The HybridReserve (www.hybridreserve.com) broker scam vanished sometime in 2020. It has defrauded thousands of victims during its active period between 2018 and 2020. Several financial market regulators in Australia and Europe have issued warnings against the scam. The vanished website was owned and operated by the offshore entity SingleBell LTD, Saint Vincent & the Grenadines, and the unlicensed Estonian SingleBell OÜ. One of the facilitating payment processors has been the German P2P GmbH, which German law enforcement agencies investigate.
Key Data
| Brand | HybridReserve |
| Domains | www.hybridreserve.com |
| Legal Entities | SingleBell Ltd, St. Vincent & The Grenadines SingleBell OÜ, Estonia (link) |
| Individuals | Daniel Lopez Romero, Serge Michou, Tchio Daloko |
| Payment Processors | P2P GmbH |
| Warnings | ASIC, FSMA, FMA, CNMV, Finantsinspektsioon |
The Scam Narrative
The Mexican Daniel Lopez Romero, Serge Michou, and Tchio Daloko are scam-connected individuals and/or managers of the fraud scheme. The HybridReserve online presence vanished a while ago. Apparently, the scam was active between 2018 and 2019 and has also received investor warnings from regulators:
- Estonian Finantsinspektsioon in January 2019;
- Belgian FSMA in February 2019;
- the Austrian regulator FMA in March 2019;
- the Spanish CNMV in June 2019;
- the Australian ASIC in November 2019.
One of the payment processors involved was the German P2P GmbH, which had already received a cease-and-desist order from BaFin to stop their illegal payment services.
The Refund Scam
The scammers have been acting as fake fund recovery experts after closing their operation. We have seen the correspondence of victims with the alleged fund recovery department of the Swiss regulator FINMA. Via email [email protected], victims were contacted in mid-2020, informed about the HybridReserve scam, and promised a refund. Of course, victims would have to upload documents and undergo a KYC check to get their refunds. FINMA, nor any other regulator, sends up such dubious emails via Protonmail. Regulators do not have fund recovery departments in the first place.
In May 2021, HybridReserve scammers once again wrote to their victims and announced a refund. For this purpose, KYC documents and a phone number would have to be uploaded again, and another phone call would be required. It is just another attempt to get even more money from the victims or keep them quiet with promises of repayments.
Share Information
Victims of the HybridReserve scam can contact FinTelegram and provide their information. We will inform the relevant law enforcement authorities and publish respective updates.
