Andreas Szakacs, co-founder of the now-defunct crypto and forex platform OmegaPro, was arrested in Turkey in July for allegedly defrauding investors of $4 billion.
Arrest and Allegations
Szakacs, a Swedish citizen who changed his name to Emre Avci after relocating to Turkey, has denied the accusations. His arrest followed a June 28 tip-off from an anonymous informant, later corroborated by Dutch national Abdul Mohaghegh, who claims to represent 3,000 investors who collectively lost $103 million.
History of OmegaPro
Founded in 2019 in Dubai, OmegaPro offered investors returns of up to 300% on its suite of paid investment products. Users of the platform initially received small returns on quick investments, followed by requests for further investment, and eventually had their accounts locked. The company reportedly began shutting down user accounts on November 7, 2022, and halted withdrawals by November 22, around the same time the crypto exchange FTX ceased operations. Before its collapse, various jurisdictions including France, Belgium, Spain, and Peru had issued fraud warnings against the platform.
Link to OneCoin
Investigators believe OmegaPro’s funds were closely linked to the infamous OneCoin crypto fraud scheme, which also defrauded investors of $4 billion. OneCoin, founded in 2014, was exposed as a fraudulent scheme in 2015, swindling investors of roughly $4 billion in just two years. Several top figures of the scheme were criminally prosecuted in the US, including founder Ruja Ignatova’s boyfriend Gilbert Armenta, lawyer Mark Scott, former head of legal and compliance Irina Dilkinska, co-founder Karl Sebastian Greenwood, and William Morro who was connected to Armenta. On June 26, the US Department of State increased the reward for any information leading to the arrest and conviction of Ignatova to $5 million, up from the original $250,000.
Turkish police seized computers, various mobile devices, and 32 crypto cold wallets. Despite Szakacs not providing any information to access the wallets, police tracked over $160 million in transactions.
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