The Austrian Financial Market Authority FMA has issued a number of investor warnings in recent days. Among them are again scam customers of the notorious Cypriot payment processor Praxis Cashier System Ltd (d/b/a Praxis Cashier and Praxis Pay) of Amit Klatchko. Specifically, the FMA warns against the broker scams Tradixa, GFXRoyal (GFX Finance), HBC Market (HBC Markets), and BSB Global. The FinTelegram Research Team has looked at the special features of these scams. And this is what we found:
- According to the website, the GFXRoyal scam is also operated as GFX Finance by the German Capital Letter GmbH. Praxis Cashier is the only integrated payment processor. Recently, the German BaFin had also issued a Cease and Desist Order against Capital Letter and warned of their scams GFXRoyal, STSRoyal, and BrightFinance (see FinTelegram report here).
- At HBC Market (HBC Markets), the Estonian Tinkbit for client-victim deposits via crypto-currencies is again integrated via Praxis Cashier.
- Bank deposits can be made at the BSB Global scam broker operated by Lotents Partners Ltd. However, these bank deposits are disguised as consulting services. Client-victims receive a respective invoice from the Lithuanian company Merelita UAB. This should be paid into the bank account of Merelita at Paysera (IBAN: LT533500010006610793).
The Lithuanian Merelita UAB is certainly acting as an illegal payment processor facilitating scams. Moreover, he actually is engaging in money laundering. The company’s director Viacheslav Novikov has to be questioned and held liable for these activities.
Unfortunately, it is a fact that neither the COVID-19 pandemic nor the summer holidays are slowing down the activities of scammers. On the contrary, it seems that more and more “quick and dirty” scams are appearing, aimed at the quick rip-off of naive or careless consumers and small investors. These scams are often only available for a short time and usually disappear after the first warnings from regulators or FinTelegram.