Ben Givon | FinTelegram News

Author: Ben Givon

March 2, 2021

Good Morning St. Vincent – Investor warning against Sky Capital Broker Scam

There are beautiful places that, unfortunately, are also associated with terrible events. For example, today's vacation paradise Vietnam will long be associated with the Second Indochina War. The Caribbean island nation of St. Vincent and the Grenadines, on the other hand, will long be known as one of the offshore centers through which cybercriminals and scammers have conducted their crimes via offshore entities. The Sky Capital broker scam (www.skycapital.cc and www.skycapital.co) operated by Geiko Holdings Ltd is one of them. With Cashir.Live and Paystruct as its payment facilitators.

March 2, 2021

Another warning against Max Capital scam FinMax and its mutations

Regulators have warned against the FinMax scams already. In Jan 2019, the German BaFin warned against the mutation FinMaxBO and issued a Cease-and-Desist Order today. In Oc 2020, the Spanish CNMV warned against the mutation FinmaxFX. The scams are operated by Max Capital Limited, Vanuatu, and Gatelinas UAB, Lithuania. Although Max Capital is licensed by the VFSC, it's not authorized to scam anybody. As scam-facilitation payment processors, we have uncovered Webmoney, Jeton, VLoad, advcash, and Aveia.

February 23, 2021

Investor warning against WAM Capital broker scam with BridgerPay and VivaWallet

CNVM issued an investor warning against the broker scam WAM Capital (www.wam-capital.co) allegedly operated by WAM-Capital Limited in New South Wales, Australia, and Gabioni Ltd. According to the website, the scam would be regulated by the Australian ASIC as a CFD provider. In fact, WAM Capital is acting as a fake of the public-listed Australian asset management firm Wilson Asset Management (WAM). The payment processor we discovered is Ran Cohen's BridgerPay and VivaWallet.

February 12, 2021

Illegal German payment processors Z.I.E natural edition, Maka Marketing, and their network

German BaFin issued cease and desist orders against Z.I.E natural edition and Maka Marketing. Both payment processors processed bank transfers from victims of several broker scams like easytrade55 or MarketsSoft. The British resident Aron Wertheimer is involved in both companies. He is a director of Maka Marketing and the liquidator of Z.I.E natural edition. Scam victims who used Z.I.E natural edition or Maka Marketing should file their fund recovery claim with these companies and Aron Wertheimer and his partners.

February 12, 2021

Austrian FMA warns against AppleTrade broker scam with GumBallPay

The Austrian Financial Market Authority (FMA) has recently issued a warning against the scam broker AppleTrade operated under the domains www.appletrade.de and www.appletrade.io by Appletrade Ltd. No further information about the legal entity or persons can be found on the website. As a payment provider for credit and debit card payments, we have discovered the Israeli high-risk payment processor GumBallPay.

February 11, 2021

Investor Alert – Estonian TheCapitalStocks scam still active attacking EU consumers

In September 2020, the German regulator BaFin issued a cease and desist order against the broker scams TheCapitalStocks (www.thecapitalstocks.com) and RoyaltyFinance (www.royaltyfinance.io), operated by Estonian Kleinman Group via its company in St. Vincent & the Grenadines. Already in August 2020, the Italian CONSOB warned against these scams. Recently FinTelegram published a report on the Estonian Kleinman Group (read here). Unfortunately, the TheCapitalStocks scam is still online.

February 10, 2021

Investor Alert – Broker Scam Financial Resident and their payment facilitators

With Financial Resident, our whistleblowers have uncovered another broker scam that is currently active. We did not find any legal entity claiming to be the scam operator in our quick initial research. This is also basically worthless information as these are typically front companies in offshore jurisdictions such as the British Virgin Islands, Marshall Islands, or St. Virgin & the Grenadines. On the other hand, we have discovered several payment processors such as iPayTotal, GumBallPay, and some others. Investors should stay far away from the Financial Resident scam and report information.

February 10, 2021

iPayTotal cooperates with FCA-regulated Global Payments to facilitate scams

In our research on the Financial Resident broker scam, we identified iPayTotal as one of the payment facilitators. However, when processing deposits via iPayTotal, visitors are redirected to Global Payments (www.globalpay.com), a payment processor licensed by the UK FCA. iPayTotal is one of the most notorious high-payment processors in the scammer scene. Many scammers complain that they were ripped off by iPayTotal and that funds were not transferred to them anymore. In this respect, the cooperation with a regulated FCA entity is somewhat surprising.

February 9, 2021

Investor Alert – 27ProQuote successor scam proFXCredit

We have already warned several times about the broker scam 27ProQuote (a/k/a ProQuote27). This was active until a few weeks ago and has defrauded many victims of probably several million euros. Deposits of the customer-victims were also processed via the Maltese ApcoPay (see FinTelegram report here). We have received information that the same scammers are now operating the proFXCredit scam under the domain www.profxcredit.com via a Lacari Group Ltd. Currently, we are still investigating but warn all investors against proFXCredit.

February 9, 2021

BaFin’s Cease and Desist Order against illegal payment processor Egramming is final

The illegal German payment processors are very popular among the worldwide scammer community. Companies like B2G of Rainer Treuer and his Russian partner Oleg Shvartsman have processed tens of millions of scammers like Gal Barak or Uwe Lenhoff and contributed to the fraud of tens of thousands of small investors. In October 2020, BaFin issued a Cease and Desist Order against the German Egramming, which allegedly facilitated the crypto scam Capital Coin Exchange, among others. The order is final now!

February 8, 2021

UK Watchdog FCA warns against PrimeCap, FitRex, CFDS Market, and iForexGain

The UK Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has today issued investor warnings against several FX & Crypto Scams. Again, the usual suspects are legal entities in the Marshall Islands and St. Vincent & the Grenadines. In a first quick review of the alleged scams, we found GumBallPay, NeoBanq, and Texcent as facilitating payment processors.

January 31, 2021

FCA warning against scam broker BimFX24 with payment processor BridgerPay

A few days ago, the UK watchdog FCA issued an investor warning against the broker scam BimFX24. This is allegedly operated by a BIM LLC registered in St. Vincent & the Grenadines. Allegedly registered at the notorious Company Builders Wilfred Services address, the facilitating payment processor is once again the Cypriot BridgerPay of Ran Cohen who repeatedly asserted that BridgerPay would not accept scams. And time and again, BridgerPay is exposed as a scam facilitator.