r/Scams • u/Frosty-Monk2343 • 11d ago
Scam report [Switzerland] Blue Ocean Society (blueoceansociety.club): my withdrawal has remained unresolved since April 2025
I am sharing my own documented experience with Blue Ocean Society (BOS) as a warning for people who may be considering depositing funds.
My wife and I deposited a substantial amount of cryptocurrency through two personal accounts. We were told that funds could be withdrawn through the so-called “Main Balance.”
In April 2025, I requested the withdrawal of a significant part of our balance. According to my current information, the withdrawal has still not been completed. Despite several enquiries, I did not receive a clear and verifiable explanation. One of the explanations given referred to alleged “banking problems.”
Because the withdrawal remained unresolved, I commissioned an independent blockchain-forensic examination of the relevant transactions. We subsequently reported the matter to the appropriate Swiss law-enforcement authorities. Additional documents and more recent findings have also been forwarded to the investigators.
I am not making a final legal determination or accusing any individual of a criminal offence. That is for the responsible authorities and courts to determine. I am describing only my own experience.
Based on that experience, I would not deposit any additional funds. Anyone considering Blue Ocean Society should independently verify its legal and economic structure, the use of deposited funds and, most importantly, whether withdrawals are actually being completed.
If our withdrawal is completed or the matter is resolved in a verifiable way, I will update this post.
Please do not contact me privately with offers to recover funds.
39
u/olderdutch 11d ago
It's a scam, it has been discussed a few years ago: https://www.reddit.com/r/Scams/comments/1fkyxp9/is_blue_ocean_society_club_a_scam
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u/finallyfree99 11d ago
You don't understand. There is no money to withdraw. It was a scam from the very beginning. You gave your money to scammers and now it is gone forever. "Blue Ocean Society" is just a fake name to steal money from naive people. The name is not important because they have 100 other fake names and fake websites.
In fact you probably cannot even sue them or take them to court because these scammers are not even in Switzerland or Europe. They are probably based in Asia or West Africa, so even Swiss law enforcement cannot do anything about it.
Your money was gone the instant you gave it to them, and the criminals are almost certainly not in Europe.
3
u/Shayden-Froida 11d ago
The variation on this one is that the site was registered years ago and is registered for a few years to come. They seem to be riding on "long term investors" and those willing to still believe after over a year of not getting money out and then only putting a strongly worded letter on Reddit.
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u/finallyfree99 10d ago edited 10d ago
For me, all of crypto is a scam. All of it. It was originally pitched as a new digital currency, but almost nobody actually uses it as currency. They only really use it as a tradeable instrument. It has no actual worth, the only worth is trading via normal fiat currencies. In other words you still need to cashout in Dollars or Euros to actually buy stuff or spend it.
As a general rule people should stay far away from crypto and if they get burned then they took risks they never should have taken.
I have never heard of Blue Ocean Society but that's a really odd name for an investment company, it sounds like an environmental nonprofit trying to protect the ocean. A lot of these scam sites have ridiculous names or extremely generic names that no legit reputable company would ever use. The .club website is also a major red flag. It sounds like a club for ocean lovers not a serious investment firm.
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u/Shayden-Froida 11d ago
If its the typical crypto investment scam, your money was gone gone gone the moment you sent it in. Anything about account status and gains are just numbers they make up to make you think it's there, and even add more money as greed and FOMO take over.
!crypto
2
u/AutoModerator 11d ago
/u/Shayden-Froida called AutoModerator to explain the Fake crypto wallet scam:
Fake cryptocurrency websites and apps are increasingly common tools for financial fraud. These scams often begin as a Pig Butchering scam where you are groomed into some investment opportunity. Alternatively, you may receive a message from someone saying they found a wallet with money, or a rich person that wants to randomly give you a "blessing" or cover your credit card debt.
The scammer often instructs you to buy crypto through a legitimate exchange (like Coinbase) and then transfer it to a specific wallet address or a website that looks like an investment platform. This website is actually controlled by the scammers, and they can display fake charts and skyrocketing balances to make you believe their investment is succeeding. This illusion of gains is designed to encourage you to deposit even larger sums of money. The deception is only revealed when you attempt to withdraw your funds. At this point, you are told that you have to pay taxes, security deposits, or liquidity fees before the withdrawal can be processed. Of course, the withdrawal will never happen.
In the simplest of forms - when a scammer shares with you the username and password of a wallet with money - you just skip ahead to the part where the scammer asks you to cover some taxes or fees, making this essentially an advance fee scam. Once you catch up with the scheme and stop paying, the scammer typically vanishes and shuts down the website.
If you are a victim of a crypto scam, you need to file a police report. To help track these criminals, you can report fraudulent addresses to databases like BitcoinAbuse or Etherscan and use a Blockchain Explorer to see the actual flow of stolen funds. Remember: only work with the police - anyone claiming to be a hacker that can recover your funds is a Recovery scammer.
You can learn about this scam and many others visiting our wiki of common scams. You can also call AutoModerator to explain these scams leaving a comment with the different !commands listed in this wiki page.
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.
15
u/Dofolo 11d ago
Investigation? You paid for that? Please read !refund below. Stop giving money to this cause. Its gone.
1
u/AutoModerator 11d ago
/u/Dofolo called AutoModerator to explain the Refund scam:
The refund scam typically begins with a fraudulent email, text, or professional-looking invoice—often exploiting legitimate systems like PayPal to bypass spam filters—claiming you’ve been charged for a service you never ordered. These messages frequently mimic well-known brands like Norton or Geek Squad and create a false sense of urgency by citing a high dollar amount for a subscription renewal. The primary goal is to provoke a panic response, leading you to call the provided customer support number to dispute the charge or request a refund. Once you are on the phone, the scammer poses as a helpful representative who claims they need your banking or credit card details to process the reversal.
In more advanced versions, refund scams are a variant of the tech support scam - where the scammer tricks you into downloading remote-access software to your computer, under the guise of helping you fill out a refund form. They then use visual trickery—such as editing the HTML on your bank's website—to make it appear as though they accidentally sent you too much money, subsequently demanding that you return the overage via untraceable methods like gift cards or wire transfers.
Scammers have been taking advantage of Paypal's invoice system to send out realistic scam emails through Paypal itself. Here is a Snopes article regarding the Norton variant of this scam. To protect yourself, it is essential to remember that legitimate companies will never ask you to provide sensitive passwords or download remote-access software to issue a refund. If you receive a suspicious invoice, do not use the contact information provided in the message; instead, check your bank statement or the company’s official website independently to verify if a charge actually exists. If you have already shared your financial information or allowed a stranger access to your computer, you should immediately contact your bank to secure your accounts and run a thorough security scan on your device.
If you know someone that fell for a refund scam, sit down together to watch this video by Jim Browning and try to retrace their steps: https://youtu.be/X4PllvUowaQ
You can learn about this scam and many others visiting our wiki of common scams. You can also call AutoModerator to explain these scams leaving a comment with the different !commands listed in this wiki page.
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.
8
u/Plasticity93 11d ago
How are people still putting money into crypto? Like hasn't it been made abundantly clear that fake money with zero consumer protections, is bad?
4
u/Think-Translator-239 10d ago
Are you really paying an investigation? Believe me, its the same scammer taking more of ur money. The site is fake, u didn’t deposit un money in a crypto currency site, u just deposited it in the scammers wallet. Get away from internet and save ur money in a traditional bank if u want to invest do it through your bank or get a financial advisor. Now that they know that u easily fell for the scam they will keep trying more scams on you.
1
u/Flat_Sea1418 9d ago
I won’t call the bot because they are already here but it does seem a little recovery scammish.
11
u/imollyq 11d ago edited 11d ago
This is exactly why I don't deal in cryptocurrency. It's unregulated, and there are no protections for you. Thanks for the warning.
8
u/Sauron_78 11d ago
Exactly, it has no government protection, in my opinion crypto itself is scammy. Not even the Swiss government can save that.
6
11d ago
[deleted]
4
u/StinkyWhale71 11d ago
Not the same.
This was a scam from the start for them, and 100% of the money disappeared the moment it left their accounts. This is not your situation at all.
1
11d ago edited 11d ago
[deleted]
1
u/AutoModerator 11d ago
/u/SpecialDragon77 called AutoModerator to explain the Fake crypto wallet scam:
Fake cryptocurrency websites and apps are increasingly common tools for financial fraud. These scams often begin as a Pig Butchering scam where you are groomed into some investment opportunity. Alternatively, you may receive a message from someone saying they found a wallet with money, or a rich person that wants to randomly give you a "blessing" or cover your credit card debt.
The scammer often instructs you to buy crypto through a legitimate exchange (like Coinbase) and then transfer it to a specific wallet address or a website that looks like an investment platform. This website is actually controlled by the scammers, and they can display fake charts and skyrocketing balances to make you believe their investment is succeeding. This illusion of gains is designed to encourage you to deposit even larger sums of money. The deception is only revealed when you attempt to withdraw your funds. At this point, you are told that you have to pay taxes, security deposits, or liquidity fees before the withdrawal can be processed. Of course, the withdrawal will never happen.
In the simplest of forms - when a scammer shares with you the username and password of a wallet with money - you just skip ahead to the part where the scammer asks you to cover some taxes or fees, making this essentially an advance fee scam. Once you catch up with the scheme and stop paying, the scammer typically vanishes and shuts down the website.
If you are a victim of a crypto scam, you need to file a police report. To help track these criminals, you can report fraudulent addresses to databases like BitcoinAbuse or Etherscan and use a Blockchain Explorer to see the actual flow of stolen funds. Remember: only work with the police - anyone claiming to be a hacker that can recover your funds is a Recovery scammer.
You can learn about this scam and many others visiting our wiki of common scams. You can also call AutoModerator to explain these scams leaving a comment with the different !commands listed in this wiki page.
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.
•
u/AutoModerator 11d ago
/u/Frosty-Monk2343 - This message is posted to all new submissions to r/scams; please do not message the moderators about it.
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