DeOS (by Razormind) is most likely a scam! EDIT: Ongoing investigation!!!

[cryptodevil]

https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@54.6317608,-5.8440094,3a,75y,208.68h,66.46t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sD0qE2ec1Jbr6W5K19Jymfw!2e0!7i13312!8i6656
clearly houses in that side of the area...

That 'side of the area' is MI5's Palace Barracks. As a military barracks it will have residential housing, yes, but I am not aware of secure military bases having residential housing for members of the public or even retired veterans. They are normally for people who have a current reason to be there, inside the compound, a reason which is directly connected to the military section which it houses.

The question of the 55 Clive Road, Holywood, Belfast address is not just about whether Jawad and/or Razormind have a connection to MI5, it is also about asking wtf a supposed global company with hundreds of staff and office locations all around the world (which we know is complete bollocks) is doing being incorporated with this registered-office address in the first place.

There not being a connection to MI5 raises just as many questions as there being one.

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[CoinTelegraph UK]

Hello Cryptodevil, it's a pleasure! This is Niall...

In regards to the claims of fraudulent misrepresentations from that company, all I can say at this stage is that according to lawyers this is a very complex case and at the time of publication of the last article, it couldn't be "legally branded a scam or fraud." This isn't to say that as more deep investigations are carried out & revelations discovered & connections made it won't turn out to be or hasn't already.

I appreciate what you are doing here, but ask for your patience as there are professional people looking into all of this who are more qualified than me & until they can "legally brand it a scam or fraud" no matter what my personal view I will wait for formal clarification from them before publicly stating so in an article.

I myself have invested 1 btc in this crowd sale, have never received a cent from that company for anything and will be updating things with more in depth details in the next article than in the first.

Keep up the good work!

[GrossBit]

https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@54.6317608,-5.8440094,3a,75y,208.68h,66.46t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sD0qE2ec1Jbr6W5K19Jymfw!2e0!7i13312!8i6656
clearly houses in that side of the area...

That 'side of the area' is MI5's Palace Barracks. As a military barracks it will have residential housing, yes, but I am not aware of secure military bases having residential housing for members of the public or even retired veterans. They are normally for people who have a current reason to be there, inside the compound, a reason which is directly connected to the military section which it houses.

The question of the 55 Clive Road, Holywood, Belfast address is not just about whether Jawad and/or Razormind have a connection to MI5, it is also about asking wtf a supposed global company with hundreds of staff and office locations all around the world (which we know is complete bollocks) is doing being incorporated with this registered-office address in the first place.

There not being a connection to MI5 raises just as many questions as there being one.

i think the choice of this address just shows the evil sense of humour of Jawad

[astmandu]

Hello Cryptodevil, it's a pleasure! This is Niall...

In regards to the claims of fraudulent misrepresentations from that company, all I can say at this stage is that according to lawyers this is a very complex case and at the time of publication of the last article, it couldn't be "legally branded a scam or fraud." This isn't to say that as more deep investigations are carried out & revelations discovered & connections made it won't turn out to be or hasn't already.

I appreciate what you are doing here, but ask for your patience as there are professional people looking into all of this who are more qualified than me & until they can "legally brand it a scam or fraud" no matter what my personal view I will wait for formal clarification from them before publicly stating so in an article.

I myself have invested 1 btc in this crowd sale, have never received a cent from that company for anything and will be updating things with more in depth details in the next article than in the first.

Keep up the good work!

Niall - I am glad that you are reporting on the matter but there is a lot that you were privy to and are in a much better position to know about, and I hope you write about that in the future.  

I am a lawyer but that really means nothing here.  What is a lawyer going to do for you except give cover to CT because it can't be "legally branded a scam"?  Oh well, we tried boys...but the lawyers don't agree!  Come on.  We all know that a lawyer sizes up a case and then proceeds with a lawsuit based on allegations.  The case may then go to court where trier of fact (judge/jury) looks at the evidence and then makes a judgment: yes or no as to whether it's a scam.  I used to prosecute consumer fraud cases.

Despite my knowing better, and my attempts to research the hell out of this company before investing, to include listening to that bullshit interview from long ago, I invested.  I know the risks in crypto and while I put down more than 1 BTC, I can afford to lose it.  I'm a big boy.  But to say you need professionals to weigh in after all the evidence of pure misrepresentation is really ridiculous.  What is needed is for UK authorities to put this mother fucker in jail.  He stole, plain and simple.  I and some others filed a complaint with actionfraud and encourage you to see if they will share what they are doing.

Again, focus on the representations. Start with the timeline of deliverables that the DeOS platform would have enabled by now.  Nothing has happened as represented.  Look at how he changed the contribution levels during the sale.  Early on he promised a list of things, a white paper included.  Nothing.  Look at how far past the date the crowdsale went so he could squeeze more BTC out of people.  What are the charities how got involved?  The whole thing with Mailik.  The company PR's Razormind stole from legit companies and represented as it's own (not legally branded a scam?).  As noted above, he put his email on auto response.  No one can log into the fucking platform because of this stupid KYC bs.  Who does that?  And why is it needed here?  It isn't.  Look at any other platform that uses KYC (for financial reasons), and you can still set up an account with those platforms.  There is no platform, that's the reason for yet another of Jawad and Co's Kafkaesque BS.

All you need are misrepresentations to brand it a scam.  That is the way you should be looking at this.  As an investor you should know that you got nothing of what was represented for your 1 BTC.  All you got was 1000 DeOS Omni tokens which do nothing on the non-existent DEOS platform.  Congratulations, you were scammed just like many of us!

In the future I hope you can learn from this experience in other stories you report on.  It's easy for me to judge with 20/20 after knowing all the facts now, but since he represented that the DEOS platform was all complete at the time first reported, it would have been good if you asked to see it.  Also, I'm left wondering if Cointelegraph received payment from Razormind for publishing the stories, such as one would do for press releases.

[CoinTelegraph UK]

Hello Astmandu and thanks for the polite and imformative reply. Yes I am privy to a lot more and will definitley be reporting on it. Believe me this isn't as straight cut as it looks as I'm sure you have noticed during your attempts to research before investing as a lawyer.

The business lawyer that is investigating and giving me legal advice on how to deal with this is a personal friend involved in this industry a long time and detests scams and fraud ruining the reputation of this industry. We have all worked hard for many years for nothing to help bring it to where it is today. He is not covering CoinTelegraph in all this, I believe that is my job as I was the journalist who was contacted and first reported on it. CoinTelegraphs hands are clean and no money was recieved by them or me! It was me who didn't do my due dilligence properly and ask for evidence of offices and a headcount of staff.

At that stage there was no evidence to even think the website was a copy of other legitimate companies, congrats to the poster who spotted that!

I also have no access to the platform as of yet like yourself but I see a guy on the Github page has and isn't impressed.

I have learned a massive lesson from reporting on this company Astmandu and don't believe I will ever touch a crowdfunding article ever again. Hindsight is a great thing and so much has came to light since that wasn't available to me then.

Are many involved in filing with actionfraud? I went through all this with the Viper ASIC company before and years later it still has amounted to anything, hopefully this will be different.

The business lawyer is also following this thread and I have no doubt he will take what you've said onboard and thank you!

[astmandu]

Are many involved in filing with actionfraud? I went through all this with the Viper ASIC company before and years later it still has amounted to anything, hopefully this will be different.

Grossbit filed a complaint and Mailik acted as though authorities are involved but I don't know if that is true and to what extent.  I'm based in the States and when I try to look into reporting financial crime in the UK it all points to actionfraud.  Financial crime doesn't get a lot of attention from investigators but if enough people make noise then it does.  Considering the amount of BTC involved and vastness of the fraud (and what's with the DEOS DAO?), I'd hope they'd have a look.  As a journalist I'm sure you can get in front of someone to ask some questions.

Thanks for your kind reply and I appreciate the measured professionalism you are showing.  I know that as a reporter you can't come across with the emotion that we have here.  If you can reach out to Mailik and Vanbex (sp) I'd love to know more of that story. 

[cryptodevil]

I and some others filed a complaint with actionfraud and encourage you to see if they will share what they are doing.

I have and I, too, recommend people file a Fraud Report Form http://www.actionfraud.police.uk/

The more alerts the authorities can be given, the more likely Jawad and Co can be stopped before the money is irrecoverable.

Also, I'm left wondering if Cointelegraph received payment from Razormind for publishing the stories, such as one would do for press releases.

Frankly Cointelegraph have an appalling record on that front, with active and known scams still being promoted through adverts, advertorials, sponsored articles and those which are non-sponsored but clearly unresearched and utterly lacking the most basic of due diligence.

As I have said before, a journalist doesn't have to put out a negative article on a project or service they suspect is a scam, but they sure as shit shouldn't be putting out uncritical pieces on projects or services which are riddled with easily-found holes and red flags from the outset.

I will be interested in the subsequent articles in the series, Niall, but let's not kid ourselves here, your claim towards having not received a cent from this sham company doesn't really explain your evident voluntary participation in it. You must have been offered something and the question is going to be when you were offered that 'something'. Was it prior to or after the two promotional articles you wrote which read as though Razormind were a serious corporate entity with bold assertions such as, "A UK company Razormind is going to be rivalling Ethereum offering alternative options in crypto, blockchain and smart contracts to corporate giants such as Microsoft, Eris and IBM. "?

Received: from Actual (218.120.115.87.dyn.plus.net [87.115.120.218]) (Authenticated sender: jawad@razormind.co.uk) by relay6-d.mail.gandi.net (Postfix) with ESMTPA id 4F385FB881; Fri,
  5 Aug 2016 05:16:10 +0200 (CEST)
From: Jawad Yaqub <jawad@razormind.co.uk>
 

This is a good time then to announce some great friends:

*        Niall Maye - Communications and Strategy Advisor.

On the one hand you claim the sham company Razormind and its subsequent sham 'crowdsale' to be akin to the cryptographic puzzle Kryptos and have just posted:

It was me who didn't do my due dilligence properly and ask for evidence of offices and a headcount of staff.

Yet nobody needed an onerous headcount of staff, you simply needed to look the company up on the UK Companies House Register https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/ to see it had only been incorporated in February of this year, with a semi-detached residential house as R.O. and that all prior incorporations linked to Jawad and Phil have ended up in compulsory strike-off.

I get that your defence is predicated on not realising it was a scam until too late, but to now be painting it as being so complex and convoluted a scam that you could not easily see that the company was a sham is just absurd and, given CT's history of doing absolutely fuck-all about the scams promoted on its own website, you'll have to excuse my cynicism as to your claim CT didn't get any money from this.

[CoinTelegraph UK]

Thanks Astmandu! Yes the Mr.Malik situation will become a lot clearer after the next article. I will also be touching on Vanbex who at the minute just look like they were smarter than me, spotted something and pulled away sooner.

[CoinTelegraph UK]

Cryptodevil - Have you invested anything in all this? Reason I'm asking is because you seem to be able to spend more time on this than anyone else.

My next article will reveal all the answers to your questions and you will see for all the time you've spent on this, you've gotten so much wrong yourself.

[cryptodevil]

Cryptodevil - Have you invested anything in all this? Reason I'm asking is because you seem to be able to spend more time on this than anyone else.

Nope, not one satoshi. That seems to annoy people for some reason. According to most I must either have lost money or be making it off the back of this, to which I can honestly state the answer to be neither.

My next article will reveal all the answers to your questions and you will see for all the time you've spent on this, you've gotten so much wrong yourself.

Sounds intriguing, I look forward to it. Let's see who is 'more right'.

[cryptodevil]

I will also be touching on Vanbex who at the minute just look like they were smarter than me, spotted something and pulled away sooner.

Ask them. They seemed reasonable enough in conversation with me.

[plastick]

The business lawyer that is investigating and giving me legal advice on how to deal with this is a personal friend involved in this industry a long time and detests scams and fraud ruining the reputation of this industry.

According to the advice he gave you he didn't really look into it.

It was me who didn't do my due dilligence properly

It's obvious you still aren't.

I have learned a massive lesson from reporting on this company Astmandu and don't believe I will ever touch a crowdfunding article ever again. Hindsight is a great thing and so much has came to light since that wasn't available to me then.

You should ask your lawyer friend what happens when you post an article that causes hundreds of people to get scammed. Is "It was me who didn't do my due dilligence properly " all you have to say about that?

[cryptodevil]

Good to know Jawad and his sham company have lots to keep them busy. Like turning their bullshit DeOS web-page into a 'Fallout'-themed terminal-screen for no apparent reason whatsoever. Useful.

http://rzr.io

'Borrowed' from https://codepen.io/mackorichardson/pen/vNMRpK

I'd be more interested in why there's still more than 8,000,000 (equivalent to at least 8,000 Bitcoin if all were bought at the 1000 DEOS per btc initial rate) omni-layer DEOS tokens to distribute which don't seem to be going anywhere.

Which does raise the question of if Mr Jawad ""I have literally got millions of pounds, more money than I have ever had in my entire life" Yaqub and Co really did raise the thousands of btc they claimed to have in return for omni-layer DEOS tokens or, if they did raise the thousands of bitcoin claimed, whether the purpose of the 'crowdsale' was less about shilling DEOS and more about laundering illicit funds.

Or perhaps, as I suggested before, large investors are refusing delivery of the omni-layer DEOS tokens and Jawad and Co are simply attempting to force the whole thing into a, "Hey we delivered the minimum spec we were required to by the T&C's of the 'crowdsale'" totallynotascam scam.

[arlecchino80]

So I was scammed, yes, largely thanks to CoinTelegraph writing such gushing reviews about DeOS, and me not having any real experience in this wild west of crypto scams.

I have many DeOS tokens yet no means to use them, and I see no evidence of the platform I funded actually existing. At best, these guys are utterly incompetent. Given what I've discovered here, I'm more inclined to believe they're seasoned scammers.

I've filed a report with actionfraud. The wording of the DeOS terms were such that they have tried to protect themselves. But this is clearly a scam in my eyes and I hope action is taken against the people who have defrauded a lot of us of a LOT of money.

[astmandu]

When is the next CT article coming out?

[cryptodevil]

When is the next CT article coming out?

@Niall? Any indications for when you're going to be publishing something with teeth?

Your former colleagues/clients/advisees appear to be having trouble keeping their totallynotascam cut-and-paste-platform operational.

[cryptodevil]

16NndHpNJyhqmXRso4dGjtW5V7fhWviGWQ

This is the address I was given by razormind.

If that is the case then your deposit was sent here: 1LbXHMsxXJfaBdfNw9sasinYXS1at6KU2Z which had a total of BTC336 received into it before it was emptied. The odd thing is that there seems to have been a number of transactions outgoing from that address, many of them for small amounts, which would suggest it was a hot wallet they were simply using to pay for goods and services.

Either that or it is a mixing address.

Another user has provided 1BeBhG4ofMKc1RdYcHqcYr2caBsZHq9wzn as being the address they were requested to deposit to for the ICO. On following this deposit we can see that it, too, goes to the above BTC336 1LbXHMsxXJfaBdfNw9sasinYXS1at6KU2Z address.

Here is the deposit address he was given, as viewed on the excellent bitcoinchain.com:

You can see the initial 1BTC deposit is then cleared out of that address in a BTC33.389 output along with a group of other transactions from other ICO deposit addresses, which means all the other transactions are addresses also controlled by the same wallet, most likely under the control of Jawad Yaqub or Phil Sturgeon.

[plastick]

Another user has provided 1BeBhG4ofMKc1RdYcHqcYr2caBsZHq9wzn as being the address they were requested to deposit to for the ICO. On following this deposit we can see that it, too, goes to the above BTC336 1LbXHMsxXJfaBdfNw9sasinYXS1at6KU2Z address.

I took a look at mine and it too goes to https://blockchain.info/address/1LbXHMsxXJfaBdfNw9sasinYXS1at6KU2Z.

[cryptodevil]

Got some amusing observations for you this morning from Jawad's Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jawad.yaqub

First, we have sad Jawad. So hopelessly useless at everything except loving his family and believing *real hard* in mythological deities. Well, that and defrauding people out of millions of dollars-worth of bitcoin, of course. You're *totes* ace at that, Jawad!

Next up, one to make you :facepalm:

He said, after collecting several million dollars-worth of bitcoin through criminally fraudulent deception.

Finally, in "Things that make you go hmmmmmmm. . .I wonder if this is because he needs character references for a court hearing?" news?

Don't worry Jawad, I'd happily provide a character reference for you! Like you did for me, when you libellously claimed that I was a paid troll, that my account could be rented for bitcoin and that googling my email address shows how disreputable I am. Except that, unlike your character references for me, I can absolutely promise you that my assertions about you would be true!

[plastick]

The only believable thing I have ever heard him say was when he said he is not good at anything.