On December 9, 2020, the Austrian Financial Market Authority (FMA) issued an investor warning against the broker scam SolidCapital (www.solidcapital.io), allegedly operated by Royal Gates Ltd, St. Vincent and the Grenadines. The scam works with Anydesk and Boiler Rooms with the phone number +442037692938 (one of many). This phone number is connected to other scams like MegaTradeFX or MarketCapital. As a payment processor at SolidCapital, we noticed BridgerPay again. These scams are offline or defunct, and just a few of many are operated by these boiler rooms.
The Boiler Room Villains and Lex Barak
The real perpetrators and villains behind the scams are the Boiler Rooms and their agents, who appear with fake IDs and lie and deceive potential victims. Therefore, the Boiler Rooms are currently being massively prosecuted by the authorities. In the Vienna Cybercrime Trials (#VCT), for example, Israeli Gal Barak was proven to be running various Boiler Rooms for his scam broker brands such as XtraderFX, SafeMarkets, or OptionStars. Therefore, he was sentenced to four years imprisonment and millions in restitution payments in early September 2020. It was a milestone in the fight against cybercrime and scams. It is expected that the managers of Gal Barak’s Boiler Rooms will also be charged. The names can already be found in the criminal files of the Lex Barak.
The AnyDesk Issue
The boiler rooms behind SolidCapital, MegaTradeFX, or MarketCapital (and many more) are located in Ukraine, Bulgarian, Albania, or Macedonia. They work with Voice over IP (VOIP) and reach their potential victims in the various jurisdictions using the respective country code, such as +442037692938 (Google Search). Besides, these Boiler Rooms work with AnyDesk and can directly access their victims’ computers to execute transactions and/or transfer funds. So, never ever use AnyDesk down when working with online brokers.
AnyDesk is a perfect tool for scammers and cybercriminals to commit the perfect online crimes without traceable traces like IP addresses.
BridgerPay again
Finally, as a payment processor, we at SolidCapital have discovered Cyprus-based BridgerPay of Israeli Forex veteran Ran Cohen facilitates the scam via its payment processing services. Even though the latter purported that he is not accepting scam operating entities and/or is fighting scams, we constantly uncover BridgerPay in those very scams.
