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Chasing Scam Facilitators – The Vienna Cybercrime Trials, SpotOption, and PandaTS
Israeli Gal Barak was sentenced in September 2020 to four years in prison and millions in restitution payments for investment fraud and money laundering in the Vienna Cybercrime Trials. Barak also faces charges in Germany. He was the head of the cybercrime organization E&G Bulgaria, which operated broker scams such as XtraderFX, SafeMarkets, Golden Markets, or OptionStarsGlobal. Payvision was its main payment facilitator, and PandaTS, the white label provider, which Barak charges with similar arguments as the U.S. SEC does in its SpotOption fraud complaint.
Latest Updates
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Fraud campaign Elite Trading Club chases victims for CySEC-regulated eXcentral
A very freshly pressed warning about a fraudulent marketing campaign: we have just received another email promising that we will receive an app that generates €734 income for us every 15 minutes. The provided link takes us to the notorious Elite Trading Club campaign on the FXOffers site (https://fxoffers.cc/elite). Upon registering, we are redirected to the payment page of the CySEC-regulated eXcentral (www.excentral.com). We would have been able to deposit unlimited amounts via bank wire without compliant onboarding or KYC.
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R4I – Scam-facilitating licensed Estonian crypto payment processor PayTechno
We already know Igor Torsin. Don't we? The 62-year old Estonian lawyer works for Estonian company builder Eesti Firma OÜ and is a director at nine FIU-licensed Estonian crypto companies (read this report). Among them is PayTechno OÜ, supervised by the FIU with license number FVT000151. The company was registered in May 2018 and operates two domains www.cryptopaytech.com and www.paytechno.com. The latter is one of the worst scam-facilitators as a crypto payment processor. We would like to know more.
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Daily Affiliate Warning – RocketChart broker scam facilitated by PayTechno and iPayTotal
Today we get an email telling us the secret to making money. The link in the email takes us (again) to LPONLINE or TopOnTechBiz and the article about the next big startup after Google and Facebook. We already know the campaign. Still, we are promised that we will get rich with it in 7 days. To sign up, we are redirected (again) to the BitQT campaign on Amazing Offers (www.amazing-offers.online/bitqt), further to Bitcoin Revolution and then, finally, to the scam broker RocketChart.
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And again! Investor warning against Capital Holdings broker scam with Way 2 Freedom affiliate scheme
FinTelegram is registered with scams and their affiliate schemes through various email addresses. Therefore, several times a day, we receive emails from constantly new email addresses suggesting investment opportunities without risk with high returns. One of these email senders is the Way 2 Freedom affiliate scheme, which today is feeding victims to the broker scam Capital Holdings, supposedly operated by SNT Agensy World Ltd in the Marshall Islands with iPayTotal, the Estonian Paytechno, and Spanisch Ceca as the facilitating payment processors. Please do not fall for it.
Payment Processors
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Attention – Estonian scam-facilitator XChangePro is no longer licensed!
Estonian BlueData OÜ d/b/a XChangePro has come to our attention over the past few months as a scam-supporting crypto payment processor. It has supported scams like Plutus, MDX500, or Blackstone500. On its websites www.xchangepro.net and www.exchangepro.eu, XChangePro claims to be a financial institution licensed by the Estonian FIU with license number FVR000146 and Ken Kovask as its only director. In fact, this license is no longer valid as of September 2020. Stay away from XChangePro.
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Maxigrid Case Update – Law enforcement investigations and Serbian boiler room activities
Since May 2020, we have been reporting on the Maxigrid Case. In a nutshell, Maxigrid Ltd of Israeli Roy Almagor and its CEO Jekaterina Pedosa, regulated by CySEC under license number 145/11, has been processing funds as an unlicensed payment processor for many broker scams such as RoyalsFX, LincolnFX, 10CryptoMarket, RoyalCBank, and others. For this purpose, Maxigrid used its bank account with the Lithuanian GlobalNetint as well as its own crypto platform BitandBuy. Victims of these scams have provided us with many documents proving this. At least one victim has filed a lawsuit and criminal charges through his attorney.
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Licensed Estonian scam-facilitator Woodstock and its payments network
We have recently discovered the licensed Estonian crypto payment processor Woodstock OÜ as a payment processor in the Trade Com scams network with GlobalSpotFX, Spotfinex, FXonspot, or TopEuroFX. These scams' victims deposited money through Woodstock's bank accounts with Lithuanian financial institutions Finolita Unio UAB, GlobalNetInt UAB, the Maltese Secure Trading Financial Services Limited, and crypto exchanges. Woodstock is controlled by Marianna Charalampous and does not even have a functioning website.
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Investor Warning – Trade Com Group, GlobalSpotFX, Spotfinex, FXonspot, and TopEuroFX scams
GlobalSpotFX, Spotfinex, FXonspot, and TopEuroFX are associated with a Trade Com Limited, which does not appear to exist. In January and August 2020, the UK FCA issued investor warnings against the FXonspot scam; in September 2020, the Spanish CNMV. Until recently, the Google App Store offered the Spotfinex trading app. This has been renamed TopEuro FX (www.topeurofx.com) and is still available for download. As facilitating payment processors, we have discovered Payecards and Estonian Woodstock OÜ with the Lithuanian e-Money Institution Finolita Unio.
Cybercrime Court Cases
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Chasing Scam Facilitators – The U.S. v. SpotOption, Yukom, GreyMountain Management, et al
Broker scams are like icebergs. You can see only the tip sticking out of the water, i.e., domain, website, offshore entities, and nominees a/k/a monkeys. Underwater or in the darkness of the Internet, the real perpetrators and facilitators are hiding. These scam-facilitators are white label providers, the boiler room operators, marketing and affiliate systems, and the payment processors. In the case of the Yukom scam, these were the boiler rooms in Israel and Mauritius, mostly Israeli payment processors, and the white-label operator SpotOption, which provided the software and trading infrastructure.
Regulatory Updates
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FCA warning against PrimeQX broker scam operating with CySEC clone site
The UK Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has issued an investor warning against the broker scam PrimeQX. The scam is operated by PRIME BUSINESS FINANCE LTD and MAGNETITS CAPITAL LTD. The scam claims to be regulated by CySEC with license number 129/22. The scammers operate the fake CySEC site www.cysecgov.com where PrimeQX is falsely presented as a CySEC-approved domain. As the scams payment facilitators, we have discovered iPayTotal, Itez, WE4BTC, and PaymentsPro.
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Breaking News – SEC files complaint against white-label broker hub SpotOption and its owners
The Israeli broker white-label operator SpotOption is related to the Yukom Case. Today, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) charged Spot Tech House Ltd (d/b/a SpotOption) and two of its former top executives, Malhaz Pinhas Patarkazishvili (a/k/a Pini Peter) and Ran Amiran, with deceiving U.S. investors out of more than $100 million through fraudulent and unregistered online sales of risky securities known as binary options.
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Italian Consob orders blackout of five new broker scams
Consob now announces almost every Monday the blackout of websites of illegally operating providers of financial services. This makes the Italian financial market supervisory authority the only EU regulator to take this effective measure. For consumer protection in the EU, it would be desirable if more member states would create a legal basis for blocking illegal or fraudulent websites. Today, the Italian watchdog announced that it ordered the black-out of five new websites that offer financial services illegally.
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Join the fight against cybercrime!
European Funds Recovery Initiative (EFRI) is a non-government organization with the mission to support scam and cybercrime victims.
