American indicted in Sydney over alleged global crypto scam

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Potential investors have claimed to have been duped into investing in bogus bonds, mostly through self-directed super funds, by online operators masquerading as trusted financial institutions.

Mr. Ayoub was charged with 13 counts of obtaining advantages by deception and 13 counts of reckless use of the proceeds of crime. He has been denied bail and is due to appear in Parramatta bail court on Saturday.

According to his LinkedIn public profile, Mr. Ayoub, a US national, was educated in Florida and previously worked for a Hong Kong-based company.

A suspected victim was contacted by police on Friday following the arrest of Mr. Ayoub. The potential investor says he invested in the fake high yield Nomura bond after entering details on a comparison site and depositing funds into an account at a major Australian bank.

Representatives of financial institutions are aware of additional police investigations into similar allegations by investors.

This type of suspected investment scam was first exposed by the Australian Financial Review after a fake prospectus for an IFM high yield bond fund was distributed to investors. It was the first of many forged documents involving well-known global institutions to circulate the local market from early this year.

The financial review does not suggest that Mr. Ayoub’s charges relate to these particular incidents, only that Mr. Ayoub was charged in connection with a similar type of alleged investment scam.

Trademarks of Citi, Vanguard, PIMCO, UBS, HSBC, Nomura, Schroders and several other companies have reportedly been used in these types of alleged scams to trick retirees into investing their savings and super-management in what they want. believed to be high yielding. but safe investments.

Potential investors affected by such scams claim to have been targeted after seeking high-yield investments through search engines such as Google.

This led them to bogus investment comparison websites where they entered their details.

Over time, they were contacted by salespeople with British accents who allegedly used the names of real staff members of the companies they were impersonating.

Victims of these types of scams would then deposit funds into bank accounts controlled by the crooks, including accounts linked to cryptocurrency exchanges, where the proceeds would have been converted into cryptocurrency and transferred to offshore wallets. .

The proliferation of fraudulent solicitation allegations has led the corporate regulator to issue investor warnings about transactions allegedly targeting investors in Australia and abroad, including the UK.

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