Tim Bentley’s Zeus’ Bounty and Zeus’ Chariots Ponzi schemes have collapsed.

Zeus’ Bounty was a simple smart-contract Ponzi scheme that launched in late 2021.

Circa January 2022 Zeus’ Bounty began to collapse, prompting Bentley to launch Zeus’ Chariots. [Continue reading…]

Metaverse Foreign Exchange Group has received a securities fraud warning from Ontario.

As per the Ontario Securities Commission’s June 30th warning; [Continue reading…]

Following their nationwide ban in New Zealand, Validus has announced they are disabling withdrawals for newer investors.

Older Validus investors who have not ranked are being prioritized (i.e. totally passive investors). Everyone else is screwed. [Continue reading…]

EvoRich was a spinoff of Anatoly Yunitskiy’s Skyway Capital Ponzi scheme.

Andrey Khovratov, EvoRich’s founder and CEO, was arrested in Russia in April 2022.

Khovratov has been charged with criminal fraud and, as of May 2023, remains in pre-trial detention behind bars.

Armands Murnieks doesn’t publicly acknowledge Khovratov’s arrest. He refers to it as a “force majeure”.

Murnieks joined Skyway Capital back in 2014 and was one of EvoRich’s top net-winners.

After Khovratov’s arrest, Murnieks and several accomplices scrambled to funnel their victims into several reload scams.

So far we’ve had Bobcoin (May 2022), FNT (September 2022) and Dragon Man NFTs (September 2022).

What’s left of the EvoRich reload scams has now been grouped under Coinset branding.

Today we’re looking into Coinset and the ongoing attempts to pump worthless EvoRich bags. [Continue reading…]

StakeMine operates in the cryptocurrency MLM niche.

StakeMine represents it is operated through “Stakemine Solutions in Ore Tokenization”, a shell company registered in El Salvador.

Purportedly heading up StakeMine is CEO Junior Cardoso.

Other than a recently created LinkedIn profile, Cardoso doesn’t exist outside of StakeMine’s marketing.

This makes Cardoso a prime Boris CEO candidate.

As to who’s actually running StakeMine, my money is someone from South America.

StakeMine’s website features Portuguese…

And StakeMine was put together using Arbot Defi, a “drag and drop” smart-contract creator tool (i.e. whoever is running StakeMine is lazy and/or clueless).

Arbot Defi’s website is also presented in Portuguese.

Brazil is the only South American country where Portugal is an official language. I’m certainly not an expert, but the actor playing Junior Cardoso also speaks with an accent consistent with what I’ve previously seen from Brazilians.

Putting all of this together, my money is on StakeMine being run by admins from Brazil.

StakeMine operates from two known website domains:

• stakemine.tech – privately registered on July 7th, 2022
• stakemine.app – privately registered on August 30th, 2022

SimilarWeb tracks negligible traffic to StakeMine’s .TECH domain. Top sources of traffic to StakeMine’s .APP domain are Latvia (89%) and Poland (10%).

As always, if an MLM company is not openly upfront about who is running or owns it, think long and hard about joining and/or handing over any money. [Continue reading…]

Likwel operates in the cryptocurrency MLM niche.

Likwel’s website domain (“likwel.com”), was privately registered on September 26th, 2022.

The company represents it is based out of Canada, but only provides a virtual address owned by Regus on its website.

Likwel’s Canadian virtual address corresponds to Likweil Limited, a shell company purportedly incorporated in Canada on October 19th, 2022.

Due to the ease with which scammers are able to incorporate shell companies with bogus details, for the purpose of MLM due-diligence shell incorporation in any jurisdiction is meaningless.

Heading up Likwel is CEO Hector Miles. No photo of Miles is provided on Likwel’s website, only a non-verifiable marketing bio.

My story began in 2010, when I finished my master’s degree, before going on to finish my postgraduate studies in computer engineering.

Since 2015, I’ve been actively working with corporate clients in the business industry.

We are however introduced to Miles on Likwel’s official YouTube channel.

Miles is played by Russian national Anton Kozlov (Антон Козлов).

Not surprisingly, Kozlov doesn’t work in the “business industry”. He’s a children’s book publisher from Nizhny Novgorod.

Who actually runs Likwel isn’t clear but it’s obvious they are in or at the very least have ties to Russia.

As always, if an MLM company is not openly upfront about who is running or owns it, think long and hard about joining and/or handing over any money. [Continue reading…]

Gold2Patti fails to provide executive or ownership information on its website.

In fact Gold2Patti’s website homepage is nothing more than an affiliate sign in form:

Gold2Patti’s website domain (“gold2patti.com”), was privately registered on May 24th, 2023.

As always, if an MLM company is not openly upfront about who is running or owns it, think long and hard about joining and/or handing over any money. [Continue reading…]

Trillant is under investigation for fraud in Germany.

BaFin disclosed it was investigating Trillant and EUPAC Digital Services Ltd. on November 22nd, 2022. [Continue reading…]

Following two securities fraud warnings and an interim stop order, Validus filed an appeal against New Zealand’s Financial Markets Authority.

The High Court dismissed Validus’ appeal, meaning the Ponzi scheme is now permanently banned in New Zealand. [Continue reading…]

GPTCoin fails to provide verifiable ownership and executive information on its website.

None of GPTCoin’s provided executives exist outside of its own marketing material:

In fact, none of the marketing claims on GPTCoin’s website hold up:

GPTCoin is jointly created by the Goldman Sachs Bank Group of the United States and Silicon Valley Valleywise GS.

Notwithstanding “Silicon Valley Valleywise GS” not being an actual company, this claim only exists within GPTCoin’s own marketing press-releases:

Whoever is running GPTCoin has slapped together a bunch of baloney and slapped it on a website.

GPTCoin’s website domain (“gptcoinai.com”), was privately registered on April 29th, 2023. GPTCoin’s website was put together in May 2023.

GPTCoin has a YouTube channel but there’s nothing on it. It appears back in May the company intended to launch with a Boris CEO:

“Tom Mueller” doesn’t feature on GPTCoin’s fictional executive list so it appears plans to run with a Boris CEO were abandoned.

I couldn’t quite place Mueller’s accent but it sounded vaguely European.

One potential geo link comes by way of World Blockchain Summit sponsorship:

Dubai-based World Blockchain Summit hold crypto circlejerk events around the world. It’s next scheduled event is in Singapore in August.

Dubai needs no introduction as the MLM crime capital of the world. Personally though I’m leaning more towards GPTCoin being tied to Singapore.

The only languages provided on GPTCoin’s website are English and Chinese:

Also note the Chinese subtitles in GPTCoin’s Boris CEO marketing video above.

Scammers in Asia pretending to be based out of the US is a recent trend, with recently collapsed Ponzi Fintoch coming to mind.

Fintoch falsely claimed it was owned by Morgan Stanley. GPTCoin’s marketing claims feel eerily similar.

In any event if GPTCoin hasn’t collapsed by August, it’ll be interesting to note who shows up to the World Blockchain Summit event.

As always, if an MLM company is not openly upfront about who is running or owns it, think long and hard about joining and/or handing over any money. [Continue reading…]