#432983 by undeadburger
Sun May 15, 2022 12:55 pm
Hi, first time posting here, but I wanted to share a story that has been going on for 2 months now
I own a company in Russia (yes, I know) and about two months ago we started looking for additional funding. I posted a call on a local investors forum - investbaza - and a couple of days later Beata Toth contacted me via Telegram.
She claimed to be a representative of a Swiss company called Frando Investment Group, which has been reformed into Atlas Portfolio Management. We even had a phone call.
I checked that info and it seemed legit. Frando is an existing company that was terminated and Atlas Portfolio is an existing active company. Beata even gave me a phone number for the founder, Leo Frank Dozsa (but I never spoke to him and I don't know if it's his phone number).
I initially agreed and then the 419 part came in - they needed a security fee in advance. The initial demand was for 7500 EUR but then we "negotiated" it down to 3580 EUR. At first she proposed we use their "Russian trustee" to transfer the funds. Someone named Pavel Zaycev. She provided the IDs and the phone number. Both checked out, phone number even had multiple bank accounts attached to it. But then it became impossible for us to transfer funds to Russia so we instead proposed to pay from our Irish entity to an account in EU. So Beata provided several bank details. One for Frank Dozsa and one for someone called Istvan Lajos Szemenyei.
For some reason our bank couldn't process the payment to Frank, so the payment was made to Istvan instead. That should've been the last red flag, but I went through with it.
And then the ongoing part of the scam comes through. From researching the forum and personal experience I understand that scammers usually break contact as soon as the funds hit their account, but that's not what happened here. Beata kept promising payments that never came. Then she claimed her husband died so she was busy, after that she claimed to be in the hospital.
And when the supposed payments were coming, they were coming in very weird ways. For some reason she didn't want to make payments to our Irish entity - even though it would be easier with sanctions and all. She insisted on making payments to our Russian account. At first she didn't mention any specific banks, but at some point she promised a wire from a "Skylight Monument bank". It's a bank that doesn't exist and I found several more websites just like it. Some are even hosted with the same registrar.
She is still in contact. I have contacted the police and gave them everything I knew. I'm posting here as a warning.
Contact details:
Beata Toth
Phone Number: +36303798180
Email: [email protected], [email protected]
IP address: 217.65.56.66
Leo Frank Dozsa
Phone Number: +41798178009
Email: [email protected]
Pavel Zaycev
Phone Number: +79174598869
Istvan Lajos
Phone Number: +36202834158
Seems to own the website Szemenyei.eu
I own a company in Russia (yes, I know) and about two months ago we started looking for additional funding. I posted a call on a local investors forum - investbaza - and a couple of days later Beata Toth contacted me via Telegram.
She claimed to be a representative of a Swiss company called Frando Investment Group, which has been reformed into Atlas Portfolio Management. We even had a phone call.
I checked that info and it seemed legit. Frando is an existing company that was terminated and Atlas Portfolio is an existing active company. Beata even gave me a phone number for the founder, Leo Frank Dozsa (but I never spoke to him and I don't know if it's his phone number).
I initially agreed and then the 419 part came in - they needed a security fee in advance. The initial demand was for 7500 EUR but then we "negotiated" it down to 3580 EUR. At first she proposed we use their "Russian trustee" to transfer the funds. Someone named Pavel Zaycev. She provided the IDs and the phone number. Both checked out, phone number even had multiple bank accounts attached to it. But then it became impossible for us to transfer funds to Russia so we instead proposed to pay from our Irish entity to an account in EU. So Beata provided several bank details. One for Frank Dozsa and one for someone called Istvan Lajos Szemenyei.
For some reason our bank couldn't process the payment to Frank, so the payment was made to Istvan instead. That should've been the last red flag, but I went through with it.
And then the ongoing part of the scam comes through. From researching the forum and personal experience I understand that scammers usually break contact as soon as the funds hit their account, but that's not what happened here. Beata kept promising payments that never came. Then she claimed her husband died so she was busy, after that she claimed to be in the hospital.
And when the supposed payments were coming, they were coming in very weird ways. For some reason she didn't want to make payments to our Irish entity - even though it would be easier with sanctions and all. She insisted on making payments to our Russian account. At first she didn't mention any specific banks, but at some point she promised a wire from a "Skylight Monument bank". It's a bank that doesn't exist and I found several more websites just like it. Some are even hosted with the same registrar.
She is still in contact. I have contacted the police and gave them everything I knew. I'm posting here as a warning.
Contact details:
Beata Toth
Phone Number: +36303798180
Email: [email protected], [email protected]
IP address: 217.65.56.66
Leo Frank Dozsa
Phone Number: +41798178009
Email: [email protected]
Pavel Zaycev
Phone Number: +79174598869
Istvan Lajos
Phone Number: +36202834158
Seems to own the website Szemenyei.eu