INVESTMENT SCAM FRAUD RING BROUGHT DOWN ACROSS 6 COUNTRIES

By Daily Mail City & Finance Reporter

Published: | Updated:

INVESTMENT SCAM FRAUD RING BROUGHT DOWN ACROSS 6 COUNTRIES

A joint task force involving law enforcement officers, private investigators & attorneys tackle fraud ring

The raid involved more than 5 fraudulent investment companies conducted across 6 countries

About 20 suspects accused arrested during police raids.

Chebotar, 34, accused of masterminding fraud ring has asset frozen.

Victims outreach currently in motion

Victims are urged to come forth by completing the secured claims form indicated below.

Investment as we have come to know it is about risk and reward but what if there isn’t a reward just deception and greed? These last few years have been challenging on an economical level due to the entire pandemic and quarantine resulting in the closure of businesses and loss of employment resulting in turning lots of individuals and family’s looking for alternative sources of income exposing them to being preyed upon by fraudster posing to be rending financial aid. An extensive criminal network involved in fraud, and money laundering has been dismantled in an international simultaneous raid across 6countries.

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Suspects accused of running investment fraud ring across 6 countries arrested in raid

About 20 suspects accused of operating various online investment scams have been arrested pending further investigation, multiple victims report has indicated these fraudsters ran various companies offering fraudulent investment opportunities. The transcript of the investigation released by the German law enforcement indicated the suspects made Use of high-pressure sales tactics coaxing their victims into making investments which they marketed and promoted as low-risk, safe, simple, and conservative but all turned out to be false it was just a mere strategy used to swindle investors out of their money. This investment scam often involved promises of big payouts, quick money or guaranteed returns.

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The moment before Bulgarian law enforcement raided one of the offices

Some of the victims who invested with this companies stated they were lured with promises of financial freedom but that turned out to be all false as they were continuously persuaded to keep investing more and more if they wanted to see return or make withdrawals.

months of extensive investigation stemming from multiple accusations by investors and whistleblowers led to the formation of a joint tax force involving law enforcement officers, private investigators and lawyers set with the task of tackling the fraud ring. On October the 27th at around 4pm a simultaneous raid was conducted on the various CallCenter’s ran by this criminal ring who had offices located in Belgrade, Cyprus, Latvia, Germany, Ukraine, Tele Aviv. The raid resulted to the arrest of 20 suspects which includes fourteen men and six women on the charges of investment advisor fraud, mail fraud, wire fraud, money laundering, false statements and perjury, all perpetuated through their online trading websites which assisted them in defrauded thousands of victims. The arrested suspects (men) have been identified as citizens of Kosovo, Albania, Germany, Bulgaria, Israel, United Kingdom and Latvia others include call center employees and management.

The raid in Bulgaria showed that the fraudsters made use of “Airsoft Technologies”. which is an online trading platform for potential brokers offering them with everything they need to set up an online business especially within foreign exchange trading, contracts for difference & contracts for difference (CFD) or cryptocurrency instruments. Airsoft Technologies services included development, Maintenace, project managers and a full technical online support team as well as back-office maintenance, marketing technology and “referrals” to payment processors. The confiscation of the various database and server technology belonging to this company’s further revealed that the fraud ring targeted victim’s resident within Canada, United Kingdom, Belgium, Germany, Australia, New Zealand, Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. Defrauding their victims through the following websites.

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Bulgarian law enforcement inside the office complex used by fraud ring

IntegraOption, SolidCFD, Tradesolid, FXIntegra, TechOption, TradeGF, Eurostandarte NordCapitalMarkets, BitCapitalMarkets, MyCoinBanking, Worldfxm, CoinsBanking, Getfinancial, TradeLegal, LiquidPro FXLaws, Remaxima Procapitalmarkets, ProfitsTrade, FXPace, LTD-Fx, AccepTrade. by portraying themselves as financial traders they were able to persuade victims to part with their savings.

Further revelation indicated the basic structure of their crime remained similar across the other offices across the various locations ran by the fraud ring says the “German law enforcement in a statement.

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Confiscated computers and server Hardwares from raid in German

Indicated below is their method of operation

“The Fraudsters call telling investors that they are trading in a particular financial instrument in the past, this instrument was binary options. Currently, it is CFDs, forex and cryptocurrencies.” asking them if they will like to invest once the victim carries out the investment the deposited funds were processed under the various identites Upaycard/ UPC Consulting, Fibonatix, Global VC, Nordindustries OU, Yield Enterprise Currency Software, Global Mojave Capital SL, Blagocorpteam SL, Stadnik KFT, Toot Capital SL, Voguepay, P2P Gmbh, Merit Capital, CB Payments, Yanay Capital SL, Transferwise, Praxispay, Agnipay, Bitstamp Ltd., Logistics Craft SRO, Kriptomat, Payward Ltd., Xchangepro, PXP Financial Ltd., Jubiter.com and others which was then transferred to the fraudsters bank account while a false figure will be displayed on the investors trading account visible to the customer in pure deception,

The scam was designed to keep the customer to keep investing by making the investors lose all of their money, supposedly by losing trades this fraud ring is said to have cost victims an estimated sum of over $200m (£146m) over a two-year time frame.

In an interview with some of the victims One victim who wanted to be simply identified as JOY.

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Joy a 30-year-old master’s student lost over £20,000 (Student)

JOY said: ” She was searching the internet for additional means to make money online. She said after her search she received a call the following day about online investment on the financial market. In her own words,

“I found legitimate details of the company online – everything seemed genuine, so I invested.

“A few months later, after a couple more investments, I started to get a bit worried – I still hadn’t received confirmation of the latest investment.

“I tried to call the contacts I had been speaking to, but the numbers were invalid. It was clear I had been scammed. “I had lost the sum of £20,000.

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Fred a 38-year-old single father from Sweden lost over £50,000.

‘’ I was contacted over the phone by an online trader who specialized in binary options, cryptocurrency and forex trading. He said his company was on the cutting edge and used the latest technology and could offer guaranteed returns. I invested a few thousand and used their online platform, which seemed to work very well. I could see my trades were resulting in good profits. I invested more at their insistence and they promised I would earn even more. When I wanted to withdraw my money, I was told I would need to pay taxes on my profits before I could access it. I was never warned about this but they insisted I needed to pay taxes before I could get my money back. After I asked for my money, my trades started to fail and my accumulated profits were starting to decrease. They pressured me to invest more so that I could reverse the situation by increasing my ‘trades volume’. They said I would lose everything unless I invested more as an emergency. I lost a total of £50,000 “.

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The Tremblay’s john aged 70 & Margaret aged 65 lost more than £200,000

A senior couple says they are on the edge of bankruptcy after losing more than £200,000 to this fraud ring through cryptocurrency scam. in an interview they both said there chequing, savings, line of credit and credit card accounts were cleaned out over a two-week period after we set up our online banking and invested $250 in Bitcoin. “We wanted to try this out, so I put in the minimum amount of money, which I recall was about $250 and I wanted to just leave that there and see what happened

John said the following day we received a phone call from someone claiming to be a trader with an online brokerage who said he could help now you can get started and you’ve already made a profit from that original investment and now you need to invest more money.’ I said ‘no, I don’t want to invest any more money, I just want to see what happens with this first,’” john recounted

The trader called us every weekday to say we were making “amazing profits” on our investments. We wondered how that could be, but didn’t know money was being moved from our accounts for almost two full weeks during which time we received no warnings from our bank. About £101,000 was stolen, which included £30,000 from his line of credit, about £9,000 from our chequing account, £37,000 from our savings account and $25,000 on our credit card. John said it’s difficult for him and his wife to recover from such a financial hit at their age but still hopes his bank will do something to cover his losses while hoping justice is served through the legal system.

Chebotar, 34, who is said to be one of the masterminds behind the fraud ring and the director of several green energy companies in Namibia and South Africa has had a freeze order placed on his assets pending more investigation. Chebotar, he appears to live or have lived in Israel, where his brother, Vadim Chebotar, is a minor celebrity thanks to his marriage to a model. His father Stanislov Chebotar is reportedly a wealthy businessman, and appears in the Panama Papers leak of offshore account information.

A gag order has been placed on the remaining names of the suspects and certain information’s pertaining this case until further discoveries are made meanwhile an outreach is currently in progress aimed at contacting those victims affected by this fraud ring, victims are being advised to proceed with a claim against this suspect to help prosecute them while aiming for compensation. All claims are to be filed before the 1 March ,2023. If you believe you have been a victim of any of the listed trading company’s / platforms indicate by completing the (Secure Claim Form). For more information regarding claims and filing information, contact(+447312217940) help call center

When can I call the call center?

Monday – Friday 7:00 a.m. – 3:00 a.m. (Western European Time (UTC)

Saturday 6:00 a.m. – 12:00 a.m. (Western European Time (UTC)

For both domestic & International Callers:

Investment Fraud Ring Brought Down Across 6 Countries

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