Whistleblower Request – MontizeAd Group, Fraud Ads, And The Adria Media Group!

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We recently brought a report that revealed that Sarajevo and Belgrade-based MonetizeAd and its subsidiary MonadLead are part of a global scheme hunting victims for broker scams with fraudulent crypto campaigns. As very often, other whistleblowers continued the story and other investigative media such as Serbian BIRN exposed additional connections. Allegedly, indicating that Serbian Adria Media Group, a Serbian media empire, and its beneficial owner Igor Zezelj have interesting connections to MonetizeAds. It gets more interesting. Let’s continue this fraud exposing journey!

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Update on MonetizeAd Narrative

Founder and CEO of Monetize Ad d.o.o. Sarajevo is Ajdin Brkovic who runs Monetize Ad and its project MonadPlug with Alma Brkovic and Mersad Vejzovic. Ajdin Brkovic is also the director of Monad Lead d.o.o. in Belgrade, Serbia, a subsidiary of Monetizes Ad.

Those guys run vast affiliate schemes with fraud marketing campaigns such as Bitcoin Up or Bitcoin System to acquire data of potential victims, which they sell to boiler room operators across Europe. In an interview, the company reported skyrocketing revenues and profits. This doesn’t surprise us, as we notice every day how aggressively these scam campaigns are run.

MonetizeAd also operates LimitedCharm, which is a slightly different animal. It sells allegedly high-quality health and beauty products through its own website as well as through an affiliate network in the Balkans as well as in other countries such as Bulgaria, Hungary, Italy, and Spain which, according to an investigation by Fake News Tragac, are either not delivered or if, the delivered items have not been what they were described to be. They call it scam products.

The Balkan Connections

The Bitcoin Up, Bitcoin System, et al fraud campaigns are well-known in the Serbian scene. Serbian online investigative magazine BIRN recently published a detailed report about the fraud activities surrounding Bitcoin Up. BIRN’s analysis exposes additional companies on the Balkans involved in the operation of fraud ads. The report exposes that some of these fraud ads have been placed by the Ukraine marketing agency MGID (www.mgid.com) and the Zagreb-based Midas Network (www.midas-network.com), operated by Midas Network d.o.o. MGID is huge; it claims to reach 900 million unique readers, with 200 billion ad impressions with 25,000 publishers. According to BIRN and Fake News Tragac, MGID agency placed fraud ads on Serbian portals.

Belgrade has an impressive track record in the international scam ecosphere. It used to be one of the global centers of the fraudulent binary options industry invested by Israeli “FinTech” entrepreneurs around 2010. Between 2014 and 2018, dozens of Israeli boiler rooms in Belgrade turned the city into the “Manhattan in the Balkans” in this binary options era. In 2017, more than 6,000 Israeli citizens worked in Belgrade’s boiler rooms. However, starting with 2018, many boiler room operators moved on to Ukraine because of the even cheaper environment.

Adria Media Group

BIRN points out, that on the Midas Network website, Mondo, Kurir, Alo, B92, Mondo, Espresso, Cosmopolitan, Pink and others are listed as clients. They are part of the Adria Media Group owned by Igor Zezelj, who is also one of the beneficial owners of Midas Network d.o.o. via his Mondo d.o.o. in Croatia. Adria Media Group, one of the largest media ventures on the Balkans, evidently has connections to the fraud operators.

Due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, many boiler room operators have gone back to Serbia. According to the insiders, since February 2022, more than 300 new companies of Russians and Ukrainians have been opened in Belgrade and more than 6,000 applications for work permits have been filed. However, we also heard that Serbian politicians and entrepreneurs want to participate in these companies and do not want to leave the “scam pie” to foreigners alone.

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We would like to know more about Monetize Ad and the fraud and scam scene in Belgrade, Sarajevo, and the Balkans. If you have any information, please let us know via our whistleblower system, Whistle42.