Thanks to several initiatives by the UAE government, the cryptocurrency industry has recorded exponential growth in the emirate. Dubai has been promoting itself as a global centre for crypto assets, leading to the establishment of the biggest crypto exchange platforms. In April 2022, Bybit announced it was relocating its headquarters from Singapore to Dubai and crypto.com is creating a regional hub in Dubai.
In tandem with the growth of crypto businesses, there has also been a proliferation of crypto-related scams in which millions have been lost by investors. The anonymous nature of the medium lends itself to fraud, which continues to remain a dangerous aspect of the crypto business.
The UAE authorities, including the Securities and Commodities Authority, have warned residents about crypto asset-related frauds. According to Tarek Mohammed, Head of the Digital Assets Crime Section at the Dubai Police, there have been hundreds of crypto scams in the first half of 2021 alone, with an estimated AED 80 million lost by investors.
In one of the latest such scams, an Italian named Marco Oliva is alleged to have swindled swindled upwards of €15 million from a pool of crypto investors. The man is said to be currently cooling his heels in a Fujairah jail.
According to the website https://cryptoscamdubai.com, Marco lived a very lavish lifestyle in Dubai and was known to frequently charter planes and yachts to fund his jet-setting ways, and is still believed to be in possession of the investors’ funds, but in crypto-currency, which is why it has not been easy to recover the money, which has apparently been deposited in offshore accounts.
The website has delved into the scamster’s past and says going back to his native country of Italy, Marco started off working in telecommunications and mainstream media. “It was within these roles that he was learning about the power of ‘content’ which would later be the foundation of his first scheme that would involve the misuse of data via a subscription model around SMS campaigns. Prior to this, he would open companies in various parts of the world, such as Italy, Malta and Dubai, from where he currently resides and orchestrates his fraudulent business.
“It was just over 10 years ago when Marco started one of his companies, Top Global Services, where he was CEO up until February earlier this year. While we don’t know very much about the company, what we have learnt from looking into his LinkedIn Profile is that the company went bankrupt, with Marco laying the blame at the feet of his clients.”
According to the website, Marco’s partner, Dasha Lapushka, continues to live a glamorous lifestyle, all at the expense of Marco’s victims. After Marco went to prison in September of last year, she is learnt to have moved to Italy where she later met her new footballing boyfriend.
The website alleges that Dasha has access to the funds that Marco most has kept hidden in crypto wallets or overseas accounts and warns that there may be other people like Marco still operating in the UAE, and other regions where crypto-currency is widely accepted.
The website claims to possess substantiating evidence of all the claims it makes, including wire transfers, crypto transfer, conversations, voice recordings and images of Marco’s and his former partner’s scam.
Also published on Medium.
