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Check this out – German PPRO Group gets $180M at $1B+ valuation
Germany has a new FinTech. FCA-regulated PPRO Financial is controlled by the German PPRO Holding GmbH and has affiliated companies in Europe, Asia, North and South America. Today, the company announced that it had received a total of $180 million in fresh money from investors based on a valuation of more than $1 billion. With this, PPRO joins the club of FinTech unicorns. However, in the past, PPRO has also attracted attention for supporting broker scams with its payment services.
Latest Updates
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Trinity Files – The U.S Case of Gery Shalon, Vienna Cybercrime Trials, and Russian connections
The Georgian-born Israeli Gery "Gabi" Shalon is arguably the mastermind of the world's largest cybercrime organization, stretching over the U.S., Europe, Russia, Georgia, Israel into Asia. The Israeli accountant Ziv Orenstein was one of Shalon's deputies in the U.S. There, they operated illegal gaming schemes and performed the largest cybercrime attack ever on the U.S. financial industry. While waiting for his U.S. trial Shalon continues to operate his cybercrime ventures.
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High-Risk Processor MoneyNetInt nominated for the Oscar of Banking Industry
MoneyNetint, controlled by Gil Trif and his family and Raphael Golan, and the related GlobalNetInt UAB, regulated by the Bank of Lithuania, is known for addressing the high-risk segment and not shying away from facilitating scam clients. Now MoneyNetint has asked us nicely to vote for them to win the Oscar of the banking industry. Sorry, but did we miss something here?
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Osprey Bitcoin Fund – A low-cost bitcoin trust about to be listed at OTCQX
The BTC is currently oscillating around $37,000 with a resulting market cap of around $680B. ETH is holding at over $1,200 with a market cap of around $140B. No surprise that new crypto-related financial instruments are emerging, such as Greg King's Osprey Bitcoin Trust (www.ospreyfunds.io), whose shares started to trade on the OTC market in New York a few days ago. This has given competition to Barry Silbert's Grayscale Bitcoin Trust and may drive additional demand for BTC.
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Payvision and Vienna Cybercrime Trials – Let’s scam the scammers and the EFRI Campaign
Oh yes, the alleged German cybercrime mastermind Uwe Lenhoff was a very good acquaintance of Payvision founder and CEO Rudolf Booker. They spent skiing vacations together in Austria and communicated a lot. Thanks to the frequent and very open communication between Lenhoff and Booker, their business details can be found in the criminal files. They show how high-risk payment processors work.
Payment Processors
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High-Risk Payment Processors Series and the dark side of finance
Undoubtedly, high-risk payment processors (#HRPP) are at the very center of cybercrime and scams. Very often, they facilitate consumer fraud and related money laundering. In early September 2020, Gal Barak was sentenced to four years in prison for investment fraud and money laundering in the Vienna Cybercrime Trials (#VCT) for operating a global scam broker network. A breakthrough in the fight against cybercrime. the forensic analysis of banking and financial data by law enforcement, the trial findings, and the court's reasoning in the verdict also allow investigating the anatomy of high-risk payment processors.
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Illegal Payment Processors FermenTec Trade and Wascom Group exposed
Scams would not even be possible without the intentional or grossly negligent involvement of payment processors. In this respect, the prosecution and detection of crime-facilitating payment processors is a key focus in the fight against scams. Thanks to the cooperation of scam victims and whistleblowers, we have already been able to uncover numerous licensed and unlicensed payment processors. With the Serbian FermenTec Trade DOO and the Hungarian Wascom Group KFT, we have again caught two illegal payment processors.
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Scam-facilitating Maltese payment processor PayTah refused to recognize its legal responsibility
Recently, we reported that the high-risk payment processor Phoenix Payments Ltd d/b/a Paytah (www.paytah.com), like Maxigrid in Cyprus, has been helping large broker scams like RoyalsFX, LincolnFX, or CodeFX to defraud consumers and retail investors with their payment services. Paytah is to be held liable for this but has so far refused to accept its responsibility for intentionally or grossly negligently supporting the scams and refuses to provide any assistance to the victims.
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Investor Alert – Broker scam NAB Consulting with PaynetEasy
Every single day we receive reports about new scams from whistleblowers and victims. Much appreciated it is! For us, this is an indication that investors are becoming more alert. That's excellent news. However, regulators and law enforcement are taking longer to do so. But that's exactly why FinTelegram exists. An insider informed us that there is a new broker scam active with NAB Consulting. We took a look at the scam and found Israeli-Russian PaynetEasy as the facilitating payment processor.
Cybercrime Court Cases
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Breaking News -German prosecutors filed extradition request for cybercrime principal Gal Barak
Gal Barak was sentenced to four years imprisonment and restitution payments for investment fraud and money laundering as a principal of the Bulgarian cybercrime organization E&G Bulgaria in the Vienna Cybercrime Trials (#VCT) opening in early September 2020. It was already clear at the time that other countries would also press charges against Barak if he were found guilty. Barak is currently still in prison in Austria. Germany intends to file charges against him and has sent an extradition request to the Austrian authorities.
Regulatory Updates
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EFRI takes action against scam-facilitating Maltese payment processor Paytah
Phoenix Payments Ltd provides payments services d/b/a as Paytah. Between 2019 and 2020, the payment processor has been processing hundreds of thousands of euros from victims of LincolnFX, RoyalsFX, CodexFX, and other scams. The legal entities behind these scams have been clients of Paytah. The company directors are the Italian Marco Lavanna, the Maltese Keith Farrugia, and Spaniard Francesc Xavier Alabart Lopez. The payment processor's beneficial owner is payment veteran Marco Lavanna through his Swiss-registered firm named Fenice Holding SA.
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SEC Complaint against Ripple may cause the first financial collapse in crypto universe
The last days of 2020 saw the U.S. SEC complaint against Ripple Labs Inc. alleging that its XRP is actually a security. A regulatory attack on the entire crypto scene, some analysts argue. Once the 3rd-largest crypto, XRP's market cap plummeted from more than $26 billion to less than $10 billion. Some crypto exchanges such as Coinbase, OKCoin, or Crypto.com have suspended trading in XRP. Is it the end of days for XRP and the crypto bull-run?
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U.S. SEC obtained Emergency Asset Freeze against $120 Mio crypto scheme Virgil Capital
The U.S. SEC filed an emergency action and obtained an order imposing an asset freeze and other emergency relief against Virgil Capital LLC (www.virgilcap.com) and its affiliated companies in connection with an alleged securities fraud relating to Virgil Capital's cryptocurrency trading fund, Virgil Sigma Fund LP. The Commission's action alleges that the fraud was directed by Stefan Qin, an Australian citizen and part-time resident of New York, who owns and controls the crypto scheme.
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European Funds Recovery Initiative (EFRI) is a non-government organization with the mission to support scam and cybercrime victims.
