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Inside EFRI Uncategorized

Be aware of Recovery scams! And pls avoid them.

All the investment scams out there show a very similar path: After having felt as a rich man/woman by seeing the life savings growing at a amazing growth rate, the reality in realizing that all was just a tricky fraud is devastating for the victims.  In this period of realizing that everything is lost[1], the victims  vibrantly try to find someone for help to get their money back and very often they fall victim to the next fraud: recovery scams!

Show up of recovery organizations:

As soon as  it gets obvious that nothing more can be “earned” from a registrant, the customer data is sold to other operators of fraudulent online trading platforms or to so-called funds recovery organizations. This is the beginning of a new journey of  harassment of the victims by email and telephone. Countless spam emails and callers from all over the world continue to harass the victims for months.

The recovery organizations promise to get the money back in exchange for a considerable down payment. But in 99,9% of the cases this does not work out – and pls do not think that you belong to the 0.05 % success case. Very often these recovery organizations are owned by the same fraudsters as the trading platforms and are working hand in hand with them. 

As far back as 2016, the United States Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) has issued ‘Investor Alerts’ urging investors and fraud victims to think carefully before paying money for asset recovery services that may prove fruitless. In the United Kingdom, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) on 12/12/2019 published a warning on their website concerning Pay Back Ltd also a recovering service proving fruitless.

Based on information received from our members we could identify the following recovery scammers

  • SCAM WATCHER
  • SCAM ONLINE
  • SCAM RECOVERY
  • MY CHARGE BACK
  • MONEY BACK
  • ACTION REFUND
  • FUNDS RECOVERY
  • MY LOST RECOVERY
  • WEALTH RECOVERY INTERNATIONAL
  • BOWSTRING CAPITAL
  • MY CHARGE BACK
  • WIN CHARGE BACK
  • PAYBACK INT
  • PAYBACK Ltd
  • FRAUD RECOVERY INTERNATIONAL
  • MY WEALTH RESTORATION
  • GLOBAL FTI
  • RECLAWS
  • SCAM INVESTIGATON
  • MY PRINCIPAL CHARGE BACK
  • EDGA RECOVERY
  • FORTUNE CHARGE BACK
  • WEALTH WATCHS
  • GFN CHARGEBACK
  • TIMES 4 ACTION
  • STAINWAYFINANCIALS
  • BROKER DISPUTE
  • ELLIS AND BURLINGTON
  • HELP REFUND IT BACK

Pls avoid these companies, they are also scammers! (in case you know one we missed, pls give us a comment below and we will include them in our warning listing).

[1] Registration with the fraud systems results in 99% of all cases in a total loss of savings for these small investors. In the worst case even with an additional financial burden, as many victims are encouraged to take out a loan through false promises and assurances.

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Inside EFRI Payment Service Providers

Follow the money!

As of today (June 29th, 2020) 820 victims from investment scams registered with EFRI with a loss of more than 34 mio Euro.

As each victim delivered its deposit slips to us, we have been able to establish a summary what countries are the most favourable places for illegal payment service providers to offer their services fo the investment scammers. The winner evidently is Germany with more than 33% of the stolen money being transferred to illegal payment service providers there.

Within Germany Wirecard (not surprising) and Deutsche Bank (also not surprising) have been the most active enablers for fraudulent companies.

For both companies we filed money laundering complaints with the authorities in Germany. #Wirecard went bust by now, pls read here for more details on our contribution to the fall out of the fraudulent company.

Guys, this summary will be the basis for the next steps to undertake to hold the authorities responsible for doing nothing and to ask for refunds.

Will keep you updated. In case of any questions pls contact us.

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EU Petition Inside EFRI Uncategorized

Victims` affidavit for the shortcomings of the European rules on Cybercrime prevention

Dear All, the EU Parliament is deeply convinced – as can be proven by their letter to the EP Committee on Petitions dated March 16 2020 – that the rules and measures undertaken by the European Parliament against cybercrime (for retail investors) are sufficient and that there are no significant structural shortcomings in the implementation of the rules currently in place.

I think we all know that this is just nonsense, as the number of victims from Cyberscams in Europe is rising in a staggering manner each single day.

As we will send our Petition signed by more than 1,100 victims from investment scams to the EP Committee on Petitions within the next two weeks. Please tell us your stories on how you experienced the effectiveness and efficiency of the EU law enforcement agencies on Cybercrime, so we can enclose your experience and affidavit with our petition.

Please restrict yourself to a maximum of 150 words, and either make a comment below or send your witness report to [email protected] ref. Witness report.

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Uncategorized

We launch the EFRI-Initiative NGO

The European Funds Recovery Initiative (EFRI) was set up in November 2018 by FinTelegram Investors Protection Ltd (“FinTelegram”) together with auditors and lawyers. The EFRI mission always was to provide support to scam victims in recovering their losses. I, being a registered Accountant, was appointed as EFRI Principal. After more than 18 months now running the EFRI-Initiative, we decided to set up a not-for-profit entity running the Initiative to Combat Cybercrime against Consumers and Small Investors in Europe/EFRI Initiative.

The new entity is registered in Vienna ZVR:1493630560, the Statutes can be downloaded here. All the people who have granted a Power of Attorney (PoA) to Elfriede Sixt, EFRI principal during the past months, will become members of the EFRI NGO.

Back in October 2018 when we started it was like a jump in the cold water and only during the past months by hearing all the stories of hundreds of victims and by talking to prosecutors all over Europe we have realized the huge size of fraud with online trading websites going on a worldwide basis.

We realized that although the European Union may be praised for its free European financial market but has severe flaws regarding investor protection, money laundering, cross-border criminal investigations, and corruption. We have learned that the highly promoted term “cybersecurity” mainly addresses cybercrime addressing companies but not individual persons. And we have learned a lot about how the fraudsters do their business and as we get defamed and threatened by them about every day we realized how powerful these fraudsters are by having collected so much money over so many years without any counterclaims.

More than 1,500 scam victims have registered with EFRI so far. Of these, more than 800 victims have provided EFRI the Power of Attorney (POA) to pursue their claims against scammers and facilitating third parties involved such as banks, payment processors, or boiler room operators.

Up to today we have filed money-laundering complaints against several payment service providers and banks involved in the fraudulent scams (like #Kobenhavn Andelskasse, #Wirecard, #Postbank, or #Payvision). In addition, EFRI has, on the basis of information and documents provided by victims and whistleblowers, submitted criminal complaints about fraudulent actors to financial market supervisory authorities regarding financial services providers acting negligently or intentionally violating regulatory rules (like the notorious MoneynetInternational, Moorwand and others). In doing so, EFRI has systematically developed a network of public prosecutors, financial market regulators, lawyers, investor and consumer protection NGOs and media people.

A network that could – if enlarged by the network of all the victims out there – really make a difference in the fight against cybercrime. And based on what we have experienced over the last couple of months one thing is crystal clear – something must happen to fight this incredible harm caused by investment scams in Europe.

Based on many discussions about the efficiency of filing legal claims and about raising awareness in Europe with authorities, we decided to finally set up a non-governmental non-profit association. With effect from 25 May 2020 this EFRI Non-Government Organization (“EFRI NGO“) was registered in Vienna. The EFRI NGO will be the victim-driven vehicle to recover funds over different jurisdictions and regulatory regimes via litigation and/or out-of-court settlement where feasible and this EFRI NGO is supposed to become the voice of all the defrauded victims in addressing all the European and International authorities in requesting Justice.

The financial means for asserting the claims will be provided by the EFRI FUND established for this purpose. This fund will be operated by EFRI Asset Management Ltd, which is registered in the UK, and will act together with interested investors as a for-profit litigation funder for EFRI NGO. In return the EFRI FUND will receive a share of the successfully recovered funds. In addition the EFRI NGO will seek for donations, grants and so on to be able to fight a powerful war against the scammers.

The EFRI NGO will be managed by two directors. One of the directors is appointed by the founders. This is the current EFRI Principal Elfriede Sixt. The second director will in future be proposed by the members of the EFRI (non-executive) Advisory Board, for the beginning the rep for the EFRI Advisory Board is Nigel Kimberly (UK-born, lives in Finland)

The EFRI Advisory Board (Section 14 of our statutes) will consist of at least one representative for each country, – (up to today we have already 27 members of this non-executive board from countries all over the world and still counting).. this Advisory Board is administered for the time being by Nigel Kimberly and Raoula Malouf (Lebanon-born, French citizen, lives in Norway). Many people in our EFRI community know both of them as they have been in the scam fighter industry for quite a long time.

Let us be as persistent and as relentless as the fraudsters in our fight against the scammer industry and its enablers.

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Inside EFRI

Spiegel Report on EFRI Money-laundering Complaints

Spiegelbericht

As discussed in our latest blog post EFRI continues to file money-laundering complaints against scam facilitating payment processors based on the documentation provided by victims. Mainly because we think that only if the European banks or the acquiring organizations stop to facilitate the money flow from the victims to the fraudsters the ongoing fraud on thousands of European retail victims can be put to an end.

The German Spiegel magazine, one of the biggest and most influenial media outlets in the German-speaking markets did a big report on our activities and spoke with two victims registered with us. It is a quite comprehensive report on how much fraud takes place and explains why we think that banks should stop being involved in such fraud.

Read the spiegel article
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Inside EFRI

The EFRI Mission – Involving Regulators and Prosecutors to Recover Funds for Defrauded Investors

The European Funds Recovery Initiative (EFRI), co-founded by FinTelegram, is specialized in the recovery of funds of investors who have been defrauded by investment scams. Furthermore, EFRI sees itself as an advocate for investors and investor protection. Currently, EFRI has been granted a Power of Attorney by more than 800 victims which have been defrauded of more than EUR 34 million. The approach applied by EFRI differs in several aspects from the activities of lawyers and other organizations in the recovery business. Also because EFRI is organized as an initiative and association of victims.

EFRI establishes big datapools

On the one hand EFRI (www.efri.io) organizes the fund recovery process more like a membership model, by setting up separate social media groups for victims of the different scams and by guiding the victims what authorities and how to approach them after having discovered that they have been defrauded. EFRI requests all victims to file criminal complaints themselves with the authorities at their place of residence and to be persistent to the authorities in following up their criminal complaints.

EFRI requests all victims to deliver their deposit information for the transfers made to the fraudsters. In addition we want to get all information on the fraudulent systems which have been collected by the victims.

Based on the documentation provided EFRI establishes data pools for each scam with the illegal and legal payment service providers and banks involved. In case of credit card or debit card payments we try to identify the acquiring organization which processed the payments for the fraudsters.

Money Laundering complaints against European banks and payment service providers

Based on the documentation provided EFRI establishes data pools for each scam with the illegal and legal payment service providers and banks involved. In the case of credit card or debit card payments, we try to identify the acquiring organization which processed the payments for the fraudsters. Based on these databases EFRI prepares money-laundering complaints against the involved banks and legal and illegal payment service providers.

Up to now, money-laundering complaints with a total volume of more than €15 million have already been filed. EFRI filed money laundering complaints for German banks and payment service providers like Wirecard, or Deutsche Bank. Additionally, money-laundering complaints against KBH Andelskasse, Moorwand, and UPCConsulting have been filed with the respective regulators and public prosecuting offices. We guess BaFin or FCA, for example, knows EFRI´s letters by now quite well and feel already uncomfortable by recognizing the letterhead.

More often than not, even regulated payment processors such as Wirecard, Payvision, or Deutsche Bank did not terminate their business relations with the scammers, although many public investor warnings have already been issued by the financial market supervisory authorities in various jurisdictions.

In addition, many unauthorized and illegal payment processors such as B2G, Xtrabit, P2P, Hermes Solution, IntellEstate Bau, and many more have made themselves available for fraud processing in exchange for fat fees. These too must be held accountable and are also responsible for the losses of retail investors.

We are convinced that the involvement of the competent authorities in the fund recovery process is ultimately beneficial both for aggrieved retail investors and for the security of the online investment scene. The European payment processors must understand that they will be held accountable for their involvement in any scams. We are convinced that this is the only method to stop this kind of fraud in Europe.

Elfriede Sixt, EFRI principal

Support European prosecutors with data

Based on the information from the victims about the fraud itself we file criminal complaints against fraudsters identified as we filed one in Denmark, several in Great Britain and in Israel. In addition, we try to push prosecutors in the different European countries to start investigations by delivering all collected information on criminal complaints in the other European countries (to help them in exchanging information) and deliver out database about the fraud.

It is certainly not the fast lane but a rather holistic approach that but hopefully will not only result in the recovery of funds but also in the punishment of dishonest actors. In any case, this approach also documents the state of the financial scene for the authorities involved and leads the black sheep to be checked and punished. Justice for the defrauded retail investors.

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Inside EFRI

Welcome to our EFRI Blog

Since the end of 2019, our team has been working closely with law enforcement, prosecutors and authorities to help victims recover the funds that scammers have stolen from them. Unlike many other funds recovery companies, we do not ask for high initial payments or outrageous commissions, but instead focus on comprehensive investigation, identification of individuals and bank accounts and recovery of the stolen funds for all EFRI members.

We have filed complaints with the relevant authorities on the basis of the victim reports. And we drive, coordinate and support the investigations of the responsible authorities across all jurisdictions.