Validus has received a securities fraud “scam alert” from the Australian Securities & Investment Commission (ASIC).
As per ASIC’s November 18th scam alert;
Validus appears to be operating a financial services business in a manner that is likely to attract Australians to invest in its financial services.
However, it is not licensed to provide financial services in Australia, which means customers will not be protected when things go wrong.
This is the equivalent of a securities fraud notice in other jurisdictions. New Zealand issued a Validus securities fraud warning last month.
Validus is a Dubai-based Ponzi scheme run by former OneCoin scammers Parwiz Daud and Mansour Tawafi.
Addressing Validus’ business model, ASIC writes;
The returns promised by Validus are unrealistic. Treat exorbitant rates of return with extreme caution.
Validus encourages investors to recruit new investors into the scheme. This is a classical sign of a pyramid scheme.
ASIC goes on to advise consumers who have already invested in Validus to “not send any more money”, report Validus to their local financial regulator and “be wary” of recovery scams.
You do not need to lodge a report with ASIC as we have sufficient information at this stage. ASIC is unable to assist in recovering your money.
BehindMLM has long been critical of ASIC’s approach to MLM related securities fraud. The above paragraph in particular emphasizes why.
SimilarWeb tracked just under a million visits to Validus’ website across October 2022, up from 924,000 visits the previous month.
33% of Validus’ website traffic originates from France, 16% from the US, 12% from the Netherlands and 8% from Colombia and the UK.
Validus is not registered to offer securities in any country it solicits investment in.
