Ben Givon | FinTelegram News

Author: Ben Givon

July 22, 2021

Incorrect FCA warning against alleged clones of regulated ForTrade broker

The UK FCA issued an interesting and incorrect investor warning today. The UK regulator warns against the TorexFX, an allegedly unauthorized clone of the FCA and CySEC regulated broker ForTrade. The domains mentioned in the warning are https://torexfx.com, https://gloryft.com, and https://fxen.gloryft.com. The GloryFT domains are operated by the Russian Alpari Broker LLC and the FCA-regulated ForTrade Limited. Thus, the FCA has not recognized that an FCA-regulated entity conducts allegedly "unauthorized" activities.

July 22, 2021

Illegal broker BTC-Trends promoted by THE NEWS SPY fraud campaign

The offshore broker BTC-Trends, operated by Cordelino Ltd registered in St. Vincent & the Grenadines, does not have a license and is most certainly a scam. The scam is being promoted today via THE NEWS SPY fraud campaign on the SafeInvestmentsNow website. The scam is facilitated by PaynetEasy payment processors for credit and debit card payments. Registration is apparently not currently possible directly through the website. Potential victims have to be referred via one of the fraudulent marketing campaigns that operate as Introducing Brokers.

July 22, 2021

Disgraced Payvision founder Rudolph Booker loses motion for a preliminary injunction

Rudolf Booker was the co-founder and, until 2020, CEO of Payvision, a Dutch FinTech acquired by ING in 2018 at a valuation of €360M. Payvision..

July 16, 2021

And again! BridgerPay facilitates illegally operating broker NATA Trading

We actually strive almost 24/7 to capture the incoming scam messages in our database, analyze them and make the cross-connections. It is almost a Sisyphean task. The number of reported scams that come in every day we can carefully record in our database, but we can't report on every single scam. Today we receive a report from a victim of the illegally operating NATA Trade broker. Allegedly, the broker is operated by NATA Trade Limited. What is certain is that the payment facilitator is once again Ran Cohen's Israeli-Cypriot BridgerPay.

July 16, 2021

Neglecting Eurojust Guidelines – Maltese Authorities refuse to investigate scam-facilitator Paytah

Malta is greylisted for good reasons, mostly for their failing regulators. Malta-licensed, Phoenix Payments Ltd d/b/a Paytah, refuses to assist the many victims who wired money to the company to top their accounts with broker scams like RoyalsFX, LincolnFX, or CodeFX. Victims reported these transactions to the MFSA. The regulator replied that they would not investigate and asked the victims to report Paytah to the Central Bank of Malta, which replied that it would not investigate such complaints. The victims also emailed Kenneth Farrugia, the Director of Malta Financial Intelligence Analysis Unit, who did not reply.

July 16, 2021

FinTelegram launches Law & Compliance Enforcement Support Initiative

We have been cooperating with law enforcement agencies in various countries since the launch of FinTelegram. As insiders and friends know, the establishment of FinTelegram came about as a means of fighting cybercriminals who were taking action against the founders and operators of FinTelegram. These cybercriminals at the time were German Uwe Lenhoff and Israeli Gal Barak. Both were arrested in early 2019, also thanks to the cooperation between FinTelegram and law enforcement.

July 16, 2021

Fake Media and illegal Telegram boiler room promote CySEC broker Libertex

Behind every scam are boiler rooms promoting potential victims with phone calls, emails, and various messenger services. In recent years, boiler rooms have increasingly been operating via Telegram and WhatsApp. Especially in online trading, these social media boiler rooms have become a popular scam tool. On the fake medium Wirtschaftsanzeiger (www.wirtschaftsanzeiger.com), a trading group a/k/a boiler room is currently being facilitated, which promotes CySEC broker Libertex.

July 16, 2021

Cybercrime Trials – Gal Barak’s wife acquitted but more charges to come!

E&G Bulgaria allegedly defrauded tens of thousands of consumers in Europe out of more than €200 million with its scams According to law enforcement agencies in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, the principals of this organization were Israelis Gal Barak and Gery Shalon and their Russian partner Vladislav Smirnov. Barak was sentenced in Austria in September 2020 to four years in prison and restitution payments in the millions for investment fraud and money laundering. His wife, Marina Barak, who was also charged, was acquitted; the prosecutors appealed.

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July 12, 2021

R4I – Muddy Waters in Cyprus or ArgusFX and an international financial thriller

The story recently touched down in Paris at the listed IT provider Solutions 30 SE, whose shares are listed on Euronext in Paris. The company has a market capitalization of approximately €700M as of July 12, 2021. Well-known Californian short-seller Muddy Waters shorted Solutions 30, suggesting that the company was linked to money laundering and criminal organizations. As a result, a certain Federico Salmoiraghi, brought suit against Muddy Waters. Salmoiraghi is a person of interest who is also associated with CySEC-licensed Acier FX Ltd d/b/a ArgusFX. We would like to learn more!

July 12, 2021

Investor Alert – GlareMarkets broker scam facilitated by Estonian mercuryo and finanic

Everyday is scammer day. Today, we found Bitcoin Prime on the site Work and Hire Best (www.workandhirebest.com). Anyone registering with Bitcoin Prime today is automatically registered as a customer with the broker scam GlareMarkets (www.glaremarkets.com) and immediately taken to its payment page. There we find once again the licensed Estonian finanic and mercuryo as the scam-facilitating payment processors.

July 12, 2021

Greylisted Malta and its disgraced regulators!

The Financial Intelligence Analysis Unit (FIAU) of Malta is being highly criticized for paying Maltese online portals and newspapers for positive reportage in its regard. This is very telling and indeed shocking for a European country. Only last month, Malta has been placed on the grey list by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), which makes the European tax haven much less attractive. Who wants to be a tax resident or owner of a company in a grey-listed jurisdiction? And then there's the strange approach of the Maltese regulators.

July 10, 2021

Investor Warning – ABSystem scam started attacking European consumers

We were led to the ABSystem (www.absystem.pro) broker scam today via the fraudulent CryptoEngine campaign. Available in several languages, including Russian, Spanish, and Portuguese, the scam claims to run an arbitrage bot that helps traders make high profits at low risk. The scam is operated by the already known and infamous Donnybrook Consulting Ltd, registered in the Commonwealth of Dominica. In our review today, registration was possible, but we received an error message when creating a new trading account.