In the first, introductory part of our Payvision Story, we set out some basic facts. We showed that Payvision, a licensed Amsterdam-based financial services provider under the leadership of CEO Rudolf Booker, was massively involved in binary options and broker scams of German Uwe Lenhoff and his Israeli partner Gal Barak and other scammers. In this second part, we show the schematic flow of money from the scam victims to the perpetrators through Gal Barak‘s GPay Ltd or Rockarage Ltd, companies used to process payments for vast scams such as XTraderFX, SafeMarkets, Golden Markets, or CryptoPoint.
Arrests, Arrest Warrants and the search for the stolen money
At the very beginning, it should be noted that the Payvision Story is not an invention of FinTelegram. On the contrary, the facts presented by FinTelegram within the framework of the Payvision Story are a significant part of the comprehensive investigations by investigating authorities of various countries. With the goal to find the perpetrators and the victims’ funds.
German online gaming veteran Uwe Lenhoff, 55, was arrested in Austria at the beginning of 2019 as a result of comprehensive investigations by various authorities in several countries. In the meantime, Lenhoff has been extradited to Germany and is awaiting prosecution. The suspicion is of financial crime, money laundering, and investment fraud. The evidence is overwhelming, the authorities say. But the retail investors’ stolen money has not yet been found.
An EU arrest warrant was also issued against his partner, the Israeli Gal Barak, at the beginning of 2019. After short-term detention in Sofia, Barak was released into house arrest, allegedly for health reasons. For months the Austrian authorities have been trying to extradite Barak from Bulgaria to Austria.
The Austrian authorities have so far coordinated these international investigations. They urgently need Gal Barak to answer questions to clear up the gigantic broker scam around Barak, Lenhoff and their network. The whereabouts of a large part of the money have not yet been clarified. Therefore, the payment service providers involved will become important in the course of the investigations.
Payvision, Lenhoff, Barak and commissions
Part of this network was also the Amsterdam-based Payvision of Rudolf Booker. As a licensed payment service provider, Payvision helped to launder the money stolen by small investors via the various broker scams from Lenhoff and Barak – Option888, Xmarkets, TradoVest, XTraderFX, SafeMarkets, Golden Markets,
FinTelegram has relevant payment documents and bank account statements to support this report. Lenhoff claims that he was a reseller of Payvision and apparently referred many of the broker scams to the payment services provider. According to Lenhoff, Payvision CEO Rudolf Booker is said to have urged Lenhoff to win and retain Gal Barak as a customer because his transaction volume was impressively high. In other words, Barak apparently stole enormous sums from retail investors and funneled them through Payvision. In return, the payment services provider received high commission payments. Former business partners of Barak put the damage for the investors at more than €200 million.
Money flow from Payvision to Bulgaria
On the basis of the available documents, we can prove without any reasonable doubt that credit card deposits of client-victims of the platforms of Gal Barak via Payvision have landed on his accounts with the Bulgarian Investbank. Not only GPay Ltd received money on its bank account with Bulgarian Investbank via Payvision but also Barak’s Marshall Islands-registered Rockarage Ltd. The companies have been registered with different Merchant IDs (MID) with Payvision.
Gal Barak and his partner Marina Andreeva had access to these bank accounts from where the funds were transferred to their co-conspirators and contributors of the scams, such as boiler room operators, client data vendors, affiliates or marketing companies.
A considerable part of the money went into the private sphere of the ultimate beneficial owners Gal Barak and Marina Andreeva. We were able to track the flow of funds through the documents to Israel, to the lawyers of Gal Barak and his partners, and to Hong Kong shell companies.
The chart above shows the flow of money through Payvision for the Barak company GPay Ltd. Gal Barak, GPay and his other companies and schemes were just some of the many of Payvision‘s fraudulent (scam) merchants. In this respect, the extent of the flow of money from victims of various broker scams via Payvision cannot yet really be determined. In any case, there are probably hundreds of millions.
In the next few reports, we will look at the flow of money around Gal Barak and Payvision in more detail.
Extradition of Gal Barak required
It is easy to understand why Gal Barak should be questioned about these accusations. Therefore, his extradition to Austria is in the
