OneCoin change banks amid German regulatory investigation
Well, that didn’t take long.
Two days ago BehindMLM reported Germany’s Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (BaFin) was investigating OneCoin.
Today OneCoin informed their affiliates they have stopped accepting payments through the German bank, Commerzbank AG.
As is typical with announcements from OneCoin, the company doesn’t provide a reason for the abruptly timed bank change.
Rather, the OneCoin affiliate newsletter sent out today simply states:
We would like to inform you that we have changed our account details in Germany!
Please note, that we no longer accept payments in Commerzbank. The change is with immediate action.
The timing of the account closure couldn’t be worse, with OneCoin gearing up to hold a major Ponzi promotion event at London’s SSE Arena this weekend.
That it was abruptly announced just days after a German regulatory investigation was confirmed is also highly suspect.
Typically when a bank closes a client’s account, they are given some notice. Only in the event of suspected serious violations of the law are accounts terminated without notice.
Typically in these scenarios, in addition to closing the client’s account(s), the bank in question also forwards its findings to the relevant authorities.
What’s somewhat weird is OneCoin’s new bank is also German…
Account holder: IMS International Marketing Services GmbH
Address: Rathaus Strasse 7, 48268 Greven, Germany
Bank: Deutsche Bank
Bank Address: Alte Münsterstraße 1-3, 48268 Greven, Germany
Account number: 80808901
Bank code: 40070024
IBAN: DE20400700240080808901
BIC: DEUTDEDB400
IMS International Marketing Services GmbH is a shell company OneCoin acquired when they purchased OPN Network’s affiliate-base.
The previous CommerzBank account was opened in March, with it taking about three months for OneCoin to trigger the bank’s money laundering filters.
There’s a good chance that OneCoin set up the Deutsche Bank account well before today’s account change notice.
Now with a German regulatory investigation underway, it is expected OneCoin’s new Deutsche Bank account will be closed even quicker.
Personally I’m of the mind OneCoin knows the account will be closed, with it being a stop-gap measure to buy them some time to set up accounts elsewhere.
Over the last year OneCoin has played banking roulette, with new accounts opened and closed every few months as authorities close in.
Interesting in that Deutsche Bank was pursuing a digital bank within the US until 10 hours ago.
well, onecoin has set up its account with deutsche bank in the name of IMS International Marketing Services GmbH, which is located in the same area as this bank ie 48268 Greven, Germany.
it may take some time for deutsche bank to connect the dots and figure out that onecoin and IMS international marketing are one and the same.
unless, people email deutsche bank at greven, germany and inform them that they are being played!
i will email deutsche bank today.
sent a mail to deutsche bank with links to articles here.
i hope they read english!
This APPEARS to be a 17 minute video exposing OC pyramid. Any translators for Italian??
rsi.ch/play/tv/patti-chiari/video/investi-1-guadagni-50-di-emanuele-di-marco-e-remy-storni-patti-chiari-27-05-2016?id=7399583
I think the video thumbnail says it all.
We have a few Italian readers but no regulars watching OneCoin (AFAIK). OneCoin isn’t that big over there.
hahaha. omg, early morning laughs from the resident onecoin joker ken labine of canada!
ahem, labine is ‘giggling’ his ass off because the ‘haters’ just don’t get what a wunnerful thing it is that onecoin has moved its account from commerzbank to deutsche bank, germany!
have ya all like checked out the alexa ratings of commerz bank and duetsche bank?
didya all like notice that commerzbank is way below duetsche bank in alexa ratings?
and and and commerzbank works in 50 countries and deutsche bank works in like 70 countries!
and THIS ^^ is why dear rujamama shifted her scam account from commerzbank to deutsche bank!! get??
ruja jus’ don’t work with banks which have low alexa ratings and all!!
and if ^^ this doesn’t make you ROFL, hear this brilliant gem from labine:
the German Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (BaFin), is not like the government of germany at all, it’s like a ‘board’.
ha ha ha.
When Zeek played banking roulette it’s in the final months. Guess how long OneCoin has left?
There’s a great irony in a company touting itself as a next-generation currency having a mainstream banking Achilles’ heel.
Bet those 500,000 third-party merchants are just around the corner…
But don’t worry about that. Hey everyone, look over there – it’s Tom Jones!
yep, because onecoin honcho ed ludbrook is priming the sheeple for ‘big things to come’:
in other words, listen to only onecoin scam spin, and suspend all logic!!
I used to be real fan of Tom Jones… Until I actually read the lyrics of “Delilah”.
He sounded pretty angry in that video. Still the same ranty crap you can’t help but tune out to though.
One thing struck me, towards the end of the video Labine invokes religion. Specifically how those critical of OneCoin are “listening to the devil”.
Is this a widespread pitch for OneCoin? I suppose Ruja’s the Pope of Ponzi points, OneCoin affiliates her congregation and non-affiliates are all devil-worshipping heathens.
Is this really where OneCoin promotion is at? Never a dull moment in this industry…
Another thing about the notification of change of bank, is they don’t want anyone to do anything silly like use the words “one coin” anywhere
@K Chang
I don’t know about you, but some of the suckers’ comments on her birthday I found rather creepy. Henceforth Ignatova shall be known as Delilah.
@ Oz, re invocation of deities, yes I’d noticed that increasing recently too.
Always a sign of desperation amongst people like Latrine, but also a bonding tool amongst diaspora, such as the Muslim community in the UK, whose latest diamond proclaims:
“All praise to God for giving me everything I ever wanted!”
Not as bad as MMM RSA to be fair, Jesus was invoked so many times as that fell apart I lost count.
Oz, if you are wondering about the religion in OneCoin, I have a story for you. Here in Bulgaria we had another very nasty pyramid, which started exactly using the religion and the protestant congregations to spread the scheme initially.
The 2 creators were Stancho Rangelov and pastor Svetoslav Petrov, and all the top pyramid leaders (so called Elite Stars) were members of his church National Christ Center.
This pyramid-sect scammed 55 000 people in Bulgaria and 12 more european countries. Now it spreads in Israel, Holland and Romania under another name, with israeli CEOs and some of the old bulgarian top Ponzi pimps. Owner and mastermind is the bulgarian crook Stancho Rangelov again.
“Smartway Israel” is a reboot of the notorious collapsed financial Ponzi pyramid scheme “Saveway International” from Bulgaria and fully deserves a review, so we can inform people about it’s scam background.
Oz, if you are interested, tell me where to write. The info in bulgarian internet space is huge but I could try to select the most important facts and details.
@Frog
Is it MLM though or HYIP Ponzi?
It’s MLM Ponzi, based on recommendations and cashback bonusses from shopping at different merchants and building “a global client feedback system”.
But this is only the bright part, the big money comes from selling premium and business software (franchise) for development of own business on their platform.
In Bulgaria 90% of the profit came from recruiting new business partners at the price of 2000 EURO for the most expensive “software product” or “business package”.
Outside the system it’s worth absolutely nothing, and when the pyramid shut down the website – it was gone forever.
In fact this was nothing more than the usual backoffice with the position tree, bonus statistics and history, plus a personal page with contact buttons and showing the current rank in the pyramid.
You know what guys?
I guess that this homepage here already came up with a lot of exposures regarding OC.
So, why don’t you call the Feds (FBI etc.) and handle them over what you have found out (based on facts and evidences of course)?
Security Agencies might be able to turn that company down and they could gather more information when it comes to expose the “Ponzi-Scheme”.
By the end of the day; you can talk loud but say nothin’ …
What ya’ll thinkin’? Sending Mails to Deutsche Bank is the most ridiculous thing I ever heard – hahaha
Everybody knows that they simply don’t care with whom they do business (See various claims & law suits all over the world).
And …
Sending mails just to verify if there will be a convention of OC in London or not is simply a waste of energy!
Have you ever heard of data security etc.???
So – If you want to turn OC down than ya’ll better get busy with contacting Interpol or any other large agency!
How did you think they got shut down in China? Magic?
MS International Marketing Services GmbH
Rickets is Frank’s account. On this account holder and the money was transferred in OPN.
Finally, it is clear that Ricketts has vadut OPN, so cash their money from the former OPN members will not see anything.
What do you do when newly invested funds drop off and you need more money to pay off existing investors?
Vouchers!
They’re apparently launching “onelife.eu” in a few days and they’ve created a OneLife Facebook page just under a week ago.
OneLife domain rego was last updated on June 7th, 2016.
Sounds like your typical travel discounts MLM opp, which is typically a recruitment-driven pyramid scheme. It’ll be interesting to see if OneLife points replace the recruitment commissions OneCoin are currently paying out.
Not enough info for a separate post/review just yet. And no word on whether onecoins will be usable to pay for travel discounts.
It’d be hilarious if they weren’t.
@Rose
Okay, am I missing something here, or is this the very legal definition of “MONEY LAUNDERING?”
What am I missing? Where’s the “loop-hole?” Isn’t this enough to shut down the account and do a fraud inquiry/ get authorities on it, immediately?!
Onecoin can’t even open an account in their own names with their many shell companies? It appears they have already burned through them?
Just Lol!
Yep banks really don’t care, they love the $bns fines.
reuters.com/article/us-bnp-paribas-settlement-idUSKBN0F52HA20140701
bbc.co.uk/news/business-32430710
Thing is Know Your Client laws make individuals in the banks personally liable, if they know or should have known, punishable by hefty fines and/or imprisonment.
I was just looking at the numbers that OneCoin puts out.
So on average, each OneCoiner has 350 OneCoins worth a value of $2400. There’s 2 million members. I am going to assume that the majority of the OneCoiners will either choose the €1000 or the €3300 package.
So let’s say that the average investor pays $2400 to join. $2400 x 2 million is $4.8 Billion. Now dividing that by the number of available OneCoins is about $7.
Looking at xcoinx, what is the value of OneCoin? Yep, it’s $7.
So is that how OneCoin determines the value of OneCoin? Take the amount of revenue and divide by the number of OneCoins mined?
@Mr. Ponzi
Yes. Minus Tom Jones, Doll dresses and volumes of red lipstick.
No, because you’re assuming a 100% in, 100% out scenario.
Don’t forget, each OneCoin withdrawal (the tiny percentage they let through) drains the system. If Juha Parhiala converted his entire onecoin point balance to the current cash value today, he’d probably bankrupt the scheme many times over.
You are forgetting something essential here. OneCoin only sells education. The members buying education get free tokens as a throw in. The incoming money is NOT by any means backing up the value of the coins. The money paid is for Ruja to buy dresses, property etc.
The value of the coins is just a figure our founder, CEO, visionary, Dr. Ruja and her almighty intelligence has dictated to us out of thin air.
I did not mean to imply that OneCoin was being backed by the revenue, only that it may be the methodology used to calculate the OneCoin “value”.
When you are being sarcastic, can you be a bit more… OBVIOUS about it?
Common cognitive dissonance resolution… one of us is wrong, and it’s “obviously” the other side. Adding religion into the mix only emphasizes how much of the bull**** is faith-based instead of evidence-based.
When TVI Express was white-hot there were a lot of “Bless club” that tried to mix TVI Express and religious blessing to riches.
And who can forget Phil Ming Xu’s “Jesus sword” and how they roped in quite a few ministers and such in South American countries? I still have screenshots.
I think one of the most crushing stories I heard in the post Zeek Rewards fallout period was from a Pastor who phoned into one of the larger calls. By his accent he was very rural and very southern (US).
He must have been a fairly early adopter because by early 2012 he was able to forgo occasional paychecks from his church so they could use that money for other needs and by how he described them those needs were very real and basic.
He was impressed with Zeek but uncomfortable enough to not share it with his congregation, his church’s secretary noticed him skipping some paychecks and asked him why. She joined.
After seeing the digits growing larger on her back office screen she started sharing Zeek and by mid summer 2012 more than half of that small, rural church had recently invested in the scheme.
We all know what happened in August.
The anguish in that mans voice was palpable. He greatly impressed me with not voicing concern for himself or his money, he was worried about how this was going to affect his church.
I have no idea how the story played out but I remember it every time someone tries to mix religion and online money games.
Lol the Jesus sword. I’d forgotten about that and how entertaining Xu was. Good times.