The Hashrate That Never Hashed: Recovering $47,300 from CloudMiningCity
A retired electrician was sold a “managed Bitcoin mining” contract by CloudMiningCity, complete with a daily-yield dashboard. The hashrate was never real, and every withdrawal triggered another fee. We traced the cash-out and returned just over half.
First Contact
It began in a Facebook “passive income” group, where a representative for CloudMiningCity explained that he could rent a slice of an industrial Bitcoin-mining farm and earn a fixed daily yield — no hardware, no power bills, just a dashboard ticking upward each morning.
The onboarding looked professional: a signed “hashrate contract,” a branded portal, and a support agent who replied within minutes. When he requested a small $400 withdrawal early on, it landed the next day. That single honoured payout turned caution into confidence — and a test deposit into his retirement savings.
Where the Trail Went Cold
The dashboard showed steady daily BTC accrual climbing past $47,000. When he tried to withdraw the balance, the portal returned an error: a “pool maintenance fee” had to be cleared first, payable only in fresh Bitcoin.
He paid it. Then came a “hashrate upgrade fee,” then a “tax clearance deposit,” each larger than the last and each blocking the withdrawal until paid. This is the advance-fee wall — the displayed balance is just a number in a database CloudMiningCity controls, and every “fee” is another deposit into their wallet.
“Every time I got close to my money, there was one more small fee. I’d already paid so much that stopping felt insane.”— Claimant statement, intake call
Following the Trail
Reconstruct the timeline
We logged every deposit, captured the dashboard screenshots, and listed each Bitcoin address he had sent funds to — the raw material for an on-chain trace.
Follow the deposits on-chain
Each payment was traced from his exchange withdrawals into CloudMiningCity’s receiving wallets. The “fees” all flowed one direction — toward a single consolidation address.
Cluster the operator wallets
That consolidation address batched victim deposits and forwarded them in regular sweeps — a behavioural fingerprint we could follow rather than guess at.
Identify the cash-out point
The sweeps deposited into the hot wallet of a regulated exchange. Matching amounts and timestamps tied CloudMiningCity’s cash-out to a specific platform and account.
Evidence package & freeze request
We delivered a labelled evidence file to the exchange’s compliance team and filed reports with IC3 and local police. The balance still resident on the platform was frozen against the case reference.
Trail’s End
About $25,069 was returned — the portion still on the exchange when the freeze landed. Funds CloudMiningCity had already swept into private self-custody were beyond reach, and we said so from day one.
Trail Markers
- “Guaranteed” fixed daily mining returns — real mining yield swings with network difficulty and price; it is never a flat daily figure.
- A withdrawal that unlocks only after new, ever-larger fees payable in fresh crypto.
- A small early withdrawal that “works,” used to justify a far larger deposit.
- No verifiable facility, pool address, or audited hashrate — only a dashboard the operator alone controls.
Sold a “mining contract” you can’t withdraw from?
If a yield dashboard is demanding fees before it releases your funds, the trail is still warm. A Cryptocule case review is free and confidential.
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