Tag: Golden Markets

Card payments are the most important and popular online payment systems. Only by checking the billing descriptors (set by the acquirer) can you identify the processing acquirer. EFRI identified the following billing descriptor used by Payvsion when processing the card transactions for Gal Barak and Uwe Lenhoff. EFRI is looking for scam victims that lost money via Payvision. Here are the identifying billing descriptors.

In September 2020, Israeli Gal Barak was sentenced to four years in prison for investment fraud and money laundering by a court in Vienna. He was released on parole in 2021 and has since founded the Vantage fund in Israel, which aims to finance convicted cybercriminals and their startups. However, German prosecutors also charged Barak as a principal of the cybercrime organization E&G Bulgaria. The case is currently before the European Court of Justice.

In September 2020, an Austrian court sentenced Gal Barak, the Wolf of Sofia, to four years in prison for investment fraud and money laundering. He was recently released on parole and is currently staying in Israel, where he gave an interesting interview to Calcalist in August 2021. He spoke openly about the fraud and manipulation with his scam brands XtraderFX, OptionStarsGlobal, SafeMarkets, and Golden Markets. According to Barak, everyone in the organization was aware of the fraud.

Broker technology and platform provider PandaTS is currently facing some hassles with law enforcement agencies from several jurisdictions. Law enforcement agents from the Israeli police and their counterparts from other jurisdictions reportedly raided PandaTS‘ offices in Israel recently. It is well known that the PandaTS platform is used by many scammers. The UK FCA has followed FinTelegram's assessment and issued an investor warning against PandaTS white-label scam Coinnery operated by Coinnery Ltd.

Rudolf Booker is said to spend a lot of time on his €30M yacht. The running costs of the yacht are €3M per year. Well, ok. He has enough time and money. He sold FinTech Payvision, which he founded and led as CEO, to ING in 2018 at a valuation of €360M. Booker and Payvision mainly served high-risk merchants, scams, and cybercrime organizations. Booker personally was well acquainted with leading scammers like Uwe Lenhoff and Gal Barak. Now the victims of these scammers want their money from Payvision. And ING considers to close down its troublesome subsidiary, local media reports.

PandaTS is currently facing some hassles with law enforcement agencies from several jurisdictions. Among them, the Israeli ones. Agents from the Israeli police and their counterparts from other jurisdictions reportedly raided PandaTS' offices in Israel almost two weeks ago. And seized a lot of data. It is well known that the PandaTS platform is used by many scammers, such as the already convicted cybercrime principal Gal Barak. He has also accused PandaTS of manipulating trades for white-label platform clients. In his trial, Barak moved the Austrian court to order a search of his home in Israel and Cyprus.

Amsterdam FinTech entrepreneur Rudolf Booker founded the payment processor Payvision in 2002 and ran it more or less successfully. The business evidently took off in 2015 when Amsterdam real estate investor Dirk-Jan Bakker introduced German cybercrime activist Uwe Lenhoff to Booker. Lenhoff and his partners brought dozens of fraudulent binary options operators to Payvision, where Booker welcomed them with open arms. In 2018, Booker sold Payvision to ING for €360 million, fully packed with high-risk and illegal clients; in April 2020, he and his co-founders left Payvision.

Gal Barak was sentenced in the Vienna Cybercrime Trials as one of the masterminds behind the cybercrime organization E&G Bulgaria to four years in prison and millions in restitution payments for investment fraud and money laundering. His Bulgarian wife Marina Barak faces the same charges and is currently on trial. Gal Barak gave false testimony at the trial of his wife and was consequently charged by the prosecution for that. As private prosecutors, the EFRI lawyer and its principal Elfriede Sixt accompany the trials representing the victims' voice!

Israeli Gal Barak was sentenced to four years in prison for investment fraud and money laundering as one of the principals of the cybercrime organization E&G Bulgaria in the Vienna Cybercrime Trials in September 2020. His wife, Marina Barak, is also charged and is currently on trial. Gal Barak is currently being extradited to Germany, where he will also be charged. In Germany, a former Bulgarian co-conspirator responsible for dozens of victims as boiler room manager is already waiting in prison. This Bulgarian going by the stage name James Morra earned a small fortune by defrauding unsuspecting victims.

Israeli Gal Barak was sentenced in September 2020 to four years in prison and millions in restitution payments for investment fraud and money laundering in the Vienna Cybercrime Trials. Barak also faces charges in Germany. He was the head of the cybercrime organization E&G Bulgaria, which operated broker scams such as XtraderFX, SafeMarkets, Golden Markets, or OptionStarsGlobal. Payvision was its main payment facilitator, and PandaTS, the white label provider, which Barak charges with similar arguments as the U.S. SEC does in its SpotOption fraud complaint.

For FinTelegram readers, it is certainly no secret that we are hunting scam-supporting payment processors. These payment processors are even worse than the scams themselves. Scams come and go while payment processors stay and support new scams all the time. They know the scammers and where the money goes. They facilitate these scammers in defrauding ever-new victims. One of these evil payment processors is Russian-born Australian Vladislav "Vlad" Kogan. He has laundered hundreds of millions for dozens of scams with his Czech registered Xtrabit s.r.o.

The broker scam Tradixa currently operates with the domain www.tradixa.net. The legal entitiwa behind the scam allegedly used to be Tradixa Ltd, St. Vincent & the Grenadines, and All Media EOOD, Bulgaria. In December 2020, the Italian Consob ordered the scam's website's blackout; several other European regulators have issued investor warnings. The scam is still active and facilitated by Epay as its payment processor.