Karatbars Worldwide, Karatbit Change and V999 have obtained securities fraud warnings from Alberta, Canada.
The ASC added Karatbars Worldwide, Karatbit Change and V999 to its Funding Warning Record on or round March fifteenth.
The ASC advises;
To assist inform and defend buyers, the ASC offers a listing of firms and people that aren’t registered with the ASC and that seem like participating in actions that both require registration beneath Alberta securities legal guidelines or could also be funding scams.
Traders are inspired to seek the advice of this record if they’re contemplating investing, particularly if they’re approached with an unsolicited funding alternative.
Karatbars Worldwide was run by Harald Seiz, a needed German nationwide who has since fled to Thailand.
Karatbars Worldwide launched in 2011 as a easy gold-themed pyramid scheme.
Round 2018 Seiz partnered up with Josip Heit, and thus started Karatbars Worldwide’s transition to crypto fraud.
Karatbank Coin’s “KBC” ICO was introduced in February 2018. By 2019 KBC had been dumped for KGC.
After months of promoting hype, KGC launched on July 4th, 2019 – solely to rapid collapse thereafter.
There was an try and resuscitate Karatbars Worldwide with V999 (KGC was deserted shortly after it collapsed), nonetheless that simply resulted in even deeper investor losses.
Ultimately Josip Heit break up and went on to launch his personal GSPartners “G999” Ponzi clone.
Heit endured with Karatbars Worldwide, happening to launch Freebay, Lifebase and Minebase.
Throughout the Karatbars Worldwide crypto fraud ecosystem, Karatbit Change served because the platform associates have been (theoretically) in a position to money out returns and recruitment commissions.
As of February 2023, SimilarWeb tracks negligible site visitors to Karatbit Change’s web site. Karatbit Change’s social media profiles have been deserted in February 2020.
V999’s standalone web site remains to be up, with SimilarWeb monitoring 10,000 visits to the positioning final month. That is up from simply 690 visits in January 2023, suggesting the site visitors could be attributed to the Minebase reboot.
Canada was one of many first international locations to take motion towards Karatbars Worldwide. Manner again in 2014 the AMF (Quebec) issued a Karatbars pyramid scheme warning.
This finally led to Karatbars Worldwide being banned in Quebec in 2016.
Exterior of Alberta and Quebec, Karatbars Worldwide has attracted regulatory consideration in Namibia, Germany, South Africa, New Zealand, Ontario and the Bahamas.
At of February 2023, SimilarWeb ranks high sources of site visitors to Minebase’s web site as Germany (21%), Venezuela (14%), Ecuador (12%), Spain (8%) and the US (7%).
