Arrest warrant issued for Karatbars International’s Harald Seiz
A German court has issued an arrest warrant for Karatbars International founder and CEO Harald Seiz.
While we now know authorities in Stuttgart have been investigating Harald Seiz’s Karatbars Ponzi scheme, no specifics of the investigation have been made public yet.
A report from SZBZ, quoting a Feb 13th paywalled article from Bild, states;
the court must clarify the question of whether Seiz attracted investors to his gold business and cheated them out of their deposits.
This suggests that prosecutors have presented the court with a case detailing the Karatbars Ponzi scheme.
The report also notes that Harald Seiz, a German national previously living in Germany, has since fled to Thailand.
Seiz has purportedly been corresponding with the court via email. Details of the correspondence have not been made public, but apparently the case has progressed such that Seiz is now a wanted fugitive.
The Stuttgart district court has issued an arrest warrant against the Stuttgart entrepreneur and former Sindelfingen villa owner Harald Seiz.
Karatbars International operated for years as a pyramid scheme. The Ponzi reboot integrated cryptocurrency, with an ICO announced in early 2018.
KBC eventually launched in July 2019. It immediately crashed and Karatbars International itself collapsed by the end of the year.
An integral player in Karatbars International’s Ponzi reboot was Chairman of the Board Josip Heit.
Heit is believed to primarily split his time between Germany and Dubai. Whether Heit is under investigation by German authorities is unclear.
After Karatbars International collapsed Heit went on to launch GSPartners, initially a clone of Karatbars International’s Ponzi scheme.
Harald Seiz has tried to reboot Karatbars International multiple times after KBC collapsed in 2019. The last reboot BehindMLM documented was MineBase in August 2022.
MineBase’s website remains online. SimilarWeb tracked a dramatic decline in MineBase traffic over the past few months.
In November 2022 SimilarWeb tracked 1.9 million visits to MineBase’s website. That dropped to just 400,000 as of January 2023.
Top sources of MineBase website traffic are Venezuela (20%), Germany (17%), Colombia (10%) and Ecuador (9%).
How long before they get that thieving scam artist sidekick Brandon Earp Jones??
In South Africa? They don’t bother arresting operators of multi-billion dollar Ponzi schemes (Mirror Trading International).
Ponzi Promoters aren’t even on their radar.
These people who have good ideas can’t keep it together. Greed takes over when they allow others to help change their model. Mary Kay made her model work.
Andrew Eaton, Brendon Earp-Jones, Tony De Gouveia, Bruce Hughes- these crooks all need to be held to account and jailed.
After being implicit in the Karatbars scam they simply moved to the G999, Lydian.World,Gspartners scams. Why are law enforcement agencies not able to get these crooks?
@Herman
“Let’s launch a Ponzi scheme” is never a good idea.
You can’t “change” math, and Ponzi math guarantees the majority of investors lose money to scammers.
Can not even imagine the damage done to those that believed in the dream. The more loyal you were, the more damage was done.
Just received notice of $17,000 dollar judgement against me last week.
A detailed article without paywall.
share-your-photo.com/eeb72cb3c8
the-krautz.com/karatbars-international-haftbefehl-gegen-goldhandler-harald-seiz
Better late than never!
share-your-photo.com/6fbc0bd91a
network-karriere.com/news/488/
This is interesting. I wonder if that creditor is related to Karatbars?
Can’t Germany do anything right when it comes to prosecuting MLM scammers…
Back when Karatbars was a gold selling scam, it was blindingly obvious it was a pyramid selling scam.
Bullion dealers make their most money selling gold in bulk and in quantities over 1 troy ounce (31 grams) up to 12.5 kilo bars.
Bullion dealers would make very little money if they only sold 0.10 (one tenth of a gram), 1 gram, 2.5 grams, and 5 grams bars of gold.
Where Harald Seiz was making money from was selling worthless “business packages” to complete bullion/crypto amateurs, and encouraging them to sell them to others.
Karatbars International GmbH in Stuttgart has a new managing director since November 17, 2022. His name is Deni Gregorec and he lives in Croatia. Harald Konstantin Seiz is no longer managing director.
share-your-photo.com/746ae16a5b
northdata.de/?id=6262959167766528
Nobody is working in Stuttgart or nobody wants to be disturbed. I have been trying continuously since Monday to reach the phone number mentioned in the imprint:
share-your-photo.com/119c73d268
Once this announcement was made:
Since then, the telephone line has been constantly busy. I am now upset and order my gold bars on the DealShaker in India! 🙂
PS: Is the phone number for US/CAN support also invalid?
Is the Gold we purchased value as stated⁉️⁉️999.9 gold bullion⁉️⁉️
You didn’t purchase gold. You invested in a Ponzi scheme and your money is gone.
Sorry for your loss.
About time! Brian McGinty and Graham Laurie would also be worth arresting as a big net winners/promoters
Arrest his ass!
I know Tony De Gouveia personally. He used to be a good guy running legit businesses.
How he got into scams is still a mystery to me. He is also very charming hence his ability to scam people.
He cheated 100s of thousands of Canadian. Counting on 100 millions from Canada alone with her Canadian girl friend Nitsa nikos.
All should be in jail for atleast 100 years.
Two questions to Harald Seiz, which he did not answer.
nikosjasonfakaro asked:
unpredictableblackboy asked:
share-your-photo.com/e40a374a97
instagram.com/p/ChWvMfjvMW2/
I am still very upset about my money that I lost. Could never guessed that a well known pastor convinced me that it is legit as he even referred to it as the transferring of wealth that is referred to in the Bible!!!
Harald Seiz Sir, I hope that you will be taken to court and instructed to pay all of our money, failing you be incarcerated for a very long time. You can run but you can’t hide.
Karatbars International GmbH in Stuttgart had its own press department. When German media reported about this dubious gold dealer Harald Seiz, this ridiculous “press department” became active and sent counterstatements to German newspapers, which were sometimes also printed.
share-your-photo.com/24c026994f
Here is an example from the past. It was an ad that Harald Seiz paid for (see arrow):
share-your-photo.com/c8c6bcc008
braunschweiger-zeitung.de/wirtschaft/presseportal/article230082210/Karatbars-Harald-Seiz-das-Handelsblatt-der-Datenschutz-und-eine-Strafanzeige.html
It is not possible to contact the head of the so-called “press department”, Kasia Turzynska. She never answered my email and she cannot be reached by phone. The phone line shown in my first screenshot has been dead for weeks!
1. The Karatbar website is still active and the few grams of Gold I own are still there. Just no way of getting itout.
2.The last message dated April 22, 2022 stated as follows (next para). I submitted a claim but never heard back & NO response to my emails.
Has any one had a response from them?
The sooner you acknowledge the gold never existed the sooner this starts making sense.
Acua Wellington was some weird recovery scam.
https://behindmlm.com/companies/karatbars-international/acua-wellington-is-a-karatbars-international-recovery-scam/
These people operate as healers, breath work experts, and life coaches preaching about healing the world while they mix in blockchain stuff.
Nitsa Nakos, Andy Mills, David Ingham, and Naomi Sweet still lure people in by DM on facebook talking about passive income, yet they never divulge anything unless you DM them.
They fake post discussions to each other and don’t even do a good job covering up that they are all part of the same ponzi scheme.
They aren’t even smart enough to pretend to be different people, yet they appear in comments threads talking to each other about how much passive income they make. Shameless false prophets.
Is karatbars gone? Is it a scam?
Karatbars International collapsed years ago.
I’m not on tiktok but i think it’ll help get this bastard in jail. So someone please make this scammer blow up. Or maybe even maybe a youtube vid about it.
He scammed millions of international people , if he doesn’t get arrested then atleast you’ll have a video that’ll rake in the views and maybe people feel united in someway.
People aren’t made to take accountability for the shitty actions these days unless it goes viral on tiktok.
I lost over 1,000 grams of gold to these crooks please let me know if you have more news about these crooks.
I lost about $120,000 in Karatbars & there are 310 grams of gold still over there that we purchased but never got.
At the time all of this start happening I had serious concerns about the validity of the claims that the gold was in our “gold savings account“.
Initially the early orders we place in 2015 were promptly filled, but after Dan died on December 29th 2015 in Dallas, all of that began to change & then things really went to hell in a hand basket in 2018 & 19.
What is the update on retrieving the gold we have showing on Karatbars site.
Is there any company that the court has asked to take over Karatbars if the court has folded it as I have read from other people’s comments above.
The update is there never was any gold. You invested into a Ponzi scheme, it collapsed and your money is gone.
Sorry for your loss.
It was a scam from day one.
Reputable Bullion Dealers make their money selling gold and silver in weights up to 1 kilogram bars, or even 12.5 kilogram bars.
A small company selling just 1 gram bars and 5 gram bars was never going to make any real money, compared to German Bullion Dealers like “Degussa”. That’s where the Pyramid Ponzi Scam came into play.
Paywalled article from July 21, 2023.
bild.de/bild-plus/regional/stuttgart/stuttgart-aktuell/gold-millionaer-harald-seiz-49-geniesst-das-leben-trotz-haftbefehls-84719420.bild.html
The scam portal karatbars.com reports:
share-your-photo.com/ca31b3d823
So what happens to the hard earned money, that we entrusted him with?
Seiz has been spending it to fund his lifestyle. The rest is stashed away.
Welcome to investing in Ponzi schemes.
Shame, take from the poor,may God bless him, for the rest of his life,he will suffer
No sign yet of Minister Hughes and Heit on stage in Cape Town! Hughes is in Cape Town but pants have turned brown after US C&D orders.
Don’t forget Hughes has been involved in multiple ponzi’s such as Karatbars, Lifestyle Galaxy to name but a few!
I’ve seen photos of Hughes at the Cape Town event, or at least side-events leading up to it. At this stage it’s looking like Heit was a no-show. I haven’t seen anything to indicate Heit even did a video link.
I’ll leave it for a bit yet just to be sure but it appears Heit might have gone into hiding (moreso beyond already hiding in Dubai).
I guess Dirc Zahlmann really is GSPartners’ Konstantin Igantov.
Is there any South African group that can get together to at least prosecute the scamsters in this country that acted on Seitz’s behalf here.
I reckon, given the fact that there was NO gold mine in Madagascar OR ANY banked gold in Miami (and that finding this out was relatively easy) that a class action group would have a prima facia case of racketeering under South African law.
I believe they’re called the Hawks. Unfortunately South African authorities have a horrendous track record of doing nothing about MLM related fraud.
Alan – I am aware of a defamation case against a South African blogger. He is looking for people who lost their money as a result of investing with these guys – if they can get a few people together, they plan to countersue.
This would likely be from karatbars, lifestyle galaxy, GSB, GSPartners onward. Do you know anyone who can help? Is anyone willing to actually take these guys to account?
Oz – the hawks are an enforcement agency. Someone from a lower government agency (such as the FSCA) need to take action first. The best option would be the FSCA.
In a way, this would be similar to what’s happening in the US – with each of their state regulators first acting (and we assume the feds thereafter)
In late 2022 the FSCA deemed Crypto as part of their purview. You can read the statement here:
fsca.co.za/News%20Documents/FSCA%20Press%20Release_Declaration%20of%20Crypto%20Assets%20As%20A%20Financial%20Product_20%20October%202022.pdf
They however allowed for an exemption period, which appears to have the window close on the 30th of November.
fsca.co.za/Regulatory%20Frameworks/Temp/FSCA%20Communication%2016%20of%202023%20(FAIS).pdf
What may worth be looking into, is whether they have applied for this. If this miss the Nov 30 window, people may be able to submit complaints against them and have the FSCA deal with it.
There are a long list of requirements to be FAIS compliant – hence the exemption. I could go into some of the requirements they would likely adhere to if this is helpful?
Failing to adhere to that, maybe the hawks could step in?
I don’t mean to sound defeatist but… the bad news is the FSCA is pretty useless too.
The FSCA declared MTI, the largest South African Ponzi scheme of all time, an illegal pyramid scheme. That was like two years ago with no followup.
By all means report local Karatbars scammers to the FSCA though.
You are not wrong, unfortunately this is the general feeling in SA to be honest with you. You can complain, but no one does anything.
The trick may be to have multiple affected parties complain – if the FSCA can release a statement it could open a few doors or at least help protect the gullible a little more.
1 – I will check, but I recall the FAIS act including heavy fines for non-compliance, or it may give a legal framework for claims to be made for losses of money.
Yes I am willing to take this matter forward,my father passed on n gave us some money,the last of it I invested in karatbars
Rachel – are you in SA? And did you put it with any of the guys mentioned in the above comments?
I lost R 30 000 after investing in Karatbars with Brandon Earp Jones in 2019, I never received the Credit Card as promised to use my funds or the Phone as part of my package I “bought”.
I asked Brandon to help me get my cash out in 2020 and he told me to wait as I would earn more guaranteed, as soon as I started questioning him and the Karatbars Scheme I was blocked.
It is such a pity that we have to find the truth here. I am being lead by my nose and to this day believed and trusted my upline. They assured me that all is still going well and that I do not have to worry at all.
Our hard earned retirement money is all gone and we have nothing to show for it. It is such a pity that the younger generation has no conscience and will lie to you all the time.
I put my money into the so called “Karatbar” scheme, wit figures that was so inflated and looked so good. I am just concerned about those that invested their last few Rands, hoping that something would come from it.
One of them is my mother’s sister who now have to live with her children and look in their eyes for the next plate of food.
When she asked for information, she was switched off with vague information and never heard from them.
I lost R135,000-00 and now live with my daughter as well. That money would have made a substantial difference.
Never knew that I would walk into such a sick scheme in my life.
Yes, I pray we can get our money back.
The website harald-seiz.de with this imprint has existed for 11 years:
share-your-photo.com/df74f33675
The telephone number stated in the imprint no longer exists:
The company Karatbars International GmbH named in the imprint no longer exists either, as it has been insolvent since April 19, 2023:
share-your-photo.com/6a202f36dd
neu.insolvenzbekanntmachungen.de/ap/suche.jsf
Five links are displayed on the website:
share-your-photo.com/0d8c07ae8a
– twitter.com/karatbarsgmbh = Account blocked
– facebook.com/karatbarsinternationalofficial = 48,238 followers, but the last post is from October 21, 2020.
– youtube.com/user/karatbarsonline/videos = Sorry, this page is not available.
– instagram.com/karatbars_official = Sorry, this page is not available.
– t.me/joinchat/HwdcMEWPPAX1NNBwtEC56Q = You are invited to a group chat on Telegram. Click to join.
Is Harald Seiz now active in South Africa? 100% of visitors to his website harald-seiz.de came from South Africa:
share-your-photo.com/15ef850075
In February 2021, Harald Seiz had to dissolve his company Karatbars International SE, based in Vaduz (Liechtenstein). He was appointed liquidator.
share-your-photo.com/a9b2d912fa
moneyhouse.ch/de/company/karatbars-international-se-in-11594388569/messages
Addition to comment #33.
The domain karatbars.com was updated on December 15, 2023 and the number of visitors increased significantly in February 2024:
share-your-photo.com/3226e0a441
My attempt to reach the website was unsuccessful.
share-your-photo.com/dace2c2a7b
The website karatbars-gold.net is still available, but the data in the legal notice is no longer correct. The company in Stuttgart is closed and the German telephone number is invalid.
share-your-photo.com/02a03a3237
Dear Karma, Here’s a group of people you’ve overlooked.
Harald Seiz & his global Karatbars minions are all fraudsters.
What Harold Seiz and his cohorts did to innocent people who invested hard earned money into Karatbars is unforgivable and they all need to face legal consequences.
HAROLD, my family and I need all of our money back. Do the right thing, stop being a coward and turn yourself in.
I invested 10000, and lost my money.
Harald Seiz’s website karatbars-gold.net is still accessible and has visitors from the United States (73.54%), Spain (17.28%) and Canada (9.18%). What is striking is the comparatively high number of visitors in August 2024 with 38.3K.
postimg.cc/Mn00KNGT
The domain registration was last updated on June 1, 2024.
Invested R15 000 and poof all gone 🙁 as I now find out!!!
Karatbars should give us back the bitcoins we used to purchace the fake gold with.
Harald should not be jailed before all so called investors bitcoins are back in our crypto wallets