Bridle tightens on Amer Abdulaziz’s Phoenix Fund lies
Phoenix Fund owner Amer Abdulaziz Salman is feeling the heat after Konstantin Ignatov shed light on his involvement in OneCoin.
According to the former OneCoin CEO, Abdulaziz used Phoenix Fund to help mark Scott launder $110 million dollars.
According to Konstantin, whatever OneCoin was paying him was not enough. This prompted Abdulaziz to skim funds off the top.
Amer Abdulaziz, after he stole €100m from OneCoin, he started buying racehorses for, like, €25m. [He was] one of the main money-launderers for Ruja.
As per Konstantin’s quoted testimony above, Abdulaziz (right) is believed to have used stolen OneCoin funds to set up Phoenix Thoroughbreds.
Abdulaziz has used Phoenix Thoroughbreds to create a name for himself in international racing circles.
Dubai-based Abdulaziz, 56, launched Phoenix Thoroughbreds in 2017 as the “world’s first regulated thoroughbred fund” and has since become one of the most high-profile figures in international racing and bloodstock, often flexing the significant financial muscle of his fund at the sales and through private purchases.
When queried on the source of funds used to set up Phoenix Thoroughbreds earlier this year, Abdulaziz refused to answer the question.
In the aftermath of the scandal Abdulaziz’s horse trader quit, citing concern over Abdulaziz’s role in OneCoin.
Earlier today Phoenix Thoroughbred came out swinging in response to Konstantin Ignatov’s testimony.
Phoenix Fund Investments LLC categorically denies all allegations made against , and its owner Mr. Amer Abdulaziz, in legal proceedings against OneCoin and its conspirators in the US.
Phoenix Fund Investments LLC believes that the firm and Mr. Amer Abdulaziz have acted according to the law at all times, and will vigorously content all allegations of wrongdoing.
Phoenix Fund Investments LLC will fully cooperate with relevant authorities should they require assistance.
Phoenix Fund Investments LLC is currently seeking legal advice and will take appropriate action against those involved in the publication of false and defamatory statements.
After that statement was published it came to light Abdulaziz has put Phoenix Thoroughbreds into voluntary liquidation.
The Racing Post asked both the DOJ and FBI whether Abdulaziz was under investigation, however neither agency was willing to confirm he was a person of interest.
The British Horseracing Authority however confirmed to the Irish Field ‘it’s aware of the situation and working with the relevant authorities “as a priority.”’
Phoenix Fund is believed to be tied to Mark Scott’s Fenero Fund through Bank of Ireland accounts.
US authorities have thus far arrested Scott himself and accomplice David Pike.
Scott was convicted last week and is facing fifty years in prison
Amer Abdulaziz Salman is based out of Dubai. Dubai does not have an extradition treaty with the US.
Update 22nd January 2021 – Phoenix Thoroughbreds have now been banned from running horses in Dubai.
As it stands Amer Abdulaziz Salman can’t run horses in the UK, France or anywhere in the UAE.
There was talk of Australia banning Phoenix Thoroughbreds but it doesn’t appear anything came of that.
Update 17th April 2021 – Minor update from Australia, courtesy of the Australian Financial Review;
Contacted this week, the Queensland Racing Integrity Commission said Phoenix allowed the registration of its ownership syndicate there to lapse last June, which meant the state had no reason to investigate.
But, on Friday afternoon, Racing NSW and Victoria Racing said they would freeze Phoenix’s prize money until its legal cases were resolved. The NSW decision was made in January and not disclosed until now.
While the decisions don’t prohibit Phoenix horses from competing, they are a blow to Abdulaziz’s reputation in one of the world’s leading horse-racing nations.
The mind boggles as to why Abdulaziz hasn’t been arrested yet.
If Abdulaziz wants to clear his name, I’m sure the DOJ will be more than accommodating.
All he has to do is jump on a plane to New York.
We’re waiting…
There might have been more than horsing with OneCoin money.
OneCoin Dubai office was/is located at the Phoenix Business Center premises at Ubora Tower. The logo indicates that it’s same brand as Aamer’s horse business.
That’s the place where Velizara Ivanova tortured the cash counting machine like no tomorrow.
You can see the Phoenix logo at 0:42 timemark of this video:
youtube.com/watch?v=FNc-PiSVI3I
(It’s fun video to watch, because it contains Velizara saying that Ruja is on holiday because she is tired for working so hard but she will be back soon.)
Here is the website:
phoenix-bc.net/
I wonder is the Phoenix real estate project established with non-stolen OneCoin criminal proceeds, in agreement with OneCoin principals. And is there a OneCoin office in Dubai anymore?
They seem to be pulling out of Dubai, since at least two OneCoin linked companies have been dissolved within a year and a half:
btw, Rigs Limited is still marked as an owner in one of the Ruja’s Bulgarian real estate companies.
He doesn’t even need to do that. All suspicion would be removed if he simply gave the authorities (or published) a list of all the investors in his fund, who of course will all have legitimate sources of income.
That Abulaziz emerged into the racing world out of nowhere in 2017, with a ton of money to spend on buying horses, at just the time Konstantin says he stole a ton of money from OneCoin, will then have been proven to be nothing more than an unfortunate coincidence.
So, out of the list of money launderers named by K, all seem accounted for apart from “Alex Ortega”.
AA thought he found a safe haven for his hot money in the horse world, whereas Scott was a traditional shuffler thru obscure shell companies.
How else could the hot Onecoin money find a “clean” home?
Bitcoin has always been criticized for facilitating money laundering, amongst other things.
Currently, there is a Japanese administrator distributing large amounts of bitcoins to account holders in the failed Mt. Gox exchange.
As this process has dragged on for years, many account holders have been approached by third parties offering to buy their frozen bitcoins for around 10c in the $.
What an excellent way to launder money (and probably make further profit): buy loaded Mt.Gox accounts from private individuals with ‘hot’ cash, then wait for the liquidator’s distribution of (now legally acquired) bitcoin.
Maybe that’s an area of fruitful investigation to help narrow down the ‘Alex Ortega’ choices (a common name), especially any who appeared in this niche around 2017…
Btw, I wonder what happened to Gilbert Armenta. Could it be that Ruja’s loverboy Armenta is actually at large?
I discovered, that this summer he incorporated a new company “ESOL B.V. LLC” in Florida with his long time associate Giselle Valentin:
opencorporates.com/companies/us_fl/L19000176275
Armenta’s 100% owned company with exactly the same name owned the Georgian bank “JSC Capital” which was major player in OneCoin money laundering operations.
The bank in fact lost its license due to money laundering concerns in late 2016. JSC Capital Bank was the bank which provided pre-paid credit cards for OneCoin investors in early years of the scam.
Perhaps Armenta is not at large but brazenly breached his co-operation terms? Or he is allowed to continue his business in WITSEC or whatever facility his is currently in?
Journalists are starting to catch up with the OneCoin story:
(thetimes.co.uk/article/top-law-firm-advised-scam-queen-ruja-ignatova-kxzl7zw6d)
I don’t have access to the full article so I can’t tell what the ‘top law firm’ article is referring is — or if it’s named at all.
It could be Locke Lord because of Mark S Scott and Robert Courtneidge. Then again, thanks to Konstantin’s wonderful snitching, the article could refer to this:
(twitter.com/innercitypress/status/1192097826421067778)
When I first saw this, I thought this might have been the un-named “top-tier London law firm” that Gary Gilford talked about in the July webinar.
The law firm representatives went to the Sofia office, investigated it with “fine-tooth comb”, made some recommendations but ultimately gave their blessing to OneCoin.
Peregrine Law and MJ Hudson have also been brought up (by the Court) in connection with the case(justice.gov/usao-sdny/press-release/file/1205246/download), so these are two other possibilites…
Ruja is good! You will never find her.
Too smart for you breedy people. She deceived you all, hahahha!
Quote from The Times paywall article:
The family office was RavenR, as Gary Gilford commented elsewhere here.
Are HL “top tier”?
I’m sure everyone is top tier when fees are pocket money..
@tmfp,
Thanks for providing the info behind paywall.
Here is my today’s major discovery about something we should alert the Estonian (+ other) authorities ASAP:
On November 7th 2019, Veselina Marinova Valkova and Habib Ur Rehman Zahid established a company TradeInvicta OÜ. It most likely has something to do with OneCoin.
krediidiraportid.ee/tradeinvicta-ou
Good to know that Habib Zahid is back in the game. 😉
They even got virtual currency related licenses from Estonia:
(teatmik.ee/en/personlegal/14844026-TradeInvicta-OÜ)
Excellent work Semjon. That’s it. I was previously looking for this too but gave up. Here’s the official register link on Estonian Ministry of Economic Affairs and Communications:
mtr.mkm.ee/taotluse_tulemus/523366
MTR should be contacted immediately.
It’s funny that Veselina and Zahid used the “package” service Heaven Vetures to acquire the license:
heaven.ventures/#our-bestsellers
Of course they never had any fricking “central bank” connection in the first place…
Funny thing is, I mention in Petteri Järvinen’s blog how easy it is to get a crypto exchange license in Estonia in 48 hours with Heaven Ventures package service. This was on 10th October 2019.
blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=6843976375835852604&postID=5796731288439706404
Find post with “heaven.ventures”
And lo and behold, Veselina and Habib created via this service a company and license in Estonia on 7th November..
There’s a big chance the finnish main promoter Tommi Vuorinen read my message told them about this package service.. 😀
The contact email indicates that they used service from Heaven Invest OÜ company which advertises “START YOUR CRYPTO COMPANY IN ESTONIA — from €4,800” on their “heaven.ventures” website.
Shame on them for failing to do rudimentary Due Diligence work! They are yet another player whose reputation is about get soiled by this scam.
For a little light relief, this year old racing industry puff piece has a prophetic title 🙂
theownerbreeder.com/features/phoenix-now-taking-flight/
Altho it could have been written by AA himself, it’s a familiar (sport) story: charismatic figure with lots of money = No due dilligence + open arms from the establishment.
I’m sure he was very persuasive. This embellishment made me laugh
“You know, if it was common knowledge who was in the fund, bloodstock agents would go directly to them and try to take away our business.”
This might also be good way to report:
politsei.ee/en/financial-intelligence-unit
There is an email address, and somebody must know someone who can report using that service which requires id-card / mobile-id…
The license page:
mtr.mkm.ee/taotluse_tulemus/523366
has a contact email and phone:
Majandus- ja Kommunikatsiooniministeerium:
(contact details removed)
They really used a 7200€ package service for their license.. 😀
Not even trying to look legit for anybody except idiots.
And hell I’m pretty sure Vuorinen told Veselina after seeing my message about the package serivice. 😀
Here are the links to both of the licenses OneCoin’s new shell company TradeInvicta OÜ got, using the all inclusive 7200€ “Heaven Ventures” -package service to create the exchange company and acquire licenses..
License: “Providing services of exchanging a virtual currency against a fiat currency”
mtr.mkm.ee/taotluse_tulemus/523366
License: “Providing a virtual currency wallet service”
mtr.mkm.ee/taotluse_tulemus/523365
Images:
MTR exchange License: i.imgur.com/iNh5heP.png
Company info TradeInvicta OÜ: i.imgur.com/rJLOj24.png
Heaven Ventures package prices: i.imgur.com/wJYbLf0.png
I seem to remember that in one of my first comments here, I said something along the lines that one should always be very suspicious about any company engaged in online activities recently incorporated in Estonia, particularly if it wasn’t clearly run by Estonians.
Estonia have made a big effort to try and position themselves as the best place for online businesses in the EU, deliberately making it easy and cheap for people who have no link to Estonia whatsoever to set up shop there.
Surely anyone could have foreseen this would turn them into a magnet for scammers everywhere.
I was thinking about the reasons why they possibly would open an (company controlled) exchange..
One reason is, for Onecoin it doesn’t matter if things don’t work well or at all, they can still hype it. A good example is DealShaker. Even when nobody can sell any coins, they can always say that ‘you have to wait, it will work better soon’, and they can keep the hype on, believers believing, and say to new victims that now they have an exchange.
Just by having even some sh#t online, they can hype and advertise it, and claim Onecoin is not a scam.. That’s already enough reasons trying to get some sh#t online.
Italy Expo has been cancelled.
I suppose this is because of “haters”, not becuase Konstantin chose to plead guilty for all four charges?
NOLINK://i.imgur.com/xLsEB3q.png
@Otto
i don’t think that is true.
Tickets are still available
//www.onelifeevents.eu/en/events/italy-expo
this is the official ima italian page on fb
//www.facebook.com/groups/Onelifeitalia/
I think they cancelled it because they were afraid it would be raided by the Italian authorities since OC has been banned there, and they would be arrested.
With the information coming out of Mark Scott’s trial I am sure it also played a major part in this cancellation.
Wonder if the Russian Expo has also been cancelled? Wasn’t that also scheduled to start this Friday and run through Sunday?
Interesting isn’t it that Simon Le, King Jayms, and a few of the other remaining top leaders are either gone MIA or eerily silent all of a sudden. Wonder why? LOL!
One object of an exchange could be to provide an endgame.
Stick ONE on an exchange, watch it plummet and then pronounce the project dead due to haterz, FBI, The Central Bank, OC members for not providing merchants…
Connecting actual ONE account holdings is probably not possible, but they could set up a plan for when your holdings are to be available on exchange.
Once ONE has been declared DOA this will of course be a moot point.
SwissCoin took this way out and managed to string people along for over a year, selling the project in the process to a new player.
I am surprised that it hasn’t been done for ONE yet, possibly due to the lack of leadership the last year or so.
RISG Ltd was a company co-owned by Ruja and Sebastian – check the initials.
@Nonecoinxxx
You are terribly ill-informed – like all OneCoin believers! 😀
The fraud event in Verona (First European Expo) does not take place! Here is the official cancellation of the scammers from Sofia:
share-your-photo.com/e9c2474ea0
The short video with the fraudster Simon Le from Vietnam, which was still visible yesterday, was also removed:
share-your-photo.com/95d2c4b8af
DealShaker has offered 1,000 tickets to merchants, of which only 97 have been sold.
Are the merchants now getting their money back? Okay, it was not real money, just worthless OneCoins. 😛
@Melanie
the event is not deleted. Before writing… try to discover real informations. Not suggestions.
We hope already that all the truth appear and as soon as possibile the police/FBI put in OFF mode the Onelife’s server.
@OneDreamScam
I see it differently. The event in Verona was an official event as it was announced on onelifeevents.eu. Official tickets have been sold for prices up to 450 euros.
Yesterday’s announcement was an “unofficial” cancellation, as Luca Miatton and Cristi Calina had a approval for the event in Verona. I am convinced of that.
I think Niente is right that the Estonian company is a part of the endgame. That company has “snowball’s chance in hell” surviving very long.
They probably thought that they can run it for a short while before the inevitable shut-down. They would blame the haterz for the downfall, take take money and run.
Or perhaps the whole thing was made just for the (now cancelled?) Italian Expo — to give false appearance of progress.
In any case, it’s good thing that we caught it before it went online.
btw, You can see Veselina Valkova’s email address and phone number in the Estonian register. It appears to be a prepaid number. And Veselina looks older than 40 years old. 😉
The chaos of disintegration. It’s quite obvious there’s nobody around anymore who knows how to work their websites and keep the information consistent. Hence, at the same time, here:
onelifeevents.eu/en/
the event has been canceled, but elsewhere on the same site, here:
onelifeevents.eu/en/events/italy-expo
it’s still going ahead, with even a running countdown timer for booking. And somewhere else yet it has only been announced that the event no longer has official approval, not that it has been canceled.
Their usual reluctance to provide something as basic as a phone number for the event makes it rather hard to check.
(The links above are correct at the time of posting, of course they could have changed again by the time anyone reads it.)
BTW: when one looks at the address in Verona given, there is clearly nothing there where one could hold an event with hundreds of dealers and thousands of visitors.
@Melanie
I repeat. The Italian expo is not yet deleted.
As I understand, it seems that there are problems with cash account payment. But the will continue to operate. Surely.
@OneDreamScam
You repeat based on what? Verona event shows “cancelled” on the official onelifeevents.eu site.
It’s very weird if the event isn’t cancelled but shows cancelled on the official OneLife event site.
There is also a new Bulgarian company incorporated by Veselina and Habib: H&V CONSULTANT.
twitter.com/CryptoXpose/status/1199459567366803456
Machine translation from Bulgarian company register:
The registry filing made by Elitsa Ivanova Stoyanova
(probably this person: advokatibg.info/адвокати/адвокати-враца/елица-иванова-стоянова)
Unfortunately, the company’s founding document pdfs aren’t in machine transalatable form.
the mastermind in verona is surely not deleted:
facebook.com/marco.agnelli.14/posts/2564777270303829 (1hour ago)
facebook.com/giorgio.troiano (2hours ago)
and as OneDreamScam wrote, the expo is not deleted yet.
nobody has write about it.
I believe that the company has canceled the event to not be responsible for it.
I don’t think that the company announcement that Melanie provided in message #25 and the “cancelled” status on the official events website necessarily mean that the event is cancelled.
To me, it sll sounds like a planned move. The announcement doesn’t read like prohibition/cancellation, but more like “we, as a company, take no responsibility, but IMAs can go ahead if they dare”.
It’s pseudo-compliance move that one could expect from these criminals.
Otherwise, what an a**hole move from “the Company” to suddenly to pull the plug a day before the event. Tickets have been sold and travel plans have been made.
The move could have an added benefit of possibly confusing the authorities….
@melanie u have wrote that mario rossi is a scammer, now u post an image where he accuse onecoin. where r u wrong?
i think that u have to carefully check before write, also take a big breath, it oxygen the brain. u do a disinformation in this way.
The brainless mama on tour says in one of his Videos the event in verona is at an other location, i forget where, and i am to lazy to watch this shit Video again…
@Nonecoinxxx
share-your-photo.com/5e7079b5d6
The name Mario Rossi caught my eye on Facebook, but I have to look for the comment that made me aware of him. If I find the comment, I will take a screenshot of it.
The scammers from Romania wrote two days ago:
share-your-photo.com/9b8e90de8e
@melanie
onelifeevents.eu/en/events/italy-expo
i have already posted this link. when i posted hours ago tickets were available.
You do is to scream at the wolf wolf without a wolf, so please check before write and please be humble to say I was wrong.
The OneCoin scammers from Austria write:
share-your-photo.com/bc0f20af34
Of course nobody knows when and where this picture was taken.
@Semjon:
I don’t think there’s anything to pseudo-comply with. There’s nothing that OC, or its affiliates, are doing that is more illegal today than it was yesterday, or a month ago, or a year ago.
I cannot see how going ahead with that event or not makes any difference to anything legally, or would confuse any authorities possibly following the ongoing events.
I think what we’re seeing are simply the outward symptoms of total confusion and panic. There’s in all likelihood no clear command structure anymore, it’s every man and woman for themselves.
“The conpany” as such really doesn’t exist anymore. We don’t even know how many people are involved in still keeping up the pretense that OC is an ongoing business – from hiding, since several reports indicate their offices are deserted. For all we know it might just be one person.
Anybody who still has control of something, like the access information for a website, or the combination for the safe, or keys to the offices, is just trying to use them to grab what they still can, as well as cover their tracks as well as they can.
I can see all kinds of reasons why somebody in Sofia, still trying to keep the charade going for just a bit longer because their exit plan is still ongoing, would think this event is bad news.
Most of the hardcore believers left in Italy or Europe generally could use this as an opportunity to get together, and talk among each other without the possibility of Sofia controlling the discussions.
One or more of the remaining heavyweights might use it as a platform to publicly end their association with OC, declare they were merely innocent victims themselves, and start touting a replacement scam (there’s plenty around to choose from). They could very well have a mass public defection on their hands.
Alternatively, the total opposite could happen, and word gets out that nobody turned up.
Whatever happens, it’s hard to see any benefit to such an event right now.
Looks like it’s normal OneCoin/OneLife messed up things.
Indeed in Telegram groups it is said the event is not canceled and the canceled message is just a technical issue..
Tecnic problem?… Really strange. A way to put earning money on the Italian IMA Leaders…. we have to remember that all the European wire banking Onelife accounts are closed.
So… which better solution to pay MLM Leaders whitout wire bancking transactions?
In this way infact Luca Miatton can earn money by cash or by his bancking account…. don’t you think so?
The transaction are done by wire transfer on leaders’s bank account or companies or cash.
@Nonecoinxxx
Which kind of LTD or other? Foreign bank account or italian ones?
In regard to the Verona event, the Italian authorities should be made aware of it immediately, and hopefully have their people attend and shut it down; with hopefully some arrests as an added plus.
It would be amazing if Italian Authority would intervene, when the scammers are all there in the Verona event.
The fact is, Verona event is promoting officially criminal international fraud scheme, as stated by the US Department of Justice after Konstantin Ignatov pleaded guilty on wire fraud and money laundering, and admitted he knew OneCoin is a fraud scheme.
Complement to comment #40:
The picture shown by the scammers from Austria comes from the DealShaker and has been shown there since October 29, 2019!
share-your-photo.com/17ff351106
Material has now appeared on open FB-groups that strogly indicate that the Miatton et al are not going to cancel the event. And they certainly don’t seem to be about to denounce the scam.
But what about the Back Office message? It can’t be technical issue, so is the one that circulated fake or some old announcement?
I thought the seemingly sudden “corporate” back-pedaling about the event was a planned pseudo-compliance move just because nothing had changed.
Veselina knew from the minute she green-lighted the Verona event (in early October?) and put it on the official events page (they don’t appear on that page by accident), that there was a “complex legal situation” in Italy and the Feds are out to get them.
Veselina probably just gave a marketing boost opportunity for the event organizers by putting it under the official brand for a while, but, as a precautionary measure, at the eleventh hour, she pulled back the official endorsement.
If people get arrested, which is not just a theoretical chance, Veselina can wash her hands by saying that they were warned, and carry on the scam with whoever is left.
It’s of course possible that something else had prompted the sudden back-pedaling and down-grading.
For example, it might be the result of internal fighting, e.g if it was a surprise that Veselina had gotten into bed with Zahid with the exchange companies.
Or Italian authorities contacted Sofia, asking about the event. Or Veselina got a tip from Frank “The Mole” Schneider, that SWAT teams and K9 units have been practicing for weeks in preparation for the event. 😉
Complement to comment #47
The next lie of OneCoin scammers from Austria:
share-your-photo.com/c45459545d
“More than 400 merchants“? Of 1,000 tickets for merchants, only 97 were sold!
share-your-photo.com/17ff351106
There was rumors months ago that Veselina has gotten close with Zahid, and Zahid was seen in the last big MLM leader gathering in Sofia, although keeping a lower profile after giving up the master distributor position.
In that sense I was personally not surprised Veselina and Zahid had gotten “into bed” together regarding the newly created shell companies.
Another indication that something strange may be going on:
(facebook.com/groups/2135051646562353/permalink/2650419441692235/)
NewDealShaker saga is about to be repeated in some form?
Simon Le asking OneCoiners to join ponzi vulture Wantage One ponzi?
That weird request to take screenshots could fit with my theory that the whole thing has disintegrated internally, and that “the company” really no longer exists.
It’s quite possible that one person or group has the passwords and other information necessary to access the website, the email, etc. and can thus present themselves to the outside world as still being the company, but that they’ve lost control of the system which keeps the accounts.
That could be running entirely on autopilot now, and be at the mercy of another person or group who could simply wipe out all the data if they wanted – most likely one of the few people there with some IT knowledge.
Asking every user to make a screenshot with all their account information on it could be someone’s idea of a desperate attempt to gather all the data they can no longer access directly, in the hope they could then reconstruct the entire database.
One could see it as a rather extreme form of the technical kludge known in IT as screen scraping.
Such a scenario is not that fanciful. Bernie Madoff at one point was blackmailed by the two computer programmers who over years had created the software system on which his entire elaborate fraud depended.
They were the only ones who knew how it all worked, and they’d simply deleted the key programs. If he hadn’t paid them off, he would have been left with all his investor data, but no way of using it.
That’s the problem if you’re a criminal running a business: you have to employ other criminals, and they make very untrustworthy employees.
The link in #51 is not valid anymore, but a similar message is posted in Facebook group OneLife/OneCoin Team Österreich, partly quoted below.
facebook.com/OneLife.OneCoin.TeamOesterreich/posts/985764268459316
A merchant from Mongolia offers 100 futuristic houses at the Expo in Verona, which cost 746,250 euros per piece:
share-your-photo.com/0246234025
That sounds tempting for OneCoin millionaires, but the purchase is subject to a condition:
Again only a decoy offer. EACC ECOMIR is headquartered in Ulaanbaatar.
A recommendation to OneCoin scammer Simon Le from Vietnam not to travel to Verona on his Facebook account:
share-your-photo.com/7dd37f4d49
Complement to comment #51
share-your-photo.com/2b70fa1bdb
Better with Google?
I don’t quite get it yet:
What and against whom should these OneCoin scammers protect themselves?
I’ve always thought that what doesn’t exist and therefore has no value, I don’t have to protect against anything!
Can you imagine what the reaction would be from the attendees if none of the promoters of this event showed up for fear they would be arrested? Talk about a wake-up call to the members.
But since OC is so real and legitimate, they have nothing to worry about, right? So there is no reason for them not to attend, regardless of the warning to Simon Le. So Go Simon Go!!
I do not think anybody noticed it, but “Mario Rossi” is almost certainly a false name. It is the Italian equivalent of “John Doe” in English.
I can’t believe this event is going ahead in just a few hours.
imgur.com/vHLsi22
Surely reporters are at least going to show up. A huge illegal meeting like this with seemingly no interest from the authorities is a big news story.
It’s more the Italian equivalent of John Smith. It’s a combination of probably the most common first name and one of the most common family name.
There are lots of real people called John Smith, and Mario Rossi. Whereas as far as anyone knows, nobody alive is called John Doe, and there hasn’t been for ages.
While the family name Doe does exist, the name John Doe has been used in English as a placeholder for unknown or anonymous people for so long, since the Middle Ages, that nobody called Doe would ever call their son John.
If somebody calls themselves John Doe online, you know that’s not their real name, somebody called John Smith could very well be for real.
The Facebook group ONECOIN [NON-]EXCHANGE/UPDATES [UN]OFFICIAL CHANNEL (my corrections in brackets) was now renamed to “New Journey” by Habib Abdul Rehman.
It seems like a defining moment. The group picture has a quote “Successful people don’t fear failure but understand that it’s necessary to learn and grow from.”
So OC was a failure but everyone involved learned a valuable but expensive lesson. Mission accomplished.
Cristi Calina replied to one of the many “when exchange?” questions:
Has master fraudster Habib Abdul Rehman deleted his Facebook account?
share-your-photo.com/bd1286ffd5
share-your-photo.com/cf3426922f
@Nonecoinxxx #45
All the tickets are deleted and all the cash account was refound to each KYC. So in this way the Company say that there is no guilty for the Event in Verona.
The hyped up facebook group onelife/onecoin Exchange/update somthing somthing… headed up by scammers, Habib, Dusan Tobric , Peter Hjelte (amongonst others) is now named New Journy (prision maybe?)….
Onecoiners preipar your butholes and get ready for the next scam…
printscreening their “accounts” and writning their balance on toiletpapier…… Finetech scam , lowtech ending……
nolink//www.facebook.com/groups/2419062874855382/
Pjif… realy, would be nice to get a comment from the admin scammers in the group, “its one of the biggest Offical fb groups”. any comment on this “new journy”.
@
Jenny Kim
Cordel KingJayms James
Malika Nourine
Jesse Choi
Dusan Torbica
Faualii Sina Apineru
Yourmos Pob
Noor N. QaderCristi Calina
Adil Noori
Luca Miatton
Muhammad Adeel
Gabriella Streit
Peter Hjelte
Alex Gardens
Henrique Machado
Mario Kuzminović
Khabat Aziz
Habib Abdul Rehman
Lord: (#68)
Never forget Ken “Egg Face” Labine!
The man , the myth , the legend…
He , who would put egg on his face unless Onecoin went public a couple of years back…..
Tommi Vuorinen has now also issued a recommendation to take screenshots:
imgur.com/W0ySVKz
He says a big update is coming and there might be bugs, so the screenshots will make the fixing of the accounts faster.
What an amazing and realiable blockchain technology OneCoin has! 😉
The scammers from Austria complete this:
share-your-photo.com/ed8f90d3e2
@pellets.
haha how could forget good ol Ken “shriiiiking” Labine
The list i pasted was of admins for the fb group 26k members “onecoin exchange/updates official channel” that was renamed (today) to New Yourny by habib, and he added a sad “motivational” picture aswell.
But no comments other then that. the 26k retarded onecoiners are confused… but hay! they were already confused…
Big update = pulling the plugs to the servers.
Followed by weekly new updates about the server update progress:
– Block chain optimization done
– Account conversion done
– KYC verification ongoing
– Exchange connection integration testing ongoing
All under scrutiny by The Central Bank.
After a month or so there will be news that accounts will be re-activated in blocks over a period of time.
During this time, people will hear of someone who knows someone with an activated account. No one will actually get an active account.
Yeah! OneCoiners, make and keep screenshot of your backoffice with a record of OneCoin/Cash balance!
Only thing you will keep as a memory and a proof of our wealth after the OneCoin servers demise…
Or accept the inevitable and say “Good bye” to your monopoly money. Lesson learned, education package you’ve bought accomplished.
Maybe they are moving the office and servers to Dubai..
I think I’m going to adopt this innovative screenshot approach to financial matters. I’ll take a screenshot of the current state of my bank accounts, add one or two zeroes to the amount in each, take it to the bank, and demand they update my accounts to match those numbers.
After all, I’ve got a screenshot showing how much money there ought to be there, that’s absolute proof, isn’t it? What’s in the bank’s database doesn’t matter.
@Mr. Czech:
I think you’ve just come up with a brilliant defence for any future OC trials.
They said they were only selling education, and everyone who bought something from them has indeed learnt some valuable lessons. So, where’s the fraud?
That wouldn’t explain much. There’s no need to move physical server machines in the first place, you just need to install the software on other machines.
You do the switchover once you have everything running on the new hardware, there’s no significant interruption required, if properly done the user shouldn’t even notice.
Who ever got a letter from their bank telling them they won’t be able to use their accounts for several days because the bank is installing new software, or changing the location of their server farm, and oh yes, everyone better take a screenshot of their account status before it happens, because some errors in the amounts may be introduced because of the switch?
Alternative explanations:
1. There is still one single somewhat coherent group of people which can be called “the company”, but they have somehow lost access to the vital OC data, and hope they can reconstruct at least some of it by gathering those screenshots. (It’s theoretically very simple, I you had a screenshot of all the information contained in every record of the database. Whether it’s practicable is another matter.)
2. This is the action of one renegade faction trying to take over the role of “the company”, which functionally no longer exists.
Because they don’t have access to the data, they hope to recreate things from scratch.
Complement to comment #71
I have ordered a ticket for the scam event in Verona from the scammers in Italy and have received this answer by email.
Very interesting: The money is collected by the OneCoin scammer Luca Miatton in a German bank account!
share-your-photo.com/b80689bfe6
Indeed. They are just a step ahead of creating a new approach to the blockchain and decentralised payment verification technology!
Each user (decentralisation) shall provide screenshot proof (blockchain) of transactions!
Maybe they should add some cross-checking: just call your room mate or neighbour or downline or upline to make a double copy of your backoffice screenshot.
Does it mean you have to give access to your backoffice account to someone else? No matter, it’s a future of money!
😛
I just wonder if Ruja is laughing at all this mess… or if she’s decaying somewhere in shallow grave.
Not completely sure and unable to check, but the Back Office page along with the numbers in it appear to be in a format that can be easily manipulated with certain browser engine tricks.
Recently OneCoin scammers from India/Pakistan made videos in which they had the official BOP page of Konstantin Ignatov open live in their web browser, showing that Konstantin will be released soon. (I made this in response, to demostrare the trick: imgur.com/a/89C0gll).
No doubt there is an opportunity to do the same kind of trick now, if mishaps happen and they will have to rely on screenshots.
Perhaps I should offer my services to OneCoin members — I could make very authentic looking photos or even live videos showing great sums on their cash accounts. 😉
@Melanie:
That idiot doesn’t even know what his IBAN number is. You can’t transfer money using what he gives there, a German IBAN number is only 22 characters long.
It turns out the first 22 characters are actually a valid number, and those extra three characters he’s stuck on at the end, “N26”, are the name of the bank.
N26 is a small, online-only outfit, which allows residents from most EU countries to open accounts.
I suppose you could send this email on to N26 and warn them that one of their personal accounts is used for OneCoin business, perhaps including a link to what BaFin has said about OC.
#78 @Melanie
Good Job Melanie…. a big fraud for the Minestry Earning of Italy. No taxes for Luca’s Earnings.
Who can advise the German and Italian Financial Police?
Italian OneCoin/OneLife fraud promoter mafioso Luca Miatton’s German N26 Bank IBAN account number: DE15100110012626399965
You can verify the IBAN is from N26 bank from here:
nifox.de/ibanreverse
N26 The Mobile Bank — N26 Europe n26.com
Ok, so the following is unverified, so take it with a grain of salt at this point, but should be a good source:
So, Veselina and Habib wanted to start with a new company in Dubai. Top leaders were invited there, but many were against this.
Now Habib Zahid has informed IC that he will now definitely leave OneLife for good.
Also rumored that Simon Le is planning to take over the network and DealShaker and trying to create a blockchain. And the screenshot requests are related to all this mess.
Post #68 lists 18 former Admins of Facebook group “New Journey”. Only these 5 are still Admin:
Khabat Aziz
Henrique Machado
Gabriella Streit
Peter Hjelte
Mario Kuzminović
Consistent with Post #84. Chaos is complete.
I see also Habib Abdul Rehman and Muhammad Adeel there by using my spy account in Facebook.
Your FB account has been blocked by Rehman and Adeel if you are not able to see them.
I guess the top leaders didn’t like the Estonia foray either. Or did they even know about it until they read about it from here.
And Veselina and Habib kinda have a new office now, it’s in this building in Estonia:
wrkland.com/locations/private-offices-coworking-spaces-tallinn-maakri/
They probably rented a private office from Workland Estonia for their TradeInvesta project. Although it would be surprising if they actually moved there. Estonia has an extradition treaty with USA, and is very pro-American in genenal…
@Semjon – as I understand it and if I recall correctly, one can own and operate a “business” out of Estonia by simply booking a trip and showing up one day to sign some documents one day. No residency required.
The world is now connected by the web, so physical presence is no longer needed. I think this policy makes Estonia quite unique.
Ps. This is from my memory, so don’t publish without verifying.
The UK has been doing this for years. Any MLM opportunity registered through Companies House = scam.
I wonder how many people named in the Panama Papers have ever visited Panama?
If everyone with a business registered in St Vincent and the Grenadines actually went there, they’d need another new airport.
Cyprus?
Malta?
Nevada?
If they do eventually open some kind of exchange, or actually, launch a generic altcoin blockchain on an exchange, this is the final opportunity to make money before exiting the scam.
Due to a server crash everyone are asked to send in their screen shots of account holdings along with KYC for verification.
Meanwhile, whoever is staging this owns all the pre-mined coins available, and is able to control the market to squeeze out the last money. EXCHANGE OPEN! BUY MORE ONE AT BARGAIN PRICE!
There may even be attempts to pump ONE, which of course is futile when someone is holding a lot of coins that can be used to dump at anytime.
But you gotta wonder, is there anyone left in charge to arrange something like this?
@Timothy Curry – You can apply e-residency to Estonia and handle everything without visiting the country.
He may be gone, but he and his eggs will never be forgotten.
youtu.be/p9DF43AJfCM
The Panama Papers were so named because the law farm of Mossack Fonseca was in Panama.
Their main business was setting up shell companies, or selling off-the-shelf already incorporated ones, in a lot of the usual mostly Caribbean island jurisdictions, not in Panama itself.
That requires hiring locally resident people to be sham company directors (people who could make some extra money simply by letting them use their name, address and signature). That’s the same method many Russian and eastern European criminals use whenever a real person is legally required.
At the very least, almost everywhere in the world you still need someone on the spot to physically go to a registration office, bringing physical paperwork, or someone like a locally licensed notary needs to be involved in the process.
(In many European countries, it isn’t the authorities but the notary drawing up the paperwork who has to check the identities of the people setting up a company. Since he’ll lose his livelihood and possibly go to jail as well if he is caught not doing that, fraud in this regard is extremely rare.)
Mossack Fonseca employed a whole cadre of people on the ground to do all that stuff. The Estonian setup deliberately eliminates even that minimal hassle for someone setting up a fake or criminal business.
The government website where they tout their “e-residence” scheme also helpfully points out you don’t even have to set up a company if you’re in a hurry, you can buy a ready-made one instead.
It even links to companies which provide all the necessary services, or can sell you a shell company.
It does claim to somehow check the identity of the people involved – but how on earth can that realistically be done?
They’ve basically set themselves up as Mossack Fonseca for everyone, without the high fees.
The entertaining thing is that on that site they also go on about how you will have a “trusted” company registration within the EU.
Yeah, right, because nobody in the world will ever notice that absolutely anyyone from anywhere in the world can register a company in Estonia completely online, for minimal fees, no genuine questions asked.
An Estonian registration will get the same “trust” one in Belize, or St Lucia, or St Vincent and the Grenadines, already does.
Who I feel sorry for are honest Estonians who have a genuine business and who want to operate internationally.
They’ll probably have no other choice soon than to set up a company in another country, if they don’t want to be mistaken for yet another bunch of fly-by-night scammers who’ve chosen Estonia as their temporary haven.
An article on Frank Schneider and OneCoin appeared on a Luxembourgish weekly magazine:
(machine translated from: twitter.com/Pierre_Sorlut/status/1200360727070101504)
Unfortunately, the article doesn’t seem to be available online. Apparantely, Pierre Arens is brought up in the article too, if you look closely at 0:37 timemark of this video:
twitter.com/Letzland/status/1200371055287771136
I wonder is Pierre there just because he is the another (in)famous person from Luxembourg tarnished by the scam, or does he have some connection to Schneider — for example, did Frank coax Pierre to get involved…
@PassingBy
That makes no sense, because the N26 Bank GmbH is known to work with scammers like OneCoin. Many fraud systems specifically recommend the N26 bank.
When Ruja constantly lost bank accounts, the N26 Bank was named and used in German forums as an uncomplicated alternative.
The German BaFin knows this and has therefore ordered this:
share-your-photo.com/04bc0a199b
bafin.de/SharedDocs/Veroeffentlichungen/DE/Meldung/2019/meldung_190522_N26_Bank_GmbH_Anordnung.html
The N26 Bank GmbH has a very bad reputation. Also the German television (ARD) has already reported about it. Here is a very short video:
share-your-photo.com/1558410716
youtube.com/watch?v=_a5YZ5DgncI
The N26 Bank GmbH is decorated with several awards. Where did this dubious “bank” buy it? 😮
@Semjon
We will get the full OneCoin/Frank Schneider/Pierre Arens paper article of Letzland for sure. Already have one guy on it.
In my Tweet is the full article by paymentscompliance.com “OneCoin-Linked Company Granted Estonia Crypto Licences”
twitter.com/CryptoXpose/status/1200407633133486081
paymentscompliance.com/premium-content/insights_analysis/onecoin-linked-company-granted-estonia-crypto-licences
@Melanie:
That’s why I only said “I suppose you could”. I’d never heard of N26 before, and only done a very quick google on their name and taken a cursory glance at their website.
It was perfectly obvious from even that short look that, even if they had entirely honourable intentions, their way of doing business would make them a magnet for scammers. Also, that they don’t exactly have a stellar reputation.
Buying awards seems to be a popular activity in Germany, though. The Karatbars MLM guy, now also cryptocurrency MLM guy, Harald Seitz, goes around calling himself ‘Senator’.
It turns out he got that ridiculous pseudo-title from something calling itself the “Bundesverband für Wirtschaftsförderung und Außenwirtschaft e.V.”.
An organisation so well-known and respected that the German version of Wikipedia doesn’t even have an article on it, and which doesn’t seem to exist outside its own website.
If I ever were to start a scammy business, I think I’d do something like that. It’s a niche, but a steady niche.
Scammers come and go, and get into trouble with the law, but there’ll always be some who want to claim ridiculous titles and awards. And there’s nothing inherently illegal in selling meaningless awards and titles.
I’d present them at big events, with very expensive tickets and all the kitschy vulgarity scammers like. “And the 2019 Dr. Ruja Ignatova Memorial Award for Fintech Innovation goes to…”
From that article: Estonia’s finance minister said earlier this year that the regime requires urgent reform because the FIU “cannot substantively assess the suitability of the … applicant and cannot realistically check the activities of owners of activity licences in Estonia”.
Wow. So the government of Estonia have realized the slight problem with attracting business from people outside the country, who they cannot meaningfully do any checks on – either background checks when they apply, or checks on their activities after they’ve legally established themselves in Estonia.
I could have told them about that problem just on the basis of the very first very brief article I ever read on the subject.
But the stupidity of this legislation, amazingly, goes further than just this fundamental, painfully obvious flaw.
Even if they can easily do a background check on publicly available information, which in this case would simply consist of putting those two OneCoin scammers’ names in a search engine, the licensing authority could still not withhold such a license for dealing in cryptocurrency (however they’ve defined that elusive concept legally).
They can only exclude people with criminal convictions – and how are they supposed to check for those, outside the EU? (Within the EU, there is ECRIS, the European Criminal Records Information System.)
Let’s hope part of the fallout of OneCoin is that this harebrained and dangerous Estonian “e-residency” scheme is dealt a serious blow.
And to think that when the Baltic states joined the EU I thought they would be among the decent ones (unlike Bulgaria, say, which should never have been allowed in).
Ok, here’s today’s article from Luxembourgish d’Lëtzebuerger Land -newspaper, about OneCoin, Frank Schneider, Ruja, Pierre Arens..
Didn’t read/translate yet, but looks to translate fine with Mobile Google Translator from the image.
i.imgur.com/VNYqSty.jpg
@PassingBy (RE: #101)
If it is so easy to start a business in Estonia, I also understand why the fraudsters of onefrench-house.eu are supposedly based in Estonia: 🙂
share-your-photo.com/5f529e543d
Thanks for the copies of the articles, WhistleBlowerFin. Can you or someone else provide a translation/summary of the FS article, at least on the parts that contain new or intersting info?
Great thing that Veselina’s Estonian Exchange Adventure was outed and and now we know for sure that authorities got notified!
Veselina Valkova is probably very angry now, because there seems to be a taboo about her name (that’s why I always try to bring it up) — she couldn’t be named or photographed in connection to OneCoin.
GLG IC FUBAR idiot Dusan Torbica was even afraid to name her, when somebody directly asked on a webinar about who’s running the company.
She is a Voldermort-like figure (although she resembles Bellatrix Lestrange more); or like the secretive but powerful Castle buraeucrat Klamm from Kafka’s novel “The Castle” — a personification of bureucratic power that always tries to hide itself from its subjects and never transacts directly with ordinary folks. 😉
It’s interesting that it was mentioned that TradeInvicta has bank accounts in Swedbank. In a Reuters article from earlier this year discussing the concerns about Estonian e-residency (which PassingBy raised very well in messages above), it was written:
(reuters.com/article/us-estonia-danske-digital-insight/dirty-money-risks-encroach-on-estonias-digital-utopia-idUSKCN1PQ3UU)
I wonder what clear connection Habib and Veselina have to Estonia that allowd them to pass the Swedbank smell test? Then again, these two news articles from past week may provide the appropriate context:
reuters.com/article/europe-moneylaundering-seb/swedish-bank-seb-missed-money-laundering-red-flags-in-estonia-tv-report-idUSL8N28650Z
reuters.com/article/us-sweden-cenbank-moneylaundering/imf-to-examine-nordic-efforts-to-stop-money-laundering-in-the-baltics-idUSKBN1Y20XB
It’s not worth the trouble translating or summarizing all of this, since it’s mostly a recap of the OC story so far.
The only two interesting bits are about the two players from Luxembourg in the saga.
Pitt Arens
Insists that, during his brief stint as supposed CEO of OneCoin, from May to October 2017, he wasn’t aware that it was a scam, and perhaps it hadn’t turned into a scam yet.
The first one would make him improbably naive and stupid for an international banker, the second one is of course ludicrous.
He claims he tried to insist on identity verification of the coin owners, generally tried to give the company a proper legal structure, and also tried to get DealShaker off the ground, to make the coins look less obviously worthless.
There was apparently also an “not very communicative Chinese translator” who might have added to his difficulties. That makes no sense at all.
What language is this Chinese person supposed to have been translating for Arens? The only person who mattered was Ruja, and with her he could either have spoken German, which as a Luxembourger he definitely speaks, or English, which as a banker he equally definitely speaks.
But his lawyer insists he knew of no criminal activity at all. He resigned because he realized he was getting nowhere with his attempts to try and turn OC into a properly-run company.
All of which rather begs the question: if he’s as pure as the driven snow, why is he communicating with the press through a no doubt very expensive lawyer (the outgoing chairman of the Luxembourg bar)?
Frank Schneider
Insists he had nothing to do with Ruja’s spying on Gilbert Armenta, thus inadvertently finding out about the FBI investagation.
Instead, he was employed by OC for an “audit of risks to security and the company’s reputation”, whatever that means, between mid-2015 and mid-2017.
For this, he met with Ruja and her lawyers every three months, in London (why London?). He claims she was out of her depth in management terms, and the company was badly structured. But he insists it was a completely legitimate business, which only sold educational courses.
OC was unjustly, and one must assume completely at random, targeted by American judges wanting to make a name for themselves.
Because they needed an underlying crime so that they could convict Mark Scott for money laundering, they arrested Konstantin and put him in a “difficult prison”, to coerce a false guilty plea from the always rather unstable K.
That Mark Scott’s lawyers never contested that OC is a fraud seems to have escaped him.
As to Ruja, he hopes she’s “alive and well-hidden”, but strongly hints at her perhaps having met a different fate.
Which begs the question: if OC was/is a legitimate business, unjustly targeted by the American authorities, why is she in hiding and in fear of her life, or even possibly dead?
It almost sounds like Frank Schneider is trolling.
It’s just unbelieavable how Frank Schneider talks like a crooked criminal, and not like a serious professional with background in security/law enforcment world, facing serious charges.
Frank is probably the only person on this planet still willing to defend the legitimacy of OneCoin against the US Government charges. If he is indeed serious, and not clowning — it’s quite something.
He even throws the “forced confession” allegation like the most feverish OneCoin idiot.
Unfrotunate if the wiretapping story was the only aspect his role in OneCoin was brought up, because the story is very unclear.
Konstantin said “One of Frank Schneider’s people” bought the apartment beneath Armenta (twitter.com/innercitypress/status/1192128106544410624). I assumed that naturally Frank’s people did the drilling and wiretapping too, but it’s not stated in ICP tweets.
That Ruja learned about the Armenta’s FBI co-operation throught the wiretapping might be just Russell Lee’s speculation (see how his tweet about it ends in a question mark).
What is clear or better documented is that Frank Schneider had “high-placed contacts” which enabled him to have unauthorized access to confidental law-enforcement info about ongoing investigations, and he forwraded that info to criminals like Ruja (twitter.com/innercitypress/status/1192591383355375616).
The tweets indicates that he even prepared some kind of presentations about the investigations for the criminals.
I think Ruja learned about the pending law enforcement action through Frank’s presentations, and its unclear what, if any, role the wiretapping has in the story.
Konstantin also said that Frank is a money launderer. (twitter.com/innercitypress/status/1192117124631801862)
And Frank’s talk about American judges targeting OneCoin is probably trolling because he must know that it doesn’t work that way.
There were (prosecutor lead) grand jury indictments and Mark Scott had a jury trial — not a “bench trial”. Judge Ramos didn’t play the leading role.
It’s troubling that he appears to be at large, for he is active security threat.
Looks like the DNS records for onecoin.eu are gone – either Cloudflare reacted to complaints or some admin gone rogue wants to blackmail them (would explain the “take a screenshot” drama).
In any case this must have been a manual intervention (iow. not a server crash, someone went and deleted them).
To be fair to Schneider only on this one point: he was speaking to a Luxembourg newspaper, so he could simply have used a local term.
Luxembourg has the standard Napoleonic setup where big criminal investigations are headed by a “juge d’instruction”, a position which doesn’t have a direct equivalent in other legal systems.
It’s usually translated as “investigating judge”, but they aren’t judges in the anglosaxon sense of the word. They are part of the prosecutorial branch, although they do have some powers that in other systems would require approval by a judge, most importantly issuing search and arrest warrants.
Although they can appear in court as prosecutors, this is exceptional, their participation in the trial is normally limited to appearing as a witness about what they’ve uncovered during their investigation.
So when Schneider says “des juges qui veulent se fair bien voir”, which in my summary I rendered as “judges who want to make a name for themselves”, he could be thinking of the closest equivalent of juges d’instruction, in this case the US attorneys involved.
It’s still a nonsensical claim of course, and he must know it is. But it’s a standard tactic for people who are involved in complicated criminal cases to accuse the juge d’instruction who heads the case of being overzealous, and of trying to further their own career by unjustly targetting high-profile people.
Interesting!
I’m no expert in such matters, but it looks it goes higher up than Cloudflare.
A whois search shows the domain as still registered to Onecoin Ltd in Sofia, but with the status of “Server Hold”, about which status the Help information says this:
This suggests that it’s the .eu domain registrar itself (EURid vzw, a Belgian non-profit appointed to the job by the European Commission) who’s pulled the plug on them. I have never heard of such a thing happening, but as I say, I’m no expert.
It’s possible EURid didn’t make this decision itself, they could be acting under some kind of legal order, or even under direct instructions from the EU, which sets the rules for the .eu domain.
Onecoin.com, BTW, still has its DNS entry, but that just redirects to onecoin.eu, so that’s down too.
There were always only two possible explanations for the screenshot thing.
Either whoever is still in charge of the remains of Onecoin has somehow lost control of their own database, and hoped to be able to reconstruct it from those screenshots.
I’ve also suggested that the one or very few people there with some actual technical knowledge might have left. They could possibly be holding that data to ransom.
Or some rogue faction wants to set up shop as the successor to Onecoin, and hopes to build up a copy of the database for themselves.
Obviously, nobody who has access to the real thing would ever have to resort to such a laughable attempt to reconstruct a database from screenshots of individual records.
One additional aspect I forgot to mention in my earlier guesswork: if someone thinks they could really do this, it suggests the number of remaining active participants is much, much lower than the numbers sometimes bandied about.
I don’t think anybody would think this was realistic if there really were many hundreds of thousands, let alone millions, of such screenshots that needed to be gathered and processed.
Anyone know if Simon Le showed up at the Verona Event or did he heed the warning and stay home?
Seems there were only about 200 at the Russian Event from the video I saw. Not the rousing success they portrayed it to be if that is all that showed.
I keep hoping that the Italian authorities raid and shut down the Verona Event and also arrest some of the big promoters. Now that would be poetic justice.
“Server Hold” does indeed appear to be something that EURid decides:
(eurid.eu/en/register-a-eu-domain/apews/)
and on “server hold” in general:
(icann.org/resources/pages/epp-status-codes-2014-06-16-en)
So looks like OneCoin got on the bad side of the EURid for some reason. Might be only matter of time when the other OneCoin linked .eu-domains face the same fate.
The screenshot thing might have also been related to a possible forewarning that the top level scammer Simon Le got about the domain issue. Or perhaps the forewarning was about some bigger legal/law enforcement issue that “the Company” is facing which will likely affect the domains too… Perhpas it even was based on a presentation that Frank Schneider gave after talking to his “high-level contacts”. 😉
I’ll have an article on the recent DNS development soon.
Just want to say though that losing DNS isn’t the same as losing the server.
If they lose DNS for the OneCoin domain that only means it can’t be accessed over the internet through that domain. Another domain can be pointed to it to remedy this.
As for the physical server, it’s still wherever it is – unless the hosting company has also pulled the plug.
Here is documented the ip and domain stucture:
threatcrowd.org/domain.php?domain=onecoin.eu
The most recent Cloudflare onecoin.eu server ip seems to be online.
Before recommending to take screenshots, it was allegedly possible to transfer coins to the upline or downline.
More details in the screenshot:
share-your-photo.com/b45eb2f65e
What was the purpose of this action, which was only possible for eight days?
facebook.com/Onedistrib/
Lynn,
Simon Le was and is at the Verona event:
facebook.com/groups/447999482063079/permalink/1179011385628548/
facebook.com/groups/447999482063079/permalink/1179402772256076/
This is from a translation of Marin Mayer’s event summary that somebody posted Petteri Järvinen’s blog:
Could it mean that Simon Le has created an alternative ecosystem for OneCoin?
WhistleBlowerFin reported earlier (message #85) that there were rumors that Simon Le was planning to take over the membership list and DealShaker, and that this is the reason he came up with the screenshot request.
That would make some kind of theoretical sense. The practical feasibility of constructing a new database from thousands of screenshots is a different matter (considering we’re talking about small-time operators here, not a big company with lots of manpower).
And how do you recreate uplines/downlines when you’ve got a less than 100% takeup rate? But the Verona appearance is then simply part of his campaign to pass himself off as the legitimate continuation of OC.
(He can even steal the name. It’s not as if under the present circumstances any of the OC corporate fronts are going to sue him for trademark violation, is it?)
The whole idea also seems to rest on the charmingly naive notion that all those people sending in their screenshots will be honest, and none of them will realize they can easily add one or two digits or so behind the numbers in their accounts.
Not that it really matters, it’s all equally worthless.
Which raises the fundamental problem for someone trying such a renegade takeover.
OC received real money from all the people who bought their worthless points. An impostor with a recreated database will start out with zilch, just a list of names and meaningless numbers attached to them.
I don’t quite see the business model. Where is his income going to come from? He needs real money, you can’t make that just by shuffling around numbers in a database.
Demanding a commission in real money on all DealShaker transactions perhaps? Now that would be a hard sell, even to the most seriously deluded.
I suppose he could try to pass it off as some kind of legal compliance requirement.
In other words: just what is the value of the corpse of Onecoin, which makes these people think it’s a good idea to acquire it and strap themselves to it?
Why not set up a nice and shiny brand-new Ponzi/MLM/crypto scam all of your own instead? Call it TwoCoin.
@Melanie:
Occam’s Razor applies: it was another sign of the rats leaving the sinking ship. O
ne last chance for higher-ups with large amounts of coins to cash out, by selling them to people in their downline who still haven’t realized it’s all over.
A new story on Abdulaziz appeared on Racing Post:
(racingpost.com/news/members/phoenix/onecoin-scammers-had-office-in-premises-run-by-phoenix-thoroughbreds-boss/411784)
Behind the paywall, but I referred to this in message #2 of this post. I provided a link to “meeting with Velizara in Dubai” video. (Perhaps my message even was the original source of the RP story.)
This could be also related, but no way to tell because it’s also behind paywall:
The Times also ran a story on Abdulaziz and Onecoin:
thetimes.co.uk/article/ascot-winner-denies-links-to-4bn-crypto-currency-fraud-snm3f6b32?shareToken=073345a1b5743825534bd5cc3f1739a1
Nothing new in terms of content, but nice to know that the story is getting wider audience.
In be4 “We just rented them the space. I thought they were selling girl scout cookies!”
Someone plz make an app “Onecoin-Doll-Dressup” that lets you mess around whit different looks and styles.
Maybe sell “costumes – education – package” for onecoins….. our bycoi… our swisscoin…our dascoin… our nanocoin. that would actually increase real demand from zero to more then zero….
Ruja , Konstatin and Igor Alberts dressed up as “girlscouts” asking for your monies mems…..
@ PassingBy
The thought of Simon playing at being Grand Admiral Donitz is fantastic!
To take a screen shot of what you think you hold on OL and maybe might hold again is beyond entertainment and would be funny if the human tragedy aspect wasn’t there. Enough people have hacked and cracked the OL backend for the data to be widely available anyhow.
You cannot of course retrofit a BC, you cannot invent a value, you cannot sell what nobody wants to buy (especially when there are over 60 billion of the things), you can’t go back in time and you obviously cannot undo the fact that Konstantin entered into a plea deal that involved him pleading guilty. You can only tread water for so long before you drown.
The damage done to crypto by OL is immeasurable. Amazingly, it could have been worse
After the fraud event in Verona, the master fraudster Simon Le from Vietnam traveled to the next fraud event in Pune in India:
share-your-photo.com/76c446b476
Speaking of India, there was an article in the Times India:
timesofindia.indiatimes.com/business/international-business/how-a-fake-bitcoin-clone-duped-millions-across-globe/articleshow/72323592.cms
No breaking news in the article, but it is getting the word out to the citizens of India hopefully keeping more from becoming a victim. Of course the faithful called it fake news from haters by the willing press.
Amazing isn’t it that if the Times India ran a “positive” piece about OneCoin they would be hailed as a great newspaper. Funny how that works isn’t it.
Complement to comment #10
OneCoin scammer Kamran Hye shows on Facebook, which company Habib Zahid and Veselina Marinova Valkova founded with only € 2,500 equity:
share-your-photo.com/7b7eca53de
Article updated with news Phoenix Thoroughbreds have been banned from running horses across the UAE.
Simon was more Napoleon III to OneCoin than Grand Admiral Donitz. King is as destructive as Robert Mugabe.
Quite an achievement to be banned in UAE — a notorious safe haven for criminals. Things must look really bad for Amer.
Minor article update from Australia.
The only explanation I can come up with is they’re waiting for sentencing in the other cases. But that’s still weak reasoning for prolonging Abdulaziz’s arrest.
Meanwhile millions in OneCoin funds continue be further laundered through the Australian racing industry.
Questions are being raised in the US following two Phoenix Thoroughbreds wins.
Nobody from Phoenix Thoroughbreds attended the event. Abdulaziz is still hiding out in the UAE AFAIK.
The trainers and jockeys who attended the event are turning a blind eye so long as they’re paid.
sandiegouniontribune.com/sports/horse-racing/story/2021-11-05/breeders-cup-horse-racing-del-mar-phoenix-thoroughbreds-amer-abdulaziz-onecoin-money-laundering
Is anyone able to confirm if the Dubai OC office is still there?
Konstantin said Ruja had properties there. Who is looking adter them?
Are these the same properties the mugs were told they could win at one point if they bought enough tickets to an event?
Ruja I imagine.