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Troubles for German scam-facilitator Deutsche Handelsbank
Deutsche Handelsbank (www.handelsbank.com) is no stranger to FinTelegram readers. The small German bank has always been around Wirecard and is still one of the biggest..
Latest Updates
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OctaPay – The exposed fraud, the vanished money, and many open questions!
According to his LinkedIn profile, Christian van Biezen lives and works in Limassol, Cyprus, one of the European powerhouses of Forex brokers, which are part of a high-risk industry, whether regulated or unregulated. Consequently, a highly active high-risk payment processor scene has developed around these Cypriot forex brokers. OctaPay was one of them, and Christian van Biezen was its director until he realized it was defrauding its merchants. So he left in December 2020, exposing the crime. As a result, OctaPay and its people vanished with most of its customer funds.
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Notorious high-risk payment processor iPaytotal launches unregulated Estonian CryptoMatix
Until recently, Aditya Williams was the registered director of the Estonian iPayTotal OÜ but was replaced in March 2021 by the Estonian nominee director Monika Sild. Currently, iPaytotal does not have a license from the Estonian FIU to operate a crypto payment platform. Nevertheless, the company is the operator of CryptoMatix, which Ruchi Rathor apparently set up. However, it seems that iPayTotal OÜ may try to obtain an FIU crypto license to get more involved in the crypto payment segment.
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Strange! iPayTotal’s Chief Experience Officer and her LinkedIn account vanished!
Does anybody know what a Chief Experience Officer (CEO?) is or does? If you don't, we happily welcome you to the club. We didn't know either. Then in December 2020, we were contacted by Davina Mungroo of iPayTotal about our reviews of the high-risk payment processor. Of course, they would be totally unjustly negative. We then learned on iPayTotal's website that Davina, as CEO, was responsible for how her company is perceived in reviews and reports. Until she vanished.
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Italian Consob has ordered the black-out of five more scam websites
Sure, scammers launch most likely a few dozen new websites every single day. Thus, closing down five per week doesn't sound too impressive, but it's a start. Like every week, the Italian regulator Consob announced the blackout of five new websites of illegally operating financial services providers. Consob is the only EU regulator to take this effective measure. It would be desirable if more member states would create a legal basis for blocking illegal or fraudulent websites. Forza Italia!
Payment Processors
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Tradixa broker scam facilitated by Jubiter, Paysend, and PandaTS
A few weeks ago, we warned against the broker scam Tradixa, operating with different domains. Currently, www.tradixa.net is the active domain of the scam allegedly operated by Tradixa Ltd, St. Vincent & the Grenadines, and All Media EOOD, Bulgaria. The facilitating payment processors back then have been Praxis Cashier and ePay. While Praxis Cashier evidently terminated Tradixa, we have been able to establish that Estonian-Slovakian Jubiter and Spanish Paysend also facilitated the broker scam.
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Investor Alert – Investors Center and Trading Academy 360 facilitate broker scams big style
Scams are facilitated by fraudulent marketing campaigns and malicious payment processors. Take the Triton Capital Markets broker, for example. The scam, allegedly operated by Karello D Buro LLC, registered in St. Vincent and the Grenadines, has been warned against by the Austrian Financial Market Authority (FMA) on February 18, 2021 (report here). However, it has been facilitated by Investors Center, Trading Academy 360, and Praxis Cashier. Here are a few more details.
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Investor Warning – Celox is another broker scam in the Plutus Racket
We have reported about Plutus Racket scams several times in the last few weeks. So far, thanks to our whistleblowers and with the information provided by victims, we have found the scam brands Plutus, Lucrum, and Galore. Apparently, the Celox (www.celox.live) scam also belongs to Plutus Racket. Furthermore, we have discovered Praxis Cashier, BitTheBank, XChangePro, and Polish Sales Master Z.O.O. as facilitating payment processors. Behind all these scam brands are the same boiler rooms in Bulgaria and the Balkans working with Anydesk.
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Polish-Lithuanian Epayblock again exposed as a scam-facilitating payment processor
Time and again! Recently, brought a Request 4 Information (R4I) regarding the regulated Lithuanian e-Money Institution Epayblock. This payment processor has been exposed as a partner of illegal payment processors such as Skylas, Merelita, Ristema, or BDIKA, which are involved in broker scams. These companies launder money through their bank accounts at Epayblock. Today, we discovered the Hungarian Dot Systems KFT, another illegal payment processor being a client of Epayblock.
Cybercrime Court Cases
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Breaking News – Criminal complaints against Payvision and its founders
Payvision and its founder and former CEO Rudolf Booker are already subjects of the criminal proceedings in Germany and Austria. Uwe Lenhoff, the alleged mastermind of a cybercrime organization, was arrested in January 2019. He was a personal friend of Booker and used Payvision for his dirty business. Rudolf Booker was introduced to Lenhoff by Amsterdam real estate investor Dirk-Jan Bakker, a partner of Lenhoff, who was found dead in his prison cell in July 2020. Criminal charges have now been filed against Payvision and its founders for money laundering and investment fraud.
Regulatory Updates
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Daily Affiliate Alert – Fraudulent Bitcoin Worldwide campaign promotes broker scams
Today we receive an email in which we are informed that there would still be a credit balance of more than €1,800 on our account. They had already tried to contact us several times to let us have our money! Within 48 hours, they would delete the account if we did not contact them. OK, let's have a look. The link in the email takes us to the BITCOIN WORLDWIDE campaign, where we are promised a bitcoin bonus. Then we are redirected to the YuanPay Group (www.yuanpay-system.com) site, which finally redirects us to payment pages of various scam brokers.
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GlobalNetInt CEO launched new financial services venture Findiban
Liudvikas Kulikauskas, founder, CEO, and shareholder of GlobalNetInt UAB (GNI), an e-Money Institution (EMI) regulated by the Bank of Lithuania with authorization code LB000434, has founded a payment processor Ifind MB d/b/a Findiban (www.findiban.com), together with his wife, Egle Kulikauskiene. The company is apparently positioned as a high-risk payment processor, offering businesses a range of financial services, including SEPA IBAN account, white-label FinTech services, or credit card processing.
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Whistleblower proves! StoxMarket boiler room scam is active again!
FinTelegram News was founded in early 2018 with the mission of investor protection. Since then, we have faced numerous threats, DDoS attacks, and also lawsuits. We have survived everything so far and defeated some of the bad players. Some companies have lost their licenses, and some scammers have been sentenced to prison and fined millions for investment fraud. All this would not have been possible without whistleblowers. They are the heart of our project. Now a whistleblower has proven that the StoxMarket scam is indeed alive.
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