Suspected German cybercrime mastermind Uwe Lenhoff died in prison in July 2020. Being a braggart and bon vivant, he spent his victims’ money to buy expensive watches and luxury cars like Ferraris. It was in a Ferrari that Lenhoff was also arrested in early 2019. He had previously been under surveillance by law enforcement agents for months. One of Lenhoff’s partners and payment enabler was then PAYVISION CEO Rudolf Booker, who was photographed at Lenhoff’s birthday party.
According to documents in criminal files, the photo was taken by Austrian law enforcement agents in November 2018. Many warnings and reports about Uwe Lenhoff‘s cybercrime activities had already been published then. Financial market regulators had issued warnings against the Lenhoff scams. Nevertheless, Rudolf Booker laundered the stolen funds with his Payvision for Lenhoff and his cybercrime organization until shortly before his arrest in early 2019.
It also emerges from the criminal files that Booker attended Lenhoff’s birthday party in November 2018 and met him in London just days before his arrest in early 2019. As a Payment Institution manager (yes, there is a fit and proper requirement for PIs also!), Booker had surprisingly little fear of contact with one of the biggest cybercrime activists in Europe. Rudolf Booker attended the three-days birthday party of Uwe Lenhoff at a luxury resort in Austria together with other close Lenhoff´s business partners. He evidently had no issues at all with the kind of industry Lenhoff was dealing with, although he told the Austrian law enforcement in May 2019 negative media reports dating from summer 2018 (sic) forced him (Payvision) to reconsider the business relationship with Uwe Lenhoff in the last quarter of 2018.
In fact, the relationship between Booker and Lenhoff was very close. The two had been introduced in 2014 or 2015 by Amsterdam real estate investor Dirk-Jan Bakker, who had also invested money in the Lenhoff scams. Booker installed Lenhoff as a sales agent for Payvision, and he ensured that binary options scam operators like Gal Barak became Payvision customers en masse. Payvision‘s transaction volume was inflated, and Booker sold the company to ING in 2018 with a dirty transaction volume.
ING is still pretending everything is fine in the Netherlands!
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If you have any information about the activities of the late cybercrime mastermind Uwe Lenhoff or his business partners Dirk-Jan Baker or Rudolf Booker, please let us know via our whistleblower system Whistle42.
