The Trade Com Racket is believed to have a headquarters in Albania. This racket includes several scams and payment processors identified so far, and we have for sure only seen the tip of the iceberg yet. JPM Capitals, ProfxCredit, FMA Crypto, Coinmond, GlobalSpotFX, Spotfinex, FXonspot, and TopEuroFX are part of the racket. In January and August 2020, the UK FCA issued investor warnings against the FXonspot scam; in September 2020, the Spanish CNMV followed. The racket offers the trading app TopEuroFX for free download in the Google store. As facilitating payment processors, we have recently discovered Payecards, the Estonian Woodstocks OÜ, the UK Cashaa Technologies Ltd, and Net Kantor.
White-label scams
On some of the racket’s websites, such as SpotFinex or TopEuroFX, the company Trade Com Limited with address in London, UK, is listed as the operator. That’s a fake. This company does not exist but is suitable as a name giver for the racket. The specific scams of the Trade Com racket do not change their appearance. They are white-label mutations. Neither the design nor the colors are changed. The processes across all scams are identical anyway. Only the domain, the logo, and the texts are adapted to the current brand. Currently, this is TopEuroFX. Do not fall for the scams of the Trade Com Racket.
In the KYC records of the Lithuanian EMI GlobalNetInt, the licensed Estonian crypto company Woodstocks OÜ is listed as the operator of FMA Crypto (www.fmacrypto.com). Woodstocks also has a bank account with Finolito Unio through which deposits of Racket’s scams were processed. Today Woodstocks still operates the crypto exchange Coinmond (see below).
Payment Processors
We have discovered the following payment facilitators in Trade Com Racket:
- Payecards (www.payecards.com) is a trademark of The Payecards Group AG, registered in Switzerland. The Payecards website is operated by Payecards Global Ltd, a UK-registered subsidiary. The Paycards Group cooperates with Verified Payments UAB, an EMI regulated by the Bank of Lithuania with the Authorization Code LB000446. The crypto payments of the group are processed by Next Generation Exchange Ltd, the FinanceX (www.financex.io) crypto exchange operator. Fiat operations are processed by CAURI Ltd and Aeloria Ltd, both of which are FCA-regulated entities.
- The Estonian Woodstocks OÜ ist the operator of the crypto exchange Coinmond (www.coinmond.com) used by the Trade Com Racket. Furthermore, Woodstock’s bank account with Finolito Unio UAB has been used to process bank deposits of victims. Finolito Unio is an e-money institution licensed by the Bank of Lithuania under Authorization Code LB000490, specializing in Forex. Woodstock OÜ is a crypto payment processor licensed by the Estonian FIU. Marianna Charalampous is registered as a director who is also a director at Silver Bit OÜ, also licensed by the FIU, and Prospect Finance OÜ.
- Deposits to GlobalSpotFX were also made through Cashaa Technologies Ltd in the UK via their bank account with Phoenix Payments UAB in Lithuania. The company is controlled by Kumar Ventures Ltd, with the Indian citizen Kumar Gaurav as its beneficial owner (Companies House).
- Victims deposited funds to Trade Com Racket scams also through Polish Net Kantor sp. z.o.z. via its account at BNP PARIBAS BANK POLSKA S.A.
- At JPM Capitals, deposits can be made via cryptocurrencies using CardPayz (www.cardpayz.com) or the Estonian Venus Exchange (www.venus.exchange).
- Victims were also instructed to transfer cryptocurrencies to the scam via Kraken. For this purpose, victims made bank transfers to Kraken (Payward Ltd) to purchase Bitcoins (BTC), which were then transferred by the scammers via Anydesk from the victims’ Kraken wallets to their own.
We want to know more about the Trade Com scammers and their scams. If they have any information, we would be grateful if you share it with us.
