On September 1, 2020, the FMA issued an investor warning against IFX Banc (www.ifxcapitals.com and www.ifxbanc.com), which Global Payment Solutions LLC allegedly operates in Podgorica, Montenegro. A quickly conducted review by FinTelegram revealed that the Bulgarian Ankor Group Investment Ltd is also stated as the operator.
Notorious operators
Ankor Group Investment Ltd, allegedly registered in Bulgaria, has already been associated with several other scams in the last two years. Among others, the UK FCA has issued an investor warning against the company in connection with the ZurichBanc scam. The Italian CONSOB has issued an investor warning against the company IFX Banc in connection with the domain www.ifxbanc.com. We have not found the company in the Bulgarian company register under company number 205655321.
According to the FMA, Global Payment Solutions LLC seems to be identical to Global Payment Solutions Podgorica DOO (“GPS”), registered with company no 50738515. It is the same address data in Podgorica. When asked today, the director of the company, the Belgrade-based lawyer Marko Vujosevic, stated that the company would not do business since 2018 and that some other party is abusing his company’s name.
Cybercrime connections
GPS has its roots in the Israeli Gal Barak and the German Uwe Lenhoff cybercrime organization. Both held 25% of the shares in GPS and used the company to rip off customers through their scam brands such as Option888, XMarkets, or VEmarkets. Barak and Lenhoff were arrested in early 2019. While Lenhoff died under mysterious circumstances during his pre-trial detention, Barak was charged in Vienna and sentenced to prison.
Barak and Lenhoff actually had their headquarters in Sofia, Bulgaria, until early 2019. In this respect, this connection makes perfect sense.
At IFX Banc we found the Estonian crypto payment processor AllGlobalPay (www.agp.com), operated by Oppino OÜ, a company with one of the worthless Estonian crypto licenses. It is a very deep integration of AllGlobalPay into the IFX Banc scam. The registration data and the IFX Banc Wallet are automatically transmitted to AllGlobalPay.
