Mark Lagarde | FinTelegram News

Author: Mark Lagarde

November 26, 2020

Gooooood Morning BaFin! Another Cease-and-Desist order against a dissolved company

Almo Markets VIP GmbH accepted funds from private persons on its bank accounts for the sole purpose of transferring these funds to offshore companies operating FX, CFD, and crypto scams. Among these scams facilitated by Almo Markets VIP have been 53capitaltrade, YesOption. YesTrading, TradeGBP, TradeDAX as well as Coinbrokerz. Almo Markets VIP vanished. As did all the scam sites. And with them the money. BaFin missed some time, we guess!

Crypto-Trading

November 20, 2020

$500 Billion Market Cap – Welcome to the COVID-19 Crypto Bull Run

The total market capitalization of all cryptocurrencies has surpassed the $500 billion mark for the first time since February 2018 as the price of several altcoins is moving up, while BTC’s price is hovering around the $18,000 mark. At the time of writing the BTC price oscillated around $18,300 at CryptoCompare. Most crypto experts expect the BTC to break the previous all-time high of almost $20,000 from December 2017 in this bull run.

November 20, 2020

FCA issues warning against FinTech wonder Lanistar

Lanistar is a prominent FinTech on Instagram and proudly presents young, sexy, and fashionable influencers on its website. The company was also hyped by bullish press releases from its partner MasterCard. The FinTech is aiming for a £1 billion valuation. The UJ FCA, however, has issued an investor warning against Lanistar, advising that it’s operating without authorization in the U.K.

November 12, 2020

BeforexCapital broker scam share boiler room with ProQuote27

We already now know that scammers change their domains, websites, and legal entities more often than many households change their bed linen. The "Scam-as-a-Service" approach offered by the many white label providers, this is no problem either. The boiler rooms behind them usually remain the same. This is also the case with BeforexCapital which is connected to the ProQuote27 scam.

November 11, 2020

FCA investor warning against Estonian MarginElite with Praxis Cashier

On November 10, 2020, the UK FCA issued an investor warning against MarginElite (www.marginelite.com), among others. This is a typical white-label scam that is actually easy to recognize. At the latest when you see that Praxis Cashier is the payment processor and has integrated the Russian Mir for credit and debit card payments.

November 5, 2020

Praxis Cashier announced acquisition of IC Markets scheme as forex client

The unregulated Cyprus-registered Praxis Cashier System Ltd (Praxis Cashier) of Amit Klachko announced the acquisition of IC Markets (www.icmarkets.com) as a new Forex and CFD client. IC Markets is a globally operating regulated broker scheme established by Andrew Budzinski in Australia in 2007. Its different entities are regulated by Australian ASIC, Cyprus CySEC, and FSA Seychelles.

NYDFS

October 23, 2020

Crypto adoption – PayPal receives BitLicense and starts to accept crypto as a means of payment

This may be a pivotal step for crypto mainstream adoption. Following FinTechs like Revolut, FinTech giant PayPal will embrace crypto. PayPal announced that it will allow customers to hold bitcoin and other virtual coins in their online wallets and use it to shop and pay at the 26 million merchants on its network. The new service will be operated on the regulatory grounds of a NY Bitlicense in a partnership with Paxos Trust Company.

October 12, 2020

The PayTech Papers – Regulatory Challenge in Fighting Cybercrime

The revised Payment Services Directive (PSD2) to regulate payment services throughout the EU and EEA came into force in January 2018 and officially kicked-off the “Open Banking Era” with FinTech unicorns TransferWise, Revolut, Monzo, or N26 leading the pack. The number of licensed PayTechs in the EEA exploded as a study published in July 2020 shows. Unfortunately, the number of unregulated and therefore unauthorized acting PayTechs specializing in scams and cybercrime also exploded.

October 12, 2020

German BaFin issues Cease-and-Disease order against TopInvestus – again!

On October 9, 2020, the German regulator BaFin again ordered the discontinuation of the TopInvestus broker scam. Already in May 2020, the regulator issued a cease-and-desist order against the scam which was then operated under the domain www.topinvestus.com by Silverdale Holdings Ltd, British Virgin Islands, and Vindigo Systems OÜ, Estonia.

October 11, 2020

Investor Warning – Crypto-based forex scheme Mirror Trading International

The much criticized Bitcoin-based forex trading MLM scheme Mirror Trading International ("MTI") was established in April 2019 in South Africa by MLM veteran Johann Steynberg. In July 2020 the Texas Financial Services Authority (FSSB) issued a cease-and-desist order against MTI and in August 2020 the South African FSCA issued an investor warning. Allegedly the MTI scheme has more than 140,000 members holding some 17,000 BTC in their trading accounts.

October 11, 2020

Lessons from BitMEX Case – Arrests, warrants, and bribing regulators with coconuts

The U.S. Prosecutors charge the BitMex founders Arthur Hayes, Benjamin Delo, Samuel Reed along with the senior manager Gregory Dwyer with (a) violating the Bank Secrecy Act and (b) conspiring to violate the Bank Secrecy Act, by willfully failing to establish, implement, and maintain an anti-money laundering (“AML”) program at the crypto exchange or BitMEX. The charges each carry a maximum penalty of five years in prison.

October 8, 2020

Investor warning against Billion Forex broker scam as part of FCA-regulated Billion Key

The logo of the broker scam Billion Forex resembles the one of Red Bull and this could be intentional. Currently, there are no warnings against the scam by a financial market regulator but FinTelegram already has whistleblower information and complaints. The scam is operated by BillionTraders Services OÜ, Estonia, and Billion Traders Ltd, St. Vincent and the Grenadines. They claim to be part of FCA-regulated Billion Key Ltd. TEXCENT is the facilitating payment processor.