Tag: Nati Harpaz

The Cypriot financial scene is apparently at war. FinTelegram has been reporting on many of the CySEC brokers and FinTechs for years, pointing out that, unfortunately, many scams and investment fraud sites are also operated or facilitated by companies from Cyprus. Recently, the Cyprus Insider Twitter (@InsiderCyprus) has been revealing interesting points. Moreover, there are apparently also extortion campaigns currently running in the Cyprus scene. Here is the update. We would like to learn more.

The Equiti Group is a global Forex and CFD broker regulated by the Jordan Securities Commission, the FSA Seychelles, and the FCA in the UK. However, Equiti illegally offers a 1:500 leverage also to European clients. BridgerPay is a VISA-registered Merchant Servicer and the operator of an AI-powered payment platform. In November 2020, Equity reported a 30% increase in global deposit approvals with BridgerPay. Today, Gareth Bateman, Global Head of Payments, praised BridgerPay for its services on LinkedIn.

TradeVtech is part of a vast scam network attacking European consumers. FinTelegram has issued several warnings against them. Currently, the scam is operated by Universal Services LLC and UMedia LLC, registered in St Vincent & The Grenadines. We uncovered BridgerPay as the scam-facilitating payment processer. In July 2021, the UK FCA issued a warning against TradeVtech; the Austrian FMA followed in Aug 2021, as did New Zealand FMA in Oct 2021. As of 21 April 2022, the scam is still active, still facilitated by BridgerPay.

In early December 2021, we issued a warning against StandPoint Finance broker scam facilitated by VISA partner BridgerPay in its capacity as a payment processor. The Spanish regulator CNMV also issued a warning against this scam. You would think that these warnings would be enough for BridgerPay to terminate the relationship with its scam merchant. Wrong thought. As of Dec 21, 2021, the scam is still online and BridgerPay is still active as a payment processor.

TradeVtech is part of a vast scam network attacking European consumers. Over the last couple of months, FinTelegram has issued several warnings against them. Currently, the scam is operated by Universal Services LLC, registered in St Vincent & The Grenadines. The UK FCA, the Austrian FMA, or the New Zealand FMA issued warnings against TradeVtech. However, the scam is still active, still facilitated by BridgerPay.

We have discovered BridgerPay as a facilitating payment processor at exactly 78 scam brokers in our reviews over the last three years. Thereby, our assessments cover maybe 10% of the existing scams. If at all. In this respect, it is easy to gauge how many of these scam brokers are supported by VISA partner BridgerPay. Today we discovered Ran Cohen's Israeli-Cypriot payment processor at StandPoint Finance (www.standpointfinance.com). The Spanish regulator CNMV issued a warning against this scam.

CoinsTrades (www.coinstrades.com) is an unregulated CFD broker that operates outside the regulatory framework and offers different account types with leverage levels prohibited in the EEA. In the Pro Account, a 1:400 leverage is offered at one million investment. On the website, one searches in vain for the legal entity behind CoinsTrades. Only the address Strawinskylaan 1, 1077 XW Amsterdam, Netherlands, is given. While we found no legal information, we found BridgerPay as the payment processor for the illegal broker.

Interesting rumors! Israeli forex expert Ran Cohen established his Bridger AI Limited in Cyprus in Feb 2019 to operate the BridgerPay payment processor. In November 2020, BridgerPay announced that it had hired Nati Harpaz, the former CEO of Australian e-commerce group Catch.com as Executive Director. Harpaz is said to play a significant role at BridgerPay and allegedly organized the financing round with the Israeli South Israel Bridge Fund (SIBF), co-founded and presided by the former Mossad boss Tamir Prado.

Bridger AI Ltd is an unregulated PayTech and, therefore, apparently moves feels free to accept scam merchants without too much concern. Just recently, Cohen hired Nati Harpaz, a big name, as an additional Executive Director. One would expect legitimacy there. However, BridgerPay has come up more frequently as a payment facilitator of scams regulators warn against. So it facilitates The Forex Premium (www.4xpremium.com) operated by Premium Finance Solutions Ltd.