Joel Ignatius Senecal committed financial fraud against me and then turned around and made false allegations by maliciously reporting himself as the victim in an elaborate Swapsy money scam... Oregon

Joel Ignatius Senecal committed financial fraud against me and then turned around and made false allegations by maliciously reporting himself as the victim in an elaborate Swapsy money swap scam...

On the evening of Tuesday September 15th 2020, at around 8:09PM (Central Time Zone) I (Bo Chen) sent via my Bank of America (with Zelle) $97.00 USD to an individual by the purported name of Joel Senecal ('givenchy' Joel Ignatius Senecal) to his Zelle account (he was enrolled by email at senecaji@yahoo.com) and this transaction completed instantly. I had previously not interacted with this Joel Senecal individual before, and this was entirely in the context of a legal money swap provided by the Swapsy service at (theswapsy.com) which they claimed themselves to be legit and registered with MSB and FinCEN and their service featured on The New York Times, MuckerCapital, etc...

I had a need to send some money to a friend overseas in a foreign country. Since I only had US dollars and the friend could only make use of his local currency, the friend suggested that I utilize Swapsy to send him some funds. I signed up and followed the 'matching' instructions and wanted to start by sending something relatively small amount since I've never used the service before and didn't know how trustworthy the platform and/or the process would be. I submitted my ID and passed the required ID verification process and was ready to do a "swap"...

I was paired by the Swapsy system in a double-blind manner with this individual called Joel Senecal. I was instructed to send $97 USD to Joel Senecal's Zelle account directly from my Bank of America (debit/checking) account via my Zelle app. I sent the $97 USD to Joel and used Bandicam to screen record a video recording of the entire process and session. I also used Greenshot to take many screenshots along the way during the entire money sending/transfer process. Later after I confirmed with Swapsy that I had sent Joel the money, I attached screenshots as proof of transfer and logged out and went to sleep that night... The system advised me that the process would take less than 18 hours and had a countdown timer that assured me the money swap would be completed by or before that time.

When I woke up the following morning on September 16th I noticed in my email mailbox a notification from Swapsy saying that the recipient (Joel Senecal) had disputed the transaction and claimed to have never received the funds. Swapsy was very rude and stated that I must send additional proof that I had sent the funds otherwise my account would be canceled and the transfer would be terminated, etc... Curiously, based on the timestamp, it appears Joel filed a dispute against me (after I had already sent him the money in full) at around 5AM Central Time, which is actually 3AM his local time, after I discovered later on that he resides in the Pacific Time Zone.

Swapsy demanded all support communication to go only through WeChat. When I offered to send them screenshots/video evidence via email, they refused and asked that I send everything through WeChat app instead. I sent them the requested screenshot and video proofs that show I sent the money to Joel and did everything correctly on my part of the process etc. Swapsy that morning recommended that I call my bank. So during lunchtime that same day (Sept 16th) I called my Bank of America and spoke with the bank customer support about this ordeal.

After some review, the Bank of America determined that the money had indeed been sent from my account to Joel and the Bank of America stated there had not been any holds, audits, pending status, for the transaction to Joel. I asked the Bank to do some more in-depth analysis and they were able to ascertain that Joel was an enrolled Zelle user and Joel's bank is Chase banking. They also confirmed that Zelle transfers even interbank between members of the Zelle group are nearly instant. From their standpoint they confirmed there were no hold ups and that nothing was in pending status and that the money in fact already posted back on the September 15th, the same day that I sent the payment.

I had voice recorded this entire process and my whole conversation with Bank of America support. After the call I sent Swapsy support a copy of this voice recording to further document and proof that I was telling the truth, that I had already sent Joel the money, and that Joel's dispute against me and his allegations that he never received the money was false.

From that point on I did not hear back from Swapsy again. After the 18-hour countdown mark passed, there was still no resolution, my friend overseas stated he didn't get any money, and my bank account was still out/deducted the $97 USD, whilst Swapsy had stopped giving me any more status updates, and the transactions itself was basically in forgotten/limbo status, with neither Swapsy canceling the transaction and returning /refunding me the funds, nor the recipient Joel recanting his false allegations that he had made and disputed against me.

Even well after the 24-hour mark, Swapsy has still not refunded my money, nor has anyone sent the money to my friend. All I know is that I'm out of $97 USD and I've gotten nothing back in return except massive headaches, needing to waste hours to contact my bank and gather evidence to prove I had actually sent the money, and on top of that also being falsely accused by the Joel scammer guy and having to deal with Swapsy pertaining to clearing up my good name after scammer Joel made a false allegation against me (when he already got the money!) after he himself was proven to have committed financial fraud against me...

=====

Forensic digital hashes of the video and voice recordings... (nonredacted, but redacted versions for privacy may be uploaded later)
(all have been uploaded and scanned by Google's VirusTotal to 'timestamp' the hashes as well)

< T:\Bandicam\bandicam 2020-09-15 20-06-28-096.mp4 >
  MD5: 25338845D60CCD914FCE56E31E8A99F6
  SHA-1: 52DC540FF84412CE85B4E4F2EE00466B68D611D2
  SHA-256: 88B9682B0A7F1177C61D57E928BA1D9CA27F3F2DF2D56D824A2F4923F62C26E2
  SHA-512: 72D9D49A148B1CBFDD11A9BB86EAC8B96FDD07A617D0961C985112FD483ECCA1AB26CDE5FD735A7B9475C4D52C2301C784A15607D709C8A57A52BA18F7A3AEDC

< T:\Bandicam\bandicam 2020-09-16 17-08-52-474.mp4 >
  MD5: C47CC908EE406F35E822C63AE2A8B9F6
  SHA-1: 92355E3185C594A1EA5D7EFE47B37CBC89D42523
  SHA-256: 18AABE2B758878F4867B286EC5C55F6A6695047D6449D136ACDEEDB076735E82
  SHA-512: 07F161E2E1778103765E65F8C3AE35803610D821B10B8D4AEA12BA07EB4243001E8A3470AC0786419AC0D95E78D690F885D445C62A570F5BACDB33CAFFF47302

< C:\Users\User\Desktop\VoiceRecording_BANK_CALL.mp3 >
  MD5: 736853EFE2111F3F5312F5EA89F3BA76
  SHA-1: 96286F4141E2C9BA37294F197112B72D480ED1A3
  SHA-256: C93D57949418F8BBEC240CE69CB8AA2E12C52E680145E2EA5455141BFED3A4E4
  SHA-512: 56B99E237AB4CEBDE4EFFB30958A137C7BE24FD98270A5E5E352813834E7864488AF4AB4A31138A987F20739440C8FDD98DAC5A1F7A991B3874897EE88FC5A91