Default judg. against Forsage’s Sergey Maslakov & Lola Ferrari

Default judgment has been granted against Forsage Ponzi scammers Sergey Maslakov and Lola Ferrari.

Default judgment follows the SEC securing an Entry of Default against Maslakov and Ferrari last October.

Following a motion from the SEC, Default Judgment was granted on February 7th.

By virtue of the default and failure to respond to the Complaint, Defendants are deemed to have admitted the allegations of the Complaint.

Accordingly, because the Complaint’s allegations are deemed admitted, the Court further finds Defendants committed the violations of the federal securities laws alleged in the Complaint and that they received ill-gotten gains as a result thereof, and liability is established
against them.

In their August 2022 Complaint, the SEC alleged Forsage was a $300 million Ponzi scheme. Ferrari and Maslakov were top Russian promoters of the scam.

As per their Default Judgment, Maslakov and Ferrari are permanently prohibited from committing further violations of the Securities and Exchange Act.

Maslakov and Ferrari are also

permanently restrained and enjoined from

(1) offering, operating, or participating in any marketing or sales program in which the participant is compensated or promised compensation
solely or primarily for

(a) inducing another person to become a participant in the program; or

(b) if such induced person induces another to become a participant in the program; and

(2) participating directly or indirectly in any offering of crypto asset securities.

Disgorgement, prejudgment interest and a civil penalty are to be determined at a later date. This is in line with the other Forsage settlements.

The two remaining Forsage defendants who haven’t settled are Mikhail Sergeev and Vladimir “Lado” Okhotnikov.

Sergeev was a Russian Forsage executive. The SEC was granted permission to serve Sergeev via email on February 7th.

Okhotnikov is Forsage’s founder. Having acquired US counsel, Okhotnikov looks set to challenge the SEC’s lawsuit.

In the meantime Okhotnikov continues to defraud consumers through MetaForce, the sixth Forsage Ponzi reboot.

BehindMLM recorded MetaForce’s first collapse last September. Since then Okhotnikov has baked an NFT grift into the Ponzi scheme.

MetaForce website traffic crashed in December 2022, before slightly recovering in January 2023.

SimilarWeb currently tracks top sources of MetaForce website traffic as Russia (21%), Pakistan (18%) and Switzerland (9%).