EFRI, an association based in Vienna, Austria, set up in spring 2020, by now represents more than 1,052 European consumers who were defrauded by cybercriminals. As of writing the victims lost over EUR 59.2 million in the form of investment scams also referred to as boiler room scams. HSBC, one
In preparing the civil legal claims against PAYVISION B.V., we dig deeply into the criminal files for Option888 and the Wolf of Sofia. We learn a lot about how these fraudulent schemes work. In addition, we also know a lot about the enablers of these enormous fraudulent activities. Unscrupulous regulated
For more than two years, we have been delivering information about bank accounts of Deutsche Handelsbank used for scamming people to the German authorities. When we were working on the #Wirecard money laundering complaint (back in January 2020), it was evident that some of the scammers used both Wirecard and Deutsche
EFRI filed a criminal complaint against PAYVISION B.V. and its former management, Rudolf BOOKER, Gijs OP DE WEEGH, Cheng LIEM LI, with the Dutch DNB and the Dutch FIOD. The criminal files for Gal BARAK and Marina BARAK are extensive; based on these papers, we drafted the criminal complaint against
The Directive for the Rights of Victims (DIRECTIVE 2012/29/EU) in principle prescribes everything needed to protect consumers and care for fraud victims. Based on experiences made by the fraud victims we represent we realized that there is a severe backlog in adopting this Victims´Rights Directive in many European Union member
EFRI represents more than 910 European consumers who have been ripped off by investment scams, stealing EUR 49,8 mio of their lifetime savings. The harm done to hundreds of thousands of European consumers – mainly older and vulnerable people – during the past years by investment and boiler room scams
We have been doing a deep-dive investigation in PAYVISION B.V. Amsterdam’s business activities. PAYVISION B.V. is a 100 per cent subsidiary of one of the world’s most reputable banks ING Groep N.V. We know that PAYVISION served scammers like Gal BARAK and Uwe LENHOFF wilfully, as described in our article
EFRI Founder Elfriede Sixt Interviewed by FinTelegram (Part I): The European Funds Recovery Initiative (EFRI) was founded in 2018 by CPA Elfriede Sixt, together with FinTelegram and a team of lawyers. Since then, EFRI has represented more than 1,000 scam victims, with total damages of approximately €60 million. In addition
For Part I of the interview with the EFRI founder, Elfriede Sixt, go here. Q 6. How did BitRush develop into the Lenhoff cybercrime case? Despite being aware of the money-laundering allegations, BitRush Corp.’s then Chief Technology Officer, Joachim Kalcher, teamed up with Uwe Lenhoff. He continued to push his
Today, EFRI represents 876 mainly European victims who lost their life savings of more than EUR 45.9 million to boiler room scammers. Fraud victims transferred EUR 45.9 million to beneficial owners of fraudulent websites through various European banks/financial service providers. Our updated Follow the Money evaluation (downloadable here) and our studies of the
