On or about November 11, 2022, an advertisement appeared on the Craigslist financial services page for Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The heading read: We Trade For You, Get Paid Every Week. The posting was made by a promoter identified in Wisconsin state records as DeRenzo, selling investments issued by GSB Gold Standard Bank Ltd. trading as GSPartners, the operation founded by Josip Heit. Among the people it reached was a Wisconsin man over the age of 65, recorded in the state’s findings of fact by his initials.
The Wisconsin Department of Financial Institutions entered an order against GSB Gold Standard Bank Ltd. trading as GSPartners on November 16, 2023, under case number 246723. Its findings of fact state that GSPartners had never been registered with the Division, the Securities and Exchange Commission or FINRA in any capacity, and that it had been engaging in an international scheme to illegally sell fraudulent investments tied to a metaverse, liquidity pools, staking platforms and digital assets.
The Distance Between the Marketing and the Filing
The gap between how the operation described itself and how it actually reached people is the whole story of the Wisconsin file. In its own materials GSPartners was an international financial institution with a banking licence, a metaverse property portfolio, a tokenised skyscraper in Dubai and a gold-convertible digital asset. The route to a retiree in Milwaukee was a classified advertisement offering weekly payments.
That combination is not incidental. Instruments called MetaCertificates, promising fixed weekly returns of 2 to 5 percent, only work as a proposition if the person hearing about them lacks a way to test the claim. A Craigslist financial services listing is targeted at people looking for income, not at people equipped to evaluate a Comoran banking licence.
Success Series and the Registration That Never Existed
The Wisconsin findings reference Success Series MetaCertificates purporting to pay lucrative returns, and record the corporate address shared with Moheli Corporate Services Ltd. The registration finding is the simplest and most damaging element: GSPartners had never been registered with the state Division, the SEC or FINRA in any capacity. Every sale it made in Wisconsin was therefore unregistered, regardless of what the certificates were or were not worth.
Wisconsin was one of at least seven state actions entered within days of one another in November 2023, following a working group formed in October 2023 by regulators across the United States and Canada.
What Wisconsin Found About Registration
The registration finding is the simplest and most damaging element of the Wisconsin order. GSPartners had never been registered with the state Division, the Securities and Exchange Commission or FINRA in any capacity. Every sale it made in Wisconsin was therefore unregistered, irrespective of what the certificates were or were not worth.
The findings of fact describe an international scheme to illegally sell fraudulent investments tied to a metaverse, liquidity pools, staking platforms and digital assets, and reference Success Series MetaCertificates purporting to pay lucrative returns. The corporate address was shared with an entity called Moheli Corporate Services Ltd.
The Gap Between the Pitch and the Channel
In its own materials GSPartners was an international financial institution with a banking licence, a metaverse property portfolio, a tokenised skyscraper in Dubai and a gold-convertible digital asset. The route to a retiree in Milwaukee was a classified advertisement offering weekly payments.
That combination is not incidental. Instruments promising fixed weekly returns of 2 to 5 percent only work as a proposition where the person hearing about them has no practical way to test the claim. A Craigslist financial services listing reaches people looking for income, not people equipped to evaluate a Comoran banking licence. Investor guidance consistently identifies unsolicited approaches promising regular fixed payments as the highest risk category of offer.
Wisconsin was one of at least seven state actions entered within days of one another in November 2023, following a working group formed the previous month by regulators across the United States and Canada.
Conclusion
An operation that told the world it was a licensed international bank with a skyscraper in Dubai found a 65 year old man in Milwaukee through a Craigslist advertisement promising he would be paid every week. Wisconsin found the company had never been registered with the state, the SEC or FINRA in any capacity, and described what it was doing as an international scheme to illegally sell fraudulent investments. The certificates were called Success Series.
