Tag: GlobalNetInt

MoneynetInt, a FCA-licensed EMI with roots deep in Israel's high-risk payment sector, continues to draw scrutiny years after the binary options ban. Once a major facilitator in the fraudulent binary options industry, MoneynetInt's financials, connections, and questionable reputation-cleaning efforts warrant renewed attention.

FCA-regulated EMI MoneyNetInt was one of the big payment processors for the fraudulent binary options industry that defrauded hundreds of thousands of people out of tens of billions of dollars between 2010 and 2018. We exposed Israeli-controlled MoneyNetInt and its affiliated GlobalNetInt as payment facilitators in many scams. Consequently, in June 2021, the FCA announced that MoneyNetInt voluntarily stopped acquiring new customers temporarily in June 2021.

In the summer of 2020, a Munich court issued a garnishment order to seize the bank accounts of CySEC-regulated Hoch Capital Ltd (file number 1539 M 46463/20). One of the payment processors involved was Deutsche Handelsbank, a notorious scam facilitator. As ordered, Deutsche Handelsbank submitted the data to the court and froze the Hoch Capital Ltd account, which held over €909,000. The company and its individuals are under investigation by German prosecutors on suspicion of investment fraud.

The FCA-regulated e-money institution MoneyNetInt had its best time during the binary options hype. Most of the binary options scheme providers were Israelis, and, as it turns out, almost all of them were scam schemes. Many of them were clients of MoneyNetInt, such as IC Option, TitanTrade, or the schemes of Uwe Lenhoff and Gal Barak. As of 2017, binary options were banned in most regulatory regimes. Since then, MoneyNetInt's business might not be doing so well either, as their latest figures suggest. Here is an update.

Currently, the indictments and trials against the operators of the Israeli scam network around GetFinancial are taking place in Germany. Around the GetFinancial scam, fund recovery scammers preyed on GetFinancial victims, posing as agents of the Cypriot regulator CySEC. The fund recovery scam victims' deposits were made to accounts at FCA-regulated high-risk payment processor NordPay Financial Ltd d/b/a CentralPay and Paysite Cash. NordPay collapsed following disputes between the founders and went into administration in April 2021.

In June 2021, the Lithuanian-Israeli e-Money Institution GlobalNetInt (GNI), related to the FCA-regulated MoneyNetint Group, was penalized by the Bank of Lithuania for its violations of anti-money laundering and terrorist activities financing rules. GNI has to pay €350,000 because it did not properly assess the risk posed by customers and did not always ensure that customer identification remotely complied with legal requirements. GNI has been a notorious scam facilitator and is now doing business as payswix.

FinTelegram has issued several warnings against the notorious scam and cybercrime facilitator Epayblock, an e-Money Institution regulated by the Bank of Lithuania (BoL). Finally, the regulator announced that it revoked the license of Epayblock due to money laundering issues. The regulator said that it received complaints and information about Epayblock customers potentially using its services for fraud. It initiated the investigation and obtained court permission to apply temporary restrictions on the provision of services to its customers.

Trustcom Financial has continuously appeared on our scam radar as a payment processor over the past few years. Scam operators have been directing deposits from their victims to Lithuanian companies with their bank accounts at Trustcom. While the Bank of Lithuania regulates Trustcom Financial UAB with authorization code LB000438, it is an Italian venture controlled by Michele Scognamiglio. The close relationship with the Georgian tax advisor Business Service Distribution LLC (BSD) is of utmost interest. We want to know more about the Trustcom group and BSD.

Finally! The Bank of Lithuania (BoL) today announced that it launched a probe into scam-facilitating Epayblock. It was about time! We informed the public and the regulator time and again about the bad activities of this Polish-Lithuanian e-Money Institution. In its investigation, BoL will check possible breaches of money laundering and terrorist financing prevention. Epaybank's activities will be partially restricted during the investigation. BoL said that it received information that some of Epayblock's customers may be using its services for fraudulent purposes. Sure they do!

A penalty is usually not an occasion for gratitude. That would also make the purpose of a punishment absurd. Usually, one is grateful for a received punishment only if one is aware that one has gotten away well with this punishment and should actually have been punished much worse. A driver who is speeding while massively impaired by alcohol or other drugs certainly grateful is grateful if he is punished by the police only for speeding and not for the offense of driving under the influence (DUI). Similarly, GlobalNetInt (GNI) shows itself grateful for the penalization by the Bank of Lithuania.

The Lithuanian-Israeli e-Money Institution GlobalNetInt, part of the FCA-regulated MoneyNetint Group, was fined by the Bank of Lithuania for its violations of anti-money laundering and terrorist activities financing rules. GNI has to pay €350,000 because it did not properly assess the risk posed by customers and did not always ensure that customer identification remotely complied with legal requirements. GNI, focused on high-risk clients, does not rely on information from a reliable and independent source when verifying the documents and information on beneficiaries. No surprise here!

The Lithuanian Liudvikas Kulikauskas is the co-founder, CEO, and shareholder of GlobalNetInt (GNI), an e-Money Institution regulated by the Bank of Lithuania. Additionally, he and his wife Egle Kulikauskiene launched the payment processor Ifind MB d/b/a Findiban, which was 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. Currently, the Findiban website is in maintenance mode and hence down.