Tag: cyber currency

OneCoin Cryptocurrency Scammer in Court

Mark Scott, a US lawyer accused of laundering proceeds from the OneCoin cryptocurrency – alleged to be a Ponzi scheme scam – went on trial in New York. He was accused of laundering approximately $400 million through hedge funds and transferring that back to his colleagues.

OneCoin claims to be a digital currency similar to Bitcoin and the founders are thought to have raised an estimated $4bn worldwide, including millions from the UK, since it began in 2015.

It was founded in Bulgaria by Dr Ruja Ignatova, who disappeared in 2017 and her brother Konstantin Ignatov, who ran the company in her absence and has since been arrested in the US.

The Sales Pitch

Dr Ruja, told her audience that the future belonged to cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, which had made millions for many investors and were free of the high cost of traditional banking.

She offered an alternative – a perfectly safe cryptocurrency of her own devising called OneCoin. She exhorted people to join this financial revolution that would become bigger than Bitcoin within a few years

It is estimated that up to 70,000 people in the UK may have invested with OneCoin and hence lost everything.

It appears to have been a fraud from the beginning as investors trying to retrieve their money found out, when they couldn’t get anything back.

The banks realised it was a scam and stopped doing business with OneCoin. So Ruja moved to using money laundering with people such as Mark Scott.

The officials are keenly trying to find Ruja to put her on trial as well.

If you have any experiences with Onecoin, do let me know, by email.

Fightback Ninja Signature

Crypto Currency Scams

Crypto Currencies are the new Internet currencies. They aren’t created by governments or banks but by new organisations seeking to develop (or benefit from) new possibilities in currency transactions and investments.

There are lots of these new currencies but the biggest and most famous by far is Bitcoin.

 

You can see that the value of Bitcoin started at near zero and reached over $2,000 in 2017.

The first ever Bitcoin transaction was the purchase of 2 pizzas for 10,000 Bitcoins.

The price has always been extremely volatile and having reached an all-time high of over $20,000 it crashed to less than $4,000 by the end of 2018.

Scammers usually offer one of the following:-

  1. A guaranteed way to make money betting on the Bitcoin price
  2. Automated “scientific” methods for gambling on Bitcoins e.g. using artificial intelligence
  3. A way to invest in Bitcoin that guarantees you will make lots of money
  4. Bitcoin vending machines
  5. Fake Bitcoin accounts opened in your name

These deals are also offered for other crypto currencies but most people have only heard of Bitcoin so the scammers focus on that one. Plus, there are lots of stories of people who invested a little in Bitcoins and are now millionaires. Some of these are true but as with any form of gambling or investing – past results do not tell you what will happen in the future.

Anyone who invested in Bitcoin in early January 2018 had lost 85% of their money by that Christmas.

The scammers don’t care of course as they only care about themselves and how much money they can steal from people.

Most of the scams are entirely fake – there is no Bitcoin investment or anything else of value and the ones that do actually lead to investment in Bitcoins are usually so highly leveraged as to make it impossible for anyone to benefit except for the scammers.

If you want to invest or deal in Bitcoins or any other cyber currency – take professional advice and be aware that you could easily lose everything.

Do leave a comment on this post – click on the post title then scroll down to leave your comment.

Fightback Ninja Signature

Is Perfect Money Safe?

Perfect Money says Welcome to a new generation of Internet Payment System!

It is owned by Perfect Money Finance Corporation, is registered in Panama and has headquarters in Switzerland.

Perfect Money allows users to make instant payments and to make money transfers securely throughout the Internet.

The Perfect Money payment system one can do the following:

  • Perform money transfers between members
  • Make regular payments via the Internet
  • Safely store money funds on electronic account and get monthly interest
  • Make payment for goods and services in Internet shops
  • Buy Bitcoin, Gold, USD and EUR currency online

They claim to have the lowest fees on the market.

Customer Reviews

Perfect Money payment say they aspire to offer customers the perfect service, but the DFID website has lots of comments about Perfect Money and many are not so positive:-

https://www.dfid.org/payment-options/perfectmoney

E.g. 1

I sent money (a lot) using bank wire transfer, but it doesn’t appeared in my perfect money account after 8days! They say it takes up to 5business days but it’s already 8days and I started to worry about my money. They never replied my email so I can’t do anything! They just stole my money that I’ve been saving for 1 year! Be careful about their system!

E.g. 2

They are scammers. They steal your personal data. They have so called “verification” and promise that you’ll pay less fees after you did it. So, I sent them my passport, it was OK. I sent them my company details. It is also OK. Now I sent them utility bill to verify address. They claim that it is fake even it is OK. They ask to send something else. I send my governemnt issued ID with legal address. They say it is also not OK. I sent more. I sent them 6 different documents, and they didn’t accept anyone. I sent the same scans to Neteller, WebMoney and even to banks, and documents were OK, just PerfectMoney found that they are fake. So, at last verification step they deny to verify you and decrease fees and cheat you, so you send them more and more documents. I am thinking now where in darknet will they sell these documents. Don’t work with these scammers.

E.g. 3

I recently had a terible experance with perfectmoney.is. They have the worst customer support with auto replies and never fully answers what you ask them. They truly give you a headach and not relaible so how would someone trust them with their money. They verified my Passport, but refused to verify my account and never read all my explanations. Basically, i submitted a government address certificate since its the common way to verify an address in our country, and the utility bill are in Arabic and have meter code number and not the address. I tried to explain that to them many times but they kept replying with an auto reply they have. I gave up and asked them to delete the account that i haven’t used so they wont keep my passport with them, but they refused for “security concerns”. I told them i don’t care about the account, but asked them to remove my passport form their data since i won’t be using their services and they ignored me. Why would they want to keep my passport and not verify the account??? Worst website ever and I don’t suggest anyone to deal with unprofessional support like them.

Perfect Money – Perfect or Imperfect?

It may be that Perfect Money provide a very cheap service and may do what you want, but it seems they may struggle on the customer service side and people suggest they find any excuse not to verify your account, so they can keep on charging the much higher fees for an unverified account.

Do leave a comment on this post – click on the post title then scroll down to leave your comment.

Fightback Ninja Signature

What is Cyber Currency XRP All About

Ripple is a business that operates a payment network RippleNet and uses a cyber currency called XRP and it is one of the biggest cyber currencies in the world.

This cyber currency is designed for enterprise use rather than for the public.

It claims to offer banks and payment providers a reliable, on-demand option to source liquidity for cross-border payments.

There’s also the claim that It’s the fastest and most scalable digital asset,  enabling real-time global payments anywhere in the world.

How does Ripple work?

RippleNet makes it easy to transfer almost any currency to almost any other currency in the world. Ripple claim this can be done in 4 seconds which is much faster than Ethereum and Bitcoin.

Using Ripple, if you wanted to transfer currency directly from China to the USA, you could trade CNY to XRP and then send XRP to the recipient who will have an online Ripple wallet or a bank in the USA. From there, they can trade the XRP into USD.

Ripple claims banks can save an average of $3.76 per payment using their network.

XRP Price

XRP has risen in price from under $0.01 to over $1 a coin in under a year, with it valued on December 29, 2017 at a high of $1.50.

XRP’s increase in value may be connected to the astonishing rise in price of Bitcoin. XRP also has a new partnership with credit card company American Express, who are looking to offer instant block-chain based payments and this contributes to market confidence.

The global market is currently valued at around $488billion, Bitcoin accounts for about 40 per cent of the daily turnover and Ripple accounts for 4 per cent. But some experts believe it will enjoy a larger boost in value in 2018.

Ripple does have serious investors working with it, including Santander InnoVentures, Andreessen Horowitz, Accenture, Google Ventures and Standard Chartered.

Cyber currencies are risky as the price is volatile but the future does seem to increasingly likely to be cyber currency.

Do enter your email address and click on the subscribe button on top right to keep up to date with new posts.

Fightback Ninja Signature