My Opinion

The Bulgarian "OneCoin" inventor Ruja Ignatova has probably brought investors around 4 billion US dollars. From the "crypto-queen", however, lacks any trace and the FBI determined.

The alleged cryptocurrency "Onecoin" is at the center of the largest crypto fraud case yet, but the machinations have been discovered. According to investigators hundreds of thousands of investors could have lost more than $ 4 billion through the alleged cryptocurrency, which promised investors quick riches. Where the money has remained is currently unknown.

The main offender is the Bulgarian Ruja Ignatova. In London and elsewhere, she promoted Onecoin as an elegant inventor and made great promises to investors. Onecoin was touted as a "Bitcoin killer". Media gave her the title of "crypto-queen". She allegedly brought hundreds of thousands of people for her money.

Entrepreneur with mafia relationships

Her brother, Konstantin Ignatov, has according to the investigative site Inner City Press at least confessed to American FBI investigators and admitted several offenses in New York, including money laundering and fraud. Many investors are coming from the UK. The BBC has released a major podcast series about the machinations of the alleged cryptocoin inventor, who also allegedly has connections to the Bulgarian mafia.

Despite all this, there is still a website on which Onecoin stirs the advertising drum. It is advertised with slogans like: "Be part of the financial revolution." and Onecoin is "the first transparent, global cryptocurrency for everyone". The advertised digital money promised high returns for investors. It also announced that millions of people in underdeveloped countries in Africa and Asia will have access to financial services.

Onecoin is a pyramid system

Onecoin was and still is not a cryptocurrency, based on the blockchain technology, but a rather simple pyramid scheme: The first investors could make high profits, as more and more investors put money in the system, but in the end are high losses. Although Onecoin denies any illegal activity on the site, such methods are fraudulent.

In 2017, Onecoin is said to have raised more than $ 4 billion from investors worldwide, including some £ 100 million from British citizens. In October 2017 Ruja Ignatova disappeared suddenly, since then she is wanted by the FBI.

Onecoin in the BBC news:

• OneCoin lawyer on trial for role in 'crypto-scam' - BBC News
• Cryptoqueen' brother admits role in OneCoin fraud - BBC News

Every customer from a company likes to get something in return for his hard earned money. The chances that you get nothing in return and even get teased if you are a customer from Converge ICT Solutions Inc. is very high. One guy from Converge or one who is only licking on their shoes even asked me why I have a rant against Converge. I have no rant against Converge, I have only a rant against technical and business incompetence, especially if someone tries to tease me. I had a good experience with the Converge field technicians as they try to understand the problems of their customers, but the support staff has no idea about what they are doing. Here can everybody find how service request are getting handled from this deadbeats. They do everything for avoiding to move their own ass and fix their own internal network problems. It looks like that Converge is even not able or does not have the knowledge to fix their network problems.

Before you take a look at the traces I have made, you should understand how they need to get interpreted. Here is the description of the IP addresses shown in the traces:

1. 192.168.1.1 is the private IP address of my home router
2. 10.105.0.1 is the router from Converge, to which the cable modem is sending all the traffic.
3. 202.69.189.77 is a router from Converge where all the outgoing traffic for US and Europe gets routed
4. 10.70.10.33 a private IP address of a router inside the Converge network, which is not answering to pings. For this reason the IP cannot get monitored with standard tools.
5. 202.69.189.177 one more router inside the Converge network on the way for reaching the oversea lines
6. 202.69.188.109 one more router managed by Converge on the way to the oversea lines.
7. 202.69.189.218 the last router inside the Converge network located at the Philippines. This router sends the traffic to Los Angeles/US using the services from Level 3 Communications Inc.

For knowing the way packages are taking you can even take the tool tracert from the Windows command line. The result is looking like shown in the following screenshot:

As we like to monitor only the IP addresses at the Philippines in the responsibility from Converge ICT, we take as last IP their last router with the IP address 202.69.189.218. I have used as monitoring tool the open source software Ping Tracer. Ping Tracer is sending out each second a ping to the routers on the way and shows the time needed until the answer got received and the lost packages (red colored) in a graphic. If you are debugging a network, then you have to start at the nearest router where the lost packages are starting. All other failures can be a follow up from the first router. By respecting this rule you have to search in our case, as the following screenshot is showing, for the problems in the connection from the router with the IP 10.105.0.1 (0.76% packet loss) and 202.69.189.77 (13.9% packet loss). The 0.76% packet loss at the IP 10.105.0.1 can be a result of a tailback of IP packages in a retry queue when the queue is full.

Here the results of such a monitoring, which I have sent to the support from Converge ICT solutions on January 14, 2018:

One day after the above support request got sent, the situation die not get changed. I have sent on January 15, 2018 the next support request to Converge ICT Solution with the values of a new trace:

On January 16, 2018 I got the email response from Converge ICT Solutions, that the "problem got solved". Here a screenshot from the email:

A sign of quality of the Converge support is already the empty link (http://), which shall get clicked to reopen the ticket. As expected is the result from their "work" the same like before. With other words - they have nothing done to solve the problems as the following screenshot is showing. The email got received on January 16, 2018 03:07pm and the screenshot got taken on the same day at 07:50pm:

A nice detail how Converge ICT Solution is how they are scamming their customers. It gets shown, by the following screenshot taken on January 16, 2018 at 04:33am, that Converge ICT Solutions is selling more bandwidth than they are able to handle inside their own network. As at this time normally all people are still sleeping and the network is during this time not really under heavy traffic. So the packet loss at this time is low, but still available. It is the problem from Converge that they have been too lazy for fixing their own internal network and the problems are now falling to their head by making problems for their customers.

A trace back from a server in Austria/Europe shows that not one package at the oversea lines gets lost. The problem is getting found in the internal network structure and the network design. The outgoing routes are taking a different way as the incoming routes. While outgoing routes are passing Los Angeles by using the Level 3 network are taking incoming routes to the users IP addresses from Europe a route from ntt.net and if you like to trace the last IP address 202.69.189.218, where the router sends all traffic to Los Angeles, then the inbound route is taking the routes from hgc.com.hk passing Hong Kong. A OSPF (Open Shortest Part First) seems to be a foreign word for the Converge ICT network technicians.

Summary: If you have the possibility to avoid this Internet provider you should avoid them. Even Internet amateurs are able to bring up better results and a better connectivity.

Where ever some money can get earned, you'll find scammers. Nobody is able to hindrance them in doing their dirty business. Even the restrictions for signing up at upwork.com are not able to avoid scams. On the other site it can be also a trick from upwork.com for bringing more of their subscribers into a paid membership.

All scammers have one common property: They are lazy. Some are even too lazy for using their own God given brain. In the actual case where I got yesterday on March 18, 2017 an invitation for a work, which got posted on December 24, 2016 and the result of the work should got delivered on February 1, 2017! Nobody can get done a work in the past. LOL

The funny thing about the invitation above is, that the invitation for the interview got withdrawn before I had the possibility to react on it. This makes upwork.com also suspicious, because at this platform everybody has limited connection possibilities. Their official reason for limiting the possibilities for bidding on offers is avoiding spam. On the other site is the behavior from their clients, withdrawing invitations before they get answered, counterproductive for their own reputation.

Suspicious is also that Philip Pateman is offering since more than 2 month a part time job, where you have to work only 2 hours a day and get a payment of $1,500/month + bonuses and nobody takes such a job or is able to fulfill the requirements for the job. It gets shown in the following screenshot, where is written under the job offer that he has hired one from 781 sent invites and under the caption "About the Client" is written 3 Hires, 0 Active - $0 Total Spent!

Another joke of the century gets found in the job description. Philip Pateman needs to hire 5 Freelancers, who are working at least 2 hours per day and are getting paid $1,600 per month. That makes a sum of $8,000/month. For this amount of $8,000/month I even would work 10 hours a day and 6 or 7 days a week. LOL

Anyway, I even would not be able to fulfill the requirements for this job, because of my problems with the Internet provider here at the Philippines. In the job offer is written "Must be accessible, online during agreed-upon hours". If someone takes a look at my article Converge ICT Solution Inc. - a service desert and teasing their customers then he will find out that I'm not able to guarantee such a requirement. For this reason I don't need to apply for such a job.

For the case that Philip Pateman is not an invention from upwork.com for stealing your connection points, then Philip Pateman from Belfast is using his real name and location. A search for Philip Pateman from the UK phone directory returns 19 results and only one is living in Belfast. Based on the 2006-17 Electoral Roll is he in the age group between 40 and 44. He is living together with Karen Mary Pateman (Karen Mary Mcmahon). A Philip Pateman from Belfast gets also found at LinkedIn. He is providing the following information about himself: He likes to be an Assistant Assembly Clerk to the Committee for Finance working at Northern Ireland Assembly since August 2009 and has at the moment 124 friends or contacts at LinkedIn. He describes his job as:

Supporting the Assembly's Committee for Finance in undertaking its advisory and scrutiny role in relation to the Department of Finance. Includes procedural advice, policy analysis and professional support.

For the case that all the information described here, is also fitting together in reality, then Philip Pateman has sent me an invite for his sham job offer and has been searching afterwards by using his favorite search engine for my name. In the result he has found my blogs and did not like to get famous. So he has withdrawn the invitation.

An alternate possibility is still available too. upwork.com has invented Philip Pateman from Belfast for reducing your connection points faster.

In any case is the job offer provided at upwork.com by Philip Pateman nothing else than a scam or an offer for being partner in crime of Philip Pateman.