Limassol is firmly in the hands of Israeli FinTech entrepreneurs. Without them, CySEC would probably be bankrupt tomorrow, and Cyprus would lose its main source of revenue. This includes the official fees that CIFs have to pay and the penalties that these CIFs have to pay frequently. They flow into the state budget. However, there is fierce competition within the Israeli FinTech community, such as between Ran Cohen and his BridgerPay. We discovered both along with PayWize as payment facilitators in the Cryptrader scam (www.cryptrader.io).
The Cryptrader scam is promoted today via the CryptoEngine scam campaign, among others. The scam itself is a not particularly well-made white-label scam from one of the many scam factories. Cryptrader is allegedly operated by Modular One LLC, registered in St. Vincent and the Grenadines. We do not know if this is also the offshore entity registered as a merchant with BridgerPay, PayWize, and/or Payneteasy.
In the source code of the Cryptrader payment page, we found links to the cashier APIs of PayWize. However, in the comment tags, we found code segments indicating that the scam has deployed BridgerPay in the past.
PayWize (www.paywize.com) is not part of the Israeli scene in Cyprus but is operated by CENTIMENT LIMITED, registered in the UK. The beneficial owner is Three Reels Marketing Limited, registered in Gibraltar. The current active director is South African Gary Helman. The company is also active in Malta as CENTIMENT PAYMENTS LIMITED (formerly Three Reels Marketing Limited) (see OpenCorpores).
From our point of view, it’s a tie for today, as we discovered BridgerPay at TraderFEX scam. But the day is still long, and the week is not over yet. It’s an open match between the two Israeli scam facilitators in Limassol. But any new day, a new competitor like PayWize enters the scene. The demand for dark payment services is huge.
If you have any information about Cryptrader or its operators and facilitators, please share it with us through our whistleblower system.
