Evidence

To support our claims detailed in ‘the scam’, we have compiled a range of evidence gathered from some of the investors who bought into Marco’s lies. This includes contracts, conversations, Marco’s ID & other documents that Marco forged to entice his victims. Please note, some information has been covered to protect the IDs of some of the investors.

One of the initial claims that Marco made to prove his credentials was that he has been given one of the first commercial licenses in the UAE as an ‘Offshore Gaming Operator’, authorised directly by a member of the royal family. Here is a snippet of the conversation he had with one of the investors making this outrageous claim:

Here is a closer look at the ‘license’:

Another trade license

A separate contract he had forged and shared with the investors in order to gain their trust was another ‘agreement’ with a German consultancy, claiming they’re investing €500m with him. Here is a copy of that agreement

We reached out to the head of the German company via Linkedin, a man named Josef Reichert, who we knew existed because the contract happened to contain his passport copy. Unsurprisingly, Mr Reichert had no idea of Marco Oliva or the agreement:

This response was beginning to become a common occurrence any time the question was posed to anyone regarding a contract or document that Marco had shared with potential investors, which we will share more of later.

Investors and Payments

In relation to this specific fraud case we’re investigating, there was roughly over €15m taken from over 30 investors, all who paid either via fiat or crypto into his Fujairah-registered company. Here is an excel sheet which lists all the funds and amounts that were paid into Marco’s business account under the name of ‘AIDIA FZ LLE’ or into his crypto wallet held with Binance

View spreadsheet of Buy-Ins

Using his expertise in forging documents, Marco then put together contracts for each investor outlining the investment and the terms and conditions attached to each one:

View Investment Agreement

Here is one example of an actual contract drawn up by Marco and provided to an investor. You can see that it explains the services Marco’s company would provide, but at the same time removes all liability for any losses. He also secures a % for himself in account management. The amount invested, in this case in crypto, is outlined along with the crypto-wallet address. This template, with a few tweaks, was sent and signed to all 30+ investors throughout last year. It’s worth noting that bitcoin had reached an all-time high in November, 2021. So confidence was high and this played perfectly into Marco’s favour. Soon after, each investor was told how they were in the profits, but little did they know that they would not be seeing their initial investment, let alone any return on it.:

We also managed to obtain some screenshots of the transactions that the investors paid into Marco’s bank account or crypto wallet::

The combined total of the fiat transactions above is over €4m and over half a million in transfers to his crypto wallet. However, plenty more funds were either wired or transferred electronically to Marco. Specifically to this scheme, it totalled at over €15m.

Personal Details

Marco would gain the confidence in his targets by sharing his personal ID to show he is a real person and that his company exists. He would do this with images of his passport and bank cards: