A few days ago FinTelegram published an investor warning on the unregulated and illegal broker scheme VEmarkets (www.vemarkets.com). At the time of our report, the scheme’s website indicated that Estonian company Grau International OU as owner and operator. Just a few hours after the FinTelegram report the officially communicated operator switched into a company called Vemarkets Ltd. Allegedly, this Vemarkets Ltd is registered in Estonia with the company number 14482296 which is actually the registration number of Grau International OU. The scheme’s operator evidently switched the name to confuse investors, authorities, and Google. Hence, FinTelegram took a closer look into this Estonian financial crime scene.

Floris Pieter Bartel Waals & Friends

The Dutch citizen Floris Pieter Bartel Waals is director of Grau International OU. Furthermore, he is also the director of the Estonian TRSystem OU, another company that has been warned of by supervisory authorities such as the UK FCA or the Italian CONSOB. According to the FCA, TRSystem OU used to be the operator of the illegal forex broker scheme CFDS100 (www.cfds100.com).

It is fair to conclude that this Floris Pieter Bartel Waals has to be held accountable for illegally operating broker schemes associated with these companies. This guy is associated with several UK-registered companies such as Wise Investments Nederland Ltd which is held by the Dutch Wine & Time Ltd. The latter was controlled until 2017 by the Cyprus-based Streamrevenue Investments III Ltd where Waals is one of the directors. Currently, Wine & Time Ltd is controlled by the Dutch Stichting Ondernemerssupporters. FinTelegram is still doing research on Floris Pieter Bartel Waals and his alleged connections to Uwe Lenhoff. It is well known that Uwe Lenhoff, as well as his public-listed VELTYCO GROUP, have s strong connection to the Netherlands. Maybe Waals is just an acting frontman but nevertheless, he officially runs illegal broker schemes.

Waal’s partner Gaele de Graf runs another Estionian company involved in illegal broker schemes – GreenRiver OÜ and Jones Mutal (www.jonesmutual.com). The Estonian watchdog issued an investor warning against GreenRiver and Jones Mutual in November 2018.

Most of those Estonian and Bulgarian sites are primarily attacking clients in the German-speaking markets and UK. VEmarkets, however, also addresses the Spanish-speaking markets. From the Ranking on Alexa, it’s evident that the illegal broker scheme has been quite active over the last couple of weeks.

Payment Services Providers And Boiler Rooms

From our research, we know that the VEmarkets is part of the network of companies and schemes of the now arrested German Uwe Lenhoff. People close the matter confirmed that VEmarkets was operated by Serbian boiler rooms. Moreover, we learned that VEmarkets was closely connected with the Montenegrin payment services provider (PSP) Global Payment Solution which was beneficially owned and controlled by Uwe Lenhoff and his Israeli partner Gal Barak.

For credit card payments, VEmarkets works with Praxis Pay.

Report Illegal Broker And People

Illegally operating broker schemes and their boiler rooms are part of fast-growing global cybercrime activities. Millions of investors are defrauded by those broker sites losing billions of euros every year. Hence, it is important to warn investors of such illicit sites. If you are a victim of an illegally operating broker site such as Tradeinvest90, Option888, XMarkets, XTraderFX, GToptions, StoxMarket, Bluetrading, FXTrade777, or KayaFX please file your claim and report activities via our whistleblower system: