Andreas Szakacs, the co-founder of collapsed crypto and forex platform OmegaPro, was arrested in Turkey in July, alleged to have defrauded investors through a $4 billion Ponzi scheme.
Arrest Details
According to an Aug. 22 report from local Turkish media, Szakacs is accused of duping investors by offering huge returns through OmegaPro’s “automated trading” algorithm, accumulating their funds before eventually locking their accounts. Szakacs, a Swedish citizen who changed his name to Emre Avci after relocating to Turkey, has denied the allegations. Szakacs’s arrest followed a June 28 tip-off from an anonymous informant, later corroborated by Dutch national Dr. Abdul Mohaghegh, who claims to represent 3,000 investors who collectively lost $103 million to OmegaPro.
OmegaPro History
Founded in 2019 and headquartered in Dubai, OmegaPro was a crypto and forex investment company that offered investors returns of up to 300% on its suite of paid investment products. Users of the OmegaPro platform recount initial small investments that provided quick returns. This was followed by demands for further investment, and ultimately, user accounts were locked. The company reportedly began shutting down user accounts on Nov. 7, 2022, and halted withdrawals by Nov. 22, around the same time as the crypto exchange FTX also imploded.
Connections to OneCoin
Local investigators believe OmegaPro’s funds were closely linked to the infamous OneCoin crypto fraud scheme, which also fleeced investors of $4 billion. OneCoin was exposed as a fraudulent crypto scheme in 2015, and in the two years it operated, it swindled its investors out of roughly $4 billion in assets. Several members of the scheme’s top brass, including Gilbert Armenta, lawyer Mark Scott, former head of legal and compliance Irina Dilkinska, co-founder Karl Sebastian Greenwood, and William Morro, have been criminally prosecuted in the US for their involvement in the scheme.
Szakacs denies his guilt. As part of the investigation, Turkish police seized computers, mobile devices, and 32 crypto cold wallets. Despite Szakacs not providing any information, police were able to track over $160 million in transactions. OmegaPro predominantly targeted non-US users, and regulatory warnings were issued against the platform in France, Belgium, Spain, and Peru.
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