EFRI asks German prosecutors: What happened to the “Wolf of Sofia” investigations? Today EFRI has formally asked the Generalstaatsanwaltschaft Bamberg and its Central Cybercrime Unit (ZCB) for clarification on the status of the German criminal proceedings concerning Gal Barak, Marina Barak and Gery Shalon. The request comes against the background
EFRI’s Payvision Report: when payment infrastructure becomes fraud infrastructure
The Public Prosecutor’s Office in Bamberg has indicted Yehezkely Isaac, who was part of the management structure of Gal Barak’s call-centre operation between December 2016 and February 2019. Barak’s investment fraud schemes are alleged to have defrauded tens of thousands of European victims of approximately €200 million between September 2015
The cooperation between Payvision B.V., a Dutch-supervised payment service provider, and the cybercriminals Gal Barak, Uwe Lenhoff, and his accomplices (Gery Shalon, Vlad Smirnov, and others) began in 2013. The cooperation ended at the end of January 2019 with the arrest of Gal Barak and Uwe Lenhoff. When reading the
Letters sent out with a strictly confidential clause always tend to be interesting for many more people than the addressees. Last night, some Barak and Lenhoff victims represented by EFRI presumably received a refund offer from ING! As there are thousands of ING victims out there (a total of more
The criminal organization around Gal and Marina Barak, Uwe Lenhoff, Gery Shalon, Vlad Smirnov and their service providers (call centers, marketing affiliates, payment service providers) defrauded tens of thousands of innocent retail investors with their fraudulent websites (optionstarsglobal, xtraderfx, safemarkets, cryptopoint, goldenmarkets, zoomtrader, option888, xmarkets, tradovest, tradeinvest90) during the years
As of March 23, 2023, the European Court of Justice published its judgment in the case GAL BARAK against the Bamberg public prosecutor´s office (Case C-365/2). The court ruled in favor of the German authority. In addition, the European court provided the German court with elements of interpretation of EU
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
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 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
