- Pek Universe has been issued a cease and desist order by the Texas State Securities Board
- FullyCrypto exposed the scam in July
- The founder, known as Bitcoin Pope, now faces a potential spell in prison
Pek Universe, the supposed cryptocurrency investment project that we outed as a scam two months ago, has been handed a cease and desist notice by the Texas State Securities Board (TSSB). Pek Universe, which we revealed to be a fraud in July, was dealt the order last week alongside another scam, Forex Birds, LTD, as the state continued its campaign against illegal investment vehicles.
Pek Universe Gets its Comeuppance
Pek Universe, which if their website is anything to go by is still operational, is one of the most brazen cryptocurrency scams we’ve ever seen. Featuring fake directors, fake documentation, no KYC, and guaranteed returns, it was a hot steaming gumbo made from classic crypto investment scam ingredients.
Pek Universe claimed to be “one of the most respected global engineering, construction, petroleum, and project management companies”, but also had sidelines in real estate and cryptocurrency/forex trading.
Putting aside the fact that a company under a single umbrella can’t possibly achieve any degree of acumen in all those areas, their cryptocurrency trading offering included a whole host of generic and meaningless buzzwords, such as offering “real-time market data and order execution technology”.
Nothing But a Scam
In reality, Pek Universe was “enticing investors with promises of significant returns” and was illegally offering securities, with Forex Birds, its foreign exchange arm, also guilty of the same. Forex Birds even claimed to be registered with a number of securities authorities, although when questioned about this for our original piece we were told that we had “no right to ask questions about that information”. Now we know why – all the claimed registrations were false, and even if they were real it wouldn’t have entitled them to sell securities.
The men behind Pek Universe and Forex Birds, Babu Bondesi and Darwin Eric Balusek (who goes by the name Bitcoin Pope), now face a $10,000 fine or 2-10 years in prison, or both. They have until September 31 to open discussions with the regulator, by which time we hope that the site has been taken down and the project is dead.
