said he had the proof of trades, that they were not readily available, but that he would provide them when he sent the closeout forms.
August 11th to August 16th 2019
We did not receive any closeout forms from Seth.
Aug 17th, 2019 - We sent Seth an email acknowledging his desire to close the account and requested he convert all alt-coin holdings back into BTC. We also let him know that we were leaving for two weeks and would not be available. We requested he send close out forms by the 4th of September so we would have them when we returned.
August 18th to September 4th, 2019
We were off grid and on vacation.
September 5th, 2019 - September 9th, 2019
We returned from vacation to find we had received no communications from Seth and no closeout docs. We attempted to call Seth, sent him messages on Voxer, Facebook, text messages in an attempt to get him to respond so we could close out the account. We received no communication or response from Seth.
September 10th, 2019
We sent an email to Seth to check in to see if he was ok as we had not heard from him.
September 11th, 2019
We received a text message communication from Seth showing him supposedly in the hospital and a message saying he had been extremely ill for 8 days. We asked if he was ok but received no response.
September 11th to September 13th, 2019
No response from Seth.
September 14th, 2019
We sent Seth a text asking if he was out of the hospital. He replied that he was out for a day but was back in again. He sent another picture of him supposedly in the hospital. Again, we asked if he was ok but received no response.
September 15th, 2019
We received a text from Seth saying they were recommending exploratory surgery. We responded by asking him when he was going in for surgery. He responded to our inquiry of him needing surgery by saying “are you f*cking nuts”.
September 16th, 2019
We sent Seth another text asking what the doctors thought was going on and if he had time to talk. We also left him a voicemail.
September 17th, 2019.
We received a text at 5:52 am from Seth saying “let’s connect this PM.”
At 5:48 PM we received a second message from Seth saying he was on a “violent health decline” and needed to push out our call. We responded by asking if we could connect the next day. We did not receive a response.
September 18th, 2019
Seth posted a picture across his social media platforms. The picture was of Seth, his father and Seth’s son on a hunting trip and clearly not in a “violent health decline.”
At 6:59 pm we received a text saying he was now on vacation but that he would be available most every evening to talk.
September 18th - September 23rd 2019
We attempted to call Seth, sent text and FB communications with zero response from Seth.
September 24th, 2019
We received a text message from Seth saying he was on the road and asked if we could connect on the 27th. We replied yes.
September 27th to October 1st, 2019
We attempted to call Seth several times and left him a message with no response and no communication from Seth at all in regards to our missed meeting again. At this point it felt very obvious to us that Seth was avoiding communication.
October 2nd, 2019
We sent a text message to Seth again asking for clarification on closeout. We explained to Seth that we were confused because we learned he had returned coin to another of his clients but that we still had not received any communication from him. The individuals we learned this from had explained to us that he had been having the same communication issues with Seth, that Seth had not provided proof of trades and that Seth refused to return his coin unless the closeout form was signed. We requested a quick phone call with Seth in hopes that the call would clarify what was going on.
Seth responded to our text message and reiterated that he stopped trading in July. He said he sent reports in August and that he was just waiting on signatures. We responded by saying that perhaps he miscommunicated and asked him to send final accounting and closeout docs and re-shared our email address as we still had not received anything from him. We also asked him to explain his plan for returning coin lost from the Cryptopia hack. Seth did not respond.
October 3rd,2019
No email received and no closeout docs received. We sent another text message to Seth requesting he send the close out forms.
October 3rd - October 6th, 2019
No response or communication from Seth.
October 7th, 2019
At this point it had been nearly 2 months since Seth explained he was closing his Elite Program and we still had not received anything from him. We sent Seth a formal demand letter in an email requesting a close out of our account with him and an accounting of all trades made. We also requested a full refund of all coin we sent him totaling 19.65 BTC since he had not communicated or ever provided proof of trades. We explained that if we did not receive the full amount back would report him to State authorities. We also asked him to explain what his plan was for returning coin from Cryptopia once the receivership overseeing the Cryptopia losses reconciled their findings from the hack.
October 8th, 2019
We received the close out forms via email from Seth. However, Seth did not provide any accounting, he did not provide proof of trades and he did not address Cryptopia. His closeout form required notary signature and gave no mention of any of our requests or concerns about accounting or actions to be taken when Cryptopia settled. The closeout forms were written in a way that completely exonerated Seth from any wrongdoing.
We replied back to Seth, reiterating our demand for a full refund of all of the coin we sent him and asked him to update the closeout form so it addressed final accounting and a plan for returning coin lost in the Cryptopia hack.
October 10th, 2019
We received an email from Seth claiming we were exaggerating things and exaggerating his lack of communication. (He said he was closing accounts in August, it was now October and he still hadn’t reconciled our account.) In his email, Seth addressed Cryptopia saying he was not aware of any communications from Cryptopia but that he would refund any coin should it be returned.
Seth did not update the closeout form and did not make any changes to it. He did not provide any proof of trades made and gave us an ultimatum. He said that we now had 30 days to sign the close out document and that if we did not sign before then, that any funds in our account would be forfeited.
October 11th to October 23rd 2019
We received zero communication from Seth. It became obvious that he was not interested in updating the closeout forms to include accounting or providing proof of trades he supposedly made.
October 24th, 2019
We made the decision to sign the closeout documents Seth sent per his deadline to avoid risking the loss of whatever coin may be left and because it appeared Seth was no longer interested in communicating. We sent the signed closeout out form under duress from his extortion since it felt that if we did not sign them he would not return the remaining 3.69 BTC he last reported our account holdings to be.
We sent the signed closeout forms back to Seth in an email and provided Seth with a link to the latest update from Cryptopia since he had previously claimed not to be aware of any communication regarding the hack. The link we sent was to information on an update from the receivership overseeing the Cryptopia hack that explained they were in the process of reconciling accounts.
October 25th, 2019
Seth blocked us on all social media platforms, he removed us from his coaching group, his telegram group and blocked us from Facebook all together.
October 25th - November 3rd, 2019
Zero communication from Seth.
November 4th, 2019
We communicated via text message to Seth asking for an ETA of the closeout. We received no response. We assumed he had now blocked our phone numbers as well.
November 7th, 2019
In a last ditch effort, we researched and located Seth’s business partner, Dave, via Facebook Messenger. We intentionally opted to keep Dave’s last name off this report because, at this time, we have no reason to suspect his involvement and he appeared to be cooperative and helpful in this process. We connected with him in hopes that he would be able to nudge Seth in doing the right thing by getting him to refund the full amount we sent in to him. And, at a bare minimum, see if he could get Seth to communicate with us. Dave responded and said he was willing to talk.
November 9th , 2019
We spoke with Dave on a call. He mentioned during the call that he was having the same issues getting Seth to communicate. He also mentioned that he was only partnered with Seth in a new business venture and that he was no longer involved with Seth in anything Cryptocurrency related. Dave was very helpful and understood our frustration with Seth’s lack of communication. Dave expressed his own frustration and committed to assisting us. He agreed to reach out to Seth to encourage him to communicate with us and issue a full refund of the coin.
November 12th, 2019
Dave wrote again via messenger saying he was going to try to talk to Seth.
Nov 13th, 2019
Dave sent a text saying he heard from Seth. Dave shared a text he received from Seth. In his text, Seth did not address his lack of communication but rather tried to lay the blame on us for the situation. We wrote back to Dave thanking him for the insights and acknowledging that Seth’s text confirmed what we had hoped wasn’t true.
November 15th, 2019
We received a text from Dave saying he finally spoke to Seth and that Seth agreed to reach out to us on the 16th.
November 16th to November 18th, 2019
No communication from Seth.
November 19th, 2019
Nearly a month after signing his closeout forms and nearly 3 months after Seth said he was closing our account we finally received coin back. Seth did not send back the full amount of 19.65 BTC but rather we received 1.68 BTC instead. We did not receive a countersigned closeout form either. We only received a summary of funds, the same summary of funds that was sent in July. However, it appears Seth ignored our request to convert our holdings to BTC from the request we made in the August 17th email we had sent him. Instead Seth “lost” another 2 BTC. We also did not receive any accounting or proof of actual trades made.
Summary:
Over the course of the 17-months Seth held our bitcoin he never provided proof of trades he supposedly made and he never provided proof that he sent coin to Cryptopia. He advertised 3-digit gains on trade signals he shared with his group but “lost” over 90% of the coin we sent him.
He forcibly closed our account then took nearly 3-months to return any coin. He only returned coin after we sent him a demand letter and we were forced to sign his closeout form to avoid him stealing the “remaining” coin in our account.
We learned along the way that Seth had done the same exact thing to at least 4 other people with a combined loss of over $350,000 worth of coin stolen/lost. He appears to have leveraged our relationship and his relationship with influencers on social media to steal large amounts of cryptocurrency from his clients.
Long story short, Seth Maniscalco failed as a fiduciary agent and ignored his fiduciary responsibilities by failing to provide proof of trades he supposedly made. His lack of communication, his threat to close the account if we did not sign his form combined with the fact that he blocked us across on all social media when presented with updated information about the Cryptopia hack we provided to him on October 24th, suggest Seth Maniscalco stole the majority of our coin. Because he never provided proof of trades, it appears he never actually traded our coin but rather used the Cryptopia hack as a cleverly executed exit scam.
Crypto Wealth Coach, LLC Reviews
The following is written on behalf of Digital Wealth Builders, LLC as it relates to an agreement for services offered by Seth Maniscalco (Crypto Wealth Coach, LLC).
Between 2017 and 2018 we built a relationship with Seth Maniscalco because of our involvement in the Cryptocurrency Space. We provided education, training, tools etc. on how to safely navigate the Cryptocurrency world. Helping individuals navigate the Cryptocurrency space was important to us because we saw so many being taken advantage of in this new industry.
We sought to help those who wanted to learn more and understand the ins-and-outs of all of the risk associated with Cryptocurrency. We met Seth Maniscalco online in mid 2017 when we started following his postings on Social Media through another Cryptocurrency group on Facebook.
We were very impressed with his knowledge of the Crypto World, trading, due diligence etc. He promoted security and even called out frauds and scams in his group. His mission seemed very aligned with ours and those we were serving. He continues to run a paid Facebook Group where he provides his reviews of coins and Crypto based projects as well as trade signals to those who trade Cryptocurrency.
The numbers he shared with the types of returns he claimed were impressive. His information and analysis, alongside the mindset training approach he offered in his group, resonated with us and it felt good to know that he appeared to be someone in the Crypto space who was worthy of uplifting and sharing with others. We eventually added him to our own Facebook Group and invited him to share his information with our audience.
We continued to see value in the information he shared with his messages. He preached messages of integrity, transparency, doing the right thing, family first, taking responsibility for one’s own actions, etc. He promoted Cryptocurrency as a new way to build wealth and how it could be used for personal banking, personal empowerment etc.
Seth promoted himself by showing his followers that he coached with high profile coaches and influencers as a bona-fides of who he was in the world. We even met with Seth when he drove through our area on a trip to see one of his business coaches. Overall, Seth seemed like a solid guy, a former Marine, who worked hard, gave voice to integrity, understood the importance of family and had several others who vouched for him and his integrity.
We were also affiliates for Seth’s signals group and over the course of the 2 years we included Seth as part of our own Facebook group, we made 1 commission of .19102 BTC for a referral who signed up through our affiliate link for his signals group.
In addition to his signals group, Seth offered a $50k “Elite” program. His Elite program was a done-for-you Crypto trading program where Seth traded coin on a client’s behalf and took a commission if the trades made money. We thought this was a brilliant idea but knew most would not be able to participate in his program because of the point of entry.
In June of 2018, we approached Seth and asked if he would entertain a group of people coming together to combine resources to take advantage of his Elite Program. He agreed as long as we served as the point of contact and as long as he didn’t have to manage the people in the group. Because of the fluctuating price of bitcoin he agreed to provide services with a minimum of at least 5 BTC. It was at that point that Digital Wealth Builders was born.
Digital Wealth Builders was designed to provide wealth mindset training combined with Seth’s Elite Services. The monthly training calls were designed to provide wealth mindset training and to go over trends, projects and things everyone saw in the Cryptocurrency industry. We met on a monthly training call each month and we recorded the calls since we had individuals from all around the globe who were a part of our training group.
We ran our first group in June 2018 and entered into individual agreements with each DWB client. Each agreement outlined Seth’s services and we held monthly training calls while Seth traded the coin. Digital Wealth Builders had a written agreement with Seth and our first group launched about June. We had several people who wanted to be a part of the DWB program so we launched a second group in July and eventually a third group in October 2018. All in all, we had 14 people join us between three groups.
As we started the first group, Seth mentioned he had run into a hiccup because he was accepting cash from his Elite clients and was going to have to give all of his cash clients their money back to avoid the issues of not having a money transfer license since he was having to convert cash into Bitcoin.
By the time our first group began Seth started accepting Bitcoin for his Elite Program and all of the transactions made between DWB clients and with Seth were done in Bitcoin. In October 2018, Seth communicated that he had returned monies to all of his cash clients and that he had lowered the requirement of his Elite program from $50k entry to $25k entry and was now transacting 100% in Bitcoin. This further affirmed the integrity and trust he had built within our relationship. Over the course of 17-months DWB sent Seth a total of 19.65 BTC between the three groups for him to trade as part of his Elite Program.
Seth supposedly started trading and the first group got the first quarterly update from Seth in October 2018. The report was positive with gains made. Seth provided a summary of the account holdings and even agreed to join our groups on some of the monthly calls. We were set to get quarterly reports for the second and third groups in January of 2019. Seth continued to show up in his Facebook group and ours representing himself as a person of integrity and honesty.
However, in January 2019 everything changed with Seth. While he continued his messages of integrity, etc. in his facebook group, his actions over the next 10 months started to suggest he was only giving lip service to his integrity and not practicing what he preached.
The following is an outline of events that eventually led to the complete deterioration of trust with Seth and revealed what appears to be a cleverly executed exit scam that stole Bitcoin from our group along with a number of other people. (Summary provided at end.)
October 9th, 2018
We received a summary statement of the account for Group 1. Group 2 (and eventually Group 3) would receive first quarterly reports in January 2019.
October 2018 to January 2019
Zero issues with Seth, everything was going well he continued to represent himself as a person of integrity.
January 1st, 2019
We did not receive our Quarterly Summary Statements from Seth for any of the groups.
January 2nd to January 11th, 2019
We reached out to Seth multiple times via Facebook Messenger and text messages asking when the Quarterly reports would be in. We finally heard back from Seth around the 11th saying reports should be out by the 15th of January.
January 15th, 2019
Cryptopia Hacked. This was an alarm for major concern as we had not heard anything from Seth and were left to assume the worst.
January 16th - 18th, 2019
No communication from Seth and the reports he now promised were late.
January 19th, 2019
We received a Voxer message from Seth. He explained he had started trading some of the “penny” alt-coins and as such had a lot of coin on Cryptopia. He also explained that he was not able to get into his Cryptopia account and that he was in a bit of a “panic” but explained he had an “idea” of what was in Cryptopia.
January 19th - February 5th 2019
We attempted to communicate with Seth about the hack and quarterly reports to try and get an idea of what happened. We received no direct response from Seth but eventually received a communication from Seth in his Telegram group explaining the hack. (We no longer have access to the group as Seth has since blocked us from all of his groups.) We eventually spoke with Seth on a phone call and he explained that he took a calculated risk and that he had placed nearly 7000 ETH on Cryptopia in hopes of taking advantage of the Constantinople hard fork that was supposed to take place on the 16th of January.
February 5th, 2019
We received the summary statements from Seth that were due on 1 January, 2019.
At this point those in the DWB group still trusted Seth and understood the risk associated with Cryptocurrency. Most in the group were upset because Seth had kept that much coin on a single exchange and, rightly so, as Seth preached security and the dangers of keeping coin on an exchange. Some in the group chose to send more coin to Seth to trade in hopes he would be able to recoup losses from the Cryptopia hack.
February 27nd, 2019
Each group was set to receive individual reports from Seth as he was supposedly trading three separate accounts for us. Given that the groups, combined, supposedly lost 10.4 BTC in the hack, everyone agreed to consolidate the groups into one in hopes of being able to leverage the remaining coin. So we requested that Seth consolidate the 3 group accounts into 1 hoping Seth would be able to continue to make successful trades.
February 28th, 2019 (Approx)
We sent in an additional 1.65 btc from those who wanted to add more for Seth to Trade. This brought the total coin we had sent to Seth up to 19.65 BTC
April 16th, 2019
We received our summary statement for the combined group from Seth. The account was down again, from 11 BTC to 7.5 BTC. Again, Seth continued with his Facebook group and his messaging had not changed, although he had continued to brag about signals he made that were seeing huge gains. This was not congruent with the summary of our account as he had now lost an additional 3.5 BTC.
July 20th, 2019
We received the summary statement for the combined group. We also received a Voxer message saying the summary report looked “rough” but that for July overall the account was on the “upswing.” Our account had dropped again this time from 7.5 BTC to 3.69 BTC.
July 21st, to August 8th, 2019
We communicated with Seth that we would like to have a conversation to discuss the quarterly report. We had also learned from someone who had an individual account with Seth, that Seth was going to be shutting down the Elite program. We reached out hoping to get clarity on this matter, but Seth did not respond.
August 9th, 2019
We received a message from Seth saying he could talk on August 10th.
Aug 10th, 2019
We finally spoke with Seth. Seth explained that he was shutting down his Elite program. He explained he was shutting it down because several people from the group had apparently reached out and attacked him on social media. He said he could not deal with that kind of feedback as it was not conducive to “winning.” He explained that he was closing down his Elite Program and would be sending close out forms and returning coin. We told Seth that if he was going to close the account, we were going to need to see actual proof of trades (not just the summary he had been providing) especially since he was closing our account at over a 90% loss. He said he had the proof of trades, that they were not readily available, but that he would provide them when he sent the closeout forms.
August 11th to August 16th 2019
We did not receive any closeout forms from Seth.
Aug 17th, 2019 - We sent Seth an email acknowledging his desire to close the account and requested he convert all alt-coin holdings back into BTC. We also let him know that we were leaving for two weeks and would not be available. We requested he send close out forms by the 4th of September so we would have them when we returned.
August 18th to September 4th, 2019
We were off grid and on vacation.
September 5th, 2019 - September 9th, 2019
We returned from vacation to find we had received no communications from Seth and no closeout docs. We attempted to call Seth, sent him messages on Voxer, Facebook, text messages in an attempt to get him to respond so we could close out the account. We received no communication or response from Seth.
September 10th, 2019
We sent an email to Seth to check in to see if he was ok as we had not heard from him.
September 11th, 2019
We received a text message communication from Seth showing him supposedly in the hospital and a message saying he had been extremely ill for 8 days. We asked if he was ok but received no response.
September 11th to September 13th, 2019
No response from Seth.
September 14th, 2019
We sent Seth a text asking if he was out of the hospital. He replied that he was out for a day but was back in again. He sent another picture of him supposedly in the hospital. Again, we asked if he was ok but received no response.
September 15th, 2019
We received a text from Seth saying they were recommending exploratory surgery. We responded by asking him when he was going in for surgery. He responded to our inquiry of him needing surgery by saying “are you f*cking nuts”.
September 16th, 2019
We sent Seth another text asking what the doctors thought was going on and if he had time to talk. We also left him a voicemail.
September 17th, 2019.
We received a text at 5:52 am from Seth saying “let’s connect this PM.”
At 5:48 PM we received a second message from Seth saying he was on a “violent health decline” and needed to push out our call. We responded by asking if we could connect the next day. We did not receive a response.
September 18th, 2019
Seth posted a picture across his social media platforms. The picture was of Seth, his father and Seth’s son on a hunting trip and clearly not in a “violent health decline.”
At 6:59 pm we received a text saying he was now on vacation but that he would be available most every evening to talk.
September 18th - September 23rd 2019
We attempted to call Seth, sent text and FB communications with zero response from Seth.
September 24th, 2019
We received a text message from Seth saying he was on the road and asked if we could connect on the 27th. We replied yes.
September 27th to October 1st, 2019
We attempted to call Seth several times and left him a message with no response and no communication from Seth at all in regards to our missed meeting again. At this point it felt very obvious to us that Seth was avoiding communication.
October 2nd, 2019
We sent a text message to Seth again asking for clarification on closeout. We explained to Seth that we were confused because we learned he had returned coin to another of his clients but that we still had not received any communication from him. The individuals we learned this from had explained to us that he had been having the same communication issues with Seth, that Seth had not provided proof of trades and that Seth refused to return his coin unless the closeout form was signed. We requested a quick phone call with Seth in hopes that the call would clarify what was going on.
Seth responded to our text message and reiterated that he stopped trading in July. He said he sent reports in August and that he was just waiting on signatures. We responded by saying that perhaps he miscommunicated and asked him to send final accounting and closeout docs and re-shared our email address as we still had not received anything from him. We also asked him to explain his plan for returning coin lost from the Cryptopia hack. Seth did not respond.
October 3rd,2019
No email received and no closeout docs received. We sent another text message to Seth requesting he send the close out forms.
October 3rd - October 6th, 2019
No response or communication from Seth.
October 7th, 2019
At this point it had been nearly 2 months since Seth explained he was closing his Elite Program and we still had not received anything from him. We sent Seth a formal demand letter in an email requesting a close out of our account with him and an accounting of all trades made. We also requested a full refund of all coin we sent him totaling 19.65 BTC since he had not communicated or ever provided proof of trades. We explained that if we did not receive the full amount back would report him to State authorities. We also asked him to explain what his plan was for returning coin from Cryptopia once the receivership overseeing the Cryptopia losses reconciled their findings from the hack.
October 8th, 2019
We received the close out forms via email from Seth. However, Seth did not provide any accounting, he did not provide proof of trades and he did not address Cryptopia. His closeout form required notary signature and gave no mention of any of our requests or concerns about accounting or actions to be taken when Cryptopia settled. The closeout forms were written in a way that completely exonerated Seth from any wrongdoing.
We replied back to Seth, reiterating our demand for a full refund of all of the coin we sent him and asked him to update the closeout form so it addressed final accounting and a plan for returning coin lost in the Cryptopia hack.
October 10th, 2019
We received an email from Seth claiming we were exaggerating things and exaggerating his lack of communication. (He said he was closing accounts in August, it was now October and he still hadn’t reconciled our account.) In his email, Seth addressed Cryptopia saying he was not aware of any communications from Cryptopia but that he would refund any coin should it be returned.
Seth did not update the closeout form and did not make any changes to it. He did not provide any proof of trades made and gave us an ultimatum. He said that we now had 30 days to sign the close out document and that if we did not sign before then, that any funds in our account would be forfeited.
October 11th to October 23rd 2019
We received zero communication from Seth. It became obvious that he was not interested in updating the closeout forms to include accounting or providing proof of trades he supposedly made.
October 24th, 2019
We made the decision to sign the closeout documents Seth sent per his deadline to avoid risking the loss of whatever coin may be left and because it appeared Seth was no longer interested in communicating. We sent the signed closeout out form under duress from his extortion since it felt that if we did not sign them he would not return the remaining 3.69 BTC he last reported our account holdings to be.
We sent the signed closeout forms back to Seth in an email and provided Seth with a link to the latest update from Cryptopia since he had previously claimed not to be aware of any communication regarding the hack. The link we sent was to information on an update from the receivership overseeing the Cryptopia hack that explained they were in the process of reconciling accounts.
October 25th, 2019
Seth blocked us on all social media platforms, he removed us from his coaching group, his telegram group and blocked us from Facebook all together.
October 25th - November 3rd, 2019
Zero communication from Seth.
November 4th, 2019
We communicated via text message to Seth asking for an ETA of the closeout. We received no response. We assumed he had now blocked our phone numbers as well.
November 7th, 2019
In a last ditch effort, we researched and located Seth’s business partner, Dave, via Facebook Messenger. We intentionally opted to keep Dave’s last name off this report because, at this time, we have no reason to suspect his involvement and he appeared to be cooperative and helpful in this process. We connected with him in hopes that he would be able to nudge Seth in doing the right thing by getting him to refund the full amount we sent in to him. And, at a bare minimum, see if he could get Seth to communicate with us. Dave responded and said he was willing to talk.
November 9th , 2019
We spoke with Dave on a call. He mentioned during the call that he was having the same issues getting Seth to communicate. He also mentioned that he was only partnered with Seth in a new business venture and that he was no longer involved with Seth in anything Cryptocurrency related. Dave was very helpful and understood our frustration with Seth’s lack of communication. Dave expressed his own frustration and committed to assisting us. He agreed to reach out to Seth to encourage him to communicate with us and issue a full refund of the coin.
November 12th, 2019
Dave wrote again via messenger saying he was going to try to talk to Seth.
Nov 13th, 2019
Dave sent a text saying he heard from Seth. Dave shared a text he received from Seth. In his text, Seth did not address his lack of communication but rather tried to lay the blame on us for the situation. We wrote back to Dave thanking him for the insights and acknowledging that Seth’s text confirmed what we had hoped wasn’t true.
November 15th, 2019
We received a text from Dave saying he finally spoke to Seth and that Seth agreed to reach out to us on the 16th.
November 16th to November 18th, 2019
No communication from Seth.
November 19th, 2019
Nearly a month after signing his closeout forms and nearly 3 months after Seth said he was closing our account we finally received coin back. Seth did not send back the full amount of 19.65 BTC but rather we received 1.68 BTC instead. We did not receive a countersigned closeout form either. We only received a summary of funds, the same summary of funds that was sent in July. However, it appears Seth ignored our request to convert our holdings to BTC from the request we made in the August 17th email we had sent him. Instead Seth “lost” another 2 BTC. We also did not receive any accounting or proof of actual trades made.
Summary:
Over the course of the 17-months Seth held our bitcoin he never provided proof of trades he supposedly made and he never provided proof that he sent coin to Cryptopia. He advertised 3-digit gains on trade signals he shared with his group but “lost” over 90% of the coin we sent him.
He forcibly closed our account then took nearly 3-months to return any coin. He only returned coin after we sent him a demand letter and we were forced to sign his closeout form to avoid him stealing the “remaining” coin in our account.
We learned along the way that Seth had done the same exact thing to at least 4 other people with a combined loss of over $350,000 worth of coin stolen/lost. He appears to have leveraged our relationship and his relationship with influencers on social media to steal large amounts of cryptocurrency from his clients.
Long story short, Seth Maniscalco failed as a fiduciary agent and ignored his fiduciary responsibilities by failing to provide proof of trades he supposedly made. His lack of communication, his threat to close the account if we did not sign his form combined with the fact that he blocked us across on all social media when presented with updated information about the Cryptopia hack we provided to him on October 24th, suggest Seth Maniscalco stole the majority of our coin. Because he never provided proof of trades, it appears he never actually traded our coin but rather used the Cryptopia hack as a cleverly executed exit scam.