Karatbars International imploding, Harald Seiz has meltdown
Karatbars International appears to be imploding due to infighting.
Founder and CEO Harald Seiz has also had a video meltdown.
I’ll be upfront in stating we’re not really sure what exactly has gone down with Karatbars, but the beef appears to be between Seiz and Josip Heit.
Harald Seiz took to YouTube with a video titled “BREAKING NEWS from CEO Harald Seiz”. The video was uploaded to Seiz’s new YouTube channel on December 19th.
Karatbars International previously had its own official YouTube channel, however that appears to have been entirely deleted sometime over the past few days.
Karatbars’ official Facebook page is still up, so we’re assuming Seiz didn’t have access to the YouTube channel. Seiz only created his YouTube channel on December 18th.
I’ll be honest, the first minute or so of Seiz’s meltdown is unintelligible rambling. Then things get interesting.
[0:56] In the past there were often enough little hints and signs about what was going on in the background.
Which you noticed but didn’t really register.
Only gradually did it becomes [sic] clear to you that something had to change.
I had to realize that in some things we were far from perfect.
All our trust, my trust, was abused.
In my name and in the name of Karatbars family things were done for which I knew nothing and which I had not wanted.
I’m going out on a limb here and suggesting Seiz is referring to events post his KaratGold Coin 1 gram of gold broken promise disaster (July 2019).
That means Seiz could be referring to:
- Karatbars International lying to South Africa’s FSCA;
- the bungled Freebay v999 Ponzi token reboot; or
- some other disaster we’re not aware of.
Since July 2019 Karatbars has also received regulatory attention in Namibia, New Zealand, Canada, Germany and South Africa.
Seiz continues;
[1:37] I have faced the consequence. I have separated myself from all those who misused my name and the name of the Karatbars family, for great profit, empty promises and plain nonsense.
I have parted company with those who claim to be a part of the leadership, uh when they never were.
And I have parted ways with those who simply stole my ideas and vision, used them for their own profit, an d have used and are using the entire team’s developments and work for personally profiling of covering up unserious [sic] businesses.
That sounds like Freebay but Seiz doesn’t go into specifics. After babbling on about fraud, Seiz does promise that “nothing like this will ever happen again”.
[2:58] What we do, we do for the people, for our families, for our children, for freedom and independent.
Together, we will make it. Together we are powerful.
Keep in mind Karatbars started off as a pyramid scheme. It then morphed into various crypto Ponzis and that’s it. That’s the entire history of the company.
And keep in mind the primary financial benefactor of Karatbars’ various fraudulent business models is and always has been Harald Seiz.
But uh yeah, Karatbars is “for the children”. No worries champ.
Seiz closes out with a bunch of marketing promises, including opening of the “V999 platform” before Christmas. That sounds like the Freebay Ponzi reboot plans are going ahead.
Existing KGC and KBC bagholders are to be given some newly created shit token, created alongside V999 oN tHe BlOcKcHaIn!
[3:44] KBC will be transformed into KBC and each KBC will be zero point five cents ($0.005) for the new utility token.
This means that all the KBCs and KCBs will be replaced.
KBC currently has a public trading value of $0.003 with negligible daily trading volume. That’s been pretty constant for most of 2020.
The V999 reboot of KBC will apparently not be purchasable. So any assigned value is meaningless (can’t purchase, can’t sell).
Not that anyone is buying failed Karatbars International Ponzi tokens anyway, but I digress.
According to Seiz more details are coming this week.
In the meantime last night I received an email from an “editorial team” looking to get stuck into Seiz and Josip Heit.
Karatbars International has parted ways with Josip Heit after independent accountants established that Heit embezzled more than 120 million.
All criminal prosecution against Heit and his criminal network is activated.
Apparently there’s a website going live with more information, also next week.
German authorities could of course put a swift end to the long-running Karatbars International scam but… *crickets*
Update 21st February 2021 – Sometime in the last week Harald Seiz has deleted all videos from his YouTube channel.
Serial South African scammers Tony De Gouveia and Andrew Eaton are heavily involved in Freebay hoping to take advantage of all the Affiliates from MTI.
The German portal netcoo.com has been reporting exclusively positively about the fraudster Harald Seiz for many years. What does Harald Seiz pay this portal for these laudatory reports? Is netcoo.com the German version of BFH.org?
Article of July 20, 2020
share-your-photo.com/95327e9208
netcoo.com/direct-selling/harald-seiz-und-sein-goldweg/
More lies on his personal website harald-seiz.de.
Twitter (twitter.com/karatbarsgmbh) writes:
Instagram (instagram.com/karatbars_official/) writes:
The German portal network-karriere.com reported in June 2020:
share-your-photo.com/d9e4daed78
network-karriere.com/2020/06/29/staatsanwaltschaft-zweifelt-an-den-goldreserven-der-karatbars-gruppe/
Link to HANDELSBLATT:
handelsblatt.com/finanzen/maerkte/devisen-rohstoffe/dubioser-goldhaendler-die-staatsanwaltschaft-zweifelt-an-den-goldreserven-der-karatbars-gruppe/25945106.html
In the article the names Deni G. and Marvin Steinberg are mentioned.
Marvin Steinberg (left) and Harald Seiz:
share-your-photo.com/29d5fb550f
Just as clarification for those who haven’t followed the Karatbars saga (not that I pretend to understand this convoluted mess in detail):
Marvin Steinberg is a former business partner, with whom Seiz fell out after the debacle of the introduction of one of his several shitcoins.
Steinberg’s company handled that introduction, and Seiz blamed him for everything going wrong.
The feud escalated to the point of Seiz filing a criminal complaint (in June 2019), accusing Steinberg of stealing the money people had paid for his worthless, supposedly somehow gold-backed, tokens.
The subsequent criminal investigation backfired wonderfully. Not only did the investigators for the prosecutor’s office exonerate Steinberg completely of what Seiz accused him of, in the process of trying to make sense of Seiz’s corporate tangle they came to the conclusion that Seiz’s own business(es) showed strong indications of criminality.
Whether or not that has yet led to a direct prosecutorial investigation into Karatbars, we do not know – all we know about is a leaked internal report with the conclusions of the investigation into Steinberg, which turned into more of an investigation into Seiz, which was seen by the Handelsblatt (an eminently respectable publication, sort of Germany’s equivalent of the Wall Street Journal or the Financial Times).
Steinberg, after his exoneration, in turn filed a complaint against Seiz for defamation (besides civil defamation, Germany also has a criminal version), but I also don’t know where that stands.
Note that the investigators did conclude that Steinberg was hopelessly incompetent, and that the introduction of the tokens had been such a mess because he didn’t have a clue about what he was doing. But that was all Seiz’s responsibility, since he picked him for the job and didn’t exercise any oversight.
They basically concluded that Seiz’s whole operation is an amateurish shambles, with everyone involved lacking any required competence for the business they pretend to be in.
Another thing they highlighted was how many people with a criminal record are associated with Seiz’s business – including Harald Seiz himself.
Given that this leak happened in June 2020, it’s quite possible that there is now an ongoing investigation by the prosecutor’s office into Karatbars. That would certainly explain why Seiz seems to be panicking.
I’ll never understand why EU authorities are reluctant to do their job.
Oh hay guys, we found “strong indications of criminality”.
Great! Now let’s do nothing about it.
Wunderbar! To the pub!
@ PassingBy
I quote Marvin Steinberg:
share-your-photo.com/c1b3e31457
The entire article is a paid advertising ad on
coincierge.de/2019/vergessen-sie-icos-der-serienunternehmer-marvin-steinberg-erklaert-warum-stos-die-zukunft-sind/
PS: In this context, the OneCoin fraudster Martin Mayer (MaMa on Tour) from Liechtenstein comes to mind.
Although the OneCoin scammers in Sofia had already started the “ICO” on onecoinico.io, this idiot kept repeating this phrase in his videos:
Check out this size…
https://josipheit.com/start.html#about
…A lot of dirt on Josip!
@ Gertrude Perkins
A new video by Harald:
youtu.be/2ZEzfJaNCJ0
Lots of jiggery pokery with the shit coins.
Is it just me or does Harald not seem to blink often enough? My eyes kinda water out of sympathy.
Santa Harald is giving GENIUS tokens to everyone. youtube.com/watch?v=2ZEzfJaNCJ0
Oh my, that jacket though! Fabulous!
So genius token is yet another token on top of KBC, V999 and G999?
I get Seiz has a fork script but how many Karatbars tokens are there going to be?
Today I spent some time trying to establish whether Josip Heit’s “GSB Gold Standard Group” spinoff is an MLM opportunity.
From what I can tell it’s just your typical crypto Ponzi:
Invest in worthless G999 tokens. Park them (sTaKiNg/MaStErNoDeS!), get more G999 tokens and cash out through the internal exchange.
Couldn’t see a comp plan but what I did come across is this hilariously cringe marketing video:
youtube.com/watch?v=cSniYhRn3jI
“Now you are ready!” Lololol!
Wow! Three major celebrities in one short video! Sophia Thomalla! Alex Cocindau! Josip Heit! Who could fail to be impressed by that?
The roster of celebrities involved in Gold Standard Group doesn’t end there.
Here is another major celebrity in another one of their videos, traveling with Josip Heit on what can only be one of Heit’s private planes: youtu.be/Y7d0iDN28BM?t=6
That’s Alex Bodi, who’s world-famous in Romania:
(balkaninsight.com/2020/11/12/romania-cracks-down-on-criminals-forced-home-by-pandemic/)
He was arrested in November in Germany for “forming an organized criminal group, human trafficking and pimping”. He’s accused of being part of a large Romanian gang that trafficked women into prostitution in Germany.
Some more information here:
en24news.com/2020/12/alex-bodi-bianca-dragusanus-ex-husband-placed-under-house-arrest-although-he-is-accused-of-human-trafficking-and-pimpingen.html
Lulz, wait for it – youtu.be/VFAagDlneNM?t=82
The comments section of Dr Harald’s latest video is quite extraordinary. And I am referring to the gullible individuals who still believe that Harald has their best interests at heart and this is not one big Ponzi scam!
Lambs to the slaughter!
A very informative and detailed article in English:
Read on at
brandaktuell.at/2020/08/20/karriere/harald-seiz-and-karatbars-criminal-complaint-against-publisherchief-editor-and-editors-of-the-handelsblatt-foto/
I don’t think the lawsuit will be successful. The German “Handelsblatt” is a serious publication. Harald Seiz also has problems with the German BaFin:
bafin.de/SharedDocs/Veroeffentlichungen/EN/Verbrauchermitteilung/unerlaubte/2019/meldung_191111_Karatbit_Foundation_en.html
There are numerous videos on this channel about cheating with Karatbars and Freebay:
youtube.com/channel/UCMFv-DoNEIg31Lmz__HM3jw/videos
The screenshot shows only a small part:
share-your-photo.com/9e87392f42
Addition to comment #13
The German portal welt.de (newspaper and television station) writes today:
share-your-photo.com/77b8f46677
Read on at
welt.de/wirtschaft/gruenderszene/article223819184/Sophia-Thomalla-wirbt-fuer-fragwuerdige-Blockchain-Firma.html
I have been scammed with this Karatbars/Karatbit (investment).
Please let me know if there is a class action law suit. I’m interested in joining a class action law suit or starting a class action law suit.
So go see a lawyer then?
Article updated to note Seiz has scrubbed his YouTube channel.
(Ozedit: link removed)
Why this isn’t being investigated properly is totally beyond me. Potentially hundreds of millions is involved @behindmlm
Because there’s nothing to discuss. If anything is ever filed I’ll cover the case.
A look back at the wonderfully bad Impulse K1 phone which was supposed to run on the Bl0cKChAiN: youtu.be/Ijssm6Qv5nE?t=348
karatbars screwed me out of 3,000 affiliates and 31,000 of units and 2 yrs of my time and still have my stored 1 gram gold bars someplace.
Does anyone of you happen to know where I can get my gold and all the cash gold I bought so I could buy kBC. tokens/gold coins back to my.
I’d sure appreciate any Info about my units and Gold that was stolen from me.
My direct upline would never help me and I think he took all my affiliates that would transfer to him and went to freeway, over 3,000 cause I was always left in limbo without helping me with what 100 s of.
please help me with navigating through all the different sites and new coins and I think that they me everything so complex to understand that most people were kept in the dark on 99 percent of issues.
I tried for almost 2 yrs trying to find out what or where all my funds went from purchasing gold and cash Gold all went to.
I had proof with my statements that my funds were deposited with karatbars but nobody would acknowledge my funds or where they were actually use for.
I am just a one man senior citizen or 78 yrs young and I feel that they used my age to take everything from me and only income I have now is my social security and by what the did to me its hurting me big time .
as iam writing this down so anybody can read this and be their own judgment of what I stated above.
By the way my immediate direct upline and menters initials are BRIAN ???
Sincerely Joseph Schrum
Hi Joseph,
You invested in a Ponzi scheme. The gold doesn’t exist. The tokens are worthless.
When you invested your money was stolen by your upline, Harald Seiz and earlier Karatbars investors.
Karatbars game-plan, as you’ve experienced, is to run you run the bush and get you to hand over more money with endless reload scams.
Not what you want to hear but it’s what happened. Sorry for your loss.
@ Joseph Schrum
You have collected 97 videos about the Karatbars scam. Do you know the name of the pastor in this video?
share-your-photo.com/6395a2a176
youtube.com/watch?v=PEhseqI567E&list=PLSCOZ1wm1vB4SOhOt-Unv2DJId2TFqfHK&index=21
The complete list:
youtube.com/playlist?list=PLSCOZ1wm1vB4SOhOt-Unv2DJId2TFqfHK
youtube.com/watch?v=QtEj5Kbu3WM
Much more recommended videos about the Karatbars scam on this channel:
youtube.com/channel/UCazBmw6adX2wXyJlAYgZSrw/videos
I went down to Miami and actually saw the bank where are they storing the gold bars and it was a huge VIP party for the first day they opened the bank in Miami, FL.
They were showing the plans of opening several banks around the world. I almost invested and something told me not to. I could not wrap my head around the idea of how it was working. I’ve still not invested in crypto either.
One of my guy friends invested over 5 million dollars in this company yet my other friends that did crypto massively back then didn’t want anything to do with this one which was a big red flag to me.
Super heartbreaking I’m so sorry so many people are scammed seems to happen a lot in Florida!!!
Ia. A pensioner and sis invested 7000 thousand between us alk gone.
Crying as now need 1800 for vet bills only to be told i have 158.00 left and sis only 580.
I invested $10.000 in Karat bars I bought shares where is my return.
If you don’t steal from someone else in a Ponzi scheme you are a majority bagholder. Sorry for your loss.
@Kim M Myles-Thompson
My personal recommendation to you is the following channel on YouTube:
youtube.com/channel/UCazBmw6adX2wXyJlAYgZSrw/videos
Also scammed.
I want my refund because I spent a lot of money thinking that it’s trustable but unfortunately not.
So with all due respect I want my money back.
Karatbars was a Ponzi scheme. There are no refunds in Ponzi schemes.
This guy traveled to the Karatbars office to get his 50,000 of gold. Nothing but tumbleweed greeted him.
Apparently, Josip won’t let Harald get to the gold. youtu.be/hdFfcAFmv9g?t=292
That one’s come up before. The guy is promoting GSPartners so bit of a marketing stunt.
Hello,
I definately would be interested in a class action lawsuit!!! Our family invested $170,000.00 usd. Between our families accounts we have 1100 grams of gold pending delivery for 1.5 years now.
we have 3 million G999 coins that are worth nothing. My wifes family trusted me an now our family is broken apart. Its tragic.
Can anyone help us? I can be reached at (Ozedit: removed) Jamie
A lawyer can. Posting your phone number all over the internet is asking for recovery scammers to target you.
PS. That gold pending delivery doesn’t exist. It never did.
Karatbars was almost certainly a scam from day one in 2011. Harald Seiz was never going to run a viable company selling 1 gram bars of gold to the average joe.
The premium of gold gets lower the greater the size of the bullion bar sold and the quantity purchased.
The monies he was making was always through selling worthless affiliate packages and encouraging others to buy them also as part of a pyramid selling scam.
Harald Seiz and his East European criminal partners targeted average joe people with no understanding or experience of buying bullion, and also cryptocurrency. They played off the ignorant.
There are a number of reputable bullion dealers out there, selling bulliion from 1 gram up to 1 kilogram, and even up to 12.5 kilograms.
Karatbars was never reputable nor commercially viable; it was cover for a pyramind selling, Ponzi scam.
Also reputable bullion dealers charge a fee to store your bullion. They have to pay for insurance and therefore they charge for storage.
Anyone claiming to store gold and is not charging a storage fee is a scammer!
Ironically, the scammer (Harald) was scammed by another scammer (Josip Heit).
Mr Oz
Have any affiliates recieved any gold? My upline says some gold has been distributed.
JK
Apart from some people who were presented quantities of what may or may not be gold at prmotional events, nobody received or has any gold from these guys.
@Stevie
The fact they were not charging storage fees for the gold was suspicious in itself, let alone the fact it was all an elaborate pyramid selling ponzi scam.
How would you know this ?
@ Jamie
Maybe because the storage costs would rapidly destroy any profit margin?
Maybe because insuring it would be near impossible?
The lack of any independent audit perhaps?
Maybe beacause it is a ponzi scheme?
Maybe because anyone who even did half a year of first year economics would recognise this at what it is?
Maybe because nobody can actually touch their “gold”?
Maybe because the people involved are dodgy?
Maybe because they have broken every promise?
Or that only insiders and those at the top have been rewarded. Does Google work where you live?
Tosser
Karatbars has only used gold as a marketing tools.
The most gold anyone publicly received was those paper card slithers. Again, they were sent out so people could take photos with them for marketing.
AFAIK nobody has ever taken delivery of a substantial amount of gold from Karatbars. Everyone just cashes out.
The gold doesn’t exist.
Thank you Oz really appreciate your help.
Am peterojojo from Nigeria Delta State. What about karatbars international?
What about it? If you invested in Karatbars, sorry for your loss.
Would love to join a class action lawsuit !! After 170,000 usd i have 22 phones .
Surely there’s some legal recourse? Even if it takes years.
Traffic Monsoon are a company that’s being sued thru the American system and it does seem to be winding up now.
Legal recourse = question for a lawyer.
Regulatory recourse = you need to file a complaint with the appropriate regulators, and even then there’s no guarantee anything will happen.
It’s not impossible but this long after the fact it’d be a longshot.
Thank you.
Do you know the name of the american law office that is suing them?
I wasn’t aware Karatbars was being sued in the US.
ok
As you have said it seems no one will get their money back, but is there is a class action lawsuit filed, I would like to be part of that.
Now we are getting messages to go through a company called Acuawellington (Ozedit: snip, see here: https://behindmlm.com/companies/karatbars-international/acua-wellington-is-a-karatbars-international-recovery-scam/ )
No class-action against Karatbars has been filed. You’re being conned.
Addition to comment #2
I regularly register that screenshots uploaded by me are removed. Why don’t the scammers I criticize like my screenshots? Harald Seiz tries again to remove traces. Let’s look at the details.
share-your-photo.com/95327e9208 = Image does not exist
share-your-photo.com/d9e4daed78 = Image does not exist
share-your-photo.com/29d5fb550f = Image does not exist
My link to the article…
network-karriere.com/2020/06/29/staatsanwaltschaft-zweifelt-an-den-goldreserven-der-karatbars-gruppe/
…is also dead:
share-your-photo.com/668ef7c059
This laudatory article from…
netcoo.com/direct-selling/harald-seiz-und-sein-goldweg/
…is still there. This confirms my opinion that netcoo.com is a German equivalent of BusinessForHome. For money, every scam is praised to the skies in Germany as well.
When will the following screenshot be removed? We see Marvin Steinberg and Harald Seiz:
share-your-photo.com/95794ce595
Another web site says Harald sold Karabars to a U. S. Company the end of 2020, but didn’t give name of company. Is this also part of the scam?
Sounds like you can’t verify the information “on another website”.
If you can’t verify, you already know the answer.