Omega Pro Forex Scam Founder Arrested in Turkey
Andreas Szakacs has been on the run since November 2022
A several years long search for the founder of one of the world’s largest and most nefarious online, MLM (multi-level marketing) schemes, is now over. Andreas Szakacs, one of the co-founders of OmegaPro has just been arrested in Turkey.
What Was OmegaPro?
The company claimed to be a “forex” investing enterprise, promoted by retired football stars and self-proclaimed business gurus. They promised unsuspecting, poorly educated, retail investors, globally, that they would see returns of 300% over a period of 16 months by utilizing the company’s “top secret” trading algorithm.
Investors could participate with as little as $100 and as much as $50,000.
Forex is a financial term and segment of the investing market where investors bet on the “spread” of currencies that fluctuate on a number of economic factors, including inflation.
In the face of mounting pressure and investigations, the company changed its name to Go Global. However, this did not change the fact that the entire operation was in fact a Ponzi scheme.
A History of The Scam
OmegaPro was launched internationally in 2019. For the next three years, the company, operating out of Dubai, managed to scam over $100 Billion from investors, globally.
By 2020, French authorities had caught wind of the scheme and blacklisted two websites associated with OmegaPro for offering unauthorized forex trading services. Class action criminal proceedings are currently underway in France.
The earliest arrests in the scam were made in April 2022, in the Congo.
By August, regulators in Myanmar launched investigations.
OmegaPro collapsed in November 2022, prompting cofounders Andreas Szakacs, Mike Sims and Dilawar Singh to go underground.
One of the main executives of the company, Juan Carlos Reynoso who “managed” the company for Latin America, was arrested in Mexico in March, 2023. He has Peruvian citizenship.
Omegapro Action Nigeria was launched in November 2023, attempting to make scammed Nigerian investors whole. Two days later, a petition was launched on Change.org to beg the Sheikh of Dubai to initiate an investigation into the company and its cofounders, several of whom were believed to have escaped to the country after the collapse of the scam.
There are currently several class actions pending against the company, including in France, Sweden and the UK. So far, no legal action has begun in the US, but that seems like a matter of time at this point.
Background of Key Company Members
Multiple senior executives of OmegaPro had been involved in previous scams. For example, Paulo Tuynman had previously been involved in a scam called the Omnia Project. Christopher Hamilton was linked to the One Coin crypto scam, one of the largest in the world so far.
Nader Poordeljo was an associate of Jordan Belfort, the so-called “Wolf of Wall Street.”
The other members of the scam are believed to still be resident in Dubai. Members of the ruling government appeared in promotional media pieces, promoting the scam as a reputable company, but so far, the rulers of Dubai have done nothing to apprehend the other perpetrators or in any way attempt to make scammed investors whole.
The Rise of International Online Scams
OmegaPro, just like One Coin and the cannabis/crypto scheme known as Juicy Fields, are three large, global scams with many similarities- starting with the fact that they are part of a global trend. Squeezed consumers, in a time of massive cost of living increases, are looking for ways to make more money. These kinds of scams often seem to be, at first, just the ticket.
All of them, however, are fairly easy to spot. They offer unrealistically high returns, for starters. They are all promoted online, via social media, usually with celebrity endorsement.
Beyond this, after the scam has run its course, scammed investors are almost always completely out of luck. They almost never get their money back. They are often treated like criminals themselves when they try to report the crime to the police or even their banks.
At the current time, there is little coordinated international law enforcement response, which is one of the reasons these types of scams are so widespread.
In the last several years, as the concurrence of crypto, online ubiquity and the massive shocks to the economy continue, these scams are on the rise.
However, so are lawyers now rising to meet the challenge of prosecuting them.
This is why the arrest of one of the co-founders is so significant. And will not be the last.