Thursday, November 21, 2024

UK FCA warns against broker scam Plutus with Estonian BitTheBank payment processor

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The UK watchdog FCA has issued an investor warning against the broker scam Plutus a/k/a Plutus Pro (www.plutus.pro) on December 18, 2020. An ITM Solutions LLC allegedly operates this from St. Vincent and the Grenadines. As a payment processor, we have discovered the Estonian BitTheBank (www.bitthebank.com) operated by Lipan Services OÜ. Plutus promotes its services on Instagram using the argument of ‘financial freedom’ via FX Trading and was active until a few minutes ago despite FCA’s warning.


St. Vincent and Estonia, again!

Many of the broker scams currently work with offshore companies based on St. Vincent and the Grenadines and Estonian payment processors which are also very often associated with them. This is also the case with the Plutus Scam.

Plutus Pro broker scam uses BitTheBank crypto payment processor

Lipan Services OÜ (companies register record) has one of the thousands of worthless crypto licenses issued by the Estonian regulator FIU. As a director at Lipan Services, we have again discovered Karmo Neider, who has already served as a director at scam operator Bleaxmond AlephLink Solutions Ltd OÜ (read FinTelegram report here).

Crypto only accepted

On its deposit page, Plutus links directly to BitTheBank, where one can buy BTC with a credit card and bank deposit, which are then automatically transferred to the Plutus Bitcoin (BTC) wallet 16PdoBy7g5BnEKmuzM2emD9wSQisfMrRH7.

Alternatively, the potential client-victim can also deposit directly to this BTC address. As of noon on December 22, 2020, just under BTC 28 (equivalent to €530,000) has been transferred there in 79 transactions. Impressive victim record, isn’t it?

Unlike many other scams, Plutus is also active on social channels such as Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram, looking for victims there.

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