Tag: Connectum

The New York-based professional trader Alexander Gerchik (LinkedIn) and his Ukrainian partner Ivan Kroshny ioperate several websites offering online trading education and brokerage services via legal entities in Vanuatu and other jurisdictions. The online trading scheme Gerchik solicits Russian-speaking clients offering them trading in U.S. stocks. According to Similarweb, his websites attracted more than 260,000 visitors in December 2022. Of these, more than 40% come from Russia and Belarus.

As recently as March 2021, white-label payment gateway provider Akuratoco announced via press release that, in addition to Tranzzo and Connectum, it has also integrated licensed Estonian crypto payment processor Tinkbit OÜ d/b/a Tinkbit (www.tinkbit.com) into its portfolio. Surprisingly, today the website is down and producing the Error 1016 Cloudflare error message. Maybe it's just a short-term problem, maybe not. In recent months, Tinkbit has come to our attention as a scam-facilitating payment processor.

Deutsche Handelsbank has appeared as a payment processor in many binary options and broker scams. Moreover, the BaFin-regulated institution is a correspondent bank and partner of other regulated payment processors such as MoneyNetint, which also support scams. EFRI has filed a corresponding complaint to BaFin. The German regulator has now officially ordered Deutsche Handelsbank to implement appropriate AML measures to prevent money laundering and terrorist financing.

In the first of the Vienna Cybercrime Trials ("VCT"), the Israeli principal of the cybercrime organization operated via the Bulgarian E&G Bulgaria, Gal Barak, was sentenced to four years in prison in early September 2020. One reason for the relatively modest sentence was Barak's confession. Through his lawyers, Barak also submitted documents that massively incriminated his Russian partner Vladislav Smirnov and his Binex Group, making him de facto the mastermind behind the Barak scams.