Kuetzal, a Big Scam?
December was a turbulent month for the world of crowdlending. One of the platform in which I and a lot of investors trusted seems to be nothing but a big fraud. Some investors even have tens of thousands invested…
Most of the people already started to withdraw their money and activating the buyback guarantee (losing 10% of their principal in the latest). This chain reaction might have the opposite result expected from investors though, as the platform might not have enough money to return to its investors (assuming that not all projects are fake and some money is indeed lent).
I will try to summarise the principal reasons so that no one starts investing any money in what it seems to be one big fraudulent company.
All of the things I’m going to say below were already discussed in other blogs such as: financiallyfree.eu and explorep2p.com. All the credits and effort belong to them and I’m thankful for their work. I’ll just try to resume it for you in all one place.
The Previous CEO and Most of The Team Left
I’m curious to see what happens now and how they will be able to solve this challenge considering that most of Kuetzal’s team left the company together with their ex CEO, Alberts, looking for a better opportunity. Also, some bloggers found out that their offices in Riga are currently empty, which makes me wonder: who is currently working in Kuetzal?
Unexperienced CEO
It all started with the change of CEO, from a young guy named Alberts to another young one, Maksims. He’s 24 years old and apparently has not so much experience to be in front of a company that demands so much caution and attention to detail in choosing the projects.
Fake Companies
There are several projects that seem to not exist at all, such as the Alborg Petrol. This “company” borrowed 850 000€ from the investors and according to some research – that should have been made by Kuetzal – it is all fake. They have no office, no employees, no trucks, even the picture used for their CEO was fake. Ah, before I forgot, almost all the text from their website was a big copy from a big Russian company. Well, a company like Kuetzal that does not do its due diligence cannot be trusted, ever.
Unprofitable Projects?!
There is another project which intrigues me a lot. A loan to the construction of 4 houses for 550 000€ with a 21% interest equals 665 500€ return to investors . After some research, it was found out that the houses are being individually sold by 145 000€ which gives a total of 580 000€. Who would do this business and lose around 70 000€??? This doesn’t make any sense at all and it smells fishy.
A Cancelled Meeting
Some bloggers (mentioned from the links above) tried to meet with Maksims and Viktoria (the owner of Kuetzal) to understand all of what was going on – from the strange projects to the future of the company. A meeting with the latest was not possible and there was not even the courtesy to explain the reason behind it.
From the only meeting that they had with the CEO, not much questions were answered as the same claimed to not be fully aware of all the projects as for that moment, since he is new in the company.
I personally don’t want to be in the middle of such a mess. I’m out and hoping that my funds will be fully withdrawn.
Conclusion
I will keep pressing this button: diversification. Please keep doing this if your goal is to achieve financial freedom.
Companies like Kuetzal, unfortunately will keep appearing. It is our duty to investigate them and share with the crowdlending community our thoughts about their safety.
Just keep in mind to diversify your investments and to not panic! If you’re doing the things right, there’s no need to. Sometimes we need to take one step back in order to take two steps front 🙂
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