Co-Founders of a Lithuanian Crypto Coin Scooped up Luxury Property While Investors Were Left in the Lurch

[1van]

Interesting read:

https://www.occrp.org/en/investigat...operty-while-investors-were-left-in-the-lurch

 

[JohnnyDoe]

Old story. We all know what Bankera is.

 

[Ilias]

Bankera — the same outfit that parades around as a holier-than-thou “compliant” crypto operation — has been caught red-handed running what amounts to a cross-border financial strip-mining operation. Well, I would not say caught now, but publicised. Pretty good explanation of this topic already published here on this forum.

While they’re busy shaking down retail users for €450-900 “compliance reviews” (which they then use to summarily reject your account after weeks of stalling and “pre-approvals”), they were wiring €45 million out of Lithuania into their personally owned Vanuatu bank. From there, it’s a well-rehearsed play: issue loans to themselves, funnel the cash into a personal real estate spree, then wrap it all in layers of shells.

Retail investors were left bag-holding worthless BANK tokens and gasping at the 98% drawdown.

It is really funny these jokers actually had the gall to market themselves as “Europe’s compliant crypto bank.” Meanwhile they ran their very own Banana Republic capital flight operation — a slush fund in drag as a bank, dispersing 7- and 8-figure loans to its own owners, collateralized by the same ICO companies they pitched to the public.

And what did the average Bankera user get? A Kafkaesque compliance dungeon. Where KYC documents disappear, approvals mean nothing, and the only guarantee is you’ll be charged hundreds of euros for the privilege of being rejected. The irony is rich. They built a reputation on “regulatory excellence” and “risk management,” then used that reputation as camouflage while stripping out investor funds through shell companies and circular loans.

I think one can learn several lessons from this:

1. "Compliance" is often a mask — the most authoritarian fintechs are frequently the most corrupt.
2. If the team owns the bank, the coins, and the borrower — you're not an investor, you're a liquidity cow.
3. Any project charging high compliance fees (paying more than €500 to be checked; note I do not speak about opening fees — these can easily be €5-10K, but charged when you are already going live)should be under extra scrutiny — that’s usually not cost recovery, it's simple cash extraction.

Bankera is a case in regulatory theater used to launder money from suckers to insiders. And if you're still falling for similar clowns (which many are, and the projects have not really changed), the real scam is that you haven’t done your homework. @Semper this is also the answer to your questions about why normal people can't run and succeed with ICOs.

 

[Martin Everson]

Cough cough at my old post.

Post in thread 'Is Bankera safe alternative to WISE'

Sep 21, 2022

I think we have a Bankera shareholder in the forum...

lol...you think he participated in the Bankera ICO back in 2017?.

I wonder where the $100m they raised via that ICO has gone. Surely they didn't use it all to buy that Vanuatu bank .

I mean does Bankera still own Spectrocoin? With crypto lending platforms blowing up how is that crypto lending business doing these days?

I think Bankera financials are needed before comparing them to a UK exchange listed transparent company like Wise. They could be close to going out of business or even the next EPB or...

• Martin Everson

• 

Well we know now where the money went