Identifying unnamed signatories of Company Documents held by Companies House in the UK

For years, I and many other Anti-Money Laundering (AML) investigators and researchers have been plagued with squiggly signatures on Companies House documentation with no names attached.

 

I recall achieving some breakthroughs thanks to a variety of pioneering online researchers and bloggers doing some really innovative work or simple hard graft. These include Graham Stack, David Leask, Richard Smith, Graham Barrow and a blogger calling themselves ‘Fortified’ – Some of whom I have had the pleasure of meeting and working with. In fact, this particular article by Richard Smith titled ‘Trust, the UK PSC Register, and the Squiggle Family’ see https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2017/09/trust-uk-psc-register-squiggle-family.html is a perfect example of the dilemma one can face.

 

But I now believe it is time that I paid back those favours - and I sincerely hope that this blog will assist some of us to not only put a name to a signature but to also then use those details to expand our knowledge and understanding of the complex global money laundering networks.

 

I would like to put on record that I am not saying that the names identified are doing anything criminal. It is ultimately the individuals who seek to abuse these incorporated companies to commit offences who would fall into that particular category.

 

What really got me into signature identification was this fabulous Steemit blog series by ‘Fortified’ where the focus shone on a signature linked to Sandra Gina Esparon:  https://steemkr.com/money/@fortified/offshore-shell-companies-part-2-or-discovering-the-people-and-companies-involved-in-the-murky-world-of-russian-money-and

Sadly, Part 3 was never published.

 

 

Now this signature issue was becoming a real challenge when dealing with researching Scottish Limited Partnerships (SLPs). I recall researching this signature for weeks before getting a breakthrough:

 

And no, it is not Mr. Squiggle! Please note that I have chosen the signature link to Damoni LP for simplicity sake, as it gives me a chance to quote the excellent ‘Smash & Grab – The UK’s Money Laundering Machine’ article published via Bellingcat.com in October 2019. It was not the company I had previously researched but the signature was the same.

 

I recall getting the breakthrough on that signature via another excellent information source at behindmlm.com where I identified a report about a Ponzi Scheme, which showed the same signature as I had seen on multiple SLPs: https://behindmlm.com/mlm-reviews/buy-time-review-reselling-airtime-400-annual-roi/ which affiliated it with the name Sergiu Valuta. And it was only by reading this article that I noticed a small but important detail – the reported company linked to the scheme was a Limited Liability Partnership (LLP) – but it had provided the full name next to the signature of interest. So, I subsequently researched the LLP named in that article on Companies House and found that the name of the signatory was only mentioned in full on the Accounts filing documents.

 

By the way, this was also the case for confirming the Sandra Gina Esparon signature linked to Always Efficient LLP – yes, the one linked to the BTC-e crypto exchange that reportedly laundered a large chunk of the now infamous stolen Mt Gox Bitcoins as well as the recently published story of the FBI case against the Russian rapper Maksim Boiko laundering funds via BTC-e back in the day.  https://cointelegraph.com/news/fbi-arrests-russian-rapper-for-crypto-money-laundering-cites-damning-instagram

 

Up until recently, this has been particularly helpful to me and I have managed to identify a few extra signatures this way. But the journey has not been simple and there is still a very manual effort to this. I have even put a customised Google search engine on my website at https://www.intelpool.co.uk/search which looks directly at the filing history pages within Companies House to allow for the search of names and to link companies to those names. Pick the LLPs out of the results and research any submitted Accounts filings and hope to match the name to the signature. But what if you have the signature and no name?

 

Here’s the workaround:

In addition to the above search technique, you should extend your search to the website of The Gazette (thegazette.co.uk) and only look for PDF documents.

 

You can achieve this quite simply using the Google Dork:

site:thegazette.co.uk filetype:pdf + “keyword(s)”

 

Now the key to unlocking these unnamed signatures lies in the detail of using one (or a combination) of the following as your keyword:

 

·      Company Name

·      Limited Partner Name

·      General Partner Name

·      Company Formation Agent Name

·      Address

·      Postcode

·      Signatory name (if known or identified as a result of this research)

 

The nice thing about this research is that the PDFs are held within the Gazette’s own website. This is not currently possible on Companies House as their filing documents are held within the Amazon AWS servers, which are a bitch to research using an external search engine dork. You’d effectively have to scrape all of the PDFs and then OCR them and conduct keyword searches against that data set.

To round off, I will use Sergiu Valuta as an example.

 

We know that the signature is on the documentation for Damoni LP without a signature. What we do know is that this SLP lists Damitra Group Ltd as its General Partner.

 

So if we enter the following command into Google:

 

Site:thegazette.co.uk filetype:pdf “damitra”

 

The first listed result is: https://www.thegazette.co.uk/company/OC415327/filing-history/MzIzNDA3ODQzMGFkaXF6a2N4

 

At the top of page 2 of that PDF document, you will find this info…

 

This particular example is great as it not only names Sergiu Valuta along with the signature of interest but it also identifies the name of the signatory Miss Molly Rita Roselie alongside her signature on behalf of Lamen Business Ltd, which also happens to be the same for Damoni LP. NICE!

 

You should note that this does not always work for every search but once you get a result your intelligence picture will expand rapidly.

 

To round off, once you have one or more of these components in place, you can change your keyword searches on both Companies House and The Gazette and keep expanding. You’ll be amazed at the widespread use of their names and signatures.

And don’t forget to keep up those adverse media search terms. You’ll find a lot of stories about how some of these companies have been abused.

Enjoy.

RuNet – The Iron Curtain of the Digital era?

You may have missed the news reports emerging on Christmas Eve that Russia had successfully trialled its new Sovereign Internet system ‘RuNet’.

Described by the Telegraph as a “country-wide alternative to the global internet”, Professor Alan Woodward of the University of Surrey compares RuNet as a “gigantic intranet” similar to that of a large corporation.

Most reporting primarily appears to be concerned with the potential tightening of censorship by a Russian regime widely known to be poor on human rights issues. However, it would seem that little consideration is being given to Russia’s lack of cooperation in relation to international law enforcement requests to pursue offenders within Russia.

Recent reporting on RuNet indicates the system was successfully tested to ensure the "security" of Russia’s internet infrastructure in the event of a foreign cyber-attack. But this is really just a game of swings and roundabouts.

Now, if you follow the news, you’ll probably have heard of some pretty nasty Russian hacking groups, such as Fancy Bear, the Dukes (aka Cozy Bear) and Evil Corp, to name just a few. There are numerous allegations that these groups are actually Kremlin-sponsored. So, what would happen if the Kremlin used RuNet to allow such groups to attack foreign assets and then close the door on any subsequent enquiries from the victims? 

Russia’s reluctance to assist UK investigations into the poisoning of the Skripals in 2018 or even as far back as the murder of Alexander Litvinenko in 2006 may be just the tip of the iceberg. Moving away from chemical poisonings of a couple of ex-spies, we should not lose sight of a more widespread issue affecting many more people. I am talking about the alleged Kremlin sponsoring of cryptocurrency related crimes.

For example, the well-documented USD $4bn Bitcoin theft from the MtGox exchange and the subsequent laundering of those funds by Russian national, Aleksander Vinnik through BTC-e; some of which was reportedly laundered on behalf of Fancy Bear who allegedly work in cooperation with the GRU (Russian Military Intelligence). And let us not forget the small print highlighting how the company structure behind BTC-e is part of a much wider Laundromat scheme facilitating a variety of Eastern European organised crime groups or other criminal enterprises and alleged U.S. election manipulation schemes, of which some are also possibly Kremlin-sponsored.

Following Vinnik’s high-profile arrest in Greece in 2017, his BTC-e business partner Alexei Bilyuchenko became a key player in another cryptocurrency exchange called Wex (World Exchange Services), which stopped trading in 2018, leaving customers unable to access investments totalling nearly half a billion US dollars. A recent BBC investigation has reported recordings allegedly linked to Konstantin Malofeev — a pro-Kremlin Russian billionaire under U.S. sanctions for bankrolling Moscow-backed forces in Eastern Ukraine. The OCCRP reports that Malofeev discussed the importance of bringing Wex under the control of the Russian Security Service, the FSB.

And then there is Bitriver, the largest ‘data centre’ in the former Soviet Union which has already won clients from all over the world, including the U.S., Japan and China. Most of whom mine bitcoins. Bitriver is the brainchild of the Kremlin-friendly oligarch Oleg Deripaska.

We are talking about some serious cyber/crypto firepower here. And given that we are seeing billions of Dollars of cryptocurrencies being stolen and other criminal funds being laundered on a frighteningly regular basis, it would be somewhat silly to underestimate the potential threat to the world’s economy here.

So, what can stop Russia from using RuNet to protect its emerging dominance in the world’s cryptocurrency markets and the potential state sponsoring of crypto-thefts or even laundering criminal proceeds through crypto mining facilities? Quite honestly, I would say nothing can. After all, we’re talking about a country that annexed Crimea and simply got away with it.

Perhaps the UK needs a BrexNet – a state sponsored internet feed of its own to mitigate some of these risks in a tit-for-tat style exchange. But before I suggest a break-up of the Internet as we know it, it might be worth developing a good understanding of global laundromat schemes and their potential links to cryptocurrencies to help our frontline defences detect, deter or prevent any such future hostile activities.

Why not sign up for my brand new Internet Intelligence & Investigation (i3) based Anti-Money Laundering (AML) training course: Investigating Illicit Financial Networks – Laundromat Methodology which runs from 23-26 March 2020 in the wonderful city of Liverpool. Alternatively, you can book for the course scheduled to run from 1-4 June 2020.