Against the German Capital Letter GmbH and its network of offshore entities and scams such as BrightFinance, SolidInvest, GFXRoyal, STSRoyal, STSCrypto, or GFXFinance, various European regulators such as the UK FCA (here), BaFin (here), or the FMA (here) have already warned and issued Cease and Desist Orders over the last months. The Italian Consob has ordered a blackout of the sites (here). However, the scammers are unimpressed. Some scams are still active. Now the UK Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) issued a new warning. After a quick check, we found that GFXRoyal scam is facilitated by the Ukraine-Estonian AnyCach OÜ (d/b/a any.money).
A Ukrainian scam in Germany
Scammers love Germany and the German jurisdiction. German regulator BaFin is nice and banks are not so strict with KYC/AML. The fight against money laundering has not really arrived in Germany yet. Capital Letter is basically not a German scam network in its very essence, but apparently a Ukrainian one. Ukrainian managing directors are active in the two German companies.
- Capital Letter GmbH in Munich, Germany, together with Capital Letter Ltd, Marshall Islands. The German entity was founded in July 2018 with Ukrainian Artem Dari as its managing director. The official business purpose of the company is management consulting (Northdata).
- Brunnlitz GmbH in Berlin was founded in August 2019 with the business purpose of digital marketing. As with Capital Letter, a Ukrainian citizen is registered as a director, Anatolii Zmeul from Novoukrainka (Northdata).
- Tokkata Software GmbH was only in the process of being established when BaFin issued a Cease and Desist Order in August 2019 because Tokkata was providing illegal payment services for the STSCrpypto scam. The incorporation was not carried out after that.
It is surprising that the German authorities have so far taken enforcement action against Capital Letter or Brunnlitz, which is based in Munich, Germany.
Payment Facilitators
The GFXRoyal scam also works with the Estonian no-longer-licensed AnyCach OÜ (companies register) controlled by the Russian Andrii Bruiaka, born in August 1987, a Ukrainian citizen and doing business as any.money.
Via the any.money payment gateway (www.any.money), the Estonian crypto payment processor Payeer (www.payeer.com) is integrated into the scams payment options. In the EU, Payeer is operated by Fincana OÜ (companies register) with a crypto license from the Estonian FIU. The co-operator of the Payeer platform Paycorp Limited, a company licensed by the offshore regulator Vanuatu Financial Services Commission (VFSC) as a financial dealer.
