Edgars Lasmanis: Charged with money laundering and exposed
The bank accounts of Connectum Limited, a payments facilitator based in London that was previously owned by Edgars Lasmanis and acquired by Cambodian tycoon Heng Sokha a year ago, are purported to have handled millions of dollars’ worth of illicit funds.
Table of Contents
Edgars Lasmanis- Introduction to the scammer
Edgars Lasmanis was a well-known scammer and money launderer for the fraudulent Israeli broker scene. His company, Connectum, was an FCA-regulated payment institution. Funds for Gal Barak’s convicted cybercrime organization were processed by it.
Edgars , the former chief executive officer and beneficial owner of Connected Limited, a licensed FCA entity, has become the chairman of the supervisory board at Walletto UAB, a regulated electronic money institution in Lithuania. He has held this role since October 2017, based on his LinkedIn profile.
About Edgars Lasmanis’s company named Connectum
Connectum is a Mastercard and Visa Principal Member Acquirer.Up until October 2020, Lasmanis, a Latvian, held a dominant ownership position in Connectum. He was replaced by Cambodian Sokha Heng, a politically exposed person (PEP) and the spouse of Ing Bun Hoaw, the former secretary of state for the transport ministry. She possesses more than 75% of the company’s shares, according to UK Companies House.
Sokha Heng
Russia accounts for a substantial percentage of Connectum Limited’s total payment volume, according to the most recent SimilarWeb statistics. Among other things, we learned that Alexander Gerchik, a trader based in New York, mostly targets Russian clients who deposit money through his trading school website, Gerchik.com, using Connectum Limited.
Connectum Limited Offering:
Connectum Limited offers international payment and processing solutions to your business.
The Connectum Limited service offers:
- Processing of payment cards for Visa, Mastercard, and UnionPay
- Settlement and processing in many currencies
- Spend using cards (Original credit transactions and MoneySend transactions)
- Coins and recurring payments (one-click payments)
- 3D-Secure
- E-Invoicing
- Banking online
Money laundering via Edgars Lasmanis’s company Connectum
Edgars Lasmanis’s company Connectum laundered millions of dollars in illegal gains from the frauds of the cybercrime organization E&G Bulgaria from at least 2017 to 2019. The funds were then transferred to the offshore bank accounts of the cybercrime organization.
Edgars Lasmanis’s company Connectum previously had bank accounts with Deutsche Handelsbank and Latvian JSC Rietumu Banka for these transfers.
FCA-Regulated High-Risk Payment Processor Connectum, a company previously owned by Edgar Lasmanis And Its Russian Activities!
Edgars Lasmanis’s business, Connectum Limited, has recently faced criticism for being a facilitator of broker frauds and a partner of high-risk processors like Hawex and HoneyPay. The Financial Conduct Authority oversees Connectum Limited, a financial institution. Based on the latest Similarweb statistics, a significant portion of Connectum Limited’s payment volume originates from Russia. Among other things, we noticed that New York-based trader Alexander Gerchik primarily targets Russian clients who deposit money through his trading school website, Gerchik.com, using Connectum Limited.
The Hawex Story and Edgars Lasmanis’s company Connectum
Edgars Lasmanis is the owner of two companies: Hawex, a Russian high-risk payment processor, and Connectum, a payment processor governed by the FCA!
Paystree Limited, an FCA-authorized e-money institution, has Hawex as an Electronic Money Agent (EMD Agent).
Up until March 2022, Russian Kirill Baldakov held control over the UK-registered Hawex Group Ltd. Since October 2022, it has been looked after by Hawex Investment LLC, a Dubai-based company owned by Ruchi Rathor, an Indian-British woman and a Russian.Latvian Jevgenijs Marenics is the director listed with the UK company. Based on the data from Similarweb for Edgars Lasmanis’s company Connectum over the last three months, the payment processor approved by the FCA has a substantial amount of business dealings with Russia.
Records show that in June, Hawex merchants used Edgars Lasmanis’s Connectum company to handle over €81 million. Almost all of the merchants come from the online marketing, cryptocurrency, or high-risk gambling industries. The United Kingdom and Estonia are the next countries with the highest concentration of high-risk merchants, after Cyprus.
FinTelegram has discovered that the Russian high-risk payment processor HoneyPay suggested Hawex to Edgars Lasmanis’s business Connectum.
Edgars Lasmanis’s company named Connectum and Binex Group
Connectum Limited (www.connectum.eu), a business owned by Edgars Lasmanis, is an electronic money payment institution that is registered with the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) of the United Kingdom (reference number 624117).The British entrepreneurs Edgars Lasmanis and Ivan Leonidovo founded the business in March 2014.Up until March 2015, Edgars Lasmanis was the only shareholder, having acquired all of the shares.In May, Estonian Juri Paal, also known as Juri Zitin, was appointed as a director and briefly acquired more than half of Lasmanis’s shares. In July 2015, Juri Paal resigned from his position as a director and shareholder of Connectum. This individual had an intriguing past.
Binex Group LP, a company registered in Birmingham, was a client or merchant of the payment processor from 2017 to 2019. The infamous money-laundering organizations Hokkaido Invest S.A. and Okinawa Holdings S.A., who were also involved in Deutsche Bank’s massive Russian money-laundering scandal, were partners in the Binex Group. Binex Group LP was dissolved in November 2020.
Romans Baranovs, a Latvian, is the leader of the 2017-founded Lithuanian Walletto (www.walletto.eu), an electronic money institution (EMI) governed by the Bank of Lithuania under license number LB000452. Walletto is a Latvian company, according to LinkedIn, and the majority of its staff are from Latvia. A white-label payment card program is offered, and payment cards are issued by Walletto, a VISA Principal Member Issuer and Acquirer.
Prosecutions for cybercrime and money laundering
Vladislav “Vlad” Smirnov, a cybercrime activist and payment specialist from Russia, has been discovered by Binex Group. Smirnov is also the beneficial owner of the Russian payment processor NetPay (www.netpay.ru), and a partner of Israeli cybercrime activists Gery “Gabi” Shalon and Gal Barak. Shalon is accused in the US of carrying out the biggest financial hack in history, and Barak was found guilty of money laundering and investment fraud in September 2020 and given a four-year jail sentence in Vienna. They were the original members of the Israeli-Bulgarian cybercrime group E&G Bulgaria.
Smirnov’s company, Binex Group LP, is mentioned a lot in German and Austrian prosecution files. The business assisted E&G Bulgaria’s broker frauds by acting as an unauthorized payment processor. As a Connectum merchant under Edgars Lasmanis, Binex Group LP had access to credit card networks.
Departing Edgars Lasmanis
At the time, Edgars Lasmanis held a dominant ownership position in Connectum. October 2020 was the last month he was the main character. Then, more than 75% of the company’s shares were acquired by Cambodian Sokha Heng, the wife of former Transport Ministry Secretary of State Ing Bun Hoaw, according to UK Companies House records. Edgars Lasmanis then continued in his role as director until January 2021, at which point he left Connectum completely. The specifics of this transaction are unknown to us at this time.
Edgars Lasmanis, a resident of Cyprus, is a national of Latvia, based on information from Companies House and his LinkedIn profile. He also owns and operates the IT company Securita SAS (www.securita.eu), which focuses on detecting payment fraud in Cyprus.
An Important update on Edgars Lasmanis
The significance of Russian website visits has increased recently, based on Similarweb data. In the three months prior, approximately half of the website’s visitors originated from the United States, and approximately third came from Russia. In December 2022, more than 68% of visitors to Edgars Lasmanis’s Connectum website came from Russia. This is really amazing.
Financial services companies in the West should steer clear of Russia. Connectum Limited’s plan is notable in this regard. This may be connected to professional trader Alexander Gerchik, based in New York, who draws Russian-speaking clients to his online trading education platform Gerchik.com and brokerage services website Gerchik.co. By December 2022, there should be about 260,000 visitors to this project, indicating its success. Over forty percent of these originate in Russia and Belarus.
Fake DMCA Case
False DMCAs have been used by Edgars Lasmanis’s company Connectum to conceal their true identity as scammers.
What is faking a DMCA case?
I have come across notifications that utilize the “back-dated article” method. A “fake original” article—a copy of the real original—is created when the wrong notice sender (or copier) creates a copy of a “true original” article and backdates it. At first glance, the fake original article appears to have been published before the true original.
Then, claiming that the copied article is the “original” and that the true original is the one that has been copied or is “infringing,” the copiers send a DMCA to the appropriate online service providers, demanding that the original be removed. The person who gave the false notice takes down the fake original URL in response to the DMCA request, probably to make sure the article is taken down completely. The information that is most likely free speech will be taken down from the internet if the takedown notice is successful.
Please take note of the following information before continuing, as it may be useful when you read the remainder of the investigation by scrolling down:
The original piece appeared on a website in a legitimate manner.
According to the Google Transparency Reports, the Lumen Database records (listed above) clearly show that the DMCAs were filed by a forger.
Conclusion
Edgars Lasmanis’s business, Connectum Limited, has a history of engaging in online fraud and other illegal activities. For instance, it managed money laundering for Israeli cybercrime organizations Binex Group LP and E&G Bulgaria. Connectum Limited, owned by Edgars Lasmanis, is consequently marked as a “Red Flag.”