OmegaPro Co-Founder Andreas Szakacs was arrested in Turkey for orchestrating a $4 billion crypto fraud scheme.
OmegaPro, a collapsed crypto, and forex trading platform‘s co-founder Andreas Szakacs got arrested in Turkey in July for running a Ponzi scheme and alligated for customers $ 4 billion crypto funds.
A local Turkish media reported on August 22 that the co-founder is accused of tricking exchange users by offering them massive returns on OmegaPro’s “automated trading” algorithm, and taking over their funds before freezing their accounts.
The co-founder of the platform changed his name to Emre Avci before changing his location, and upon arrest, he denied the allegations.
Szakacs was arrested on June 28 on the information by an anonymous tip-off and positively identified by Dutch national Dr. Abdul Mohaghegh. Dr. Mohaghegh currently says he is representing 3,000 investors who invested in OmegaPro and lost $103 million.
The OmegaPro was founded in 2019, with headquarters in Dubai. The company was based on crypto and Forex investment and was famous for its exclusive returns of up to 300% on its paid investment products.
The users of OmegaPro, talk about how they initially invested small capital that yielded high returns within a short time. But then, during the Great Recession, they were encouraged to invest more and their accounts were frozen.
The company started shutting down users’ accounts on November 7, 2022, and restricted users from withdrawing their amount from Nov. 22. The incident happened at the same time when a famous crypto exchange FTX collapsed.
OmegaPro linked to OneCoin scam: Global fraud warnings and $160M tracked
Going to the specifics, though, France, Belgium, Spain, and Peru had all raised regulatory fraud alerts on the firm before its shutdown. It mainly focused on international audiences, that is, users outside of the United States.
Turkish police confiscated computers, various electronic devices, and 32 crypto cold wallets. Despite this, Birgun reported that Turkish police could track almost 306 billion lira ($160 million) in transactions without any input from Szakacs.
According to the local investors, the OmegaPro scam is linked with the famous crypto exchange OneCoin, which is also accused of scamming almost $4 billion. The OneCoin was founded in 2014, and in 2015 it was exposed as a fraudulent crypto scheme that scammed billions of users’ crypto funds.
Many of the major characters of the scheme such as Ignatova’s boyfriend Gilbert Armenta, the lawyer Mark Scott, the former OPC and legal and compliance head Irina Dilkinska, the co-founder Karl Sebastian Greenwood, and William Morro have been charged with criminal offenses in the United States for their involvement in the scheme.
On June 26, the U. S. Department of State increased the amount of the reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of Ignatova to $ 5 million for the previous $ 250,000.
