Ukraine authorities have taken action against Forex Trend Limited, which they accuse of running an international forex pyramid scheme, that has robed several thousand Ukraine and European Union citizens of 12,5 million USD.
The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), the main security agency in the country, announced on Tuesday that it has blocked all known assets of Forex Trend Limited, after conducting a series of raids against offices of the scammers and their associates in Kyiv, Zaporizhia, Dnipro and Kharkiv region. SBU managed seize evidence in the form of documents, fake seals and digital storage media, as well as cash received from a transaction, gold bars, gilded watches and guns.
“The task force discovered that the offenders under guise of an international investment company Forex Trend Limited, using websites and fake trading platforms, attracted funds of citizens in very large amounts, guaranteeing high short term revenues”, SBU said in a statement.
The funds were laundered through a series of companies, registered in offshore jurisdictions, as well as individuals in Ukraine and the EU. Afterwards the stolen money were also laundered through the purchase of luxury goods, both in Ukraine and in EU.
In February after a successful investigation by the authorities in Austria, Germany, the Czech Republic and Bulgaria led to the arrest of several people for running an online trading scam ring that has robbed over 100 million Euro from retail investors across Europe in 2018 alone.