The audacious fraudster Nazar Babenko changes signs on financial pyramids

The audacious fraudster Nazar Babenko changes signs on financial pyramids

The unnoticed by justice gang of cybercriminals does not slow down.

Analysts are sounding the alarm: since the beginning of the full-scale invasion by the aggressor country, the level of fraud in Ukraine has been rising at an unprecedented rate. Last year was a record breaker – with as many as 82,609 cases opened under the "profile" article 190 of the Criminal Code. As Ivan Chip writes in a review for CRiME and [high-profile cases] projects, not all victims of swindlers file complaints with the police, so the real scale of fraud may be several times greater. At the same time, in 2022, the damages from internet fraud and the use of social engineering methods increased by 96% compared to the previous year, reaching 1 billion UAH. Last year, 2023, it could have reached 2-3 billion UAH.

Last summer, in the investigative article "Crypto Pyramids" in the Shadow of the "Presidential Office", we thoroughly analyzed the organization under the conditional name Danvel Group, consisting of two scam companies – Danvel Ltd and Eternity Business. To provide legality to the "projects", they were registered as limited liability companies in the British jurisdiction. The companies operated websites supposedly offering a "unique investment product" containing a "formula for financial success". However, in essence, these were financial "pyramids", where the profit rate depended on the size of the "investor’s" contribution and the number of newcomers he brought in.

Mykhailo Romanenko

Through a well-thought-out information campaign, the swindlers managed to convince even the author of these lines that the head of the fraudulent scheme was an inconspicuous entrepreneur from Chernivtsi Mykhailo Romanenko. However, newly emerged data suggests that Romanenko is a front man. The main beneficiary of the criminal "enterprise" is a young man from Dnipro named Nazar Babenko, along with his longtime friend Ihor Kotov.

Nazar Babenko and Ihor Kotov

In 2022 and 2023, Danvel Ltd and Eternity Business were actively promoted not only in the Ukrainian and Russian-speaking segments of the internet but also in the English-speaking segment. Their information campaign was based on flaunting the indecently luxurious lifestyle of the figures involved (Romanenko, Babenko, and Kotov) with a thick insinuation to the audience about the opportunity to make large sums of money with minimal effort. For instance, in image publications, it was claimed that Mykhailo Romanenko amassed a fortune from cryptocurrencies amounting to $1.5 billion (naturally, without any confirmation) and collected an impressive car collection worth $10 million (which is plainly absurd).

It appears that this information campaign was financed by Nazar Babenko. The image of the billionaire frontman Romanenko convinced potential victims that their "investments" were insured by the capital of the shell company’s nominal founder. In reality, their contributions were immediately converted into USDT and withdrawn to a cryptocurrency wallet controlled by Babenko.

By the time of our last year’s investigation, profile monitoring resources already considered the Danvel and Eternity Business projects "suspicious" and "potentially dangerous". After gaining publicity, the fraudsters began some sort of reformatting of their "business".

In September of last year, the domain name eternity.inc was registered, which now redirects from the eternity.business website, where the eponymous "pyramid" was initially constructed.

It also redirects from a dozen other websites devoted to easy online earnings.

On the main page of eternity.inc, it claims to be a certain community with free membership. "By becoming a member of our global community, you get access to real estate, financial solutions, financial instruments, a financial literacy academy - and much more," it states there.

The unfortunate visitor is promised golden mountains, but vaguely, without specifics. What exactly will their money be invested in? How? How does it work?

The only thing that somehow resembles specifics is "reliable investments in real estate."

More details the author found among the company’s news, where Mikhail Romanenko persuaded patients to invest in elite real estate in Dubai, claiming to be a partner of the second-largest developer in the UAE, Nakheel.

Hurry to invest $10,000 to become part of one of the most impressive projects – it sounds too much like a scam. In any case, neither the Ukrainian subject Mykhailo Romanenko nor any legal entity associated with him as investors in Nakheel PJSC, which is controlled by the UAE royal family, are mentioned in the public sphere.

From this, it can be concluded that the "investment in elite real estate" will end up in the pocket of Ukrainian citizen Nazar Babenko.

Moving on.

If a site visitor to eternity.inc succumbs to the scammer’s promises and registers, they will immediately land in a "personal account", where they will be persistently urged to top up the "deposit wallet". In other words, to separate from their money.

The author of these lines pretended to be a "sucker", registered, and pretended to intend to throw a hundred dollars into infinity (after all, this is the translated word from English "eternity") – to see where and how investors’ money goes.

By the way, the ability to start financial transactions without identity verification (it is available on eternity.inc, but the platform did not require it from me) is one of the sure signs that no one intends to return the invested funds to you.

When attempting to use "open banking", I encountered a server error (repeatedly). And concluded that it simply doesn’t work on this platform.

However, the SEPA bank transfer (fast euro transfers) proved to be fully functional – payment details were instantly generated.

As we can see, if an "investor" dares to part with their money in such a way, it will go to the account of the company Mandato Financial Services GmbH, opened in the Lithuanian bank Mano Bankas (which we calculated by the SWIFT code KUSRLT24). But this does not imply that you are paying Mandato itself.

Registered in Switzerland, Mandato Financial Services is a financial company specializing in providing financial gateway services, banking, e-wallets, etc. Thus, in the case of eternity.inc, Mandato opened a bank account in Lithuania in favor of the beneficiaries of the platform and conducts transactions for them. Compelling Swiss financiers, who are perpetually surrounded by lawyers, to disclose the ultimate recipient is a non-trivial task.

And in the case of a "cryptocurrency payment," the money will go to an anonymous wallet, whose owner will be extremely difficult to find unless you know that it’s owned by Nazar Babenko, who resides in the Turkish city of Antalya.

By the way, we checked the movement of funds on the BTC- and ETH wallets, which are used by eternity.inc at the time of publication. There is no activity, zero. This may mean one of two things. Either the "clientele" of Nazar Babenko is so ignorant that it doesn’t use cryptocurrencies, or eternity.inc changes wallets after every transfer from trusting investors so that the compromised address does not "flash" in association with the "office".

Moving on.

In the "legal notice" on the eternity.inc website, it’s stated that it belongs to the company Eternity Prime Limited; its CEO is an Austrian citizen Roman Leithäuser.

Roman Leithäuser

According to registration data, Eternity Prime Limited was founded in Hong Kong (China) as a limited liability company on October 26, 2023. The founder of the company, its CEO Roman Leithäuser calls "a Ukrainian billionaire and driving force" Mykhailo Romanenko.

Roman Leithäuser is a genius of network marketing, a desperate participant in financial pyramids, and incidentally one of the leaders of the German branch of the criminal organization of Nazar Babenko.

As far back as September last year, we noticed that Eternity began to focus on "luring" the German-speaking audience. Judging by the youtube channel of eternity.inc, Germans and Austrians are chosen as the main target of the swindlers.

As a result, on December 19, 2023, the Austrian financial regulator warned investors against transactions with Eternity Prime Limited. "This provider is not authorized to carry out banking operations in Austria that require a license," the regulator’s statement said.

A few weeks after the Austrians’ warning, on January 3 this year, Nazar Babenko and Co received a "red card" from the International Organization of Securities Commissions. It warns of possible fraudulent and manipulative actions by Eternity Prime Limited.

Soon, the "body movements" of Nazar Babenko were noted in the "homeland" of the company Eternity Prime Limited. On January 12, the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) warned the public about suspicious investment products called "Eternity.inc forex packages" offered by Eternity Prime Limited.

"These products have not been authorized by the SFC for offering to the Hong Kong public and are suspected of violating the Securities and Futures Ordinance (SFO)," the regulator’s statement said.

The SFC also mentioned that the products promise an abnormally high annual return of 36–84%. There, it was transparently hinted that "SFC will take all necessary actions in the event of a law violation".

Soon Nazar Babenko influenced the nominal head Romanenko to make a video appeal to pyramid participants "community members" (now deleted, as Romanenko has left the game), attempting to rebut the regulators’ claims. Allegedly, no financial products are being "offloaded" to anyone, only providing free opportunities for members to invest in "our partners’ products" (saying this, he surely assured that neither paper nor digital payment trails would lead to their gang). Angrily he claimed, we here at Eternity are all "d’Artagnans", surrounded by enemies, blackmailers, and fraudsters. In particular, Mykhailo Romanenko shamed lawyers who are ready to help "investors" get their money back from the fraudsters.

It didn’t turn out very convincingly, but it was funny.

Speaking of funny. In section 6 paragraph 1 of the "user agreement" with Eternity Prime Limited, it is clearly stated that minors, insane persons, and citizens of Ukraine and the USA cannot enter into an agreement with the "platform."

With children and mentally incompetent citizens, everything is clear. But why such discrimination against Ukrainians and Americans? Let me report. If citizens of the USA suffer from the Eternity scheme, it will be considered a crime committed in the US territory. Several federal services will simultaneously hunt down the schemers, and bank accounts will be locked tightly.

As for Ukraine, most likely, the rule of "don’t mess where you live" applies here. Mikhail Romanenko and part of his accomplices reside in Ukraine. As far as one can judge, the main office of Eternity.inc is located here, although its target audience is EU citizens. Recently, a vacancy for a "customer support service manager" (read – call center manager) was posted on behalf of Eternity on the Robota.ua service. A mandatory requirement is knowledge of German and English languages.

So...
…to be continued....

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