The BitRush Story – or how FinTelegram evolved!

FinTelegram and its editor Werner BOEHM are repeatedly attacked because of the Canadian BitRush Corp. The critics refer to a Canadian commercial court order and try to imply that Werner BOEHM did something wrong resp. “cheated” his fellow shareholders. That is simply nonsense! In December 2016, the BitRush co-founder Werner BOEHM was confronted with the most absurd accusations by the board of BitRush Corporation in Toronto and when he denied these accusations and did not voluntarily leave the company, he was sued.

This litigation was financed by the Slovakian millionaire Igor WOLLNER, who was a minority shareholder and saw an opportunity to increase his minority share from under 20% to over 50% (by squeezing the original founder BOEHM out). After personal discussions with LENHOFF, WOLLNER wanted to position BitRush Corp in the emerging crypto hype in a direction that the founder would not have agreed to. So far a common occurrence in the startup scene.

What neither the millionaire nor the supporting board of the BitRush Corp had expected was the resistance of Werner BOEHM and the preliminary interim result of this shareholder battle.

The intended business partners went missing: The German Uwe LENHOFF was arrested and has been held in custody since then and his Israeli partner Gal Barak is looked for with an EU arrest warrant. Moreover, Joachim KALCHER, the then CTO of BitRush – is also one of the suspected co-conspirators in this criminal case. BitRush Corp has been inactive since December 2016. Here is the story in a nutshell!

The public-listed BitRush

Boehm had launched a crypto startup with partners in 2013 which focused on blockchain-based crypto-payment services. In September 2015, the company became public-listed via a reverse takeover (RTO) in Toronto at the Canadian Securities Exchange (CSE) and was renamed into BitRush Corp. It was one of the first public-listed crypto companies worldwide. Boehm was appointed CEO but was not a board member and hence not in control of the company.

In spring 2016, talks took place in London and Amsterdam about a possible partnership with the then highly respected German online gaming veteran Uwe Lenhoff and his listed Veltyco Group PLC. With a view to a possible partnership, Boehm had the auditor Elfriede Sixt carry out a due diligence on Lenhoff and Veltyco.

Due diligence and billions in money laundering

The due diligence report found inconsistencies in virtually all areas of Veltyco business and in the accounting. Veltyco is and was a public-listed company on the London Stock Exchange. Neither the business model of the company was clear nor the ownership of the registered domains (e.g. Option888) was transparent, the cash flows could also not be traced. In the course of this due diligence, contact was also established with other business partners of Uwe Lenhoff. They spoke very openly of the absolute necessity of cryptographic solutions for the “distribution” of funds across Europe (i.e. money laundering). Lenhoff also explained that chargebacks could be prevented via cryptocurrencies. BitRush should do it all for him. In return, Uwe Lenhoff promised a payment transaction volume of several billion euros along with attractive commissions.

The reaction of the directors, co-shareholders and key employees of BitRush Corp to the result of the due diligence could not have been more different.

The Slovakian millionaire Igor WOLLNER represented in the BitRush board by his partner and long-time friend Hans-Joerg WAGNER and Karsten AREND as well as the software developer and acting CTO Joachim KALCHER definitely wanted to partner with Uwe Lenhoff. Igor WOLLNER spoke of a “missed opportunity” if BitRush would not take part, and he found the reference to money laundering laughable. With the help of this partnership the shares of BitRush would shoot up on the Canadian stock exchange and make everyone rich:

On the basis of this due diligence report, Werner Boehm as BitRush CEO rejected any form of partnership with Lenhoff and Veltyco. He was advised to do so by Elfriede Sixt and his lawyers.

Accordingly, on 26 November 2016, Werner Boehm filed the first money laundering complaint against Uwe LENHOFF and his business partners with the UK National Crime Agency in London.

Only a few weeks later – at the end of December 2016 – BitRush Corp filed a lawsuit against Werner Boehm in Toronto.

Criminal complaint and lawsuit

In the legal complaint Boehm was accused of improper and oppressive behavior. The lawsuit was based on false affidavits made by the directors Karsten AREND, Hans-Joerg WAGNER, CTO Joachim KALCHER and managers Sven WOLLNER and Chris WOLLNER. The two WOLLNERs and their father Igor WOLLNER also supported the lawsuit with false statements and a lot of money for expensive lawyers. They wanted Boehm out, control of BitRush and the partnership with Lenhoff.

On the advice of the Austrian attorneys, Boehm did not accept Toronto as forum conveniens and did not defend himself in the proceedings before the court. He focused on the criminal proceedings in Austria instead.

In this respect, it was no surprise that the lawsuit in Canada was ultimately complied with. Without defense, the judge had no choice but to order the plaintiffs requested remedies. Who reads the court order will find that Boehm did not defend himself.

But more money laundering complaints got filed in Austria (see below).

Criminal proceedings, arrests and the crackdown

Parallel to the civil suit in Toronto, investigations against Uwe Lenhoff and his partners like Gal Barak progressed in Europe as it turned out that the Austrian prosecutor believed in the money laundering complaint. It turned out that this cybercrime organization had already been investigated independently of Boehm’s charges. Many victims of their scams have filed criminal complaints in Germany and Austria.

In fact, Uwe Lenhoff and his partner, the Israeli Gal Barak, were arrested in early 2019 on suspicion of financial crime, money laundering, and investment fraud on the basis of EU arrest warrants. Lenhoff is currently in custody in Germany and is awaiting prosecution with at least four other lieutenants of his cyberscam organization.

Boehm founded FinTelegram at the beginning of 2018 on the basis of his own experience with scammers and online fraudsters such as Uwe Lenhoff and Gal Barak. Soon insiders from the Lenhoff organization came forward and provided further evidence of the criminal activities. Since the beginning of 2018, FinTelegram has handed over this evidence to the investigating authorities in various countries, thus making a significant contribution to the fact that the binary options fraudsters and scammers have now also been strictly prosecuted in Europe.

BitRush CTO Joachim KALCHER, who cooperates with Lenhoff, is also one of the main defendants in the criminal proceedings alongside Uwe Lenhoff. House searches and office raids were carried out on his premises. In the meantime, it has turned out that Lenhoff and Kalcher had founded a joint company – Varkasso EOOD – in Bulgaria already in 2017. Probably the legal claim in Toronto just took to long.

The IP rights stolen by BitRush Corp were illegally transferred to this Bulgarian company. In fact, with the information from Boehm and FinTelegram, the police authorities have been able to crack down a large European cyberscam organization. In the course of an internationally coordinated enforcement action in January and February 2019, a large volume of documents and bank data were seized. The assessments and investigations are still in full progress. Further arrests and indictments are likely to follow.

and it remains to be seen when the names of the other actors in the BitRush case will appear in the seized documents: Igor WOLLNER, SVEN and CHRIS WOLLNER, Hans-Jörg WAGNER and Karsten AREND. We will report about it.

DAMAGE

Through the cooperation of Uwe LENHOFF, Joachim KALCHER and Igor WOLLNER as well as Hans-Joerg WAGNER, Werner BOEHM has suffered massive damage, which means that he too can be seen as the injured party of Uwe LENHOFF and his accomplices, and like countless other injured parties he has already joined the ongoing criminal proceedings as a private party.

BitRush Corp. has been inactive since December 2016. And the reputation damage caused by the abusive dissemination of the “obtained” verdict in Canada is gigantic for Werner BOEHM and his partners. It is important for the scammers to destroy the credibility of Fintelegram and Werner BOEHM. But at the end of the day it could be the same for all of them like Uwe LENHOFF – they could go straight to the jail.

Case file numbers and complaints

• Criminal file No Vienna: 9ST 16/19p
• Criminal file No: 730 Js 1545/18
• Money laundering: criminal report filed by the auditor in German (download)
• Report of Elfriede SIXT in April 2017 to the BitRush Corp (download)
• Money laundering: complaint filed by Werner Boehm (Download)
• Declaration of facts BitRush and Wollner in German: (Download)

Bottom line

This is the case of the BitRush Corp which led to the establishment of FinTelegram. A story of decency, courage and the fight against cyberscammers. The decision made in 2016 by Werner Boehm not to get involved in the business around binary options in general and with Uwe Lenhoff in particular was retrospectively validated by time. Binary options were banned in USA, Canada, EU, Israel and many other jurisdictions. According to Simona WEINGLASS of The Times of Israel, almost all binary options brokers are gigantic fraud cases (their contributions here). The FBI and other investigative agencies around the world are currently working to capture these scammers and, as far as we can help uncover these scams, we will.