Illegally or fraudulently acting payment processors are the singularly most important element of scams and fraudulent investment schemes to defraud investors online. We have known this not only since the Wirecard scandal. Unfortunately, there are too many payment processors, especially among the FinTechs, that ignore KYC/AML/CTF regulations or perform negligent checks. Regulators and law enforcement must act much more consistently in this regard and block these companies.
In the last few weeks, we have noticed, based on reports of scam victims and whistleblowers, that more and more payments of scams and investment schemes are processed via Mister Tango. The “Mister Tango” platform (www.mistertango.com) is operated by Secure Nordic Payments UAB, regulated by the Bank of Lithuania. The company was fined by the Lithuanian regulator in October 2019 for non-compliance with money-laundering (AML) regulations and the license was temporarily restricted.
The Bank of Lithuania had previously determined that MisterTango, UAB failed to comply with the requirements of the Republic of Lithuania Law on the Prevention of Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing, yet the company did not take appropriate measures to remove the detected shortcomings.
Bank of Lithuania Press Release Oct 25 2019
Evidently, as a result of this regulatory punishment, the company changed its name from Mister Tango UAB to Secure Nordic Payments UAB.
Most recently, Mister Tango appeared as a payment processor in the extensive PumaTS scam broker network and with some other scams such as CCXcrpypto or ProCapitalMarkets.
We warn investors not to make payments via dubious providers or scams using this payment processor. The sheer number of reports we have received strongly indicates that Mister Tango is currently increasing its efforts to facilitate scams and investment schemes.
Report incidents
In the event that you have information about Mister Tango and scams involving this payment processor, we request that you share this information with our FinTelegram Research team. Please use our Whistleblower System.
