The phasing out process of PAYVISION ends today (June 30, 2022)! On October 28, 2021, ING announced that it would start phasing out the business activities of its subsidiary PAYVISION as a payment service provider (PSP) and acquirer. According to the announcement, this was done after a thorough evaluation of
Administrative fines and bans for Maxigrid Ltd Finally, on June 17th 2022, The Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission (CySEC) took action against Maxigrid Ltd. It announced administrative fines totalling € 210,000 and bans against four exercising directors for management functions in Cyprus Investment Firms (C.I.F.s). In specific, CySEC imposed the
When German and Austrian prosecutors arrested Gal BARAK (the Wolf of Sofia) in Sofia on January 29, 2019, Marina BARAK took over the management of the boiler rooms of the cybertrading platforms xtraderfx, OptionStarsglobal, and safemarkets. Some of the victims registered with EFRI transferred money to the scam platforms by
The professionalism of today’s cybercriminal organizations (in short: the scammers’ industry) correspond to the professionalism and procedures of legitimate big international corporations. Technology, development activities, human resources, accounting, finance, marketing, legal departments are carried out by different departments independently under the professional leadership of the management people hired by criminals.
Kobenhavns Andelskasse: A Small Bank’s Role in Massive Financial Fraud Kobenhavns Andelskasse (a.k.a. Copenhagen Cooperative Fund or KBH Andelskasse), a small Danish-regulated bank, became a key enabler of international fraud by collecting and transferring hundreds of millions of euros in stolen funds to boiler room scammers in 2017 and 2018.
Our research shows that Postbank Germany (a subsidiary of Deutsche Bank) was definitely “the bank to go” for scammers in 2016 – 2020 to open bank accounts for shell companies. We collected the data of more than 90 shell companies with bank accounts with different Postbank branches all over Germany.
As we have seen so often in the past years, the European authorities have been mainly concerned with protecting the interests of the business users in drafting the Digital Markets Act (DMA) and have forgotten about the so much-needed consumer protection. It is about time to enhance consumer protection in
The 1st Criminal Division in Bamberg, Germany, has submitted a request for a ruling to the European Court of Justice (ECJ) for the next steps in the Gal BARAK case on June 4, 2021. The pending ruling of the ECJ will not only be important in the criminal case of
Out of about 1.100 victims registered with EFRI, more than 620 (about 57%) victims told us that they got lured into investments scams by fake or misleading ads on social media platforms like Facebook or Instagram. These findings correlate with the British Action Fraud findings from the report dated end
UNZER’s Acquisition and the Role of Clearhaus A/S and KBH in Online Fraud. As of January 21, 2021, UNZER (formerly Heidelpay) announced its acquisition of two Danish payment companies: Clearhaus A/S, an acquiring company and payment institution regulated by the Danish FSA, and QuickPay, based in Aarhus, Denmark. This transaction
