EFRI-thing’s Wrong

The truth about EFRI, Werner Boehm’s most despicable scam and its surprising recent resurfacing.

All online investors are familiar with the fear of scamming and deception. The new technological advancements brought about new and exciting opportunities – from binary trading to cryptocurrency – that are ripe for the taking by those brave enough to dare. But the rapid advancements – much like other technological advancements of recent decades, were significantly faster than the systems set in place in order to regulate it, forcing investors and regulators alike to operate in uncharted territories. This has allowed many people to get incredibly wealthy, and created a playground for many dangerous people. Online investors know the fear of being scammed oh too well. Sometimes opportunities seem ‘too good to be true’ prove to be their golden ticket to the big time, while other times they prove to be no more than a scam.

The worst kind of scammers, in my personal opinion, at the very least, are the ones who prey on the weakest and exploit people in their darkest hours. In my years of covering technology and investments, I very rarely came across a scammer as heartless as Werner Boehm, and a scam as vile as the one ironically named European Fund Recovery Initiative (EFRI).

The Method

The innocently named ‘European Fund Recovery Initiative’, was presented as a Non Profit set in place in order to help online scam victims retrieve their lost funds, by joining forces, sharing information and filing class actions against the scammers who conned them. Beautiful idea indeed, one many victim spend their days dreaming of. EFRI, as the ‘fund’ became colloquially known, was in fact a scam of its own. Once approached by victims, EFRI urged the ones contacting it to pay a significant fee for legal representation. The fee, they were assured, would be reimbursed to the victims in its entirety once the case was tried and the legal battle would have been won.

But EFRI, the fund that was supposed to help scam victims, never really existed. It was no more than an empty name. A shell organization, formed by Werner Boehm to collect information about the field of scammers and get innocent people’s money. No cases were prepared. No lawsuits were filed. No legal personnel was hired. EFRI was a mere scam. Another link in Boehm’s seemingly endless chain of international scams.

EFRI is back and this time it’s personal

The EFRI story is, sadly, far from over. As was advertised on his own site FinTelegram (an elaborate scam in its own right, used by Werner Boehm and his criminal associates to advance their criminal ends and attack former colleagues and friends) EFRI is back again only this time the ‘European Fund Recovery Initiative’ has lost interest in its original goal – now it is used to settle personal scores.

Under the cover of the fictitious EFRI title Boehm urges people to petition for the extradition of Gal Barak – an Israeli businessman, currently facing charges in Bulgaria for businesses he owned and ran together with Boehm – to Austria, and his personal vendetta does not stop there. Werner, or ‘EFRI’, goes on tarnishing German businessman Uwe Lenhoff, a former associate of his (who distanced himself from Boehm, after the latter was found guilty of conducting a scam in the infamous BitRush trial) who, as we have shown in our recent report, has become a regular target, often attacked by Boehm’s personal vendetta machine, also known as FinTelegram.

While the timing behind this ‘urgent message’ issued by EFRI on FinTelegram – one of his scams advertising another – Boehm’s history of scams in general, and EFRI’s ongoing scam in particular, suggest that he is, once again, likely up to something cunning and most probably illegal. As the two men identified by the message were former partners of his currently facing charges in which they claim he was heavily involved, this is an audacious albeit ridiculously transparent, attempt to obstruct justice and avoid his and his partners prosecution.