Unaico case in Pakistan proceeds to arrest phase
An investigation into Unaico executives in Pakistan has progressed to the arrest phase.
The National Accountability Bureau is investigating Unaico CEO Dan Andersson and Atif Kamran.
The investigation examined the allegation that Anderson and Kamran, through Unaico, caused Rs. 190 million ($1.1 million USD) in losses.
The NAB’s investigation was announced mid last year. References were filed against Andersson and Kamran last December.
One thing to note is Pakistani media citing “Dean Ganarbajarnay Anderson” as CEO of Unaico.
I’ve not seen this name before and it doesn’t come up outside of coverage of the NAB investigation.
Dan Andersson’s full name is “Dan Gunnar Bjarne Andersson”. I believe “Dean Ganarbajarnay Anderson” is a translation mangle.
Unaico was a pyramid scheme dating back to the late 2000s. The original business model centered around SiteTalk, an in-house social media network.
By 2013 Unaico had collapsed, prompting The Opportunity Network reboot.
Dan Andersson meanwhile spun off and launched LEO in 2012.
Initially LEO was a personal development themed pyramid scheme. In 2014 the company jumped on the crypto fraud bandwagon and launched LeoCoin.
Over the next few years Andersson illegally solicited investment into LeoCoin, which itself went ultimately nowhere.
One of LEO’s primary investment markets was Pakistan. Authorities finally took notice and moved to arrest Andersson in mid 2018.
Details since then have been sketchy. As of August 2019 we were able to confirm Andersson’s case is still playing out, however there have been no updates since then.
Atif Kamran (right) has been working with Andersson since the Unaico days.
Kamran followed Andersson from Unaico into LEO as the company’s Chief Marketing Officer.
By 2017 LEO was on the decline, prompting Kamran to bail. Later that same year he launched My Travel Biz, a travel-themed pyramid scheme.
According to Kamran’s Facebook profile he’s residing in London, UK. Dan Adersson’s currents status is unclear.
It’s probably not directly related to this particular event, but two of the vestiges of the LEOcoin episode have also, finally, been quietly abandoned.
They had the LEOcoin Foundation CIC, which was supposedly in charge of the currency, and the Digital Currency Foundation CIC, which was used to pretend to have general lofty goals in the public interest, and with which they managed to deceive some British politicians into giving them credibility by association.
This went so far as the setting up of an All-Party Parliamentary Group for Digital Currencies, for which the Digital Currency Foundation paid the secretarial costs (until March 2020):
publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm/cmallparty/190911/digital-currencies.htm
Which they used for advertising material like this:
facebook.com/LEOcoin.org/posts/1574368349328301
Both “foundations” had Mihir Magudia as sole director, and in March, he’s applied for voluntary strike-off from the register for both.
Although strangely, for both he’d still intervened in the knick of time, in 2019 and 2020, to delay a compulsory strike-off for not filing any accounts.
Clearly, he didn’t bother to tell that parliamentary group about it, because he’s still listed on the House of Commons website as the group’s “Public Enquiry Point”, with the contact details of the Digital Currency Foundation.
Something tells me any public enquiries might go unanswered.
As to the LEOcoin Foundation, it’s quite rare for an abandoned shitcoin to get a formal ending date like this.
Dan Gunnar Bjarne Andersson has been arrested or not has already been debated but his current status is not clear. He is laying low and staying underground.
Had a quick look at Islamabad High Court website and found that Chief Justice of Islamabad High Court Mr. Justice Athar Minallah passed judgement against Dan Gunnar Bjarne Andersson and refused his application to remove his name from Exit Control List (ECL).
In his judgement (link below) Justice Athar Minallah stated following facts. (My comments in brackets)
1: Dan Andersson was Director of Unaico Pakistan (Pvt) Ltd and owned and held 99% of the shares.
2: When SECP initiated investigation against Unaico, Dan Andersson tried to windup the company.
3: National Accountability Bureau (NAB) got involved and started investigation against Unaico.
4: 1% shareholder and director Atif Kamran’s name was also mentioned. (Not sure how actively he was involved. His name only appeared once in this 15 pages judgement.)
5: Dan Andersson offered to pay Rs 98 million to NAB stating that this was the only amount he had taken from people. Due to his confession and returning the money he took from people Dan Andersson’s name was removed from ECL.
6: Subsequently over 2,000 claims were received by NAB against Dan Andersson so NAB once again placed his name on ECL.
7: Dan Andersson arrived Pakistan on 25 March 2018 and then got caught at the airport when the tried to leave Pakistan.
8: Dan Andersson was alleged to have induced members of the general public of Pakistan to invest in a sham scheme and thus he was alleged to have committed the offence of cheating the public at large.
9: Dan Andersson admitted his crime by offering Rs 98 million to NAB in voluntary return. But in fact he was not honest with NAB and did not make full and complete disclosure and illegally made more than Rs 98 million that he originally disclosed.
This is the reason probably NAB is pursuing him for further Rs 190 million mentioned in the ‘Thenews.com.pk’ article.
mis.ihc.gov.pk/frmRdJgmnt.aspx?cseNo=Writ%20Petition-1632-2018%20|%202019%20PLD%20566%20Islamabad&cseTle=Dan%20Gunnar%20Gjarne%20Anderson-%20VS%20-FOP%20etc&jgs=Honourable%20Chief%20Justice%20Mr.%20Justice%20Athar%20Minallah,%20Honourable%20Mr.%20Justice%20Aamer%20Farooq&jgmnt=/attachments/judgements/WP-1632-2018____________637004482916825071.pdf
Thanks to God. these two never go to Pakistan again. But they should be in jail.
A video of scammer Atif Kamran promoting Unaico: youtube.com/watch?v=VjEhSU9QfhE
Pakistani people will ever get the 190 million ?
Never heard it happening but may this time.
Followers of these thieves will come and say, “so what if they are arrested, I make money with fake Travel scam and shit coins.” You are scumbags.
Unaico – finally justice will find evil Atif Kamran and Adersson.
Is it just me, but do OneCoin and LeoCoin backoffices look very much alike? Compare:
OneCoin
youtube.com/watch?v=oz4eFQx22nY
LeoCoin
youtube.com/watch?v=9qHqJXlxBVM
Even some of the small favicons are exacly the same.
So former Unaico pals Sebastian and Dan bought their Ponzi platforms from same company?
@Semjon
Possible, bigcoin also had a similiar look, think sebastian/rujas old company coolsdaq (think it was the name, Tim T could probobly clerfi)
was the creator of the ”backoffice system” back i the days. Think the backoffice was even called that,
Sebastian greenwood was part of Unaico so thay all more then likley snorted cockain toghter back in the days….
Artikel from 2010: Nolink//realtid.se/svenskarna-bakom-unaico-och-sitetalk
Thanks for the clarification. That gov website is timing out for me at the moment.
Also with respect to Kamran, you sign a legal document you’re responsible. Not withstanding Kamran being paid for his name and participating in Unaico.
This is funny.
If you read of this site, you see that Atif Kamran writes himself in all of the comments on lots of articles always attacking his brother Dan. He has lots of different names and write his own reply.
But these two are always together. Scammers Atif Kamran and Dan are brothers and maybe today they share a jail cell in Pakistan.
Here is the Atif Kamran blog saying that he owned Unaico: atifkamrans.wordpress.com/2015/04/28/the-atif-kamran-scam-is-totally-false/
The first investigation of Unaico is only about Atif Kamran, no body is mentioned other: pakistantoday.com.pk/2012/05/05/nab-starts-probe-into-unaico-ponzy-scheme/
And here is Atif Kamran scamming people into Sitetalk/Unaico on Youtube: youtube.com/watch?v=tujyU4Jfnpw speaking in Urdu to loot Pakistanis.
Scammers Atif and Dan are both together in this and always will be brothers in crime.
As far as I can piece it together:
Greenwood in 2013 started a scheme called Loopium, for which he acquired, or had someone write, software called CoolsDAQ.
It was at that time he met Ignatova, who’d been brought in as a money laundering expert (she’d apparently taken a special interest in the subject at university).
Loopium soon collapsed, and the company was liquidated in April 2014. Together they moved on to the also short-lived BigCoin, and the CoolsDAQ software was used for that, too.
In parallel, Greenwood and Ignatova had set up a new company, Zooperium Consultancy Ltd. (March 2014), which in May 2014 was renamed CoolsDAQ Ltd., and in September 2014 OneCoin Ltd. (later abandoned for other shell companies). They once again used the same software for OneCoin.
So basically, Loopium = CoolsDAQ = BigCoin = OneCoin = Greenwood + Ignatova.
All this doesn’t stop Greenwood from during that same 2013/2014 timeframe also being involved with SiteTalk/Unaico, and then something called Prosper. LEOcoin appears in May/June 2014, so it’s quite possible the same software was used for that, too.
Either with Greenwood’s cooperation, or because someone else involved had made a copy at some point, or the same guy who’d made the software for Greenwood sold it again to Andersson, or whatever.
Although generally, a pretty standard, generic look has arisen for these things, with lots of obvious components, such as icons, taken from widely-used toolkits. A lot of software development these days is just recycling old stuff (often other people’s old stuff) with minor changes, and all these things need the same, quite simple, functionality. I wouldn’t read too much into it. It’s like almost all new MLM scams these days having interchangeable websites, or like all the fake office videos look like they were made by the same people.
I don’t think it’s that simple or clear.
Loopium (web.archive.org/web/20140218073328/http://hq.loopium.com/) was Sebastian Greenwood’s payment card company, which provided WaveCrest payment cards. Its customer base probably mostly consisted of MLM and other frauds. There is no evidence that it ever had MLM element.
SG’s CoolsDAQ company, which got renamed as OneCoin Ltd , was probably nothing more than a shell company vestige from his short BigCoin gig. Or, it’s not clear what, if any, role SG had in CoolsDAQ platform, and I supect CooldDAQ was just a shell company for money laundering purposes.
It’s possible that SG was working behind the scenes to help his Unaico/SiteTalk pals John Ng and Ronnie Sköld (whose scam BigCoin/Prosper really was, before and after Ruja/Sebastian were part of it) long before he became publically involved in the scam in summer of 2014, but there is no evidence of that, AFAIK.
In BigCoin, his short public appearance was to be the head the “BigPay” payment arm of the scam (youtube.com/watch?v=rjAo4TkP7r4), not CoolsDAQ.
Ruja renamed her Bulgarian company “MB Kepital EOOD” as BigPay EOOD (bird.bg/tr?v=view&guid=201744388) for a short while in summer 2014, so I guess Ruja was not just the CryptoReal Investment Trust lady for BigCoin, but also somehow in team with Sebastian already back then.
There are rumours that Sebastian and Ruja somehow defrauded Ng and Sköld, and that’s why their brief gig in BigCoin came to an end. The history and transition form BigCoin to OneCoin is very shrouded and murky.
But Dan Andresson using the same platforms as SG would fit into the picture, because it’s a small circle (jerk) of these predominantly Scandinavian “Ponzi vikings” out there who nowadays raid the world with Ponzi schemes.
They team up, help each other and use the same infrastructure. It’s my understanding that Towah payment card company (set up by MLM veterans) was a major common factor in many of thsese schemes. I think even Leo used it at some point.
After SiteTalk, Sebastian probably tried his luck in the “wholesale”/support structure side of MLM industry with Loopium etc.
The latest hit from this Ponzi Viking group Crowd1. I recently discovered that another old Unaico/Sitetalk Ponzi veteran, who was close to Greenwood and other BigCoin fraudsters, “Björn Thomas” , recently surfaced under name Björn Arnsted in Crowd1: youtu.be/PWfGLSnrtP0?t=7429
If you glance that video, you see many familiar faces from OneCoin.
Just to clarify: I was going by plausible-sounding statements put on the net in the early days of OneCoin, and the “=” was only meant in terms of the user-visible software used.
According to what I found, CoolsDAQ was originally simply the name of the software Greenwood used for Loopium (which indeed wasn’t an MLM), and it was during that project that he encountered Ignatova.
The software was subsequently repurposed first for BigCoin, then OneCoin. Anyway, that was the explanation given for the back offices of those three things looking almost identical, which some people spotted when OneCoin first surfaced.
It was also the name used for the internal pseudo-exchange of BigCoin (which for OneCoin they called xcoinx). It was also reused, briefly, for a Gibraltar shell company, which was later renamed to become the first corporate entity using the OneCoin name.
So “CoolsDAQ” would not be anything in particular, just “a name Greenwood has stuck on a succession of things, during the time he also worked closely with Ignatova”.
Of course, it’s not as if such software needs huge development teams, all we’re talking about really is a quite simple, standalone database, and a web front-end.
And since most developers will stear clear of obvious scams, it’s quite possible, given how small the circles we’re talking about are, that all the Scandinavian scammers end up going to the same programmer, who keeps selling slight variations of the same basic package to a succession of people.
Dan is actually residing with his wife and kids in the UK after he got released, he lives in the region of Oxford.
Seems like he has a happy life again now writing on his Facebook he went through 18 terrible months.
The Onecoin connection is very interesting. If you read the Oz review of Atif Kamran travel scam mytravelbiz, there is a shitcoin as part of it Travelcoin – but this is worse than a shitcoin, there is no blockchain, no coinmarketcap or any exchanges of it, exactly what onecoin was.
People call Onecoin and Atif Kamran Travelcoin a shitcoin, they are not even coins, they are just bullshit ponzi investment.
I first thought Mihir Magudia and Dan Andersson were good guys. Mihir Magudia impressed all my investors in Germany and South Africa with his personality but now all the websites are closed.
Mihir Magudia is director of Leo coin
leocoinfoundation.org/transparency.aspx
Mihir Magudia is director of Leo
learnearnown.com/leo/AboutLEO/OurTeam
Mihir Magudia is director of Digital Currency foundation
digitalcurrencyfoundation.io/AboutUs.aspx
Mihir Magudia is not answering our emails, my teams investment in LEO DMS and LECoin is wasted. Mihir, Dan and Bernard bankrupted all companies and no one answers our calls.
As it happens, there was some bizarre travel-themed proto-OneCoin website called “sabway.biz”:
web.archive.org/web/20151005215918/http://sabway.biz/
This site is very similiar to the early OneCoin website:
web.archive.org/web/20140823011912/http://www.onecoin.eu/
Not only that, you can see this direct link to OneCoin hidden in the source code of this archieved sabway site
web.archive.org/web/20160210023739if_/http://sabway.biz/Index_Sabway.asp#
Curiously, the main sabway landing site source code contains hidden this cryptic message:
Perhaps the ST Gold was proto-Aurum Gold Coin.
And “Somphone” the “Idian guy” developer who was referred in the SDNY court documents?
@Zamahlubi so What’s the way forward people getting they money do you know ?