Mar 2018 - Denaro Fraudulent Initial Coin Offering - $7m (Global)
"Denaro seamless payment ecosystem bridges the divide between cryptocurrencies and the mainstream market. The platform enables companies and individuals to send, spend, store, and exchange cryptos and fiat through secure web wallets, physical debit cards, merchant payment terminals, and IBAN."
"Denaro is a versatile payment solution that enable users to store, spend, and transfer their cryptocurrencies on an intuitive interface and debit card that addresses crypto’s number one problem – physically spending it."
"Denaro has developed secure and customizable SCI/APIs for merchant services that will facilitate the payments of goods and services online or offline using a web wallet or a physical debit card respectively."
"Tired of juggling all those ETH and BTC wallets? Utilising Denaro’s multi-cryptocurrency wallet, you no longer need multiple addresses. Not only does it allow you to receive and store multiple cryptocurrencies under one address, it also allows you to spend them at any ATM or store."
"Denaro will be rewarding early contributors/investors and community participation with a generous bonus-and-referral commission system. The bonus system rewards early contributions based on tokens sold in our pre-sale and main-sale events, while the referral side of the commission system issues community members with 3% of every purchase made by their referral(s). The pre-sale bonus system consists of a 25% bonus for investors contributing. It lasts the entire duration of the pre-sale - 7 days.
The public/main-sale bonus system consists of a 25% bonus for the first 15 million tokens sold, 15% for the following 20 million tokens sold, 5% for the next 25 million tokens sold and then no bonus for the final 5 million tokens sold. There are 65 million tokens in total to be sold during the public sale."
"As ICO is coming to an end make sure to get your Denaro tokens. We are still having bonuses active - so now is the time. Visit Denaro.io"
"The Denaro Whitepaper contained a detailed roadmap stating the company had engaged in various activities relating to the business such as attracting private investors and developing a beta wallet."
"More strong evidence is that their employees are fake too.
Jeremy Boker's pic is from pexels
Amy Archer's pic is also copied from another site
Everyone please be careful of ICOs. There are plenty good ones but DYOR. I avoided this ICO straightaway when I saw the frontpage literred with discounts and their whitepaper was horribly written."
"Auzins took numerous steps to conceal his true identity in connection with the Denaro ICO. He signed up for accounts associated with Denaro—including website registration, website security, email, and credit cards used to purchase these services—using the name of a Turkish national. Auzins obtained a copy of this individual’s Turkish passport, which he then used to satisfy any “know your customer” requirements for each website. For entities that had a more stringent verification process and required additional customer information such as a utility bill, Auzins provided a fraudulent document purportedly showing the Turkish national’s gas bill for a fictitious London address."
"Auzins registered a legal entity—Cryptoshine LTD—with the U.K. Companies House to lend legitimacy to the Denaro offering, when in fact this legal entity did not represent an actual business. Moreover, the address Auzins provided for Cryptoshine belonged to an individual who had never heard of the company prior to receiving correspondence from aggrieved investors."
"Although the Denaro Whitepaper detailed certain future uses for the DNO Token, at the time of the offering the DNO token had no consumptive use."
"As alleged, Auzins and co-conspirators induced investors to invest in the Auzins Entities through a series of material misrepresentations and omissions about the products and services that the Auzins Entities claimed to provide, the profits that investors would earn by investing in the Auzins Entities and the individuals who operated the Auzins Entities. For example, in its marketing materials, Denaro stated that its Chief Executive Officer, “Ron Ramsey,” previously was an executive at a technology company based in Ohio, its Chief Financial Officer, “Jeremy Boker,” obtained a degree from a university in Kentucky, and that it issued debit cards associated with a credit card company based in New York. These representations were false. After soliciting investors in its ICO, Denaro stopped its public advertising campaign, its website became publicly inaccessible, and its investors lost their investments."
"The Securities and Exchange Commission today charged a Latvian citizen with defrauding hundreds of retail investors out of at least $7 million through two separate fraudulent digital asset securities offerings."
"According to its website, Denaro raised more than $11 million in Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, and U.S. dollars from thousands of investors."
"According to the civil complaint, filed in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York, Ivars Auzins defrauded U.S. and foreign investors through the unregistered offer and sale of digital asset securities in an initial coin offering and a purported digital asset cloud mining program. Auzins allegedly used fake names, fictitious entities, and fraudulent profiles to perpetrate his schemes, and misappropriated nearly all of the investor funds that were raised."
"the complaint alleges that, from January 2018 through March 2018, Auzins fraudulently offered and sold unregistered digital tokens as part of an ICO of Denaro, a purported "multi-currency debit card platform." Specifically, the complaint alleges that Auzins falsely claimed Denaro enabled users to store their digital assets in a secure digital wallet and then spend them "like any other debit card" which could be provided by a credit card issuer. In fact, the complaint alleges, all of the claimed products or services being offered were fictitious, including the relationship with the credit card issuer. Finally, the complaint alleges that Auzins misappropriated all of the ICO’s proceeds."
"As we allege, Auzins was engaged in a brazen scheme to defraud retail investors under the guise of profitable digital asset opportunities," said Kristina Littman, Chief of the SEC Enforcement Division’s Cyber Unit. "We will continue to detect and pursue those that seek to victimize investors in the digital asset space."
Further Analysis
Denaro was marketed as a seamless payment ecosystem bridging cryptocurrencies and the mainstream market, offering web wallets, physical debit cards, merchant payment terminals, and IBAN services. Denaro's versatile payment solution aimed to solve the problem of spending cryptocurrencies in the physical world. Reports surfaced of fraudulent activities by Ivars Auzins, the alleged mastermind behind Denaro, including using fake identities, fictitious entities, and misappropriating investor funds. The SEC filed a complaint against Auzins, accusing him of defrauding retail investors out of at least $7 million through fraudulent digital asset securities offerings. The complaint alleges that Auzins falsely claimed Denaro offered a multi-currency debit card platform but did not deliver any of the promised products or services.
How Could This Have Been Prevented?
More Cryptocurrency Exchange Hacks/Scams/Frauds
Lightning Channel Penalty Enforced > > < < Irving Bitcoin ATM Theft
Sources/Further Reading
Latvian Individual Extradited for Securities Fraud and Wire Fraud in Cryptocurrency Scheme | USAO-EDNY | Department of Justice (Dec 31)
SEC.gov | SEC Charges Latvian Citizen With Digital Asset Fraud (Dec 31)
Denaro | Address 0x10b35b348fd49966f2baf81df35a511c18bd1f80 | Etherscan
(Dec 31)
Denaro ICO - Overview of Denaro Crowdsale, Information About Denaro Token Sale Details (Dec 31)
DENARO ICO information (Dec 31)
DenaroIO - Facebook (Dec 31)
Denaro ICO have just scammed investors and ran away with $8.7 million : CryptoCurrency (Dec 31)
https://www.pexels.com/photo/cv-elegant-male-portrait-267359/ (Dec 31)
Fotografo de RETRATO CORPORATIVO - MSTUDIO FOTOGRAFIA (Dec 31)
https://financefeeds.com/sec-charges-ivars-auzins-7-million-ico-scams/ (Dec 31)
DENARO - ICO (Dec 31)
https://www.sec.gov/files/litigation/complaints/2021/comp-pr2021-248.pdf (Dec 31)
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