On the r/CryptoScams forum, user JustaBoxofRocks shared a heartbreaking story about losing 0.5 BTC (about $42,000) while trying to exchange it for Monero via the SwapSpace aggregator, which redirected him to the Changee exchange.

According to user JustaBoxofRocks, on April 8 the transaction got stuck and then returned an error. SwapSpace support simply brushed him off and sent him to deal with Changee. The latter demanded that he pass KYC on a service that is positioned as No-KYC. The author successfully passed verification through AMLBot, but the nightmare didn't end there. The exchange demanded proof of the source of funds. When the user offered cryptographic proof (Monero TxProof) — the gold standard of verification in blockchain — they simply rejected it. For 10 days and more than 30 emails, support just strung him along, demanding ever-new data about random transactions from his history, without returning a single satoshi.

User checkyourearsbro doubted the post's veracity due to its style, which looked AI-generated, and asked for the transaction hashes. The author immediately provided the TxID: 38a1634ab0cb6a4fa9d8f501f13d9fe5e9e44faf60df47b81558a29ea7c769d7.

In the comments, the legal underpinning was quickly identified. According to user PeePeeePooPoooh, Changee's terms of service contain a direct prohibition on serving US citizens, which gives them a legal pretext to appropriate violators' money. However, the post's author clarified that he is not from the US and promised to spend another 0.5 BTC on a PR campaign to destroy their reputation in crypto media. User jmbsbran genuinely wondered why anyone would send such a huge amount in one go without a preliminary test transaction.

It's worth noting that this fraud pattern is well known. According to user HelpfulCondition7595, SwapSpace and their partners (such as FixedFloat) run the same scheme: small amounts go through without a problem, while large ones instantly get hit with an "AML flag" and disappear. An official SwapSpace_support account appeared in the thread, posting a standard boilerplate about how they don't benefit from this and it's just a verification procedure, but the community was no longer impressed.